Finding Patterns in Historical Tax Resistance Campaigns

I’m going to be NWTRCC’s representative at the 14th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns in Bogotá, Colombia in . The conference organizers have asked me to deliver a talk concerning the history of conscientious tax resistance.

So lately, a lot of the time I would otherwise be spending on The Picket Line, I’ve instead been spending on research and preparation for this talk, which I also hope to expand on for my next book.

The theme I’m working with is similar to one I used for a Picket Line post back in : the variety of methods with which tax resisters and sympathizers have augmented and amplified their campaigns. At the time, I identified and briefly described 22 such methods. I’ve picked out another thirty or so since then and I’m still going through my notecards.

For each of these, to the extent that I can, I want to research how they were used by various historical tax resistance campaigns, and how they played out dynamically as the campaigns and their opponents developed their competing tactics.

My research so far has shown me a lot of repeating patterns in the ways tax resistance campaigns play out and in the ways they succeed and fail, and it seems to me that it would be useful for future campaigns to be able to quickly come up to speed on this history so as to better understand what to expect.