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How you can resist funding the government →
a survey of tactics of historical tax resistance campaigns →
pay taxes in an inconvenient or symbolic way →
paying under protest, or in a protesting fashion ▶
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The I.R.S. confirms the personal and standard deduction amounts for next year, The Picket Line gets a plug from Wendy McElroy, and press reports about the Enola Gay exhibit may have been exaggerated. Also: a British tax protest takes one step forward, then one step back.
Robin Brookes paid his taxes and made his point at the same time. Also: The Ripple Project goes live—is this the alternative currency we’ve been waiting for? And: Scott Ritter’s tough-love message for the anti-war movement.
I’m going to be at the “Stop Funding the War in Iraq” demonstration on Monday, trying to convince the demonstrators to stop funding the war in Iraq. I’ll have some help, and a sign or two. Also: Benjamin R. Tucker gave up on tax resistance (and caught a little hell for it).
A review of “Standing Up to the Madness” by Amy Goodman and David Goodman. Also: states issuing I.O.U.s instead of tax refunds (and making taxpayers angry), a prisoner serving a life sentence successfully files for millions of dollars in federal tax refunds (and the feds decline to prosecute!), a taxpayer pays his whole bill in coins, the agrarian tax revolt buzz in Argentina, a 35-year-old service gift economy, a water tax strike in Northern Ireland, and a way to make a buck or two from unused storage space in your home.
The tax collector’s bowels were trod out by a horse, and other tales of 17th century Scottish presbyterian tax resistance.
Evan Reeves decides to become a war tax resister, and has an innovative protest idea. Also: A Quebec man tries to pay his taxes with 200,000 pennies. And: Americans renouncing their citizenship to avoid U.S. taxes. Also: Alcohol, tobacco, ammunition, and firearms federal excise tax receipts are way up. And: how the U.S. judiciary supplements the legislature’s revenue raising prerogatives in times of war.
A note on Howard Zinn’s tax resistance, from his recently-released F.B.I. files. Also: An account of the pacifist crisis of conscience of John Lowell Heywood over military commutation fines during the American Civil War, from the Autobiography of Adin Ballou. Ballou counseled Heywood to pay the fines under protest rather than submit to imprisonment, but he later had second thoughts about this.
The old pay-your-tax-bill-in-pennies trick strikes again. Freelancers in Budapest and public transit operators in Venezuela launch tax strikes. A look at Americans who are comfortable on lower incomes. And: in 1914 suffragette Matilda Cubley refused to pay her dog license tax.
A group of Quakers from the Pacific Yearly Meeting is trying to reinvigorate the tradition of Quaker war tax resistance… pretty weak sauce, but maybe it’s a start. Also: a look at the underground tobacco industry in Canada.
Evan Reeves paid his federal income tax by writing 5,574 different checks, each one inscribed with the name of a different U.S. soldier killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Mary S. Anthony (Susan B.’s sister) decided that the answer to taxation of women without representation was tax resistance, or at least paying under protest.
Ruth Benn explains war tax resistance on David Swanson’s show. Also: speed camera destruction, paying a traffic ticket with origami, collecting blood in Greece, tax resistance in Indonesia, council tax resister June Farrow gets a finger-wagging, and the U.S. increases its lead as the biggest global arms race dealer.
Tax resistance campaigns sometimes choose a particular tax to resist, not because it is particularly offensive, but because it is easier to resist or the ramifications of resistance are less frightening. This is meant to encourage more people to begin resisting. Today I’ll give some examples.
NWTRCC’s fall gathering announced; a report on the BerkShares alternative currency; Robert Fernandes pays his taxes in $1 bills as a protest; lucky duckies are becoming rarer and may have been over-counted in the first place; prohibitionists in Colorado are trying to use taxes to push marijuana back underground; Michael Izbicki shares his decision to begin resisting taxes; and another “suspicious white powder” incident at an I.R.S. facility.
Hong Kong’s “Occupy Central” protests have evolved into a noncooperation movement that is launching a tax resistance campaign to pressure the government to adopt democratic reforms.
