Some bits and pieces from here and there:
- “Will I Get Audited?” — a frequently expressed worry of people contemplating war tax resistance. The answer: probably not, though it depends on how you go about it. But here are some responses from the IRS you can expect, and some options for how you can respond in turn. (From Ruth Benn on the War Tax Talk blog.)
tax resisters across Italy hold up “#IOnonMIammazzo” hashtag signs to demonstrate that they refuse to sacrifice themselves for extortionate taxes
- Tax resistance continues its viral spread in Italy, now semi-organized under the “Io Non Mi Ammazzo” (“I won’t kill myself”) banner.
This latest incarnation of what seems to be a growing and converging set of campaigns was spurred by Facebook post by Scordia bartender Giuseppe “Pippo” Barresi in which he said, in part: “I do not mean to be a tax evader, but given the choice of not paying crazy and unnecessary taxes or reducing my family to hunger, I choose the first option.”
Barresi, as with other recent resisters, is claiming a necessity defence under the criminal code and also a Constitutional right to not be subject to unbearable taxation.
“It’s as if my family were threatened by a wild beast. Only that beast is the state.”
Barresi also gave a nod to war tax resisters: “if part of the public finances is squandered in unnecessary wars (like the one in Afghanistan), then to participate in public spending also means contributing to part of the war, regardless of your moral views about it; to withhold funding for war should therefore be permitted by the State as an inalienable right, as much as the already recognized right of refusal to perform military service.” - Italy is also home to an anti-abortion tax resistance movement, organized it seems by the Pope John ⅩⅩⅢ Community.
- “How does the IRS’s ruling that both parties to an exchange of services are subject to income tax apply in the dating context? When meeting, dating, living together, or potentially raising a child together, single people provide services for each other. Most are unaware that potential tax liability lurks behind their performance and receipt of services.”
