Kirchensteuer, or church tax, is a a tax on income in Germany that benefits a church that the payer belongs to. The level of tax depends on the state or Bundesland that you live in.

Payment is made from your wages by your employer to the Finanzamt, therefore the church who benefits is noted on the Lohnsteuerkarte.

For the main churches, the Kirchensteuer is an important form income. They do, however, use this to provide services to the community which in other countries may be charged for separately.

To hear a simple explanation and a short discussion in German, listen to the podcast:

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Disclaimer: this podcast is a simple explanation for non-native speakers. For tax advice, please contact a Steuerberater.

With only one week to go until Christmas, Maria and Graham discuss how they celebrate with elements of different cultures and how much they stay with German traditions.

When do you celebrate on the 24th and when on the 25th of December? Who brings the presents – the Christkind, Weihnachtsmann or Santa Claus?

Listen to the podcast to find out:

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I haven’t had much of a chance to visit the Christmas Markets this year. I had good intentions of blogging and podcasting from different ones, but in the end the weather has stayed bad and to make things worse I was ill for the past week.

So yesterday we braved the elements and wrapped up warm to at least visit the Frankfurt Christmas Market. Last year I was critical of the high prices on some of the stalls, so I was interested to see if they had got any worse. I found out that it is easy to spend a lot of money on very little!

I also found out that Sunday evening was not the best time to go – it was absolutely full and there was little or no chance of taking a leisurely look at the stalls. You either went with the flow or got out of the way!

Listen to the podcast to find out more. Have you visited a Christmas Market this year?

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At the end of October we asked you for your comments on the Monday Podcast. Although we didn’t receive a large amount, the ones we did get were very detailed and have helped us to plan the future direction of the podcast.

Unfortunately, Maria has decided to leave the podcast at the end of this year to concentrate on other projects. She will, however, continue to produce German Words Explained with me.

Listen to the podcast to find out more:

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Sometimes you see signs that have been translated into German, only not quite translated correctly. This can have funny results. Graham saw, and photographed, several of these whilst on holiday on Lanzarote and today the Monday Podcast discusses what he found and why such mistakes happen.

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