In the United States, prisoners are supposed to file income tax returns like anyone else. And unless the law says otherwise, the same tax rules apply to them. When Congress passed the last stimulus bill, giving taxpayers a tax credit and then pre-paying that credit to them by mailing out checks, prisoners were among those who benefited. Because that was the law.
But the IRS decided the law should have prohibited prisoners from getting their hands on that money. They think Congress should have passed a more restrictive law than it did.
So they sent out notices to prisons across the country, asking them to intercept stimulus relief checks coming to prisoners, or to seize them if they had already been received. Prisoners were threatened with criminal prosecution if they did not return the money. There is no legal basis for this threat. The IRS is just making it up.
In other news:
- Israeli musician Hemi Rudner has gone on tax strike to protest the lack of government support for the self-employed during the pandemic shutdown.
I’m a normal citizen. And aside from a joint here and there, I abide by the law, love my country, and of course, pay taxes. Around half of my income has gone to the state for decades already. Only God knows how many meetings I’ve funded.
Myself, and millions of other citizens in the State of Israel, are stuck in a horrible situation, where in addition to fears about our health, we don’t have any way to make a living and support our families. In other Western countries independent workers get an economic safety net as an integral part of their rights. In Israel, the tyrannical government toys with us as if we’re invisible, like there are no faces behind the masks.
I want to say that as long as we don’t receive our rights as citizens, without the terrible and discouraging bureaucracy, I’m declaring that I’m not paying taxes to the State of Israel. I call on all Israelis to do the same. Maybe then, at the end of the day, something will change here.
- Gwen Jaspers issues a call to Defund the Pentagon, and says this we don’t have to wait for the politicians to act: “We may even decide, eventually with trusted supporters, not to pay for the Pentagon’s war budget by omitting the amount from our tax payment that the Pentagon receives — a whopping 50 percent or more of what we pay in federal income taxes.”
- The human war on traffic ticket robots continues, lately in Wales, Germany, and France, and in Australia, Canada, France, Luxembourg, and Saudi Arabia.
- comes late this year, so also does NWTRCC’s Tax Day press release about war tax resistance actions around the country.
- In , the war tax redirection fund “People’s Life Fund” redirected $21,850 in resisted taxes to several social justice organizations in the San Francisco bay area. They’re at it again , with $12,000 more in grants going out.
- As the (delayed) approaches, J.D. Tuccille asks taxpayers to consider what they get for their money: public health incompetence, abusive security forces, and economic instability.
