It is expected that the entire community of Quakers will object to pay the
income-tax which is about to be levied as a war tax. In years gone by the
Quakers always refused to pay war taxes, and the collectors had frequently
to distrain upon their property to recover the money. Whether they will
have to do so when the new tax comes to be collected remains to be seen.
This is after the point when war tax resistance seems to have mostly stopped
or gone underground in American Quaker meetings.
Reuters carried this report on :
Chavez foes tear up tax forms
Foes of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez tore up income-tax forms on
as they added a national tax
revolt to their five-week-old strike that has throttled the nation’s crucial
oil exports.
Waving Venezuelan flags and blowing whistles, thousands of anti-Chavez
demonstrators marched to government tax offices in east Caracas on the
37th day of an opposition strike aimed at forcing
the leftist leader to resign and call early elections.
The grueling shutdown has strangled oil output and shipments by the world’s
No. 5 petroleum exporter.
“We are not going to pay taxes until this government goes,” 52-year-old
housewife Belkis Soto said as she took part in the march. Many protesters
waved tax declaration forms, which they then ripped up outside the tax
offices.
The disruption to Venezuela’s strategic oil industry has jolted world oil
markets and bled the Chavez’s government’s economic lifeline, costing it
millions of dollars a day.
The opposition has called on individuals and firms to stop paying taxes,
whether income or sales taxes.
But the strike has so far failed to force Chavez to bow to opposition demands
for him to quit. The populist president, a former paratrooper who led a coup
attempt in and was elected president
, has dug in his heels, vowing to
break the strike and survive.
Speaking on at a school in west
Caracas, Chavez accused his foes of “trying to break the state coffers.”
“With the oil strike, we’re going to start the year with a lot of economic
difficulties,” he said, without elaborating.
He warned opponents they would be breaking the law if they refused to pay
taxes. Tax authorities say offenders face fines and prison terms ranging from
six months to seven years.
Some analysts questioned the impact of a tax rebellion in a nation where tax
evasion is widespread.
Tensions high
Tensions have been running high since anti-Chavez demonstrators clashed with
supporters of the president in fierce street battles on
also involving troops and police.
Two Chavez supporters were shot and killed, triggering accusations between
the government and its foes, who blame the president for the killings of
opposition protesters last year.
Chavez, who survived a short-lived coup in
, has condemned the strike and the tax
rebellion as the work of “traitors” and “terrorists.” He accuses his foes of
trying to overthrow him in another coup.
His opponents say the left-wing policies of his self-proclaimed “revolution,”
which include a nationalistic oil policy and increased state intervention in
the economy, are dragging the country toward ruin and Cuban-style communism.
The strike gripping the oil industry has disrupted oil shipments to the
United States, which normally obtains more than 13% of its crude imports from
Venezuela.
But oil prices, which rose close to two-year highs last week, fell heavily on
as leading
OPEC heavyweight Saudi Arabia pushed the
oil exporters’ cartel for a hefty oil output increase to fill a gap left by
the Venezuela strike.
London Brent lost 51 cents to
$US29.69 a barrel
by late afternoon.
US crude fell 98
cents to $US30.92
a barrel.
The government insists strike-hit oil operations are being restored to
normal. Striking executives in the state oil giant
PDVSA, many of whom have been fired, deny that.
Potentially adding to the problems from the oil strike, which has caused
shortages of gasoline and cooking gas, Venezuela’s bank workers said they
would decide on a proposed
48-hour halt to all banking operations.
Many major industries and shops remain closed and many private schools and
universities are not starting classes.
The opposition is setting its sights on a
referendum scheduled by electoral authorities to vote on a single question:
should Chavez voluntarily resign?
But the poll is nonbinding, and the president, whose term is scheduled to end
in early , has said he will ignore the
results, even if he loses massively.
Talks between the government and the opposition, brokered by the Organization
of American States, have so far failed to agree on the timing of elections.
Chavez tells his foes they must wait until after
, halfway through his current term,
when the constitution allows the holding of a binding referendum on his rule.
The anti-Chavez unrest that the article alludes to had been going on
, but this tax strike was more of
a “last hurrah” than a real escalation. The strikes and other civil
disobedience petered out and the opposition focused on holding a binding
referendum to remove Chavez from office.
This
recall referendum was held in , but it
lost, and Chavez continued to cement his hold on political power.
In the midst of her preparations for the Belgian Party a writ for the
recovery of £11 13s.
4d. and costs (£1
6s.
8d.) for income tax on a
fictitious income has been served by a Somerset House official on the
Secretary of the Women’s Freedom League. The pompous phraseology of this
document is as follows:—
In the High Court of Justice. King’s Bench Division
(King’s Remembrancer.)
George the Fifth by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of
the Faith, to F[lorence].A. Underwood, Greeting. We command and
strictly enjoin you that within Fourteen days from the service of this Writ,
inclusive of the day of such service, you cause an Appearance to be entered
for you in the King’s Bench Division of Our High Court of Justice, to answer
us concerning certain Articles then and there on our behalf to be objected
against you, and take notice that in default of your so doing we
shall proceed thereon to Judgment and and [sic] Execution.
Witness the Right Honourable Richard Burdon, Viscount Haldane of
Cloan, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain at Westminster, the First day
of December in the year of our Lord One thousand nine hundred and fourteen.
At the Suit of His Majesty’s Attorney-General
By Information.
This Writ is issued against you by Hugh Bertram Cox, the Solicitor of Inland
Revenue, Somerset House, London.
For the recovery of £11
13s.
4d. for Duties due from you
under the Statutes relating to the Income Tax.
Take notice that in default of your entering an Appearance
according to the exigency of this Writ, an Information may be filed and
Judgment signed thereon, and Execution issued on such Judgment together
with Costs, at the expiration of Fourteen days from the day of signing such
Judgment.
The costs of this Writ amount to £1
6s.
8d., which must be paid
together with the Duties.
N.B. — Appearance to be entered at the King’s Remembrancer’s Department, Royal
Courts of Justice, Strand, London.
Miss Underwood has no intention of paying any part of this amount, and, if
she is arrested, we rely on the co-operation of Branches up and down the
country to hold meetings of protest, and to raise a substantial sum for the
funds of the League, so that we can strengthen throughout the country the
resistance to taxation without representation which the Women’s Freedom
League inaugurated some years ago as a protest against the Government’s
unconditional action in levying taxes on unrepresented women.
Our countrymen are fighting abroad for the independence of Belgium; women are
fighting at home for their own independence, and are as confident as their
brothers of ultimate victory.
Winnipeg, . — More then 600 federal civil servants employed in Manitoba
will protest the right of the Manitoba Government to collect a two per
cent. wage tax it was announced
today, following a mass meeting of
representatives of all federal employees in the province.
Facing court action for failing to pay their wage tax to the Manitoba
Government the civil servants decided to retain legal counsel to test the
validity of the imposition in the court. The main defence it is understood
is to be the ground of “ultra vires.”
The test case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled on
that the soldiers and other
federal workers were indeed liable for the Manitoba tax.
