From the 2026 budget audit
31.7 billion Ft to run churches — on top of what their members already give
Hungary's state budget contributes 31,705 million Ft to church core-institution operation and tops up the voluntary SZJA 1% church designation — converting a voluntary mechanism back into a mandatory one.
About 7,950 Ft per taxpayer per year — including a state top-up of the voluntary 1% designation, meaning the taxpayer who designates nothing to any church still funds a supplement to the large recipient denominations.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: funded parishes, clergy salaries, and core institutional operations across Hungary's registered churches. The unseen: the wage-earner — of any faith or none — whose SZJA top-up flows toward the largest recipient denominations regardless of whether they are a member or designate their 1% there. The worker whose grandmother belongs to a small denomination finds that their tax tops up the larger ones.
Objection
"Churches provide social services — schools, hospitals, care homes — that the state would otherwise have to fund directly."
Answer
Public-service contracts for specific deliverables — school places, care beds, hospital services — are a separate accounting matter from this line, which funds core-institution operation. The argument for church social services is an argument for procurement contracts at transparent rates, not for a 31.7 billion Ft operational grant. The four-year linear phase-out gives churches time to rebuild offering-based and membership-based funding. The voluntary SZJA designation channel — the genuine funding mechanism — remains fully intact.
Share if you think church funding should come from the faithful who choose to give, not from everyone's income tax.
The analyst's verdict
Church Core-Institution Operation, PIT Designation and Top-up
Rationale
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. The within-class point sharpens it: the 31,705.0 millió Ft core-institution line is partly an SZJA kiegészítés, a state top-up of the voluntary 1% church designation. The mechanism means that a worker who designates their 1% to no church, or to a small one, still funds — through general tax — a state supplement that scales toward the large recipient denominations. The voluntary designation channel already exists and already works; the state top-up converts a voluntary mechanism back into an involuntary one.
Transition mechanism
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.
Affected groups
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 and core-institution lines, protected by the multi-year glide; construction counterparties on capital lines, protected by contract run-off. 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.
Free Society Institute
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