From the 2026 budget audit
Payroll levies on a graveyard custodian: frozen, not growing
The 148.5 million Ft employer-contribution line for the National Heritage Institute is frozen nominal — the real-terms envelope shrinks each year without a single redundancy.
About 37 Ft per taxpayer per year — employer payroll taxes for a small, bounded heritage-custody operation.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: the state's share of payroll taxes for Institute staff who maintain protected memorial sites. The unseen: the ten-year real-terms saving from holding this line flat while inflation runs — a 32.5 million Ft reduction in real purchasing power that requires no forced change.
Objection
"Freezing employer contributions means the institute can't keep pace with wage increases."
Answer
That is precisely the mechanism. When the nominal envelope is held flat, the real envelope shrinks — and over a decade, that shrinkage creates the financial conditions under which the custodial arrangement can be reviewed for transfer to a foundation model. The Institute's own 225 million Ft operating revenue would anchor that foundation's finances.
Share if you think inflation erosion is a fairer way to right-size state institutions than abrupt closure.
The analyst's verdict
Employer Contributions (National Heritage Institute)
Rationale
The Institute maintains the Nemzeti Sírkert (National Graveyard) and the registry of protected memorial sites — a bounded, finite custodial mandate. It is not a rights-protection function, but it is self-limiting: the stock of graves and memorial sites does not expand on a budget cycle. An outright cut would strand a custodial obligation toward physical heritage that has no private claimant ready to assume it; an expansion is unwarranted. Nominal freeze is the honest classification — hold the allocation flat and let inflation erode the real envelope by roughly 20-25% over a decade, during which the custodial arrangement can be reviewed against a foundation or trust model. The Institute is, like the Institute for National Strategy, named in the government's restructuring list with Veritas as successor;[^1] if that absorption proceeds, the freeze simply carries into the successor's books.
Transition mechanism
Hold nominal allocation at 2,477.1 millió Ft. Review within the decade for transfer of custodial functions to a heritage foundation funded partly by its own 225.0 millió Ft revenue stream.
Affected groups
None displaced in the freeze period; staff and custodial obligations continue.
Free Society Institute
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