• 21 May 2013: It looks like the I.R.S. is backing down from its extralegal policy of hitting war tax resisters with $5,000 fines for including letters of protest along with their otherwise complete and accurate tax returns.
• 19 May 2013: Robin Hoods taunt parking ticket personnel in Keene. The I.R.S. tea party scandal hits agency morale. How war tax resisters are taking the scandal news. That other I.R.S. scandal about reading our email without a warrant. A look at the inflation of the charges agains the Transform Now Plowshares. And: the crackdown on tax evasion in Greece turns out to be all for show.
• 16 May 2013: The TEA Party tempest takes down the acting IRS chief, launches a criminal probe of I.R.S. employees, and accelerates the agency’s death spiral.
• 15 May 2013: From the first draft of history comes a curious moment in the Dharasana Salt Raids in which the police used nonviolent satyagraha tactics to temporarily thwart the raiders.
• 11 May 2013: The I.R.S. has been caught extra-legally harassing TEA Party groups in the run-up to the last presidential election, and the agency has been forced to walk back its earlier denial that it had done this.
• 9 May 2013: Notes from the NWTRCC national conference earlier this month. Also: tax resisters versus the banks. And: profiles of the Transform Now Plowshares activists and of incorrigible moonshiner Popcorn Sutton.
• 2 May 2013: Join in the fun of this weekend’s national war tax resistance gathering without leaving your couch. Also: war tax resister Karl Meyer explains radical nonviolence in 1975.
• 28 April 2013: The necessity defense gets an airing in the trial of the Transform Now Plowshares. Also: more about Google’s aspirations to statehood. Also: Obama’s budget calls for a big boost in the federal excise tax on cigarettes.
• 22 April 2013: War tax resisters David Waters and Juanita Nelson make the news. More on tax resistance in Catalonia. I.R.S. employee furloughs ahead. And: the movers and shakers at Google are ominously pitching their view of the future of the internet to the lords of war, international intrigue, and government intervention, who sound delighted by what they are hearing.
• 21 April 2013: So what’s all this fuss about “bitcoin” anyway? A mutual-aid health organization has decided to abandon the taxed above-ground economy and conduct as much of its operations as possible in this new currency. Is this the future of tax resistance?
• 19 April 2013: A new survey of “low-compliance” taxpayers reveals that they are more motivated by distrust of the government and dislike of the way it spends tax money than they are by self-interested economic concerns.
• 18 April 2013: Video footage of Joan Baez addressing her tax resistance on this day in 1966. Also: Happy Tax Freedom Day, America.
• 17 April 2013: Tax day aftermath, IRS heavy-handedness & blundering & budget cuts, Gambling on the Rapture, tax resistance in Argentina, and a long-term look at public opinion about taxes in the United States.
• 16 April 2013: Updates on the various tax resistance campaigns in Spain. Also: some archival bits about American war tax resistance in the 1980s and 1990s.
• 15 April 2013: Ed Hedemann is interviewed on Democracy Now today about war tax resistance as a form of protest. Also: examples of Tax Day coverage of war tax resisters in 1966 and 1968, including Irving Hogan, who redirected his taxes one dollar at a time to passers-by: “Here, go buy yourself a beer.”
• 14 April 2013: Sally Buckley was arrested and charged with criminal tax fraud in 1970 for filing a W-4 claiming “the family of man” as her dependents. Clearly the government had gotten nervous about war tax resisters. She then tried to pay her taxes — with medical supplies instead of money.
• 13 April 2013: A number of interesting behind-the-scenes artifacts about the Writers and Editors War Tax Protest of 1967–1968.
• 12 April 2013: Former Catholic bishop Thomas Gumbleton talks war tax resistance on Democracy Now. Also: some elements of Obama’s latest budget proposal bear watching by those of us in the tax resister set.
• 11 April 2013: NWTRCC announces the crop of Tax Day protest actions for this year. Also: Catholic war veterans launch a tax strike in New York City in 1938 to protest a Communist in the local government.
• 10 April 2013: In 1901, 200 employees of the Dimmick Pipe Company walked off the job, furious at a poll tax that had been withheld from their paychecks. This is one example of a labor strike being used to amplify a tax resistance campaign.
