A few more things that I found in the inbox when I got back to my desk:
- Evan Reeves has decided to become a war tax resister, and he’s blogging about it. One of his innovations: “to make repayment to the IRS by sending a hand-written check for every cent owed with the name of a fallen soldier in the memo.… that would bring us to 5,563 names (hence 5,563 checks). If I’m going to repay it, they’re sure as, hell going to have to go to great lengths to get their money.”
- “A Quebec man, fed up with his skyrocketing property taxes, carted more than 200,000 pennies down to City Hall to pay his bill.”
- Financial Times has now caught on to the trend: Americans Forfeit Citizenship to Avoid Tax.
- Revenue to the U.S. government from excise taxes on alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and ammunition is sharply up. This is largely from higher tax rates on tobacco, firearms, and ammunition, but also possibly from a surge in firearms & ammunition purchases in the wake of national Democratic election victories which caused some people to anticipate stricter gun control would be on the way.
- I haven’t had time to go over this in detail, but a new paper from professor Nancy Staudt looks at how the U.S. judiciary uses its power to raise funds for the military during wartime — a responsibility nominally reserved for the legislative branch.