Links of Interest to Tax Resisters • TPL

A few more links from here and there:

In an effort to shield their residents from federal income tax, state and local governments are exploring options for rejiggering their own tax systems so that more of the taxes paid to them will be deductible on federal returns under the new tax law. TaxProf Blog has a good list of articles about these efforts and about whether or not they’ll pass legal muster.
The case of Cliven Bundy and his supporters — who stood down the federal government’s attempts to extract ranching fees from them — has been excruciatingly embarrassing for the federal government, which has racked up a string of failures in trying to win prosecutions against them. In the latest case, the judge dismissed with prejudice all federal charges against Bundy and two co-defendants due to “flagrant prosecutorial misconduct.”
War tax resister Randy Kehler appeared on Greenfield Community Television’s Local Bias show last month:
Pablo Hijar, city councilor of Zaragoza, Spain, from the Zaragoza en Común Party (a left-wing alliance), tweeted out a photo of himself tearing up his bill for the regional tax ICA, claiming that the tax is a boondoggle designed to force Zaragoza residents to pay for other regions’ sewer treatment plants, having already paid for their own independently. “#IWon’tPay the #ICA,” he tweeted. “We want accountability for the scam of the Aragonese Plan for Water Purification, and rates that are fair (progressive) and transparent (in their purposes).” He called on followers to demonstrate against the tax on February 4^th.

From the 30 January 1950 issue of Labor Action:

Readers Take the Floor…

To the Editor:
A soft-spoken Nisei has put the internal-revenue system and the infernal prison system under a glaring spotlight that only pure peacemakers can hold.
K. J. Otsuka, 40, farmhand of near Richmond, Indiana, refused to pay $4.50 income tax because he didn’t want to finance the cold war. He didn’t comply promptly with a collector’s order to produce books and papers showing his financial condition, so he was hauled before Judge Robert C. Baltzell of Indianapolis Federal District Court.
On August 18 he had complied with the red tape and so was only reprimanded by the judge. Then the judge gave Jim until the first of September to pay the $4.50.
Jim was still of the same, stubborn mind on the first, so Judge Baltzell sentenced him to 3 months imprisonment and fined him $100. This the judge gave Jim for failure to answer the collector’s summons promptly. There was evidence of prejudice by the jurist against Americans of Japanese ancestry. Actually, the judge was mad that Jim refused to pay his income tax.
After Otsuka served his time, he was due for release December 29. A U.S. Tax Commissioner on that day, in Ashland, Kentucky, ruled that he would have to stay in jail until he paid the $100 fine plus $40 court costs. As $140 constitutes one-third the value of Otsuka’s assets, and he has not changed his mind after 90 days’ reorientation of his tax-refusal views, he is still in the Ashland penitentiary.
The warden would not speak to a mixed delegation which had come to Ashland to welcome Jim on the outside. He was shocked at the effrontery of Mrs. Wallace F. Nelson, who wanted him to give her some information! Nor would he allow any of the ministers among them to see Jim (during regular visiting hours). The welcoming committee thereupon set up a picket line, and drew up two sets of picket signs (the first set were destroyed by the Kentucky “colonels” — state troopers).
Our Workers Defense Council here protests this $4.50 injustice and permanent persecution of peace-loving citizens, and is glad to express its solidarity with Jim Otsuka. Albeit in different ways, we too are fighting the permanent war economy.
Tad Tekla, Secretary
Cleveland, Jan. 11