I am typing on my phone so please forgive me for the formatting.
Technically the TIFU is in the making for the last 9 years.
In Germany there is a tax on your personal income called Kirchensteuer (church tax in English). It’s about 9% and collected by the churches in German (both Catholic and Protestant).
When I was first working in Germany, amongst many paperwork, there was one called Anmeldung (Registration) whereby I had to register my info (address, work, family situation, and religion - if any) to the federal authority. At the religion box I filled: “keine” - none. So the job was great, Hamburg was a very vibrant city, time flew. After a while I noticed in my income statement there was a line called "Kirchensteuer", which by default I should be exempted. So I bought the matter to the HR lady, who condescendingly ask me that "every German pays it, do you think you are different?". So being a foreigner in a foreign country, I was not keen on pissing off the HR who might hold sway to my work visa. So I piped up.
Before Covid, I returned to my home countries and had a talk with an another guy in the same field, somehow this topic came up and turned out he was exempted.
TLDR: forced to pay church tax even I am a declared atheist. Too afraid of losing my work visa to fight with company HR about that. End up paying over 10,000 euros over the years for that freaking tax. Fml