Ron Paul calls for mass war tax resistance, the Stamp Act Riots turn 250, the tactic of paying your taxes in pennies, ideas for repairing the Peace Tax Fund, remembering how Julian Bond was inspired by Quaker war tax resisters, and a tax resistance struggle in Russian-occupied Abkhazia in 1866.
War tax resisters to meet in Massachusetts in October. 27% of Americans pay no income or payroll tax. Separatists in Trieste launch a tax strike. An Argentine priest leads a road toll rebellion. A college student invents a chatbot that overturns $4 million in parking tickets. The I.R.S. continues to get spanked for civil forfeiture abuse. Bitcoins may be the next super tax haven. Another irate taxpayer pays his bill with bags of low-denomination money. And more news besides.
A collection of links to news and notes about war tax resistance and other tax resistance campaigns around the world.
Rising tax resistance sentiment in the anti-Trump movement, behavioral science lessons to help erode tax compliance, the tactic of paying taxes in pennies, and more news of tax resistance from around the world.
My local newsweekly covers my tax resistance. Also: a new source of data on government taxing and spending; NWTRCC recaps tax resistance season; the Satyagraha Foundation continues its tax resistance series; Susan Lee Barton, Mary & Peter Sprunger-Froese, and Erica Weiland opine on war tax resistance; a majority of Americans feel the federal tax system is unfair; new techniques in paying-under-protest and facilitating the tax evasion of others; and the Peace Tax Fund Act makes another quixotic run at Congress.
War tax resisters in Canada, paying your taxes in a wagonload of nickles, speed camera vandals strike again, 50 years later a war tax redirection is still paying off, and the latest on the tax strike in Lebanon.
How you can resist funding the government →
a survey of tactics of historical tax resistance campaigns →
switch to alternative currencies →
Bitcoin ▶
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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?
Conservative tax resistance to protest against Obamacare. Cryptocurrencies as ideal tax havens. An I.R.S. enforcement shutdown. The war tax resistance of John Woolman. War tax resistance in a Jewish context. And French soccer goes on strike over a populist tax on million-euro salaries.
The tax wonks look at Bitcoin and think it is going to prove tough to tax. Also: a backgrounder on the Rebeccaite phenomenon, from the Monmouthshire Merlin on this date in 1843.
An upcoming google hangout explores how to continue to resist war after the anti-war rally ends. Also: frugal living in the service of philanthropy, more evidence the I.R.S. is falling down on the enforcement job, the tax trouble of bitcoin, and another suspicious package evacuates an I.R.S. building.
I.R.S. follies, international tax resistance news, war tax resistance bits of note, and a couple of things about Bitcoin and nonprofits and people who renounce their U.S. citizenship—more links than you can shake a stick at.
War tax resisters to meet in Massachusetts in October. 27% of Americans pay no income or payroll tax. Separatists in Trieste launch a tax strike. An Argentine priest leads a road toll rebellion. A college student invents a chatbot that overturns $4 million in parking tickets. The I.R.S. continues to get spanked for civil forfeiture abuse. Bitcoins may be the next super tax haven. Another irate taxpayer pays his bill with bags of low-denomination money. And more news besides.
News about war tax resisters and about virtual currencies as a tax resistance option. Also: trying to track down information about John Randolph, a “seditious and scurrilous” poll tax resister from the World War Ⅰ period.
The I.R.S. takes an interest in bitcoin, South Korean activists get tax resistance advice from U.S. war tax resisters, the Greek “won’t pay” movement continues its guerrilla electrician campaign, India suffers from demonetization, and the Robin Hooders of New Hampshire score a supreme court victory.
The authoritative story about the legal consequences of federal tax noncompliance in the U.S. Plus: a flurry of news stories about war tax resisters, featuring Ed Hedemann, Robert Randall, and Ruth Benn. A boycott is targeting Trump family products. Tax agencies are trying to figure out ways to target bitcoin. And a new tax in Belarus confronts widespread noncompliance.
A new 100-day, 100-dollar campaign of tax resistance for the timid has just launched. Also: Seeing Like a State, a newfound love of federalism on the American left, profiles of Vivien Kellems and Raymond Hunthausen, and the latest on the I.R.S. versus bitcoin.
