The War On Christmas Just Won’t End

[Venom]

Here it sounds like the governments are collecting this tax for individual churches, skimming some off the top (to cover their own "costs", no doubt) and then paying the money to the churches. Why not let the churches collect their own funds, the way they do here in the US?

The church tax is not a fix amount, it's a percentage of the income tax (in Germany, for example, 8 respectively 9%, depending in which federal state one lives). Since tax information comes under data protection, it cannot be given to the churches to collect the money.

And letting everybody, rich and poor alike, pay the same total amount is considered unfair, so said tax information is needed.