Collected Works of Gandhi Freely Available On-Line

Gandhi’s writings on tax resistance can also be found in the book We Won’t Pay!: A Tax Resistance Reader.

Here’s some great news: the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi Online. 98 volumes of his writings, speeches, and interviews, free-of-charge.

Gandhi was, among many other things of course, a strategist who as commander-in-chief of the Indian independence movement accomplished some of history’s most successful and organized tax resistance campaigns.

Gotta love bureaucracy. The Taxpayer Advocacy Panel (which “listens to taxpayers, identifies taxpayers’ issues, and makes suggestions for improving IRS service and customer satisfaction”) just released their latest report, containing dozens of recommendations. I only skimmed, but for some reason recommendation #TAP A04-072 caught my eye:

Many taxpayers and even some experienced practitioners are confused by the reference to the Earned Income Tax Credit in some documents as “Earned Income Tax Credit” (“EITC”) and the use in other documents of the term “Earned Income Credit” (“EIC”).

The Committee recommended that the EITC program work with other IRS organizations to agree upon and implement consistent use of either “Earned Income Tax Credit” (“EITC”) or “Earned Income Credit” (“EIC”).

Earned Income Tax Credit Director David R. Williams responded:

EITC Director advised Committee that the recommendation was not politically feasible.

I laughed out loud.

Another tidbit gives tax resisters a quantitative peek at how much trouble they cause the IRS when they resist token amounts. This comes as part of TAP 04-037, a recommendation that the IRS computers be instructed not to bother to pursue balances smaller than $25 (currently the cut-off is $5):

A cost analysis of IRS Balance Due Notices showed the cost of a single notice ranges from $0.45 to $4.79, depending on the type of notice and whether it is reviewed by the notice Review function prior to issuance. Although the cost of administering a tax module through a cycle of several notices is significantly higher.