Today, some links about domestic tax and tax resistance issues:
- NWTRCC is holding its national gathering in Las Vegas this weekend. Last night Jennifer Carr entertained us with her visions for a more legislatively feasible Peace Tax Fund bill. Today holds a full schedule of workshops and events.
- Ruth Benn reports back from the recent New England gathering of war tax resisters.
- This coming tax season, “shared responsibility” fines for people without qualifying health insurance are going to hit for realsies. The IRS is by law somewhat hobbled in pursuing people who refuse to pay these fines, and when you combine that with conservative hostility toward Obamacare, you have a recipe for a potential wave of tax resistance.
- It looks like the experiment of using private bill collectors to go after unpaid federal taxes is back. It seems this on-again/off-again experiment has little to do with collecting taxes, and more to do with a tug-of-war between Democrats and Republicans on whether to reward Democrat-leaning public employee unions or Republican-leaning government contractors.
- Irwin Schiff, one of the most bull-headed and influential of the “show-me-the-law”-style tax protesters in the United States in recent years, died in prison recently.
He developed cancer while in prison, and died shackled to a prison hospital bed, as his son Peter recounts:
I’ve seen a surprising amount about this in the foreign press, like this lengthy article from China that matter-of-factly discusses Schiff as an American political prisoner.As the cancer consumed him, his voice changed and the prison phone system no longer recognized it, so he could not even talk with family members on the phone during his final month of life. When his condition deteriorated to the point where he needed to be hospitalized, government employees blindly followed orders that kept him shackled to his bed. This despite the fact that escape was impossible for an 87 year old terminally ill, legally blind patient who could barely breathe, let alone walk.
