Tax Resistance News from Austria, France, Italy, Jordan, Spain, and Wales

It’s time for another international tax resistance news update:

Austria

The Hypo Alpe Adria bank bailout scandal has proven to be the last straw for some Austrian taxpayers. I’ve mentioned before the case of tobacconist Gerhard Höller, who recently started to refuse to pay his taxes and who started a website to encourage others to join his strike.

This article introduced me to Wolfgang Reichl, who is paying his taxes into an escrow account to protest the Hypo bailout.

France

The bonnets rouges are still torching tax portals along the highways of Brittany. Two went up in flames last week and the authorities then dismantled and removed the damaged structures.

Italy

Small business owners in Italy are also rebelling against the taxes and fees that are pushing their businesses into bankruptcy. Bed and breakfast owner Alessandra Marazzi laid off staff and started doing everything herself — working from six in the morning to eleven at night — and she still couldn’t keep above water. Then she sat down with her books and discovered that fully 84% of what she was bringing in was going to pay taxes and state-monopolized utility fees. She decided to stop paying taxes just so her business (and her family) could survive.

Her “protesta fiscale ad oltranza” (tax protest to the bitter end) movement is also gaining adherents. Caterer Andrea Polese, for instance, stopped paying and put a sign on her door reading “I am a tax resister.” Bar owner Mariano Pavanello posted a selfie with a sign saying “I decided to stop paying protection money to a state thief.”

Meanwhile, the planned tax strike of the Venetian secessionists continues to progress, despite the recent arrests of two dozen separatists.

Jordan

Well, I can’t make heads or tails of the dialog in this video, but apparently it shows residents of Bani Obeid explaining why they have decided to stop paying taxes to protest against governmental incompetence.

Spain

The “comprehensive disobedience” movement that began in Catalonia has a new website, that includes material in several languages (including English). Its purpose: “to construct an international political and ideological space on the basis of the Integral Revolution.”

Meanwhile the Spanish war tax resistance movement is kicking into high gear (more details here) — and is increasingly targeting not just military spending but government spending on internal security forces, the Catholic Church, bank bailouts, the Spanish monarchy, and so forth.

It’s a little unclear from the text, but I think the following news brief from the Welshman by means of the Monmouthshire Merlin refers to two separate nights of Rebeccaite attacks on tollgates in April 1843:

Rebecca Again.

Last Friday night, “Rebecca and her daughters” again made their appearance at Pwlltrap gate, near St. Clears, and for the fourth time levelled it with the ground. The work of demolition was very speedily effected; as usual, all the parties concerned made good their escape, nor have any of them since been detected. Bwlchydommen gate, near Newcastle Emlyn, has been demolished by “Rebecca and her daughters.” The mob consisted of about 30 persons, principally dressed in women’s clothes, and having their faces covered with rabbit skins.

In Henry Tobit Evans’s book on the Rebecca Riots, he gives the date of the Bwlchydomen gate attack as 13 April 1843, but doesn’t mention this Pwlltrap attack, at least not by that name (he does mention a later attack on the adjoining toll house).