“Death and Taxes” on the Radio

New Hampshire’s “Making Waves” radio show, available on-line at the a-infos Radio Project, had a special “Death and Taxes” show .

Part 1 has coverage of the “penny poll” protest outside the Portsmouth, New Hampshire post office (50:39—57:34). Part 2 starts off with Geov Parrish asking “Why Pay Taxes?” (0:00—4:10) — this bit is also available as a separate download that is freely available for non-profit rebroadcast.

“Nobody should undertake tax resistance without understanding the risks. But there are also risks involved in passively cooperating with our own fleecing, or our own demise.” ―Geov Parrish

“Eula” at citymouse/countrymouse blog reflects on her last year of work and decides to take a stand:

I’m sitting here looking at the amount of money I’ve paid to the federal government for having this job, and calculating the amount of money I still owe them, that amounts to about a total of 112 wage-earning hours of my life. And of those total 112 hours of my life that goes to the federal government, how much goes to the military to support massive acts of violence which I do not believe in? About 30% if we count only current military spending (according to this pie chart), which is about 33 of my own wage-earning hours on this earth.

I’m strongly considering using those 33 hours to:

  1. Write a war tax resistance letter to the IRS explaining my refusal to pay 30% of my federal taxes.
  2. Send that money to an overseas charity or a peace fund instead.

This is civil disobedience. This is freedom of speech. This is “freedom of conscience” or so says the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And this is also illegal according to the US Government. Wish me luck… I wonder if there’s wi-fi in prison…

Good luck, Eula!