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Germany’s 27 dioceses received a year-on-year increase in church tax revenue in 2025, despite losing more than 300,000 registered Catholics in the same year.
The German bishops’ conference announced July 7 that dioceses received 6.751 billion euros (around $7.72 billion) via the church tax system in 2025, up from 6.628 billion ($7.58 billion) in 2024 and 6.515 billion ($7.45 billion) in 2023.
German commentators have dubbed the counterintuitive phenomenon in which church tax revenue rises while the number of German Catholics shrinks the “church tax miracle” (Kirchensteuerwunder).
The German bishops’ conference did not provide a detailed explanation for why revenue increased again in 2025. It limited itself to presenting the latest figure in a table showing how church tax revenue has developed since German reunification in 1990.
The German bishops’ conference presents each year’s church tax revenue in a table with three main columns, showing the total annual sum, the percentage year-on-year change, and the percentage change relative to the baseline year of 1991.
The updated table shows that revenue rose 1.9% year-on-year in 2025 and that the 2025 sum marked a 73.9% increase compared to 1991.
The number of people leaving the Catholic Church in Germany fell to
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