Snubbing Uncle Sam: a Collection of New Tax Resistance Links

Today’s link dump:

  • My local newsweekly, the New Times, covered my tax resistance today: Snubbing Uncle Sam: Local resident touts tax resistance as protest. They also did one of those we-ask-a-man-on-the-street sidebars where they asked four people: “What is your opinion on people who don’t pay taxes as a form of protest?” and got surprisingly positive answers. I expect the typical man-on-the-street to reach for the old familiar clichés about “who will fix the roads if we don’t pay our taxes” and so forth, but three out of four people who were asked supported tax resistance.
  • Steve Ballmer, ex-Microsoft CEO, has launched a new project — USA Facts — that is meant to be a thorough, non-partisan, unbiased source of information about government spending. By non-partisan they mean “credulous and non-judgmental” and by unbiased they mean “exclusively relying on government sources,” so keep that in mind. It’s naively cheery about the federal government, by design:

    We soon discovered that dealing with something as big and complex as government — with its more than 90,000 jurisdictions and 23 million employees — required an organizing framework. What better place to look than the Constitution, and, more specifically, the preamble to the Constitution? It lays out four missions: “Establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility; provide for the common defense; promote the general welfare; and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” While we don’t make judgments about policy, we all agree on the broad purposes of government as laid out in the preamble to the Constitution.

    That said, it may end up being a useful source for some information about taxes and spending.
  • NWTRCC has some follow-up on this year’s tax season:
  • The Satyagraha Foundation continues its series on tax resistance by reprinting my inaugural Picket Line post.
  • Susan Lee Barton shares the letter she sent along with her tax return this year in lieu of a check.
  • Peter and Mary Sprunger-Froese promoted war tax resistance in the letters-to-the-editor column of the Colorado Springs Independent.
  • Erica Weiland discusses the decision of whether to be a public war tax resister, or to resist in a less-conspicuous way. (Read the comments, too.)
  • Majorities of Americans are bothered that corporations and wealthy people don’t pay their fair share of taxes. And 56% of Americans describe the federal tax system as unfair — the highest percentage since the question was first asked .
  • Here’s a new item in the pay-under-protest file: Scott Dion paid his property taxes with a check that said “sexual favors” in the “Memo” field. The government has been refusing to cash it.
  • A restaurant patron paid the bill with a credit card, wrote “Taxation is theft — 0” in the “Tip” field, and left cash instead, with a note reading: “This is not a tip. This is a personal gift and not subject to federal or state income taxes.”
  • Congressman John Lewis has again reintroduced the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act into the U.S. Congress.