I got another letter from the IRS the other day.
This one was sent “Certified Mail,” which meant that my housemate had to sign for it, but this was just for show.
It was their “Notice of intent to levy” letter for my unpaid taxes for tax year 2011.
The letter summed up my unpaid taxes ($4,087.86) and interest & penalties ($27.19), and gave me a variety of explanations and pleas for what I ought to do next.
Also in the envelope was a “Notice of Potential Third Party Contact” (warning me that they may nose around my employer, neighbors, or bank to ask about my assets), and a copy of an old version of Publication 594 (The IRS Collection Process).
They’ve been sluggish lately about hunting for assets to seize, but this new $4,000+ puts me over the $10,000 in owed taxes threshold at which (it is rumored) they start putting in more effort.
So I may see more attention from the agency in the coming months — we’ll see.
The Standard learns that a body of South African constabulary, with two
Maxims, has been dispatched to the border of Swaziland, owing to difficulties
which have been experienced in collecting the native hut tax. It is hoped
that the trouble will not prove serious. Correspondents report that
Dinizulu,
the famous Zulu chieftain, is advising the Zulus in the Transvaal to avoid
the payment of the increased hut tax.
Actually, in , the government had been pleasantly surprised (according to some accounts, anyway) at how easy it had been to apply the hut tax and how compliant the victims had been.
Not so much in the following years, though.
Resistance to the tax grew , and the attempt to institute a second, poll tax in led to the Bambatha Rebellion.
Here is another example of someone getting resistant over social security taxes for her household help.
In the United States we saw more of this in the 1950s.
This example comes from England in :
The
Duchess of Somerset, in a letter to the press, writes that since the
“infamous Insurance Act does not touch the fringe of poverty in England,” she
intends to passively resist payment of the servant tax.
Her Ladyship urges employers not to submit, adding that the whole country
cannot be fined and imprisoned.