• 9 April 2013: Budget cut woes for the IRS. Also: the agency plans to use consumer-tracking databases, and to link those up to government databases, as a way of pinpointing tax evaders and finding their assets. And: a fed up farmer in Argentina fires 23 bullets into a car carrying tax inspectors, and the local prosecutor decides to let it slide. Also: a note about a planned tax strike in India in 1921.
• 5 April 2013: By April, 1970, the American anti-war movement had really hit its stride, and war tax resistance had become a mainstream protest tactic.
• 4 April 2013: 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.
• 1 April 2013: War tax resister Andrea Ayvazian, in a column for The Progressive, wrote about what happens when she challenges our cultural taboos concerning money, particularly those that discourage women from taking the reins economically — and about the experiences of women who have taken the reins in a controversial and confrontational way by becoming war tax resisters.
• 31 March 2013: A new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter with information about regional, national, and international war tax resistance gatherings, and news and commentary about war tax resistance.
• 29 March 2013: Notes about the organized tax resistance campaigns of white supremacists trying to regain political control in Reconstruction-era Louisiana and South Carolina.
• 28 March 2013: Graphs that show how U.S. taxpayer noncompliance and I.R.S. enforcement efforts are changing over time. Also: Darian Worden on the political philosophy of Thoreau, David Hartsough on war tax resistance, and a look at the I.R.S.-produced Star Trek parody video.
• 26 March 2013: The modern American war tax resistance movement was born around 1948. Here are a couple of newspaper articles from its earliest years.
• 23 March 2013: Here’s a fun telling of the tale of how St. Clair County, Missouri resisted collecting taxes to pay off investors in fraudulently-issued railroad bonds.
• 22 March 2013: Reading between the statistical lines to infer a growing underground economy; Congress continues to demonize the IRS for us; that agency is so afraid of bomb threats that it looks suspiciously even on boxes of tax forms; Cypriots are the latest to resist austerity taxes; and A.J. Muste loses a court case asserting constitutional protection for conscientious objection to military taxation in 1961.
• 21 March 2013: Some examples of the rhetoric and demonstrations from when telephone excise tax resistance became a popular tactic in the movement opposing the U.S. war against Vietnam.
• 19 March 2013: In my annual report I summarize my tenth year of tax resistance and forecast the year ahead.
• 18 March 2013: News articles about Walter Gormly and other American war tax resisters of the early fifties.
• 17 March 2013: The federal tax angle to legal marijuana sales in America. The trouble with tax-exempt politicized churches. How federal budget cuts are putting the squeeze on IRS employees. And: Vivien Kellems gathered a posse to challenge the self-employment tax in 1952.
• 16 March 2013: 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.
• 15 March 2013: Today, some clips from the morgue concerning “bond slackers” who refused to buy United States war bonds during World War Ⅰ, and the vigilantes who persecuted them.
• 14 March 2013: I ordered my “tax account transcripts” from the I.R.S. Here is a walkthrough of one of them that shows some of the actions they have taken to try to collect my 2007 taxes. Also: Francis & Valerie Riggs were American war tax resisters in the 1940s.
• 13 March 2013: Mary Stone McDowell is a rare — perhaps unique — example of someone who took a war tax resistance stand during World War Ⅰ and was also part of the post World War Ⅱ revival of war tax resistance in America.
• 12 March 2013: Transit fare boycotts are being used today as a protest tactic in New York City and Egypt. Also: a news article about A.J. Muste and the Peacemakers from 1951.
• 11 March 2013: The lesser-known of two large public rosters of war tax resisters during the Vietnam War, and some other artifacts from the American war tax resistance movement circa 1967.
• 8 March 2013: The latest IRS statistics show how many million income tax filers were “luckie duckies” who paid no income tax in 2011. Also: do I really have to write something about this “sequester”? And, Jack Payden-Travers leads a war tax resistance workshop at the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker.
• 7 March 2013: Some notes about one of the pioneers of the modern American war tax resistance movement: Marion Frenyear.
• 6 March 2013: A blip of American war tax resistance history can be seen through the lens of a 1971 court decision on the limits of First Amendment rights. Here are some excerpts from People v. Kiger.
• 4 March 2013: After a nearly nine-month drought, I got four letters from the I.R.S. today about the taxes they still hope I’ll pay.
