A 2026-os költségvetés-elemzésből
14.9 billion Ft to top up clergy incomes and fund a heritage grant
A 14,964 million Ft line supplements the incomes of clergy and funds Jewish heritage preservation — two very different obligations bundled into a single transfer that phases out over five years.
About 3,751 Ft per taxpayer per year — income supplements for religious personnel plus an earmarked heritage grant, funded from general tax.
Amit látsz — és amit nem
The seen: clergy whose state income supplement brings their effective earnings above what their denomination's offering base provides; Jewish heritage institutions whose preservation work is partly state-funded. The unseen: the wage-earner whose tax tops up the incomes of religious workers in traditions they may not share — and whose own income has no comparable state supplement.
Ellenvetés
"Jewish heritage preservation is a special obligation given Hungary's history — it should not be treated as a standard subsidy."
Válasz
The Jewish heritage component is a distinct and serious claim — one that the five-year phase-out acknowledges by giving the longest possible transition horizon. The argument is not that this obligation is trivial but that dedicated heritage-funding mechanisms — foundation grants, EU cultural funds, dedicated legislative provisions — are a more appropriate instrument than a line bundled with clergy income supplements inside a church-transfer budget. The two components should be separated and the heritage grant migrated to a durable mechanism before the phase-out completes.
Share if you think Jewish heritage preservation deserves its own dedicated funding mechanism, not a bundled church-transfer line.
Az elemző értékelése
Magyarországi egyházi személyek jövedelempótléka és zsidó örökség ápolása céltámogatás
Az elemző indoklása jelenleg angol nyelven elérhető; magyar fordítás folyamatban.
Indoklás
Religious practice is the paradigm case of a voluntary association. A church is sustained by the freely-given contributions of its believers — and Hungarian churches, like churches everywhere, have a millennia-tested mechanism for this: the offering, the tithe, the membership of the faithful. The classical-liberal frame does not judge the worth of religious life; it observes that religious life does not require involuntary tax financing, because the people who value a church can and historically do fund it directly. The seen here is a funded parish, a renovated church building, a supplemented clergy income. The unseen is the wage-earner — of any faith or none — whose SZJA was routed to a religious institution they may not belong to and did not choose.
Átállási mechanizmus
The capital and heritage lines (23,503.8, 15,460.2, 14,964.3, 4,386.6) typically sit inside multi-year renovation and construction commitments; a five-year linear run-off lets in-flight building contracts complete while no new ones are commissioned on the state account. The 31,705.0 millió Ft core-institution line funds, in part, the working livelihoods of clergy and church employees who have planned their lives around it — a four-year linear glide gives churches time to rebuild offering-based and membership-based funding and to absorb the SZJA-designation revenue that remains entirely intact. Across the cluster, the SZJA 1% church designation — the genuinely voluntary channel — is untouched and becomes the primary funding route.
Érintett csoportok
Churches and religious institutions, who transition from state grant to offering-and-membership funding plus the intact 1% designation; clergy and church employees on the income-supplement line, protected by the multi-year glide. No believer loses the right to practise or to fund their church; the reform removes the involuntary contribution of non-members, not the voluntary contribution of members.
Szabad Társadalom Intézet
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