Teach-In: 99 Tactics of Successful Tax Resistance Campaigns

Some links of interest to war tax resisters:

• If you’re going to be in San Diego on February 15, there’s going to be a teach-in based on my 99 Tactics of Successful Tax Resistance Campaigns: Invest in People. Divest from the Pentagon.
• NWTRCC has launched what it bills as “Days of of War Tax Action 2016” — a set of events and actions in the months leading up to Tax Day. Add your event to their list to help it grow, and check this page for some action ideas.
• NWTRCC has dug up some interesting bits from their archives, featuring war tax resisters Elizabeth Taylor and Max Sandin, the “From the Poor to the Pentagon” campaign, and a “People’s Tax Reform” campaign in Pittsburgh that asked taxpayers to redirect money from the federal to the local government.
  • The latest tax protest in Pennsylvania, though, is a proposal to withhold taxes from the State government and hold them in escrow until they get their shit together.
• Steve Russell, in the course of some reflections on the recent sagebrush rebellion outbreak in Oregon, shares some war tax resistance memories. Excerpt:

  My wife and I quit paying the war tax, starting a sparring match with the Internal Revenue Service that went on for years. We got a long respite when the Post Office inadvertently put a document in our mail box meant for the Postal Service for the purpose of locating us and we returned the form to the IRS marked “deceased.”

  The next year, after threatening criminal prosecution and being told to go for it, the IRS garnished my wife’s entire paycheck. I was working only part time at several gigs for which I got a 1099 at the end of the year and there was no withholding, but her pay check was low hanging fruit.

  The sum we owed Sam was less than $100, but they took her entire check and would not release it unless we paid. Having no choice, she went to the bank and got enough pennies to cover the bill, less ten cents.

  She went over to the IRS and saw the agent who had been chasing us for a couple of years and put a bag of pennies on his desk. Scowling, he started counting… and soon announced, “You’re ten cents short.”

  At that point, she whipped out a recent cover of a news magazine that was about the My Lai Massacre and featured a headshot of Lt. William Calley, who had been indicted for the murder of Vietnamese civilians. She had taped a shiny dime over Calley’s hat brass.

  Sam spent more money collecting from us than what we paid and we got a great story to tell.

Tens of thousands of British nonconformists have been refusing to pay at least a portion of their rates because of their opposition to the provisions of the Education Act of 1902 that allow for taxpayer funding of sectarian religious education, which, more often than not, means Anglican or Catholic religious education. In our survey of a sample of newspaper coverage of the movement, we’re now up to December 1904.

The only article in my sample from this month comes from the 16 December 1904 Cambridge Independent Press. Excerpts:

Passive Resistance at St. Ives.

Citizens’ League Formed.

A meeting was held in the Corn Exchange, St. Ives, on Thursday in last week, to hear an address by Mr. J. Hirst Hollowell, of Rochdale. The subject was “The new Church Rate and the fallacies of its defenders.” There was a good attendance… A string band was in attendance, and opened the proceedings with a lively air.

There were a handful of speakers, including one who spoke for over an hour, largely rehearsing the usual arguments against the Act and denunciations of the arguments of its supporters. The following resolution was proposed and passed at the end of the meeting:

That this public meeting, held in St. Ives, of the supporters of a national system of education expresses intense sympathy with the people and local authorities of Wales in their refusal to levy the new Church Rate for Schools under the control of Anglican, Roman, or other Churches, and hopes that the result of the next General Election, may deliver both England and Wales from the injustice of the present Act, and place all schools maintained out of public funds under the control of authorities directly chosen by the people, free from sectarian tests, teaching, and influence. This meeting also heartily approves of the stand made for justice and liberty by Passive Resisters, and promises its moral support to their protest.