Your tax resistance news round-up:
International News
- Tax collectors turned up at a festival in Maritsa, in Rhodes, Greece, and were forced to flee under police protection when the crowd turned on them with jeers and insults. The papers note: “This is the second time that tax officers have been prevented from performing their duties on the island in a period of less than two weeks.”
- Market areas across Pakistan shut down in a business strike protesting a new tax withholding system. According to one account: “This was the first time in the history of Pakistan that traders, goods transporters, custom clearing agents and traders’ bodies gave the strike call.”
U.S. News
- The right-wing of the domestic internet has lately been outraged about Planned Parenthood, over the issue of abortion in particular.
I’ve lost track of how many tweets I’ve seen that are variations on “I’m going to stop paying taxes if the government doesn’t stop funding Planned Parenthood!”
Easier tweeted than done, of course, and today’s American right-wingers have a pretty poor record of follow-through on threats like these.
But then there’s Ann Barnhardt.
She’s a Catholic counter-reformist who burned a Koran on camera (“bookmarked with raw bacon”) and who shut down her financial services business in to “Go Galt” and stop paying taxes.
In a post on her blog, Barnhardt explains why the Bible’s “Render Unto Caesar…” verse doesn’t discourage her from refusing to pay federal taxes.
Her conclusion:
Enough is enough. You cannot subsidize this government and still claim that God is “first” in your life. It is mathematically, metaphysically and morally impossible. You must choose your allegiances now. You must now choose who or what it is that you truly worship. Do you worship God or do you worship your wealth? Here’s a simple litmus test for you: are you or are you not willing to give up all of your wealth in bearing witness to God in His Truth? If the answer is no, then stop calling yourself a Christian, because you very simply are not.
- The IRS hung up on 8.8 million callers who tried to contact the agency during this year’s tax filing season. Only 37% of those who called actually managed to hear a non-recorded voice. The IRS calls these hang-ups “courtesy disconnects.”