How tax resisters popularized bitcoin. “Symbolic” tax resisters explain themselves. The I.R.S. continues to take damage, sometimes self-inflicted. And: The international human war against the robot traffic ticket camera hordes continues.
Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
Greece →
in 2011–2019 →
electricity tax resistance ▶
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The voluntaryist case against taxation. Greece erupts in a variety of tax resistance tactics. The I.R.S. hands Cindy Sheehan a summons. More private tax debt collection follies. To be free is not freedom from responsibility but freedom to take responsibility. Also: some background on the tax resistance campaign in Germany in 1848.
A few more news briefs from the «δεν πληρώνω» (“won’t pay”) movement in Greece.
Dignified people power at U.C. Davis. A report from the Fall 2011 NWTRCC gathering. Remembering war tax resister Scott Kennedy. Roy Prockter takes his case for conscientious objection to military taxation to the European Court of Human Rights. Residents declare a property tax strike in Andino, Argentina. And Greek tax resisters introduce some new tactics.
In the Civil War, Ohio did not make allowance for Quakers in its military conscription law. The Ohio Yearly Meeting wrote to the Ohio legislature on this date in 1862, to explain why Quakers could not pay a militia exemption tax. Also: updates on the tax resistance actions in Greece.
An overview and update on the Greek tax resistance movement from the New York Times. Also: Ed Hedemann and Ruth Benn talk war tax resistance on Cindy Sheehan’s radio show.
You can help keep an eye on the government revolving door. The opportunity costs of the warfare state. A Coherent Philosophy in verse. How the 1% got there. Developing derring-do. Greeks hang their unpaid tax bills on a Christmas tree. An Argentine Congresswoman leads a toll strike. A Catholic Worker in London refuses to pay his civil disobedience fine. And Carl Watner introduces the voluntaryist case against taxation.
More fake Pentagon belt-tightening, a new estimate of the size of the U.S. underground economy, a legal victory for tax resisters in Greece, and a look at tax resistance in the anti-abortion movement.
Catholic bishops get all bent about being forced to pay for contraceptive-coverage in the health insurance of their employees, and war tax resisters ask “hey, what about us?” Also: resistance to the “Household Tax” in Ireland, and to the many fee hikes in Greece. And: the I.R.S. is getting overwhelmed by a cottage industry of tax fraud via identity theft.
Quaker legislators voted to fund the British conquest of Egypt in 1882, so an editorialist for The British Friend said it was up to Quaker taxpayers to show some spine. Also: a video of folks from the “Δεν Πληρώνω” (“Won’t Pay”) movement in Greece reconnecting the electricity at a home where it had been shut off for failure to pay the new taxes grafted on to the utility bills.
Today’s tax resistance news from Greece, Indonesia, and Spain.
Tax resistance campaigns can increase their visibility by adopting particular uniforms, badges, ribbons, or other emblems to identify resisters and those working in concert with the campaign. Today I will summarize some examples of this.
On the 100th anniversary of the imprisonment of Mark Wilks for failure to pay his wife’s income taxes, let’s look at how close attention to legal technicalities can help tax resisters find and exploit flaws that hold the tax system or its enforcement arm up to ridicule, make them unworkable, or make them vehicles for additional resistance or propaganda opportunities.
Today I’m going to cover a specific variety of consumer strike undertaken in coordination with some tax resistance campaigns:a strike against goods sold by the government or by a government-protected monopoly, or goods that are subject to a particular tax.
Another way people can assist and show solidarity with tax resisters is by coming to their assistance if their property is seized. Here are some examples.
Tax resisters have sometimes augmented their campaigns by manufacturing and selling untaxed alternatives to taxed goods. Here are some examples.
Ten things I think are probably true concerning ethics. Also: a round-up of recent international tax resistance news.
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.
While I was busy going through Friends Journal back issues, I didn’t attend much to tax resistance news in the here-and-now, so I’ll try to give a recap today of some of the news about international tax resisters that caught my notice, from the U.K., Spain, Catalonia, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Italy, Greece, and Portugal
Here’s an update on the ongoing “Δεν Πληρώνω” tax resistance movement in Greece.
