New National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee Newsletter

The April issue of More Than a Paycheck, NWTRCC’s newsletter, is now on-line. Contents include:

• an overview of “tax day” actions planned across the country this year
• notes and updates about the new health care bill, IRS enforcement tactics, taxpatriatism, the advantages of credit unions, and the criminal case against war tax resister Frank Donnelly
• Chris Moore-Backman writes about the suit he has filed to try to get legal protection for conscientious objection to military taxation
• food for thought: tax resistance ideas and actions
• resource updates, including new brochures, a “penny poll” tutorial, the new War Resisters League pie chart, and reviews of the new Death and Taxes film
• a profile of war tax resister Liz Scranton

If you liked Liz Scranton’s profile, you’ll probably also like this account from a produce-addled wild-eyed hairy mountain man. Both tell of lifestyle choices that go beyond tax resistance to a more radical reinvention of what it means to live a good life.

A couple of modern tax resistance outliers:

• Harry Carless has stopped paying a portion of his council tax in a London suburb. He’s deducted the part of his tax that pays for the police because, three times now, his car has been stolen, and the police have done nothing about it. He was dragged into court, but the judge wouldn’t hear his argument:

  “The issue of you having a car stolen is not relevant to the matters we are dealing with this afternoon.”

  Mr. Carless said: “My summons ordered me to appear in court to explain the reasons why I have not paid this amount. Do I not get the chance to do this?”

  Mr. Adams said: “It is unfortunate and we sympathise with you but it’s not due cause to not pay. If everyone who was a victim of crime refused to pay taxes there would be complete anarchy.”

• A group of animal rights activists in Padrón, Spain, is threatening tax resistance against a government that tolerates bullfighting while at the same time neglecting its legal obligations to protect animal welfare.

  [Rubén] Pérez explains that the tax disobedience or resistance is a protest technique used when there is a disagreement with the nature of the entity collecting the taxes or the purposes for which the money will go, and that “it’s a strategy linked to reasons of conscience such as the opposition to bullfighting.”