24 December,2015 08:09 AM IST | | AFP
Former Italy striker Luca Toni has been awarded more than one million euros in repayments from his former tax advisors after a German court ruled in his favour over a religious tax case
Luca Toni
Berlin: Former Italy striker Luca Toni has been awarded more than one million euros in repayments from his former tax advisors after a German court ruled in his favour over a religious tax case.
Luca Toni
The 38-year-old's former tax consultants must repay the Verona forward 1.25 million euros (approximately R8.99 crores) according to the Munich ruling, the court said in a statement. Toni, who spent three years at Bayern Munich from 2007 to 2010, had claimed 1.7 million euros.
The World Cup winner with Italy in 2006 claimed he was misinformed by his consultants about the German religious tax. The tax, equivalent to about eight-to-nine percent of income tax, is levied on registered church members. In order to stop paying it, people must formally leave their religious community.
"If I'd have known how much it costs to be Catholic here (in Germany), I would have immediately left the church," Toni said, according to press reports.
After leaving Bayern, Toni received a bill for the religious tax which he had not paid during his three-year stay in Bavaria. He claimed that as he did not understand German, he had signed many documents without knowing what they were.
