We thank the referee for his/her careful assessment and have responded
to all items as clarified below in detail.

> The paper is well written and will be of interest to a wide audience
> in solar physics community and beyond, particularly so in the CMB. In
> this respect, it would be beneficial for the paper to put the current
> result in context of recent work on CMB galactic foregrounds.

We have now added a corresponding discussion of earlier numerical and
analytic findings on the left column of page 2 in the second part of the
introduction.

> The authors cite relevant literature, but a due discussion is
> lacking. In particular, the galactic dust polarization patterns
> measured by the Planck satellite were successfully reproduced by models
> of non-helical MHD turbulence, but the authors claim that the observed
> E- and B-type polarizations characterize "helical hydromagnetic
> turbulence in the case of dust polarization" (see Abstract).

To avoid this impression, we have now presented new results without
helicity in Section 3 where we discuss the skewness of E. Both cases
are rather similar, as is now explained in various places, both in the
abstract and in the introduction, and of course in Section 3 itself.

> Likewise, the explanation of the EE/BB asymmetry in terms of Alfven
> waves under sub-Alfvenic conditions is based on homogeneous MHD
> turbulence. It seems that what the authors propose as an explanation
> (helical, non-homogeneous turbulence) is disjoint with respect
> to the previously proposed explanations (non-helical, homogeneous
> turbulence). Which critical tests and observables would help us to
> distinguish between the two propositions?

As explained above, we have now mentioned and presented results for
nonhelical turbulence to avoid the wrong impression that helicity is
required for the enhanced EE/BB ratio. It is simply a new result
originally obtained when analyzing helical turbulence, which was the
main focus for predicting a finite EB cross correlation, which has
not yet been measured, however. We do however refer to a measured
TB correlation as a possible proxy and refer here to our other paper
by Bracco et al.