Tax Resistance News from Italy, the U.S., and India

Some bits and pieces from here and there…

• Italy’s “Northern League” says it plans to lauch a tax strike later this year, but it seems to me they’ve made similar threats in the past and nothing has come of it. Sure enough: Next Quotidiano gives us a run-down of every time the League has threatened a tax strike since 1992.
• If you decide to resist the federal income tax, you have to decide whether to file a tax return or not. One of the disadvantages of non-filing is that if the IRS notices, they’ll file a sort of dummy return for you: and usually one that considerably overstates the income tax you would have owed if you filed yourself. Tony Nitti at his Forbes blog, describes how this screwed over tax resister Thomas Salzer, who went to tax court to try to get them to accept a more accurate, less expensive, but tardily-filed tax return, but lost his case.
• American war tax resister Joseph Olejak, one of the few such resisters to have served time on criminal charges for his resistance, shares some of his thoughts about activism, resistance, and how he can continue to resist when being tax-compliant is a condition of his probation at The Nuclear Resister.
• The state secretary of one of India’s Communist Parties — CPI(M) — has called on residents of Kerala to refuse to pay new taxes announced by the state government.

The 23 September 1843 Cambrian carried brief summaries of the meetings of the Breconshire Turnpike Trust and the upper and lower branches of the Cardiganshire Trust, at which the trustees seemed to be falling all over themselves to remove toll gates and reduce tolls to try to keep Rebecca at bay, for example:

A meeting of this trust, attended by an unusually large concourse of trustees… ordered that Bwlch Llangorse Gate, Senny Bridge Gate, the Side Gate in Llanvaes, the Groesfford Gate, the Side Gate at Tairderwen, Llyswen Side Gate, the Watten Side Gate, Pontcumbeth Side Gate, and the West Side Gate at Builth, be taken down and discontinued… that the Penygenfford Gate be abandoned, and that the Talgarth Gate and the Tretower Gate on that road, clear each other…