Some bits and pieces from here and there:
- NWTRCC (the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee) is holding its gathering in New York City .
- PBS NewsHour did a special report on the BerkShares variety of alternative currency that has been used in Berkshire County, Massachusetts .
- Robert Fernandes of Forks Township, Pennsylvania, paid his $7,143 in property taxes with 7,143 dollar bills, as a way of making a protest against paying for public schools that his children don’t attend. “We don’t even use the public system, yet I am being forced to pay all this money into a public scool system. I don’t think that’s really either fair or just or even ethical. It would be the equivalent if McDonald’s were to force vegetarians to pay for their cheeseburgers.” Friends of Fernandes videotaped the action and put it on-line. “I wanted to create a visual,” said Fernandez, as a way to help taxpayers “see exactly how much taxes is being stolen from them.”
- The percentage of households in the U.S. who are among the “lucky duckies” who pay no federal income tax is beginning to recede slightly. But Howard Gleckman, at the Forbes blog, wonders if we’ve been overcounting ducks this whole time. There are a surprising number (millions) of people in the U.S. who fail to file income tax returns even though they have had taxes deducted from their meager wages all year and are probably due refunds. Because they don’t file returns, they are usually categorized as non-paying “lucky duckies” — but because they have had taxes withheld from their paychecks, they really don’t belong in that category.
- Voters in Colorado decided to finally legalize recreational marijuana use. But the prohibitionists are fighting back by trying to enact a prohibitive tax on marijuana that would effectively recriminalize it — forcing it back into the black market and erasing many of the benefits of legalization. Legalization promoters there responded with a free marijuana give-away program in Denver (some coverage here, here, here, and here).
- I missed this when it first came out in April, but here is Michael Izbicki’s note on “Why (and how) I’m refusing to pay war taxes.”
- Here’s yet another “suspicious white powder” incident at an IRS facility.
- Thanks to NWTRCC’s War Tax Talk blog for linking to my discussion of the varieties of tax resister in the American war tax resistance movement.
