Some tax resistance news of note:
- I’m seeing some signs of organized tax resistance as part of the ongoing protests in Nicaragua, which are aimed at the unpopular policies and the general repressiveness of the Sandinista government:
- Attorney Julio Francisco Báez has produced a video for Nicaraguans who want to participate in tax resistance.
- The Nicaraguan Academy of Sciences and Academy of Legal and Political Sciences have called on people and businesses in Nicaragua to stop paying taxes and bills from the state electricity monopoly.
- There is talk of a tax strike in the Mercado Oriental in Managua, mirroring a general strike there in the last days of the Somoza regime in .
Merchants there met and voted to stop paying taxes and utility bills. Merchant Irlanda Jerez told an interviewer:
When we talk about civil disobedience in the Mercado Oriental, we are talking about not paying city taxes, not paying Conmema [vendor fees], not paying trash, not paying any tax that has anything to do with government entities. First, as disobedience, and second, because it is prioritizing the salaries of the workers.
Of course [we fear reprisals]. We know that this dictatorial government always takes reprisals against anyone who rises up. The merchants are afraid. I am afraid. It’s normal, but in this moment we have to put aside any fear of economic loss.
- Student protest leaders called for tax resistance and boycotts of businesses owned by the ruling family as part of a nonviolent resistance campaign.
- Alex Tabarrok has an amusing post demonstrating the sort of magical thinking that progressives sometimes have about taxes and government spending.
- TheNewspaper continues to report on people around the world who are disabling traffic-ticket-issuing machines: in Russia, Saudi Arabia, and many times over in France, in Italy, England, Russia, and several more times in France.
- Some people every year get it into their heads that it would be a good idea to donate money to the U.S. government to help it pay down the national debt. That debt stands at something like $21,000,000,000,000, so those donations, though they amount to millions of dollars a year (go figure), only pay down something like 0.00001% of this amount. People may be wising up, though. These voluntary contributions seem to be sharply down this year.
