This is evident from a decision of the Federal Constitutional Court published on Wednesday.
The Karlsruhe judges repealed the provisions of the Church Tax Act in Saxony, which applied in 2014 and 2015, as violent because they made marriages worse compared to civil partnerships.
"The different treatment of marriages and civil partnerships in their attraction to special church money represents an indirect unequal treatment because of the sexual orientation, which is constitutionally unjustified," the decision states.
Marriage and registered civil partnership are "shapes legally binding in a comparable manner". Saxony must now change its ecclesiastical tax law for 2014 and 2015.
According to a judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court in 2013 on spouse splitting and income tax calculation of spouses and partners, all federal states had immediately changed their church tax calculation accordingly, except for Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt.
Only Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt had several years to achieve several years for the equality of marriages and civil partnerships.
Despite constitutional judgments to the contrary, spouses had to pay the special church money in these two federal states, but they did not. Saxony spent the equality first in 2016.
Special form of church tax
The special church money is a special form of church tax.
It is raised by the Protestant and Catholic Churchs if one spouse or a partner is a member of the church and the other is not, i.e. without a religion, has left the church or belongs to another religion.
In this case, not only the income of the church member, but the income together taxable by the partners is used as a basis for calculating the calculations.
In a specific case, a Protestant Christian from Saxony, who was married to a non-denominational spouse, had defended himself against taxation with the special church money. It should pay 1,860 euros annually.
Although the tax office later significantly lowered the tax claim, the woman sued at the Saxon Finance Court.
This then handed over the case to the Federal Constitutional Court for examination.
According to the decision of the Second Senate, the legislature in Saxony must now be held until 30th. June 2025, a change in the law to put them on an equal step-by-step and partnerships for the 2014 and 2015 assessment period.
It is likely to be an obvious solution to apply equality retroactively to 2014 and 2015.