News Tax Resisters Can Use

Some tidbits that have caught my eye lately:


From The Pittsburgh Press :

Tax Walkout Is Threatened

Coal Twp. Considers Move Against Coal Firms

By The United Press

Small taxpayers of Coal Twp., already beset by a walkout of school teachers because of unpaid salaries, considered calling a tax strike of their own to force large coal companies to pay their delinquent levies. The township once was a prosperous anthracite community.

With no immediate aid in prospect, the nearly 200 teachers here and in Gilberton faced the necessity of going on relief or seeking other jobs, even in bootleg coal mines. Some 6000 pupils were on an unexpected vacation and, unless the State steps in, likely will not return to school for the remainder of the year. School buildings were locked and blinds drawn, as about 50 maintenance employes also walked out with the teachers.

62 Teachers on Relief

A total of 62 Coal Twp. teachers already are on relief.

A group of 300 angry taxpayers met last night to discuss the situation.

“If the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Co., Lehigh and other coal corporations don’t pay their taxes, you and I will refuse to pay ours until such time as the companies pay up,” George Rumberger, a member of the United Mine Workers, told the gathering.

It was pointed out that the Philadelphia and Reading owes the township taxes on nine million dollars in property, more than 70 per cent of the taxable wealth. Federal Judge Oliver B. Dickinson has declined on jurisdictional grounds to order the 95 million dollar anthracite concern, now undergoing reorganization under Section 77-B of the National Bankruptcy Act, to pay more than $939,000 in delinquent delinquent taxes owed to about 18 school and poor districts.…

A followup United Press article a few days later said that the companies had partially relented, sending $400,000 to the school districts and promising another $200,000.