John Bisceglia Talks about Tax Resistance for Same-Sex Marriage

John Bisceglia of Gay Tax Protest was on the internet talk radio show Strictly Confidential last week to talk up his tax resistance campaign to protest the government’s refusal to recognize same-sex marriages.

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The Bisceglia segment of the show starts at about 29:00. He talks about how he discovered in the wake of his divorce that he had no recourse to defend in the legal system his rights to a portion of the joint property held in the marriage, or to defend himself against the machinations of his ex-husband. This convinced him that to the extent that his tax dollars were the dues we pay for citizenship, his dollars were only buying him a second-class citizenship. So he decided to stop paying.

Taxpatriate Jeff Knaebel has another article up on LewRockwell.com: “Toward a Society of Love and Reason” — excerpts:

The Buddha taught that sila (morality) in respect of non-killing is on three levels:

Abstain yourself from killing

Do not support others engaged in killing

Do not approve of others engaged in killing

It is clear to me that paying taxes to any government on this earth in present times amounts to direct finance of murder. It violates directly and implicitly the Buddha’s precepts. Paying taxes makes of one a material accomplice to murder.
How can I escape my derivative responsibility as an accomplice in finance of war when the whole economy is geared to war? Simply to participate voluntarily as an “upwardly mobile” member of a mindlessly destructive culture is, at the least, acquiescence to mass murder.
I live on savings and try to contribute to society as a one-way flow. I am aware of how fortunate I have been to enable this manner of living. I was a moderately successful rat in the race who took his chance to jump off the treadmill. I am not a highly evolved moral being. Along with moderate success has come immense failure, primarily caused by my own flaws of character.
I am a learner. I take solace in the perception that all of life is an experiment, and that there can be no failed experiment — only collection of more data.

