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Tax Strike Tactics

Put Your Taxes in an Escrow Account in lieu of Payment

Another way some resisters and resistance campaigns have tried to defuse the attack that makes them out to be anti-social misers is by paying their taxes into escrow accounts.

When resisters use this tactic, instead of paying taxes to the government, they deposit the money into a special account and say they’re willing to relinquish it to the government at a future date if the government meets certain conditions. The message conveyed by this is that “we will pay our share of money for the government’s upkeep—we’re not just keeping the money for ourselves—but we’re not going to let the government have the money until it shapes up.”

Examples Quakers

The Purchase Quarterly Meeting of Quakers set up something it called the “Peace Tax Escrow Account” into which war tax resisters could deposit their refused taxes. The Meeting said it would turn this account over to the government if the government were to give taxpayers a way to pay such taxes without paying for the military functions of government.

The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Quakers lost a court battle in which the IRS hoped to force them to withhold taxes from a war tax resisting employee. The Meeting then began withholding the taxes as ordered, but rather than submitting the money to the IRS, the Meeting put it into an escrow account and told the agency it would have to seize the money. The London Yearly Meeting also put resisted taxes from 25 war tax resisting employees of the Friends House in an escrow account—“the intention being to release it to Inland Revenue after assurances that it would be used for non-military purposes.”

Example Tijuana Chamber of Commerce

In 2006, the Chamber of Commerce in Tijuana, Mexico led a business tax strike to protest against inadequate security during a crime wave there. The group brought in accounting consultants to help them establish an escrow account, in the hopes that such a gesture would discourage the government from classifying the member businesses as tax delinquents.

Example Markus Zwicklbauer

This tactic can be used by individuals as well as groups. For example, in 2011 Markus Zwicklbauer, a 58-year-old tax consultant from Fürstenzell, Germany, began paying his taxes into an escrow account which he says he will release to the government only if the government can show him to his satisfaction that it will be spent for the benefit of German citizens and not wasted on bailouts of other eurozone nations.

Example Catalan Separatists

The independence movement in Catalonia encouraged Catalans to pay their federal taxes into an escrow account controlled by the Catalan regional government. That government then relinquished the money in the escrow account to the federal government, which meant that those people who paid into the account were legally paying their taxes. But by regularly paying into the escrow account rather than directly, they empowered the regional government to withhold those funds from the central government entirely at some future date when they feel bold enough to do so.

Notes and Citations
  • “I.R.S. Sues Quaker Group” New York Times 27 July 2003
  • “World of Friends” Friends Journal 15 November 1982, pp. 24–25
  • Corpus, Aline “Retendrá la Canaco impuestos en Tijuana” El Norte 22 September 2006
  • Wilhelm, Hannah “German Taxpayer Won’t Pay Up If His Money Goes to Greece” Suddeutsche Zeitung 26 September 2011
  • Duarte, Estaban “Catalan Tax Rebels Dig In for Battle to Escape From Spain” Bloomberg 27 February 2015