Turn Yourself In as a Criminal Because You Paid Taxes
A rarely used tactic in tax resistance campaigns is for resisters to turn
themselves in for prosecution for having paid taxes. This was used
by a group of Welsh war tax resisters who went to the police and “confessed to
the crime of paying income and
VAT taxes used
for British nuclear programs, in violation of international law” in
. The police declined to make any
arrests.
An American war tax resister reports that when he refused to pay his taxes
in , “I also asked the
IRS
if they could provide legal assurance that paying taxes would not leave me
open to prosecution under the Nuremberg Principles. The
IRS
replied that they could not provide a quick response to my letter since they
had received ‘a large number of similar requests.’ ”
The legal reasoning, in the abstract, is not all that far-fetched, but it is a
sort of affected naïveté to expect the government to respect it in this
fashion. This sort of tactic is a form of symbolic protest and can help to
educate people about their accountability for war crimes conducted with their
acquiescence and support.
As early attempts to get methodical about nonviolent resistance theory and
practice, these are interesting works. I’ll note some of what he had to say
about tax resistance as a nonviolent resistance tactic here today:
Tax resistance against the Education Act of
This was the organized opposition to the English Education Act of
, which extended the private school system
of the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches at the expense of the general
taxpayer. The interest of the matter for the purposes of the present
discussion lies in the fact that it was explicitly an example of passive
resistance, inasmuch as the agitators called themselves “passive resisters”
and published, for a decade or more, a periodical called “Passive
Resistance,” from whose pages this account is drawn.
Their method was to refuse to pay the school tax, which they held to be
grossly unjust to dissenters, but to submit obediently to the penalty
prescribed by the law for delinquency. This punishment came with great
regularity in the form of fines, which the passive resisters steadfastly and
consistently refused to pay; whereupon their goods were distrained, or, in
default of goods, the recalcitrant was cast into prison. The magnitude of the
movement is shown by the fact that within two and one half years of its
inauguration the league had on file reports of seventy thousand summonses and
254 commitments to prison.
The character and social standing of the members of the movement are facts of
significant interest. According to the secretary of the
organization,1 “The men and women whose goods
have been sold belong to all classes and ranks. They are clergymen and
ministers, journalists and teachers, manufacturers and magistrates, members
of Parliament and candidates for Parliament, farmers and gardeners, aged
women and young men.”2
The movement was losing momentum in , in
response, as was supposed, to a feeling on the part of some that the Liberal
victory of , for which the Passive Resisters
seem to have been more or less responsible, insured the repeal of the
obnoxious law. But the decline was doubtless due also to the proverbially
early exhaustion which overtakes all sudden expressions of popular
indignation. The secretary admitted in that
the Passive Resisters were “fewer in number compared with the hosts which at first resisted the fraudulent legislation of .”3
“Passive Resistance,” ; p. 7.
Ibid.
Ibid.; p. 4.
Tax resistance in the American Revolution
The merchants, true to the intuition of their class, were by no means
revolutionary or even reckless as regards the foundations of law and order,
although in this case they permitted their zeal for prosperity to encourage
social forces which, in turn, eventually raised a tempest that they could not
quell. Their intention, both real and apparent, was the organization of a
boycott against British trade, particularly in commodities subjected to
taxation or other restrictions under the recently enacted revenue laws. This
boycott was planned with clear comprehension of the interplay of interests
that obtains in human affairs, and particularly the dependence of political
policies upon personal and business influences. Consequently the colonial
merchants did not aim a general broadside at the whole British Empire, but
planned to reach particular interests with a well-directed blow. More
specifically, they hoped, by means of their boycott measures, to give the
British mercantile and manufacturing people a motive, in the person of their
own imperiled interests, for seeking the ear of Parliament with a demand for
the repeal of the objectionable legislation.
