Patriarch: numbers shall not be assigned to people, but only to papers

Russian Orthodox Church believers has been strongly complaining against the authorities’ plans to introduce “identification taxpayer numbers.” As they understood, they were supposed to submit an application to the taxation agency asking to assign him or her a number “instead of the Christian name.” Reacting to this popular dicontent, Patriarch Alexy II has issued a special statement saying that “the state has heeded the voice of the Church and complied with its request to alter the scheme of assigning identification taxpayer’s numbers.” From now on, an applicant should only have to fill out a questionnaire, while a number will be assigned to man, but to his “taxation policy.”