Some links that have floated through my facemask in recent days:
- Thousands of IRS Employees Are Currently Home With Pay, But Not Working is the sort of headline that brings a smile to my face. The gist of the accompanying article is that most of the IRS workforce has been sent home to avoid infecting one another at the office, but only a minority of the employees are equipped to work from home. The rest continue to collect paychecks, but have nothing to do.
- People are travelling less, commuting less, and shipping less. As a result, people are burning less motor vehicle fuel, and as a result large drops in gasoline excise tax revenue are expected.
- The hashtag #RebeliónFiscal is trending on the Twitter, as small business owners in Argentina plot a tax strike. The business owners are upset that the government has offered them no tax relief as business activity has gone into an epidemic-induced slump. They’re joined by antiauthoritarian activists and by the general public, who are throwing coordinated cacerolazos (noisy pot-and-pan banging protests) from the windows of their apartments as they remain sequestered.
- The thirty-year anniversary of the Poll Tax rebellion is being met by a new book on the movement and a recap of what the tax strikers accomplished by movement organizer Tommy Sheridan.
- Ruth Benn previews the upcoming Global Campaign on Military Spending and our out-of-the-ordinary tax filing (and tax protest) season this year (at NWTRCC’s blog).
- Protest has to take on a different look during a time of “social distancing” Ruth Benn examines “Protest in the Time of Coronavirus” at NWTRCC’s blog. Excerpt:
Now, while mostly at home, we find plenty of things to do, but running out to a big demonstration is not one of them. This got me thinking about war tax resistance as a perfect protest for the isolated. That led me to think of the many individual acts of resistance in antiwar history and thus to Ammon Hennacy and his “one man revolution.”
- There’s a new edition of NWTRCC’s newsletter out, with the latest news from the U.S. war tax resistance movement.
- War tax resisters Lincoln Rice and Ruth Benn were on Northern Spirit Radio to discuss “the methods, mechanics, motivations, & consequences of refusing to pay for war.”
- The war against traffic ticket cameras continues in Europe, even as some areas are suspending their use of the cameras.
