I like keeping up on what the war tax resistance movement in Spain is up to. Here is the latest (my translation):
CGT Campaign — Tax Resistance 2012
- The ultimate goal of WTR is the elimination of armies, military research, and the military industrial complex, by means of a progressive reduction in military spending.
- Engaging in WTR demonstrates the social rejection of military spending in particular, and militarism in general, while at the same time we show solidarity with other struggles going on in our society through the chosen projects [that we support with our redirected taxes].
- Support for the Vialía Málaga strikers is one of the alternative projects of this campaign.
War Tax Resistance is declared when you fill out your income tax return. It is best to complete your ordinary or simplified tax return and not the rapid-return sheet. This can be done by hand, with the help of a computer program from the Treasury Department.
We suggest to you the symbolic figure of €84.00 in protest of the 84 countries impoverished by debt, or any other amount from €1 up.
You deposit the amount of your tax resistance in the project you have chosen (ask for two receipts: one for you, and the other to include with your tax return).
It is advisable to attach also a note addressed to the Treasury Secretary (see the example at www.nodo50.org/objecionfiscal) giving the reasons for your Resistance to military spending; in this, you announce the total amount of money redirected and the alternative social project you have chosen.
You fill out the forms of your return and on reaching the general deductions, cross out the declaration for one of the boxes and add “for war tax resistance” and the amount chosen.
If you use tax software, you can include it in any of the sections in which the deduction from the total is set to a “certain percentage,” or even include it directly by hand.
And to finish, send us the details of your Tax Resistance (type of return, quantity refused, and chosen project) to the address CGT — OF 2012, C/ Sagunto, 15 1ª, 28010, Madrid, or by email: sp-a.social@cgt.org.es
Remember:
Although your tax return will come out as owing taxes, getting a refund, or breaking even, you can always declare yourself a tax resister, reclaiming the money from your taxes that is destined for military spending, and redirecting it to the alternative project.
If you have questions, see: www.nodo50.org/tortuga/article.php3?id_article=3640
War Tax Resistance (WTR) is the unwillingness to collaborate with one of the worst ways that capitalism expands globally: with militarism and wars, even as they are dressed up lately as “humanitarian interventions” or “wars against terrorism.”
With WTR we are actively resisting military spending at the moment of filing an income tax return.
Technically, this would consist of deducting from our taxes the part that is destined for militarist purposes.
With WTR we are not encouraging or promoting “à la carte taxes” as some people think, but the use of a tool in the framework of civil disobedience, which is to say, disobeying and breaking, publicly and collectively, a law or norm that is considered unjust, seeking to overcome it for society (in this case, military spending and militarism).
With the money that we redirect by means of the WTR in our tax return, CGT suggests financial help for concrete struggles, resistance funds or social projects related to anarcho-syndicalist organization and ideas. Giving this money that is taken from our acts of resistance establishes social projects, and they allow continued work for a more just and equitable society.
The article goes on to describe two suggested projects: support for a strike of janitorial workers at a train station in Málaga, and supporting a group organizing nonviolent resistance among Palestinians under Israeli control.
