Tax Resistance, Underground Economy, and Tax Fraudsters

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

• NWTRCC is collecting a list of Tax Day protest actions that will be going on around the U.S. this year.
• The Mennonite World Review has a story about a forum held by Mennonites on the subject of reviving the war tax resistance that has long been latent in that tradition.
• Here are some more interesting data about the underground economy. It might be that the underground economy is the second largest economy in the world.
• A group that is trying to preserve heterosexual legal privilege in France is contemplating a tax resistance campaign to press its point.
• The Tampa Bay Times reports that the money vacuumed up from the IRS vaults by tax fraudsters in recent years is “likely gone for good” — even if the fraudsters get caught. Says the paper: “Seldom have so many, with so little, had the ability to steal so much.”

Here’s an excerpt from a letter-to-the-editor by Barbara Deming that was published in the Provincetown [Massachusetts] Advocate fifty years ago today:

Will Refuse War Taxes

It was good to read Mr. [Ted] Malcolm’s letter in last week’s Advocate, suggesting that we each ask ourselves what we can do for peace — “rather than merely sitting by while Washington spends about 75 percent of our tax dollars on preparation for war”.…

There is one action which I have decided to take, myself, this year and which I should like particularly to recommend: that is to refuse to pay that percentage of my income tax which goes for preparation for war. (Anyone wanting detailed information about non-payment of taxes can write to Peacemakers, 15 Elgin St., Stoughton, Mass., and receive a handbook on the subject). I am not willing to have nuclear weapons used in my name — under any circumstances. To refuse my small tax will not, of course, stop their production, but it is one way in which I can cast my vote against our present national policy of being willing to use them. Thoreau wrote in “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” “What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn”. In the past I have simply written, “I pay that part of this tax which goes for armaments under deep protest”. But actions speak louder than words.