The straight, or primary, boycott was the method used to impress the minds of
the British trading class, which was, of course, the British
government for practical purposes. The secondary boycott,
as now known, was in turn brought to bear upon Americans who failed to
observe the original agreement and resorted to dealing within the limits
prescribed, either as to persons or goods. For instance, in the earlier
struggle, waged against the stamp tax, communities that paid the same were
made to feel the disapproval of their neighbors, as in Charleston, South
Carolina, where a radical fire company agreed that ”no provision should be
shipped “to that infamous Colony Georgia in particular nor any other that
make use of Stamp Paper.’ ”1
During the later boycott, directed against the Townshend taxes, Rhode Island
yielded to that temptation which constitutes the greatest peril for any
concerted movement of this kind, namely the impulse to reap a rich harvest by
seizing the opportunities deliberately left to go begging through the
self-denial of one’s competitors. This incident also discloses another
weakness inherent in such organized “voluntary” efforts, which is that they
are really seldom, if ever, completely voluntary. Enthusiasts for every
cause, however worthy, almost invariably make use of coercion by means of the
hundred and one devices known to social pressure, and thereby incorporate the
seeds of their own disintegration. Thus a contemporary Rhode Islander wrote
that they “were dragged in the first place like an ox to the slaughter, into
the non-importation agreement,” and that adherence to the same “would have
been acting out of character and in contradiction to the opinion of the
country.”2
The resistance of the colonists was destined, however, to run the entire
gamut of forms known to social opposition and constraint. Evasion of
law had long been an established business in the form of smuggling; the
peaceable boycott, both primary and secondary, was now well under
way; but political action, litigation, social
ostracism, mob violence, and armed revolution were
either already coming into play or waiting to enter the stage as the historic
drama proceeded. And this list makes no mention of those subtle methods of
persuasion and “influence” which operate between friends and relatives,
business and scientific associates, boon companions, and numberless other
channels of daily intercourse, not to mention the more overt persuasion of
pulpit, press, and platform. And one of the most significant aspects of it
all is the tendency of any one of these situations to transform itself into
one or more of the other members of the series, so that one method can hardly
be used without sooner or later invoking the others. This truth is clearly
exemplified in the events now before us.
For example, in the secondary boycott directed by Charleston against Georgia,
as quoted above, the resolution threatened death for future offenders, with
destruction of their vessels. In Boston, especially during the earlier
contest over the Stamp Tax, the disturbances were most serious. The rioters
were led by one Mackintosh, a shoemaker, endowed by nature for “government by
tumult.” Under his leadership, the mob, which was currently reported to
include “fifty gentlemen actors” partly disguised in workman’s attire, not
only razed the stamp office but also attacked the house of the registrar of
the admiralty, and even the residence of Governor Hutchinson himself. In all
these scenes the Sons of Liberty, composed largely of workingmen, did the
strong-arm work. Meanwhile the merchants, ostensibly committed exclusively to
the boycott and orderly methods, lent in private an anxious but effective
moral support. One of them testifies in a private letter of the time that
they were endeavoring “to keep up the Spirit” of resistance but were “not a
little pleas’d to hear that McIntosh has the Credit of the Whole
Affair.”3…
“The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution,
,” by Arthur Meier
Schlesinger; Vol. ⅬⅩⅩⅧ,
Whole Number 182, of “Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law,”
edited by the faculty of political science of Columbia University. New
York, ;
p. 82.
Ibid.; p. 215.
Ibid.; p. 72.
Economic pressure through the boycott and physical force in the form of
violence were constantly supported by the more subtle forms of social
coercion. Thus the Boston agreement of was
to be enforced by a discountenancing “in the most effectual but
decent and lawful manner” of all who should fail to aid the movement. At
Philadelphia, any person failing to support the boycott was to be branded “An
Enemy of the Liberties of America,” and it was the plan to publish such names
in the newspapers. The commercial resisters of Savannah likewise agreed that
“every violator should be deemed ‘no Friend to his Country’ ”; while in South
Carolina non-supporters were “to be treated with the utmost contempt.” In
the Boston boycotters circulated thousands
of handbills throughout their own and neighboring provinces calling on the
inhabitants to have no trade relations with persons whom they named as
lacking in regard for the public good. While this is apparently merely a case
of the secondary boycott already described, the publicity methods connected
with it are of interest just here. Public disapproval, aside from withdrawal
of patronage, was a factor held in view. It was an effort to revive the
ancient pillory upon its mental though not its physical side that prompted
some of these acts — perhaps that of the Harvard College seniors who resolved
never again to deal with Editor John Mein, who championed the
non-boycotters.1 The town meeting went a step
further, and ordered the names of seven persistent offenders inscribed on the
town records in order “that posterity may know who those persons were that
preferred their little private advantages to the common interest of all the
colonies.”2
Boston, the scene of so many stirring activities, staged a prototype of our
present-day “peaceful picketing” on a mass scale, when, during the struggle
to prevent disintegration of the boycott forces, in
, a procession of more than a thousand
persons proceeded, in what Professor Schlesinger describes as “impressive and
orderly array,” to the homes and shops of the recalcitrant merchants, among
them two sons of the governor, whom they sought under the roof of the
executive mansion itself. Having made their demonstration and protest, in
every place the multitude quietly dispersed.3
Ibid.; pp. 112,
130, 148, 149, 158, 172.
Ibid.; p. 173.
Ibid.; p. 176.