Tax resistance news from France, Italy, and Greece, including an amusing police raid against French tax agency workers holding a holiday party when their Santa hats were mistaken for the “bonnets rouges” of anti-tax protesters.
A European tax resistance news round-up with the latest from France, Italy, Greece, Spain, and Austria, (and some late news from Germany).
International tax resistance news briefs, featuring stories from Spain, Greece, Russia, South Korea, and India. Also: “passive resisters” lose their cool in Todmorden Police Court as the Education Act tax strike enters 1905.
Mutual aid and war tax resistance; tax resistance news from Trieste, Greece, and Croydon; and the suffragist tax resistance of Julia & Abby Smith and Caroline Fagan.
A tax resistance news roundup, with items from Italy, the U.S., France, the U.K., and Greece.
The I.R.S. takes an interest in bitcoin, South Korean activists get tax resistance advice from U.S. war tax resisters, the Greek “won’t pay” movement continues its guerrilla electrician campaign, India suffers from demonetization, and the Robin Hooders of New Hampshire score a supreme court victory.
Recent links concerning tax resistance in the Onondaga Nation, Spain, southwest Oregon, Greece, Italy, and the American gig economy. A tax pro recommends you just hang up on the I.R.S.’s new private debt collectors. U.S. prisoners discuss the American war tax resistance movement. An upcoming documentary about war tax resister Larry Bassett. And: a spurious #NoTaxForBlacks movement rises out of the 4chan muck.
An international overview of recent tax resistance news from Addis Ababa, Seattle, Suffolk County, Lagos, and Petroupolis.
Tax resistance forecast for the Catalan independence campaign. International resistance to the Greek coffee tax. Resisting the Greek tax on the electric bill. And, author Lou Cadle says she won’t be paying federal income tax until Trump is gone.
The Pentagon budget will undergo its very first audit after trillions of dollars in unapproved spending are discovered. How much of a tax gap remains in Europe’s VAT? A new Thoreau biography. Greeks fight back against the government utility monopoly. War tax resistance continues to decay in Britain’s Society of Friends. Spanish war tax resisters redirect to help refugees. And: implications of the new American tax law.
A suffragette tax resister gets her own postage stamp, the Den Plirono movement comes to the rescue, a former White House staffer becomes a war tax resister, a Greek Orthodox Archbishop vows to defy Jerusalem’s attempt to tax church property, and more skepticism about the “starve the beast” theory.
Arcadi Oliveres discusses war tax resistance in Spain. Also: war tax resister DeCourcy Squire, Greek guerrilla electricians strike again, a look back at the Women’s Tax Resistance League, and the present renaissance of tax evasion in the United States.
Tax resistance news from Samoa, Greece, the United States, Brittany, Saudi Arabia, France, Italy, Zambia, India, Nicaragua, Uganda, and Valencia.
An interactive map of the Rebecca Riots, a new tax rebellion in France, more protest and resistance in Greece, the U.S., South Africa, and New Zealand. Also: an audit of the I.R.S. includes a new estimate of the size of the “tax gap” and shows just how much unpaid tax the agency writes off as “uncollectible” each year.
Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
Greece →
in 2011–2019 ▶
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Tax resistance in occupied Mexican Texas in 1877. Also: Cindy Sheehan on “frivolous” conscientious objection, more background on the Greek tax rebellion, and Indian farmers using the power of poisonous snakes against a corrupt tax office.
The International Monetary Fund backs down in the face of Greek tax resistance. Also: Kansas City peace workers reflect on the recent NWTRCC conference there. And: how the government buys the silence and compliance of tax-exempt non-profit groups (and how the progressive fad of calling for the end of constitutional protection of the rights of incorporated groups would make that worse).
Translating an English-language article about Abbey Manse Tax resistance in Scotland in 1880 (what’s a “feuar,” what’s a “manse,” can you live in paisley without taking L.S.D.?). Also: Greek tax collectors go on strike, squeezing the government with tax resistance from both sides. Meanwhile, Greeks turn in their license plates rather than pay an increased tax on auto registration.
