Joel Landis has produced a new video on war taxes and war tax resistance for the Mennonite Central Committee:
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
- The Tax Update Blog reflects on The Massacre of the Innocents. About seven million American children vanished from U.S. tax rolls in when the law changed to require taxpayers to include the social security numbers of any dependents they declared on their returns.
- Doctors in Nepal plan to refuse to pay a new tax and engage in other acts of noncooperation with the government, according to the chairman of the Nepal Medical Association.
For more information on the topic or topics below (organized as “topic → subtopic → sub-subtopic”), click on any of the ♦ symbols to see other pages on this site that cover the topic. Or browse the site’s topic index at the “Outline” page.
- How you can resist funding the government → the tax resistance movement → media → video
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- NWTRCC’s video contest begins. Also: Albert Jay Nock on anarchist ethics. And: war tax resisters find a receptive audience at the School of the Americas Watch protest in Georgia earlier this month.
- Choose your favorite among the finalists in NWTRCC’s video contest. Also: Dave Keniston writes about his tax resistance, and Ticia at T.P.M. Cafe thinks about getting her toes wet. And: the American public begins to suspect that they’re overspending on the military.
- The Agape Community, a group of radically nonviolent, tax resisting Catholics in Massachusetts that was founded in 1982. Also: Eric Volpe explains why he became a war tax resister. And: will tax resisters get hassled when they try to cross the border?.
- Two war tax resistance films — “Paying for Peace” and “An Act of Conscience” — are released on-line. Also: the story of The Bezuidenoudt Affair, an act of tax resistance that triggered the first Boer War.
- Two war tax resistance films — “Paying for Peace” and “An Act of Conscience” — are released on-line. Also: the story of The Bezuidenoudt Affair, an act of tax resistance that triggered the first Boer War.
- A new video from Conscience Canada promotes conscientious objection to military taxation. Also: as I walk down the path of tax resistance, I notice I’ve been bothered by the same stone in my shoe as those in whose footsteps I’m walking.
- On “The Ridley Report” Dave Ridley files a Peace Tax Return instead of a 1040. Also: a new G.A.O. report on the I.R.S. collection process contains a few bits of interest.
- If you tap on the core of central authority it sounds hollow, brittle, and rotten, like the stalk of a cattail just before the seeds are ready to disperse. Also: a video of David Schenck giving a talk about war tax resistance last month. And: Gerald DePyper tries to light a tax-resistance fire under the American anti-abortion movement.
- Some notes and photos from the first full day of the NWTRCC National Gathering in Cleveland, Ohio. Also: Aristotle continues to try to understand self-control and its absence, and contrasts his view with that of Socrates. Does this have anything to do with hypocrisy?
- A new edition of NWTRCC’s newsletter includes items on relationships where one person is a tax resister and the other one is not, news on a new war tax resistance film, upcoming and recent war tax resistance actions, and more. Also: Mexican vendors sell tax evasion paraphernalia, making the income tax there nearly a joke.
- Here’s a classy, well-made video short promoting war tax resistance. Also: registration information and more details about The 13th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns coming up in Norway this July. And: an update on duelling tax resistance campaigns in Chascomús (last time it was the secessionists from Lezama who were resisting; this time its the unionist Chascomunenses).
- War tax resister Patrick Keaney takes his case to the top, Billy Bragg says he’ll refuse to pay taxes that pay for outrageous bonuses of executives of taxpayer-bailed-out banks, the U.S. changes policies on tax-delinquent federal contractors and charitable donations to Haiti relief, and one frustrated taxpayer starts a tax resistance campaign against the corrupt government of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. Also: the trailer to the new war tax resistance promotional film “Death and Taxes.”
- A review of the new war tax resistance video, a look at how the war tax resistance testimony fares in modern Quaker Meetings, the Alliance of the Libertarian Left registers as a subversive organization and refuses to pay its filing fee, Steuern zu zahlen ist keine Bürgertugend, Wendy McElroy on the philosophy of William Wollaston, and American prison slave labor’s link to war materiel.
- George Ought to Help, but when people call on governments to mandate contributions to otherwise charitable causes, they are using disreputable violent means to feel-good ends.
- Some historical and global examples of tax resistance → Nepal / doctors in 2010
- Some historical and global examples of tax resistance → religious groups and the religious perspective → Mennonites / Amish
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- Mennonites, atom bombs, Borgen values, unconventional thinking, and gasoline taxes (oh my!)
- How did the Amish manage to get themselves exempted from the U.S. Social Security system? Also: Crispin Sartwell gives a conference of young Democrats a good talking to, and that’s not all he’s got to say.
- Supporters rally to protest the jailing of war tax resister Russell Kanning. Also: how can someone who doesn’t file a 1040 apply for a refund of those illegally-collected telephone taxes? And: new editions of the newsletters of NWTRCC and the War Resisters League. Also: a new section on war tax resistance from the Mennonite Central Committee web site.
- War tax resistance among American Mennonites during the Revolutionary War. Also: tax resistance during the British women’s suffrage movement, and a political cartoon from the Spanish-American War shows what happens when a jingo meets the “war tacks”. It must be history day at The Picket Line.
- A new edition of NWTRCC’s newsletter is out. Also: Chris Hedges expands on last month’s tax resistance pledge.
