Why Pay Taxes?
The employment of tax-resistance as a method of protest against
disenfranchisement appears to be due, in the first instance, to Miss Charlotte
Babb, whose goods were distrained upon in the early days of the suffrage
agitation thirteen times because she refused to pay Imperial taxes. Following
her heroic persistence, there was a series of isolated resistances to taxation
by unrepresented women, of whom the best known are Miss Henrietta Müller and
the Misses [Anna Maria and Mary] Priestman, of Bristol, who resisted taxation
about , and Mrs. [Dora] Montefiore, whose
final resistance in gave occasion for the
famous six weeks’ siege of her house at Hammersmith. There were other
individual instances as well as these, but the Women’s Freedom League in
made the first organised attempt to run a
definite tax-resistance campaign. Instead of isolated instances we have now
got a steadily-increasing body of yearly resisters, and the action of these
women has been made use of to drive home to the public the concrete injustice
of taxation without representation.
a Tax-Resistance League came into
existence, confining itself to the development of this one line of protest.
This year, as a sign of further growth, the sister militant society has
decided to adopt the tax-resistance policy as a means of bringing additional
pressure upon the Government. These signs of the progress of this very
practical anti-Government action are good to see; but just at this moment
they are particularly to be welcomed, for the National Executive of the
League has just decided to adopt and develop a further line of
tax-resistance, in which we hope all the societies approving this general
policy will concur.
So far, the strength of the tax-resistance movement has rested with the women
who were spinsters or widows; but the new line of action will make the married
women a more effective agent of protest. The most that can be done by the
widow and spinster is to enter her protest, and thus delay the passing of her
money into the Treasury. Except in the case of Mrs. [Charlotte]
Despard — which is exceptional — no widow or spinster has successfully
withheld the contribution demanded of her by the State; but with married women
this is possible. She is enabled by the state of our present law not only to
enter her protest, but actually to withhold her moneys, and so to deplete the
Treasury coffers.
There are many anomalies with regard to married women upon our Statute Book,
and a large number of them are due to the basic wrong done by our Common Law
assumption that a married woman is the subject and property of her husband,
having no independent existence apart from him. In spite of the Married
Woman’s Property Acts this assumption is still acted upon to-day, old laws
that ought to have been rendered null and void by the passing of the Acts,
which gave the married woman the control of her own property still remaining
on the Statute Book, are being applied by the authorities. The Income Tax
Commissioners provide a case in point. This legal inconsistency places the
woman at a disadvantage, sometimes the man, but if it is dealt with in the
right way in this case of Income Tax the Government itself can be made to
bear the burden.
It is our duty as suffragists to take advantage of every opportunity which
may offer. Even when the initial cause of the opportunity is an insulting
denial of the woman’s independence, we must still employ it. We must make
this very insult to us a means of attack upon the Government which denies us
liberty. We must turn the ridiculous survivals of coverture into weapons of
enfranchisement. The existing law so stands that married women can escape
the payment of Imperial taxes. Then let them take advantage of the law. Let
them organise a depletion of the Treasury. Let them go tax free until women
are enfranchised. This is the new tax-resistance policy which we have
adopted, and which we mean to spread throughout the land.
Let us examine the position. The standard of Income Tax law is the Finance
Act of , upon which all our present Inland
Revenue procedure is based. Section 45 of this Act deals with the position of
married women, and declares that the income of a married woman living with
her husband shall be deemed the income of the husband, and the same shall be
charged in the name of the husband, and not in her name or of her trustee. So
stands the law for the protection of the wife. The Income Tax authorities
cannot legally apply to a married woman for the payment of any Imperial tax;
they cannot cite her for non-payment, they cannot levy distraint upon her.
She is not liable to Income Tax in any form whatsoever while living with her
husband.
The husband is legally liable for the taxes levied upon his wife’s income,
whether earned or unearned, and generally, with her co-operation, he has been
able to satisfy the Income Tax authorities as to the extent of that income,
and to hand over to the same body the taxes with which she provided him in
respect of the claim made upon her through him. The authorities have been, as
the man in the street would say, having it both ways. They have refused to
recognise or deal with the woman, and yet they have insisted upon her husband
acting as their agent in levying taxes upon her; but all the time since
they and the husband have been acting
illegally. The Married Woman’s Property Act took from the husband the old
jus mariti by means of which he became possessor of all his
wife’s goods and properties; it took away also his old right of
administration of his wife’s property, and deprived him of any legal right to
control, inquire into, or interfere with, his wife’s economic affairs.
Therefore, every time a husband, acting with the compulsion of the law behind
him, compelled his wife to reveal the extent and nature of her income he was
breaking a bigger law and a more recent law than the one which he was
obeying. The husband has no legal right of inquiry, no legal power of
control, over the income of his wife. He cannot be forced to do what is
illegal. He can make no return for his wife. He cannot be assessed for
payment of taxes on an income that he cannot declare.
The plan of campaign is unfolded, and it is only necessary to indicate the
details of procedure. These are simple. When the demand for a statement of
the wife’s income is made for the Government by the husband, the wife must
refuse to supply any information, and must refer her husband to the Married
Woman’s Property Act (England, ; Scotland,
). This refusal and reference the husband
will convey to the Revenue officials. In all probability the form will be
returned once or twice, and, finally, a form will be sent direct to the wife.
She will return this, calling the attention of the senders to the fact that
she is a married woman living with her husband, and referring them to the
Income Tax Act of , section 45. If both
husband and wife stick firmly to their guns, the authorities would seem to be
able to do nothing.
The law allows everyone who pays Income Tax to claim redress for any undue
and illegal levy made during the last three years. Therefore, a married
woman’s payment during the last three years can be reclaimed, if she can
prove that they were paid by herself or deducted from her personal income.
This course should be followed wherever moneys are paid out by trustees and
agents, or deducted from interest on investments. By this means not only
this year’s taxes, but a portion of previous years’, can be withdrawn from
the Treasury. The cumulative effect of this additional development of the
tax-resistance campaign and the new impetus given to the old lines of
resistance should go some considerable distance towards convincing the
Chancellor of the Exchequer that women are preferable as allies and peaceful
enfranchised citizens than as an army of sharpshooters interfering constantly
with the smooth conduct of his financial army.
This is our plan. Why pay taxes? Married women, respond!
Teresa Billington-Grieg.
Outdoor Meetings
Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, Secretary of the Women’s Tax Resistance
League, held a very large gathering . A part of her long
and interesting speech was taken up in pointing out to the audience how we
women could obstruct the Government by refusing to pay the Imperial taxes.
She was listened to with deep attention, and many questions were asked.…
No Vote, No Tax. — “It was mentioned on
at the Suffragist demonstration
in Alexandria Park, Manchester, that many of the lady Suffragists have
refused to fill up their income tax forms, or to answer the urgent notices
posted to them in consequence. This plan is to be carried out all over the
country as a protest against taxation without representation.” — Manchester Evening Chronicle.