Greek economist Varufakis Yanis explains the recent outbreak of tax resistance in Greece.
More than 40% of American households paid no federal income tax on any of the income they earned in 2010. Also: updates on current tax resistance movements in Greece and Ireland. And: the I.R.S. drags its heels on giving any payouts to informers who have ratted out their tax evading neighbors and employers.
Kathy Kelly writes of the diffuse responsibility for the ominous emergence of drone warfare, and our responsibility for stopping it. Also: the latest developments in the tax resistance campaigns in Ireland and Greece. And: Raoul Vaneigm takes the side of the Greek “We Won’t Pay” rebels.
The Senate passes a bill that would revoke or deny passports of Americans who are $50,000 or more behind on their taxes. Also the “Potato Movement” joins up with the tax resisters in Greece.
More news from the anti-austerity tax resistance campaigns sweeping Europe. The Greek government says it has lost €17 million just to the road toll resisters so far. Meanwhile an underground economy and alternative currency are making the Greek economy less taxable. And the soldiers marching in the Greek independence day parade had to be protected from spectators by lines of riot cops.
Tax evasion could get you deported… or confined within the borders. Also: updating the war tax resistance bible. And: the rise of popular sociopathic protagonists. Also: Ed Agro on war tax resistance. And: updates on the Irish and Greek anti-austerity tax resistance movements.
A greatest hits video of Greek “Don’t Pay” movement direct action. Also: how the 1% get out of taxes. And: Maia Duerr starts resisting war taxes. Also: a photo from the archives of a 1971 war tax resistance picket.
Hubertine Auclert, inventor of the word “féministe,” was resisting taxes to protest for women’s rights back in 1880. Also: how did the “won’t pay” party do in the Greek elections?
The I.R.S. may be near “a breaking point” at which the moribund agency budget combined with Congress’s enthusiasm for loading up the tax code with greater complexity, leads to “serious problems” with “adverse national repercussions,” says the I.R.S. Oversight Board. Also, the New York Times looks at the trouble for tax collectors in Greece. And: an update on Vickie Aldrich’s frivolous filing case.
A tantalizing hint about tax resistance amongst South Africa’s women’s suffragists in 1923. Also: coordination between the tax resistance movements in Spain and Greece, extra-legal government gambits against legal bridge toll resistance, a new Declaration of Independence, and our weird collective amnesia about the fact that a handful of nuclear-armed psychopaths are holding millions of lives in the balance.
Tax resistance stories from Australia in 1932, and Greece, Italy, and Ireland today.
One way a tax resistance campaign can get a leg up is through the acts of sympathizers within the tax collection bureaucracy itself. After all, they’re taxpayers too, and may feel more loyalty to their fellow-subjects than to the government they’re subjected to. Here are some examples. Also: a theater company’s clever response to a hike in the value-added tax on entertainment tickets.
Ruth Benn explains war tax resistance on David Swanson’s show. Also: speed camera destruction, paying a traffic ticket with origami, collecting blood in Greece, tax resistance in Indonesia, council tax resister June Farrow gets a finger-wagging, and the U.S. increases its lead as the biggest global arms race dealer.
More details on tax resistance and tax enforcement in Greece. Also: seventy federal government agencies are delinquent on paying their federal taxes. And: India’s Moslem League refused to pay a collective punishment tax in 1946.
It’s violence week at The Picket Line. Today: some examples of violent attacks on police or soldiers who come to the assistance of tax collectors or who take reprisals against tax resisters.
One way tax resisters can foil the plans of the tax collectors is to send up the alarm when they’re on the way. Here are some examples.
Today I’m going to cover a specific variety of consumer strike undertaken in coordination with some tax resistance campaigns:a strike against goods sold by the government or by a government-protected monopoly, or goods that are subject to a particular tax.
Social boycott can also be a potent tactic to use against tax collectors or collaborators with the tax collection process. Here are some examples.
By paying in cash, you can facilitate the tax evasion or resistance of others, and can deprive the government of more resources.
Some people have tried to use alternative currencies (alternatives to official government-created legal tender, that is) to facilitate tax resistance. Here are some examples.