- Fifty years ago today, Time magazine published an article about Amish resistance to the social security tax in the United States — a civil disobedience campaign that eventually succeeded in forcing concessions from the government.
- Mennonite war tax resisters today, a “Tax Tea Party Revolt” for legal same-sex marriage recognition in April, and weighing the pros-and-cons of simultaneous war tax resistance against federal and state taxes.
- I report back from the Spring NWTRCC national gathering in Virginia.
- If your progressive friends aren’t war tax resisters yet, this Daily Kos post and Chris Hedges column might push them over the edge. Also: the Mennonite Central Committee sets up a fund for people who want to redirect their tax dollars toward undoing some of the harm in Afghanistan. And: another flashback to the beginnings of the modern American war tax resistance movement.
- The new health-care industry law includes concessions to the conscientious objection of the Amish and of people who oppose abortion. Meanwhile conscientious objectors to military taxation still don’t get no respect.
- The latest issue of New Escapologist carries an article I wrote to introduce the practical technique of tax resistance. Also: John K. Stoner tries to get American Mennonites excited about a new war tax resistance protest campaign. And: would you be surprised to learn the I.R.S. issues more press releases about tax-related prosecutions in the weeks leading up to April 15?
- A 1964 article about the Amish resistance to the Social Security taxes in the United States, and a couple other data points about the campaign. They were eventually successful in gaining a partial exemption from those taxes for the Amish, but it took over a decade.
- During World War I in the U.S., an ostensibly voluntary war funding drive in which people were encouraged to buy “Liberty Bonds” was made effectively mandatory by a vigilante enforcement system that was even more ruthless than the government’s.
- An Amish bishop explains his church’s position on refusing to buy war bonds. Also: Elizabeth Knight and Emma Sproson call the tax authorities’ bluff.
- In 1978, American Quakers, Bretheren, and Mennonites got together in a “New Call to Peacemaking” — a campaign that continues today under the banner of “Every Church a Peace Church.”
- In 1978, American Quakers, Brethren, and Mennonites got together in a “New Call to Peacemaking” and vowed to support and encourage war tax resistance. Here’s a report on the results of that meeting.
- As the arms race ramped up in the early 1980s, a group of religious leaders including Quakers, Bretheren, Mennonites, and a Catholic archbishop, called on Christians to refuse to pay taxes.
- The Mennonite publication “PeaceSigns” focuses on war tax resistance. Also: the text of war tax resister Clare Hanrahan’s tax day speech that cast out the MoveOn liberal vampires.
- My Shareable article about my tax resistance is topic #1 on the Porc Therapy podcast. Mayors in Italy’s Northern League launch a tax strike. A Mennonite responds to the Lettermanesque 10 reasons Mennonites don’t resist taxes any more. A government-funded video game based on Thoreau’s “Walden” pegs the irony meters in the red. And: a photo of Ken Knudson burning his tax payment check in 1966.
- The U.S. financed its World War Ⅰ effort with ostensibly voluntary “Liberty Bond” sales. But war-fevered vigilante mobs made it dangerous not to contribute. Here is one eye witness account of a mob attack.
- The U.S. financed its World War Ⅰ effort with ostensibly voluntary “Liberty Bond” sales. But war-fevered vigilante mobs made it dangerous not to contribute. Here is one eye witness account of a mob attack.
- Tax resisters sometimes form cooperative housing or business relationships that help facilitate their resistance. Today I’ll summarize some examples of this that I have encountered in my research.
- Income tax withholding or “pay as you earn” makes it difficult for people to resist paying income tax. Resisters need their employers to be willing to go out on a limb and resist alongside them. Here are some examples of employers who have done just that.
- In addition to refusing to withhold taxes from the salaries of tax resisting employees, employers can also express their solidarity for such resisters by refusing to comply with salary levies. Here are some examples.
- When tax resisters give away their resisted taxes to charitable causes, this defuses critics who claim they are selfish tax evaders, and also forms links between tax resisters and other activist groups.
- When trying to bring new tax resisters into a movement, sometimes there is no substitute for addressing potential resisters individually: whether that be through letters, petitions, face-to-face meetings, or cleverly creative modes of engagement.
- If more people evade more taxes, even if they do so for non-idealistic reasons, this both takes resources away from the government and increases the number of targets the tax enforcers have to pursue, thereby taking some pressure off of the resisters. Here’s how to make that happen.
- Some tax resistance campaigns have accompanied their resistance with petitions to the government asking it to change its policies or to rescind the tax. Here are some examples.
- One way a tax resistance campaign can claim victory is by convincing the government to either formally rescind the tax, or to recognize the legal validity of tax resistance. Here are some examples.
- Tracking down information about Sander Katz, Edith Aldis, and Gerhard Friesen, American war tax resisters of the 1940s and 1950s. Also: Cornelia Lehn’s successful quest to get her employer, the General Conference Mennonite Church, to support her war tax resistance.
- What’s happening on Tax Day 2013. Mennonites contemplate war tax resistance. Data on the underground economy. French heterosexual supremacists contemplate tax resistance. Even if they’re caught, American tax fraudsters are incredibly unlikely to ever cough up their ill gotten gains. And: fifty years ago today, Barbara Deming lays out the case for war tax resistance.
