From yesterday and for five weeks, advertisements on TV, papers, radios and the Internet: these are the initiatives taken by the Spanish Bishops Conference to spur the citizens to sign in their tax returns for the Catholic Church. Initiatives that were presented in Madrid yesterday at a press conference and that have become necessary, since a new type of tax allocation will be enforced from this year, as agreed with the Government, under which the state’s preventative allocation will be suppressed from 2008, the income coefficient will be increased from 0.5 to 0.7%, and tax exemption for the Church will be suppressed. "Financial support to the Church said mgr. Antonio Algora, director of the Secretariat for Support to the Church will only depend on those people who appreciate what the Church does and on the Catholics who know that with that 0.7% they will support priests, parish and ecclesial centres and apostolic work". According to Fernando Giménez Barriocanal, deputy secretary for economic affairs of the Spanish Bishops Conference, this is "the year of the truth", because, "if nobody checks the box, the Church will get nothing". In 2006, nearly six million taxpayers signed in for the Church.