A brief note about Reagan-era war tax resister Katherine Kohrman. Also: reminiscences of the Beit Sahour tax strike, of war tax resister-sympathetic Bishop Walter Sullivan, and of the movement resisting Thatcher’s poll tax. And: Athens resisters battle police. Also: a classic satyagraha sci-fi story comes on-line.
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.
International tax resistance news from Ireland, the United Kingdom, Spain, Catalonia, Chile, Italy, and Greece.
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 against the Transform Now Plowshares. And: the crackdown on tax evasion in Greece turns out to be all for show.
An insider guide to I.R.S. processing codes. Some thirty-year-old punk rock aesthetic art about war taxes. Constitutionalist tax protesters spread to Canada. More tax resistance news from Greece. The I.R.S. throws in the towel on its frivolous filing penalty overreaching. Another government rigs traffic lights to make intersections more dangerous and more profitable. War tax resister media talking points. Ruth Benn reflects on the letters she gets from the I.R.S. And a 1967 wire service report quoting Joan Baez on her war tax resistance.
Here’s an update on the ongoing “Δεν Πληρώνω” tax resistance movement in Greece.
Tax resistance news from Mexico, France, Tunisia, and Greece. Also: how do tax resisters interact with the I.R.S.? And: are citizens of countries that commit war crimes legally obligated to stop paying taxes?
It’s time for another ’round the world tax resistance round-up, with news from Austria, Greece, Cyprus, Ireland, and the Venetian Republic.
An international tax resistance news round-up, with notes from Italy, France, Ireland, Spain, and Greece. Also: Rebecca copycat vandals muddy the waters in Wales.
The Coalition of the Radical Left, an important Greek political party, has launched a “Won’t Pay” movement, inspired by the more grassroots movement of the same name. Also: the authorities bring in a crack detective from London to hunt down Rebecca.
Scotland officially throws in the towel and won’t try to collect Thatcher’s Poll Tax from people who refused to pay back in 1989. French tax officials are frightened out of their wits by taxpayer animosity. Greek resistance to the enfia tax grows. And: another “suspicious white powder” incident at an I.R.S. office.
The I.R.S. is predicting a “miserable” tax filing season this year. Also: tax resistance news from France, Mexico, Greece, and Italy.
Tax resistance news from Ireland, Spain, England, and Greece.
An international tax resistance round-up, with news from Ireland, Hong Kong, Italy, France, and Greece; and another dispatch from the way-back machine gives us news of a Rebecca panic in Wales.
Tax resistance news from the United States, Hong Kong, Greece, and Italy.
Raymond Kwong spent over 50 hours preparing 9,280 separate tax checks to send in protest to the Hong Kong government. Also: a look back at suffragette tax resister Sophia Duleep Singh, a successful auction disruption by the Greek “Won’t Pay” movement, and an overview of the Monteverde community.
Tax resistance news from the U.S., Greece, Italy, Ireland, and Spain, and a flashback from the tax resistance in Bermuda’s women’s suffrage movement.
Catalan separatists have a tax resistance strategy. Kathy Kelly talks of her war tax resistance. The War Resisters League publish a new federal budget pie chart. Scotland lets poll tax refusers off the hook. And Greece offers its tax resisters a deal.
The Greek crisis may be rooted in corrupt military spending profiting the creditor nations. Also: Venezuela cracks down on tax resistance campaigning. And: tax resistance in Puerto Rico, Spain, and Belarus. Also: Rebeccaites on trial at the Pembrokeshire Spring Assizes.
An international tax resistance roundup, with news from Wales, Greece, and Spain, and a flashback to the run on the banks that was part of the revenue denial strategy of the activists pushing for the Reform Act of 1832.
Today, a series of tax resistance news briefs and links about campaigns and campaigners all around the world, refusing taxes in the service of a variety of causes.
Tax collectors hounded out of town in Greece. Pakistan businesses shuttered in tax protest. U.S. conservatives threaten tax defiance over Planned Parenthood funding. And the I.R.S. flat out hung up on 8.8 million people calling with tax questions this year.