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How you can resist funding the government → a survey of tactics of historical tax resistance campaigns → migrate or taxpatriate ahead of the tax collector → Jeff Knaebel: ▶; ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦; Happy tax day! Here’s an audio interview with Ed Hedemann, and info on tax resisters Karl Meyer, Timothy Godshall, Carol Rose, Joanna Karl, and Jeff Knaebel.; Tax resister and renunciate Jeff Knaebel echoes a position previously held by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Leo Tolstoy — the first commandment of fighting tyranny: thou shalt not give false witness. Is this true, or is there a place for the sniggler and the framing spinmeister?; Ammon Hennacy explains how he got away with paying no income tax for so many years. Fred Ecks reports another good year of living large and paying no income tax. Jeff Knaebel celebrates the anniversary of Gandhi’s birth. And I try to figure out if it’s possible to get more back from the government using the Earned Income Tax Credit than you pay through the payroll tax (FICA).; The Picket Line commemorates an important anniversary with some vintage rhetoric and a bunch of links.; An update on the Schwieberts attempt to persuade the United Methodist Church to help them resist an I.R.S. levy. Also: tax resister Jeff Knaebel addresses an International Conference on Global Conflicts and Terrorism in Pune, India.; Taxpatriate satyagrahi Jeff Knaebel has a book out, and a website that he hopes will help like-minded folks join together as they walk in the footsteps of Gandhi, Tolstoy, and Thoreau.; Sunday browsing bits & pieces: Opting out of the money economy, leaving the sinking ship of a nation-state, and giving an red-white-and-blue homecoming to a war hero.; Ralph DiGia, old-school anti-war activist who persuaded the War Resisters League to support the war tax resistance of its employees, dead at 93. Also: some notes from expatriate renunciate satyagrahi Jeff Knaebel.; Don Schrader lives simply (and strangely) in pursuit of ethical living (and generates plenty of interest); war tax resisters in Colorado Springs make the news; the I.R.S. refuses to cough up its audit statistics despite a court order; expatriate tax resister Jeff Knaebel speaks at the Gandhi Sixtieth Memorial in Pune; and Larry Rosenwald wonders if the emphasis on voluntary simplicity means that tax resisters with voluntarily complex lifestyles aren’t welcome in the clubhouse.; Jeff Knaebel examines the sort of relationship an ethical person should have with a government, using the framework of Thich Nhat Hahn’s socially engaged Buddhism. Also: libertarians debate civil disobedience and the possibility of geographically diffuse, agorist splinter economies that compete with the State without confronting it directly. And: anti-war activists may be having more success than they know. Also: Wendy McElroy shares her “frugalista” philosophy. And: Vermonters are encouraged to seceed from the Union before Vermont does. Also: corruption and graft in wanton disregard for the safety of U.S. troops amongst American war profiteers? Who’d have guessed?; The People’s Life Fund redirects $10,000 of war tax resisters’ money from the federal government to local charities. Also: the I.R.S. oversight board thinks the agency should use a M.A.D.D. or M.P.A.A.-like propaganda campaign to get people to comply with taxation. And Jeff Knaebel suggests tax resistance as a way of reclaiming your right to pursue an ethical life.; In Lillian Schlissel’s book “Conscience in America” is an excerpt from a letter to the Pennsylvania Assembly from 1795 that I haven’t been able to find elsewhere, and the author of which remains unknown to me, but that attempts to explain the Quaker refusal to pay militia exemption fines. Also: some advice from taxpatriate satyagrahi Jeff Knaebel.; The government responds to a would-be tax resister by auditing her and then giving her a refund. Also: more on long-term tax resisting dentist Thomas Wilson. And: tax provisions of note in the recent bailout bill. Also: anti-war port blockaders in Olympia, Washington avoid prosecution but might get hit by SLAPP suits. And: a widespread tax strike hits Tehran’s bazaar. Also: taxpatriate Jeff Knaebel meditates on political freedom and satyagraha.; The conspiracy to discredit war tax resister Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen, a property tax strike in Chicago in 1977, information about Australian war tax resister Robert Burrowes, memories of Mennonite war tax resister Benny Bargen, and Jeff Knaebel on war and taxes. Also: Was Saint Hugh of Lincoln a 12th century conscientious war tax resister?; Taxpatriate satyagrahi Jeff Knaebel has a new quest and a new website. Also: Washington wants you to invest your 401(k)s and IRAs in government bonds and has begun floating ideas on how to force you to do so. And: An obituary for long-time war tax resister George Willoughby. Also: another tax resistance campaign in Argentina.; Suffragists in France organize a campaign of tax resistance in 1931. Also: Gandhian taxpatriate Jeff Knaebel died from deliberate self-immolation in India last month.; One tactic tax resisters have used from time to time is to pack up and leave when the tax collector comes calling, or when arrest is imminent. Also: the tale of James F. Hathaway, who won tax concessions by threatening to go Galt in 1897.
Why it is your duty to stop supporting the government → how tax resistance fits the bill → does taxpaying make you complicit?: ▶; ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦; To what extent does paying taxes to the government make you responsible for what the government does? That turns out to be a very hard question. Also: The Money Magazine article I’m in is finally on-line. And: Ruth Benn eulogizes Ralph DiGia. Also: is war tax resistance futile, or scrappy? And: United for Peace & Justice breaks my heart.; Does a taxpayer enter into a criminal conspiracy with the government, with the risk of being prosecuted under the Nuremberg Principles? If you pay taxes under duress or under protest, do you not have to worry about the ethical consequences? How was Chiquita (the banana company) convicted for paying taxes? Can Caesar take your blame away? Is paying taxes obligatory, like paying your debts, regardless of the consequences? Have people really been arguing about this stuff for centuries now?; Tax resisters across the country are planning actions for Tax Day in the United States. Also: a profile of Vermont war tax resisters Janet Hicks, Robert Riversong, and Bob Bady.; Ben Metcalf’s provocative Harper’s essay “Why I pay my taxes” is now on-line. Also: Roderick T. Long touches on taxpayer complicity in his paper “On Making Small Contributions to Evil.” And: Laura Baran decides to resist. Also: Randal Bentz throws a Thoreauvian challenge at the Marine Corps-hostile city of Berkeley.; I’m being very urban homesteader, Francois Tremblay is examining taxpayer complicity, Steven Schallert is exploring war tax resistance, Murray Rothbard writes about nonviolent resistance and the insights of Étienne de La Boétie, Carl Watner reexamines the Whiskey Rebellion, two Cato Institute scholars worry that we might be the U.S. military’s next target, the Church of the Brethren remembers war tax resisters Phil & Louise Rieman, the Taxpayer Advocate says it costs Americans $200 billion just to do their taxes (not including what it costs to pay them), the local paper notices that it’s way way cheaper to take the bus than to drive, alternative currencies enjoy some limelight, Europeans reject military spending, but the U.S. spends upwards of $50 billion a year just on its nuclear weapons program. Whew.; In part two of John Brown’s “The Law of Christ Respecting Civil Obedience, Especially in the Payment of Tribute” (1839), he writes about when a Christian must pay taxes, and when he must not.; David Little, trying to get the courts of Canada to accept his conscientious objection to tax-funded abortion, loses in the court of appeal. Also: The Poplar Rates Rebellion of 1921.; A paraphrased summary of Alexander Shields’s “The Sufferings of many, for Refuſing to pay the wicked Exactions of the Ceſs, Locality, Fynes &c. Vindicated” (1687), with some biographical and historical context.; Is taxpaying voluntary, involuntary, or non-voluntary? Who knew there were three options? (Aristotle, for one.) It makes all the difference in deciding whether paying taxes makes you complicit in what the government does with the money, and therefore blameworthy.; The revolution starts now, and you are the revolutionary. You don’t need an organization, a movement, or a majority. Join the “one man revolution — the only revolution that is coming.”
Some historical and global examples of tax resistance → tax resistance for same-sex marriage → John Bisceglia: ▶; ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦; The story of my tax resistance hits the pages of Money Magazine, tempting the haves with the zero-tax methods of the have-lesses. Also: more than thirty protesters were arrested trying to blockade the entrance to the I.R.S. headquarters in Washington, D.C. yesterday.; Is the end of the I.R.S. private debt collection program at hand? Also: The Picket Line is plugged on Soul-N-Black blog talk radio. And: a new Gay Tax Protest website.; Some quotes from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago.” Also: A press release from John Bisceglia about his tax resistance in favor of legal recognition of same-sex marriage.; If providing material support to terrorism (e.g. “an act that evinces a wanton disregard for human life”) is a war crime, should taxpayers start getting good lawyers? Also: John Bisceglia is overwhelmed by positive feedback to his press release about his tax resistance campaign for same-sex marriage.; A Permanent Tourist, only Passing Through or Parked Temporarily, can become a Prior Taxpayer. Also: news from War Resisters International about its tax resistance and an upcoming international war tax resistance conference. And: more about John Buscaglia’s tax resistance in favor of legal recognition for same-sex marriages.; A brief report from the NWTRCC conference in Eugene, Oregon. Also: Melissa Etheridge joins the emerging tax resistance movement to protest government discrimination against same-sex marriage.; Updates on Melissa Etheridge and Charles Merrill — two tax resisters fighting for legal recognition of same-sex marriage. Also: in these troubled economic times, barter is making a come-back (and the internet is helping). And: ever wonder what happens when the I.R.S. gets audited?

Books

Free Chelsea Manning: Wikileaks whistleblower