The article aims to pitch tax resistance through the low-income, simple-living lifestyle to people who already see the merits of that lifestyle and who might want another arrow in their salespitch quiver when trying to talk it up to others, or who might think “well, I’m almost a tax resister already, might as well go the extra yard and pick up that merit badge too.”
I deliberately tried to cast a wide net, including lots of information on war tax resistance (since there’s lots more information to be had there), but also trying to be welcoming to potential resisters of other stripes.
The impression I have is that the Simple Living News has a pretty ideologically diverse readership.
Military Spending: Not With My Money
The
issue of Rojo y Negro, a Spanish anarcho-syndicalist monthly, has a couple of articles about war tax resistance.
(Translations mine, and I’m not very good at it.)
We Continue Our Disobedience to Military Spending
At least 875 people have resisted taxes in
, redirecting up to €80,600, which has
been allocated to alternative projects
One year more we publicly present the data that we have compiled on objectors
to military spending in different regions of the Spanish state in the
tax season. Although we are aware that
there are several more, there are 875 people who have reported their
objection in this campaign by directly informing Antimilitarist
Alternative/Conscientious Objectors Movement or other groups that promote war
tax resistance and are responsible for collecting these data. In particular
we are aware that at least €80,600 has been deducted from Spanish military
spending and has been redirected to other citizens’ organizations that
certainly will apply it to a superior end.
We Are at War
We are at war. Although the bombs do not drop on our territory, or spray us
with shrapnel, the Spanish state participates in military conflicts all over
the world (Afghanistan, Lebanon, Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, the Congo…),
subsidizes the war industry with sweet public contracts and does business in
the arms trade. Armies in the world are sustained by three fundamental
pillars: human resources (reserve and active military, professional or
conscript), ideological justification (these days they legitimize their
existence with the excuse of global security; rich countries, that is), and,
of course, the important economic pillar. All three are necessary for the
functioning of the military machinery of modern armies, with their
hypocritical humanitarian façade that has the function of defending
the interests of the most rich and powerful to sustain a situation of
injustice that condemns three-quarters of the world population to poverty.
Military Spending: Data That Is Obscured
All of this is done, whether we like it or not, with our money. The Spanish
army is a real consumer of economic resources. The state has budgeted for
military spending that amounts to a
whopping €18,161 million. Rather than covering the real social necessities
(sustenance, shelter, education, health…), an average of €394 per person will
be spent every day in preparation for war.
It is not an accident that the money budgeted for the Defense Ministry will
not be more than 42% of actual military spending. In order to get the
complete figure, one must add the money corresponding to military
R&D
(nice self-contradiction!) since most of the military industry is financed
with this money, those parts of the Foreign Affairs Ministry budget destined
for spending on NATO and the EU,
military pensions, and more spending besides, with which they hide the final
scandalous figure. The fact that the state will not be transparent in its
public accounting is an indication that they have something harmful to hide.
And our objective is to undo this harm.
War Tax Resistance
War Tax Resistance, as we know, is a a form of civil disobedience that
consists of refusing to pay the taxes for military spending, and aims to stop
it. Anyone can be a tax resister by nothing more than deducting, on one’s tax
return, a quantity of money for military spending (a symbolic amount, or a
percentage that corresponds), which is then destined to some project of
solidarity that actually contributes to constructing a more just world. In
this way we demonstrate that the redirection of money to non-military
purposes can be effective. Together with the tax return, is included a
declaration of the redirected money and a letter explaining to the Treasury
the reasons for our disobedience: we commit tax resistance because we refuse
to collaborate in the sustaining of the military machine and because we want
to make a public denunciation of this injustice.
War Tax Resistance is now in its third decade in the Spanish state. It has
involved many thousands of people over the years and has also managed to
redirect substantial amounts of military spending that have enabled the
realization of numerous social projects of solidarity both in the Spanish
state and in various countries. In recent years it has supported
antimilitarism, nonviolence, feminism, and different struggles and basic
skills in places like Colombia, Zimbabwe, Chile, Russia/Chechnia,
Palestine/Israel, Iraq… or the Spanish state itself.
Appeal to Common Sense: Invitation to Disobedience
Antimilitarist Alternative/Conscientious Objectors Movement wants to make an
appeal for sanity and common sense in order to fight against the army and
military insanity. In a world where capitalist imperalism has gone so far
that the destruction of the planet is, in this day, a work in progress, and
where the domination of the powerful over the impoverished majority forms
part of the “inevitable” scenario, disobedience is necessary. It is necessary
that we say no, it is necessary that, like years ago in the disobedience
campaign, we set forth and refuse to collaborate with the army. Not a single
woman, not a single man, not a single euro for war!
Hugo Alcalde and Jorge Güemes
Two tax resisters stand up to the Treasury
Valencians Hugo Alcalde and Jorge Güemes have been practicing war tax
resistance for several years. For example, Hugo deducted from his tax returns
about €1,500 which he
donated to various pacifist, nonviolent resistance, and social media
organizations in protest against war and militarism, as he stated in an
explanatory letter along with his returns which included an accounting. In
each of these tax returns he deducted a percentage equal to that which in the
Federal General Budget represents spending on military and armaments, and he
recorded this on the form itself, creating his own handwritten line-item
deduction “For War Tax Resistance.”
A few months ago the Treasury demanded the amounts deducted along with
penalties and interest. Both Hugo and Jorge maintain the legitimacy of
their action, and each one, on his own, decided to resist the administrative
decision, appealing it. With this they are not seeking for preferential
tax treatment for themselves, of course, nor the recognition of an individual
right not to pay the part of the taxes related to the military establishment,
but rather the active demand of a collective right to live in a world at
peace, which involves the progressive dismantling of the machinery of war.
So far, with the support and advice of Antimilitarist
Alternative/Conscientious Objectors Movement, Hugo Alcalde and Jorge Güemes
have appealed their tax claims before the Regional Administrative Economic
Court and plan to gather public support and to appeal to the Superior Court
of Justice in Valencia, Hugo in the coming months, and Jorge in the coming
weeks. Hugo and Jorge are only two of nearly a thousand people each year
who redirect a percentage of their income taxes as an active, conscientious,
open, and committed signal for demanding the progressive elimination of the
military budget and the abolition of the military.
All this forms an even more outrageous picture today, seeing all the generous
aid to banks, carmakers, and the housing industry, and in the midst of
significant cuts in social rights in connection with a crisis of capitalism
that fiercely struck the most vulnerable sectors. In view of this, it appears
necessary to update the classic antimilitarist pacifist proposal: We end war
(and the economic crisis) by dismantling the army. Let the army pay for the
crisis.
