Taxed!

I have been unaware of this till a few days ago, but apparently, i've been paying "church tax" and i didn't even know it!

It came out the other night as my husband and i lay in bed just before falling asleep. That is when our most enlightening conversations happen, by the way. My husband expressed concern that bad weather's coming and snow's coming and he will need to put his bicycle away, inside somewhere as opposed to just propped up beside the house, so it wouldn't get snowed under. I jokingly suggested he puts it in the second hand store that our landlord keeps on the ground level of the chalet. My husband laughed at that and commented on how much "junk" there is in that store and that there would be absolutely no space for his bike in there. I asked, just out of pure curiosity, if he thinks our landlord gets a substantial income from all the stuff he sells or is it just to pass the time. Oh, no, my husband replies, the money he gets from selling the stuff does not go to him. It goes to the Salvation Army.

Our landlord is a priest of the Salvation Army. Some Sundays he holds church service up in his house. We can hear them singing. Every Friday, he opens up the second-hand store and puts all the stuff out on display and the people come and maybe buy something. The wife of our landlord does not work. Well, that's not exactly correct or fair to say. She does not have a job. She works though. She vacuums the house every, and i am not kidding here, every day! I hear her. She's a good, Swiss housewife. But she earns no income.

So here is the question i posed to my husband that night in bed: If the landlady doesn't earn any money, the landlord earns very little from our rent and some events he might host (but hey, village Saanen is not that big, and we already have another priest living across the street. Yes, we live in a 'holy' area indeed!) then how do they get the money to live? The answer was simple. From our "church tax". Church tax? Yeah, church tax. Do I pay this church tax too? Yes. Do I pay it because i'm married to a Swiss or did i pay it before also? No, i pay because i'm Swiss. Aha, i see. Does every Swiss person pay church tax? But of course, what for a question is this? Well, do i have some sort of say here, like could i not pay church tax if i didn't want to? Sure, but why would you want to "go out of the church"? Huh? You know, that's not good really, you might not be able to get buried when you die. HUH? It's just not good, ok. Ok, so i pay church tax so i can get buried. Any other benefits? Well, we didn't pay a cent for our wedding ceremony, did we? No. Ok. Ok.

"Now i lay me down to sleep......."