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Tax Strike Tactics

Blockade Tax Offices

Blockade the IRS. March 19. Washington D.C.

Tax resisters have used nonviolent blockades to disrupt tax offices.

For example, poll tax resisters in Glasgow once occupied a tax office, and, as the staff retreated, the resisters took their places at the walk-up windows. One of the occupiers, John Cooper, remembers:

I just sat down at the desk and said through the glass, “Can I help you?” I says, “It’s okay; you don’t need to pay any more, it’s abolished!” and the guy says, “Are you sure?” I says, “I’m positive. You know what I’d do with this money: go and spend it, have a good time.” He says, “You’re having me on.” I could see the guy was still uncertain, so there was a bunch of pads for phone messages—I ripped [a page] off and said, “If there’s any bother just send that in to us.”

Some blockades are more symbolic or perhaps aspirational. Anti-war demonstrators used handcuffs to lock the doors of an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) building in Rochester, New York, for about a half hour in 1972. Another group of anti-war activists, including representatives from the War Resisters League and the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, performed a sit-down blockade at IRS headquarters for about an hour in 2008.

Notes and Citations