Francis Deak’s campaign against Austrian domination in Hungary
Deak proceeded to organize a scheme for national education and industry, and
a boycott against Austrian goods was set in motion. As relations between the
two governments became more tense, “Deak admonished the people not to be
betrayed into acts of violence, nor to abandon the ground of legality. ‘This
is the safe ground,’ he said, ‘on which, unarmed ourselves, we can hold our
own against armed force. If suffering be necessary, suffer with dignity.’ He
had given the order to the country — Passive Resistance”; “and the order was
obeyed. When the Austrian Tax Collector came to gather the taxes the people
did not beat him nor even hoot him — they just declined to pay. The Tax
Collector thereupon called in the Austrian police, and the police seized the
man’s goods. Then the Hungarian auctioneer declined to auction them, and an
Austrian auctioneer had to be introduced. When he arrived he discovered that
he would have to bring bidders from Austria also if the goods were to be
sold. The government found before long that it was costing more to distrain
the goods than the tax itself was worth.”
Gandhi’s campaigns against anti-Indian measures in South Africa
The long struggle, which the London “Times” declared, according to Mr.
Polak’s report, “must live in memory as one of the most remarkable
manifestations in history of the spirit of Passive Resistance,” was drawing
to its close in . Mr. Gandhi, in connection
with the discussion in Parliament and elsewhere in England, just prior to the
great “March” of , above described, had
accepted full responsibility for his advising the Indian community to resist
the law. His plan, which he held to be “of educational value, and, in the end
to be valuable both to the Indian community and the State,” consisted, as he
worded it himself, in “actively, persistently, and continuously asking those
who are liable to pay the £3 tax to decline to do so and to suffer the
penalties for non-payment, and what is more important, in asking those who
are now serving indenture and who will, therefore, be liable to pay the £3
tax upon the completion of their indenture, to strike work until the tax is
withdrawn.”1
This, as has been shown, was his plan of procedure at
, when he proposed
the strike of protest for .
But the new year opened with a series of conferences with the authorities, a
truce was declared, and the principal points in the long dispute were finally
settled by the Indian Relief Act, passed in …
“Speeches and Writings,” p.
ⅩⅬⅦ.
Gandhi’s independence campaign in India
At the close of his year of silence we find Gandhi organizing the ryots of
the Kaira district in his own province in a passive resistance movement,
i.e., Satyagraha, against the payment of taxes which they
asserted should have been suspended because of a partial failure of their
crops. The struggle continued to , when the
passive resisters were released from jail and their contention accepted.
Meanwhile the non-coöperation movement, the strangest revolution in human
history, had been launched at a special session of the Indian National
Congress, which met in Calcutta in . the program
was amended and strengthened in what are known as the Regular Congress
Resolution, or the Nagpur Resolutions, of . The resolution is based upon the two fundamental propositions,
(1) that the British Government in India had forfeited the confidence of the
country, and (2) that it should be brought to an end by the non-violent
method of simply refusing to cooperate with it longer. The program of
non-cooperation was planned to culminate in “civil disobedience,”
specifically in refusal to pay taxes for governmental support. It was
realized, however, that this drastic measure would subject the social order
to a terrific and perilous strain. Therefore a more or less extended period
of discipline was seen to be necessary by way of preparation for the final
stroke.
It will be recalled that the Non-cooperation Resolutions promised
Swaraj within one year. But as the tumult tended to increase with the
passing months of , it became necessary,
time and again, to postpone the most drastic measure, namely civil
disobedience or refusal to pay taxes or remain in the government service, in
which it was planned to culminate.
In , the All-India
Congress met at Delhi, where Gandhi, according to the despatches to London of
, declared it necessary to
accelerate the movement by using all the measures in the non-cooperation
arsenal. “This,” he declared, “embraces the policy of civil disobedience,
which means civil revolution. Whenever it is practised it will end Government
authority. It means open defiance of the Government and its laws. I will
launch this campaign in my own district, in Gujarat, within the next
fortnight. The nation must await the result of this example, which should
open the eyes of the whole world.”
The congress committee pointed out in a resolution that only a little more
than a month then remained of the year within which Swaraj had been
promised. In view of this and the “exemplary self-restraint” observed by the
nation in its adherence to non-violence, the committee then authorized “every
province on its own responsibility to undertake civil disobedience, including
non-payment of taxes,” provided they would observe Hindu-Moslem unity and all
the other features of the non-cooperation program. So much for the individual
provinces, but, as for the nation as a whole, the decision was that it must
await Gandhi’s signal.
And so it came about that at a meeting of the working committee of the
All-India Congress on ,
with Gandhi presiding, a resolution was adopted postponing civil disobedience
until , or pending the final
result of the negotiations at the round-table conference then in progress
between leaders of all parties…
During an interview with an American correspondent, in
,1
Mr Gandhi admitted that mass civil disobedience had been abandoned on the
very eve of its promised inauguration, because “the country was not ready.”
“The principles of non-violence,” he explained, “had not yet made themselves
felt.” But he declared it merely a postponement, adding, “We will continue
individual disobedience and boycott.”
Mr. John Clayton, in the Chicago Tribune,
.
Shortly thereafter, Gandhi was jailed, and he was still in jail when Case was
writing his book.