Remembering the war tax resistance of Archbishop Hunthausen. Also: a new “moral beacons” project, a one-family tax strike in Vermont, more tax resistance in Greece, and looking for tax resistance in the anti-abortion movement.
An international tax resistance roundup, with news from the U.S., Catalonia, India, Ireland, Pakistan, Greece, and Italy.
Tax resistance news from Catalonia, the U.K., the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Spain, Greece, and elsewhere.
An international round-up of tax resistance news, from Catalonia, France, Greece, Honduras, Ireland, Spain, and Wales.
A war tax resister in Honduras becomes a martyr. Businesses in Eastleigh, Kenya declare a tax strike. Greek tax resisters discover a new tool to use against the tax collector. The “world citizen solutions” has a vague plan to emancipate us from war taxes. And: an Irish boy makes his family proud by harassing the tax collector.
A plethora of links of interest to tax resisters, including: a European fiscal disobedience consultancy, looking back at the anti-Poll Tax movement, Quakers invent fair trade, a pacifist does €800,000 in damage to a U.S. military installation in Italy, Kathy Kelly interviewed about war tax resistance, and academic looks at tax evasion, anarchy, and cognitive liberation.
International tax resistance news briefs, featuring stories from Spain, Greece, Russia, South Korea, and India. Also: “passive resisters” lose their cool in Todmorden Police Court as the Education Act tax strike enters 1905.
I.R.S. follies, international tax resistance news, war tax resistance bits of note, and a couple of things about Bitcoin and nonprofits and people who renounce their U.S. citizenship—more links than you can shake a stick at.
Today I got a letter from the I.R.S. dated one week in the future. And that wasn’t the most confusing thing about it. Also: the tax resistance of Litmus A Freeman. And: retaliating against ticket inspectors in Greece. Also: fake banknotes act as bribe-deterrents in India.
Tax resistance news from France, the Democratic Republic of Congo, London, and Greece demonstrates a variety of motives and tactics.
Updates from the Greek “won’t pay” movement, and from tax resistance campaigns in Tamil Nadu, Mombasa, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Cook County, Illinois. Also: Equifax loses its I.R.S. contract, and two researchers suggest the “tax gap” may begin to shrink after all.
A new NWTRCC newsletter previews this year’s Tax Day actions, looks back at the bond slackers of a century ago, and gives us news of interest to war tax resisters. Also: tax resistance continues in Greece. And: a possible new twist to the I.R.S.’s new ability to deny passports to tax delinquents?
Pete Brace, climate activist from the U.K., shares the correspondence from his tax refusal battle. More details from the ongoing Lebanon tax strike. How the I.R.S. face-to-face visits may play out. “Sovereign citizens” swindle millions of dollars from the I.R.S. but don’t know when to quit. The human war on traffic ticket robots continues. And, the Greek government tries to force its tax evading population away from cash to more trackable forms of money.
Tax resistance in the “Peace Churches” →
Quakers →
18th century Quakers →
John Woolman ▶
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Excerpts from the Journal of John Woolman
John Woolman tells the story of how he introduced war tax resistance to American Quakers in the 1750s.
More from the journals of the American Quaker John Woolman, as I continue to research the history of tax resistance.
Isaac Sharpless tells the story of Quaker war tax resistance in the colony of Pennsylvania, and gives us the context of Benjamin Franklin’s quote: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
In the eighteenth century, John Woolman noted that war tax resistance was a hard sell even among Quakers, Samuel Fothergill hoped that the difficult question of war tax resistance would help separate the wheat from the chaff in Quaker Meetings, and James Pemberton noted sadly that for the first time the persecutors of conscientious Quakers were tax collectors and law enforcement officers who were also Quakers.
In another episode from John Woolman’s journal, he gives a strong answer to the criticism of tax resistance that sees it as a violation of a social contract. Also: the source of Woolman’s plea that “we look upon our Treasures, and the furniture of our Houses, and the Garments in which we array ourselves, and try whether the seeds of war have any nourishment in these our possessions.”
