Nine Love Letters from the I.R.S.

Every year the IRS lets me know that it still would like me to pay those taxes for all those years I haven’t been paying taxes.

Rather than doing this like any sane bill collectors would, it sends me a different envelope for each tax year, each one containing the same boilerplate information except for a different dollar amount and tax year.

The waste, inefficiency, and thoughtlessnes of this just makes me that less interested in throwing my money away by giving it to such an organization.

In other news:

• American anti-abortion tax resister Michael Bowman has won another court victory. Prosecutors had tried to charge him with felony tax evasion, but a judge ruled that Bowman had been up-front about his resistance, not trying to conceal income or deceive the government and so the felony charge was not appropriate. Bowman is making legal arguments based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision. Those arguments have not yet been addressed by the court, but are similar to those being entertained by those war tax resisters who hope to legalize a form of conscientious objection to military taxation.
• At NWTRCC’s blog, Ruth Benn examines how the IRS is coping with war tax resisters like her at a time when the agency is struggling.
• “Maybe it’s time for California’s taxpayers to go on strike,” says Jon Coupal in an op-ed in the Orange County Register. Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association (Howard Jarvis is known for his promotion of the “Proposition 13” legal tax revolt in California in the 1970s). He believes California taxpayers should be concerned at the power public sector labor unions have to get ever more tax money without accountability. He seems to be raising the specter of a tax strike only rhetorically, alas: “I’m curious as to what would happen if, in reaction to the teachers’ strikes in L.A., Oakland and Sacramento, taxpayers decided to go on strike?”
• Merchants in Guanare, Venezuela, have declared a tax strike after the municipality unilaterally established a new tax without going through legal processes. The local Chamber of Commerce is coordinating the tax strike.
• The Tax Foundation has put out a useful graphic showing the sources of federal tax revenue between 1940 and today. This shows how excise taxes and corporate income taxes have shrunk, and social insurance and individual income taxes have risen, as a percentage of federal revenue.
• TheNewspaper.com continues to do remarkable work chronicling the global phenomenon of fed-up drivers attacking and disabling the robot radar cameras that automatically generate traffic tickets.
  • Attacks continue in France, England, Italy, and Saudi Arabia.
  • Other attacks took place in Belgium, France, Italy, Saudi Arabia, and England.
  • The latest estimate is that fully ¾ of such cameras in France have been destroyed or disabled. And there were some other attacks in New Mexico and Italy.
  • Government assertions that the ticket cameras are necessary for public safety have been hurt by statistics showing traffic-related fatalities, hospitalizations, and injuries have been falling in France as the machines have been destroyed.