• 2 March 2013: International tax resistance news from Ireland, the United Kingdom, Spain, Catalonia, Chile, Italy, and Greece.
• 1 March 2013: On this date in 1998, Peacework magazine covered the war tax resistance of Nancy Alach, who along with her employer, Cambridge Friends School, challenged the I.R.S.
• 28 February 2013: Cindy Sheehan forces the I.R.S. to blink. A look inside NWTRCC’s latest newsletter. Yesterday’s “Pull the Pork (from the Pentagon)” protests. War tax resisters Francesc García Barberà and Amy Wachspress. And the I.R.S. use of civilian informers.
• 27 February 2013: Some miscellaneous items of note from the 14th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns in Bogotá.
• ☆ 26 February 2013: The 14th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns in Bogotá coincided with the biennial meeting of the general membership of Conscience & Peace Tax International.
• 25 February 2013: The group Acción Colectiva de Objectoras y Objetores de Conciencia advanced its careful plan to improve the situation for draftees and conscientious objectors in Colombia as they hosted the 14th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns in Bogotá.
• 24 February 2013: At the 14th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns in Bogotá I learned a lot about the state of militarism, conscription, conscientious objection, and nonviolent resistance there.
• 23 February 2013: The 14th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns gave conscientious objectors to military taxation from around the world a chance to compare notes on activities in their countries.
• 22 February 2013: A brief summary of the 14th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns.
• 19 February 2013: Today, some notes about what happened when Catholic Archbishop Thomas Croke endorsed tax resistance in Ireland in 1887. Also: a note about Eroseanna Robinson’s prison stint for tax resistance.
• 16 February 2013: “When a deputy sherif went to make seizures, the residents threatened to string him to the nearest tree. Finally, they compelled him to eat the writs he had, and then gave him a limited time to get out of the township.”
• 14 February 2013: Today, some news about the Bambatha Rebellion in 1906, and a note about Gandhi’s ironic role in suppressing it.
• 5 February 2013: Today, some news reports about the activities of the Pennsylvania group “Brandywine War Tax Resistance” during the 1970s — a predecessor to the present-day group “Brandywine Peace Community.”
• 31 January 2013: “Resenting the petrol tax, taxicab and motor drivers were at a standstill from noon until 12:45 p.m., blocking all traffic in the Place de la Opera and jeering at the police efforts to remove the locked vehicles” on this date in 1934.
• 30 January 2013: Seyfullah Pasha led troops into Lazarina, Greece in 1898 to crack down on tax resisters there. It didn’t go smoothly.
• 26 January 2013: A note about the tax resistance campaign led by Mad Bear Anderson of the Tuscarora Nation in 1959.
• 23 January 2013: What were American war tax resisters up to in early 1972, you ask? Let’s investigate. Here are four local news articles about resisters from that period: David Gracie and John Paul Malinowski in Philadelphia, and war tax resistance groups from Columbia, Missouri and Rochester, New York.
• 21 January 2013: Tomorrow I leave for the 14th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns in Bogotá, Colombia. Expect things to be a little quieter around here for the next month. Also: tax resistance in Catalonia, more on the War Resisters International war tax capitulation, and an update on prisoner tax fraud.
• 20 January 2013: Americans who had set up shop in the Isle of Pines, south of the Cuban mainland, didn’t care to pay taxes to Cuba in 1903, and hoped they could enlist the support of the United States government in their tax refusal.
• 18 January 2013: Muted reaction from American war tax resisters to my series of articles on tactics. Also: Eighty years ago, a taxpayers’ league in Elmira, New York, threatened a tax strike as a way of pressing for reduced rates.
• 17 January 2013: War Resisters’ International reportedly throws in the towel and pays its war taxes. And: updates on tax resistance campaigns in Greece and Ireland. Also: The city treasurer in Sydney, Australia, had harsh words for corporate income tax resisters there in 1914.
• 16 January 2013: During the acceleration of the arms race in the Reagan administration, several Lutherans signed a tax resistance pledge, and George Mummert & Susan Morse resisted as well.
• 15 January 2013: Ruth Benn, Ed Hedemann, and Cindy Sheehan talk war tax resistance this evening. Also: income tax resistance in the campaign for expanded citizenship rights in the Northern Territory of Australia in 1919.
