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Comment by allendoerfer | Hacker News Reader

To add to that: Taxes are not 50%, but there are mandatory social insurances you have to pay: Health insurance (+elderly care insurance), unemployment, pension system. They make up the biggest chunk for low to medium sized incomes.

Your employer also pays into these insurances for you, which does not show up on your job-offer. So effectively you get 20% more than advertised.

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It's a total of about 50% in social security contributions AND taxes. Assuming you are single and have no kids and your gross salary is 100k, you pay about 15k in social security contributions and 29k in income tax. And additionally 2.5k in church tax if you're catholic or lutheran.

thats roundabout 45% but yeah. Actually high earners pay less taxes than those stuck in the middle (like 40k to 60k) because after a certain threshold (i think around 60k) your contributions to health care (which is until then around 15% of your income) don't rise anymore (unless you have a very expensive private health care plan but thats on you ;)).

Additionally, I remember hearing that private healthcare can be cheaper for young healthy people as the public healthcare is a fixed percentage and the private is based on your circumstances. So many high earners pay less for healthcare than lower earners until they age/have families

> And additionally 2.5k in church tax if you're catholic or lutheran.

Woah, what? How does that work and why?

Well, we don't take separation of church and state as seriously as we should. The state collects the taxes for the churches, it's around 9% of your income tax. This happens automatically if you're baptized, and you have to leave the church if you don't want to pay this, which also happens at a government office.

I thought this was just a way to reduce money laundry. If the church would just receive donations, it gets hard to track where the money is coming from/going to. There's a church in Brazil that flies helicopters out of the temple carrying cash [1]. If you're a drug dealer there's no money laundry scheme better than this.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ciw8ciqPY_c

It has historical reasons. Back when Napoleon conquered Europe, the HRE redistributed some land from the Church to the secular rulers and in return promised to fund them via taxes and compensate them for the land. The church tax has since become more of a membership fee (you can just leave the Church and stop paying it), but the state still collects it for the Churches.

All your questions mostly answered, my unknown internet friend.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_tax

As a Blue Card holder, upon registration in town hall, they ask about your religion and if you don’t want to pay church tax, you have to say you have no religions. Germans also can get out of the church “in an official sense” and stop paying that tax.

I still show up as a parishioner at my old church. I haven't been in over 6 years.

Yes that is true, I keep seeing the chunks of my pay go and forget that there is a good reason (except for the TV licence!) I’ll edit my post

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