In another episode from John Woolman’s journal, he gives a strong answer to the criticism of tax resistance that sees it as a violation of a social contract. Also: the source of Woolman’s plea that “we look upon our Treasures, and the furniture of our Houses, and the Garments in which we array ourselves, and try whether the seeds of war have any nourishment in these our possessions.”
Lynn Johnston started as a Vietnam War phone tax refuser, but ended up adopting a more radical libertarian critique of taxes in general. Also: In 1981, 3,500 General Motors employees caught the “show me the law” bug and stopped paying their federal income tax. And: in 1756, a correspondent for a London paper complains that the pacifist war tax resistance of Pennsylvania Quakers is leaving their people wide open to attack from their enemies.
War tax resister Elizabeth Boardman has filed a Claim for Injunctive Relief against the I.R.S., saying the agency violates her freedom of religion by labeling her war tax resistance “frivolous” and failing to provide a taxpaying method that accommodates her sincerely-held beliefs.
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.
On 2 November 1965, an American Quaker named Norman Morrison went out to the sidewalk in front of Robert McNamara’s office in the Pentagon and set himself on fire as a protest against the Vietnam War. His suicide stunned the Society of Friends and made urgent the questions about the moribund Quaker peace testimony. This is reflected by the increased attention given in the pages of Friends Journal in 1966 to the issue of war tax resistance.
War tax resistance was a frequent topic in the issues of Friends Journal in 1979, though there was still no consensus about how to go about it, and there was a lot of hesitance among Quaker institutions about how strongly to endorse it.
There was plenty about war tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1980, but it seemed to involve tax resisting Mennonites as least as often as tax resisting Quakers.
War tax resistance remained very much on the agenda at the Friends Journal at the beginning of the Reagan era of aggressive military build-up in 1981.
Is the dilemma facing pacifist Quakers who are asked to pay a war tax best resolved by conscientious objection and civil disobedience, or by lawsuits and lobbying? Both approaches could be found in the pages of the Friends Journal in 1982.
After noting several years of dwindling coverage of war tax resistance in the Friends Journal, it was a pleasant surprise to see that the magazine devoted its March 2008 issue to the topic.
Conservative tax resistance to protest against Obamacare. Cryptocurrencies as ideal tax havens. An I.R.S. enforcement shutdown. The war tax resistance of John Woolman. War tax resistance in a Jewish context. And French soccer goes on strike over a populist tax on million-euro salaries.
The Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends in Britain has recently released the fifth edition of its Quaker Faith and Practice book. Here’s what it has to say about taxes.
Possibly the most important period in the history of Quaker war tax resistance was the seventy-five years when the Quakers were governing the colony of Pennsylvania.
Quaker war tax resisters were severely persecuted during the American Revolution, and Quaker meetings in America were wracked with debate over the proper extent of the war tax resistance witness.
Excerpts from the Friends Bulletin archives show how war tax resistance was being discussed among Quakers on the West Coast of North America during the last half of the 20th Century.
Here are some more excerpts from issues of the Friends Bulletin from the 1980s, including a variety of tactics, a number of new resisters, and evidence of increasing national coordination of the war tax resistance movement.
As the 1950s end, “The Mennonite” was almost as likely to counsel tax obedience as tax resistance, but a stirring of resistance was beginning that would break out into a storm in the decades ahead.
My limerick commentary on current events. Profiles of war tax resisters Don Timmerman, John Woolman, and Ammon Hennacy. Creative ways to exploit I.R.S. paperwork chaos. Traffic ticket robots under attack in Europe. How tax evasion may suddenly balloon. How the “All or Nothing Syndrome” discourages war tax resistance. Americans renounce their citizenship in record numbers. And peace activists who attacked U.S. military planes in Ireland are found not guilty by a sympathetic jury.
Miscellaneous tax resisters →
individual war tax resisters →
Frida Berrigan
Miscellaneous tax resisters →
individual tax resisters of other or more comprehensive sorts →
Andrew Newman ▶
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A new NWTRCC newsletter is out. Plus: Thoreau is trending. And: how you can help Greeks drink untaxed coffee, how Quakers organized a transatlantic boycott of slave-labor products, Gloria Steinem opens up about her renewed interest in tax resistance, and the I.R.S. gets audited.