• 13 January 2013: Bits and pieces: Organized value added tax resistance techniques. What does the recent tax legislation have in store for low-income tax resisters? How states are building an underground cigarette smuggling industry one tax at a time. The I.R.S. is enforcing innocent people into resentment and out of voluntary compliance. And the Early Retirement Extreme blog now has a wiki.
• 12 January 2013: Here are some data points about tax resistance in Fiji in the 1920s.
• 11 January 2013: Peter J. Reilly at his Forbes blog covers the Elizabeth Boardman challenge to I.R.S. “frivolous filing” penalties against war tax resisters. Also: updates on tax resistance in Greece. And: the National Taxpayer Advocate estimates that Americans spend over six billion hours each year just doing the record-keeping and form-filing involved in doing their taxes.
• 10 January 2013: To find tactics that the American war tax resistance movement could unite around, we can start by using a process of elimination…
• ☆ 9 January 2013: There are four fairly distinct varieties of tax resister. Most tax resistance campaigns are dominated by one variety or another, but the American war tax resistance movement is an amalgam of all four. This makes it difficult for that movement to decide on goals and tactics.
• 8 January 2013: Here are a couple of examples of American social security tax resistance from the late 1930s to the early 1950s.
• 7 January 2013: A 1987 media account of the Catholic Workers’ “Peter Maurin Farm,” which was organized in such a way as to help facilitate the war tax resistance of its volunteers.
• 6 January 2013: Why have I bothered to catalog all of techniques of historical tax resistance campaigns? I hope to help future tax resistance campaigns be more successful. A successful tax resistance campaign doesn’t limit itself to tax resistance. It must also develop strategies to support and sustain resisters, recruit new resisters, deploy additional techniques of resistance, frustrate the government’s countermeasures, and amplify its effect with good publicity.
• 5 January 2013: War tax resister Richard Catlett, one of the few American war tax resisters to do time behind bars for his resistance.
• ☆ 4 January 2013: Over the past several months I’ve been compiling lists of examples of a variety of tactics that have been used by tax resisters and tax resistance campaigns — tactics in addition to tax resistance itself. Today I’ll give an overview of the whole series.
• 3 January 2013: It is possible to have a quiet, leaderless tax strike that never forms an organization or runs a formal campaign but nonetheless is durable and successful.
• 2 January 2013: Some notes about the mass, organized resistance to the income tax in Tasmania in early 1904.
• 1 January 2013: One way to win a tax resistance campaign against a government that is stubbornly trying to squeeze money out of you is to appeal to an even bigger, badder government to take your side.
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• links: other websites of interest
• FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions
• How to Resist the Federal Income Tax Through the “Don’t Owe Nothin’” Method
• Retirement Savings Credit (Form 8880): using it to eliminate your income tax
• Rebecca and Her Daughters: Being a History of the Agrarian Disturbances in Wales Known as “The Rebecca Riots” by Henry Tobit Evans
• The Sufferings of many, for Refuſing to pay the wicked Exactions of the Ceſs, Locality, Fynes &c. Vindicated. by Alexander Shields
• Resistance to Civil Government by H.D. Thoreau
• Slavery in Massachusetts by H.D. Thoreau
• Thoreau on John Brown (including “A Plea for Captain John Brown”)
• Life Without Principle by H.D. Thoreau
• Excerpts from Thoreau’s journals
• Excerpts from Thoreau’s juvenilia
• Sir Walter Raleigh by H.D. Thoreau
• Thomas Carlyle and His Works by H.D. Thoreau
• Excerpts from Thoreau’s “Natural History of Massachusetts”
• Excerpts from Thoreau’s “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”
• Wendell Phillips Before the Concord Lyceum by H.D. Thoreau
• Reform and the Reformers by H.D. Thoreau
• The Service by H.D. Thoreau
• Herald of Freedom by H.D. Thoreau
• Paradise (to be) Regained by H.D. Thoreau
• Letter to the Liberals by Leo Tolstoy
• The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Tolstoy
• Letter to Eugen Heinrich Schmitt by Leo Tolstoy
• “Carthago Delenda Est” by Leo Tolstoy
• Patriotism and Government by Leo Tolstoy
• “Thou Shalt Not Kill” by Leo Tolstoy
• The Only Means by Leo Tolstoy
• Excerpts from the Journal of John Woolman