War Tax Resistance
- Some war tax resisters are very public with their resistance, and consider protest and confrontation with the powers that be to be crucial parts of how they make their stand. Others are more private and understated, refusing to pay but not making a lot of hullabaloo about it. On the NWTRCC blog, Erica Leigh examines public vs. quiet resistance.
- War tax resister Larry Bassett looks at “the power of war tax resistance in 2018” — trying to measure the effects of his own resistance and that of the war tax resistance movement. (As found on Facebook and at Citizen Truth.)
- The Indypendent interviewed war tax resister Ruth Benn about the current U.S. anti-war movement.
- A flash from the past in the Lewis Center, Ohio, ThisWeek Community News gives us a glimpse of a war tax resistance tactic used in the United States during World War Ⅰ. The government had put a war tax on rail travel, but apparently the tax only applied on tickets above a certain threshold value. So some travelers split tickets, buying tickets from point A to point B and then point B to point C to avoid paying the war tax that would have applied on a ticket from point A to point C.
Tax Resistance Internationally
- Nicaragua’s Blue & White National Unity group has called for a consumer strike and energy strike. The consumer strike is meant to last three days and aims particularly at those consumer goods like fuel, alcoholic beverages, sodas, and tobacco that are most taxed. People are also encouraged to not use any utility power from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., indefinitely. The group seeks the release of 400 political prisoners.
- The Zimbabwe Congress for Trade Union went ahead with an anti-tax demonstration, which the government had banned under the pretense that public gatherings would contribute to a cholera outbreak. The government of Zimbabwe is trying to impose a 2% tax on all electronic funds transfers and is attempting to force citizens who hold their savings in foreign currency to convert that money into the notoriously hyperinflating Zimbabwean currency. Police raided the headquarters of the group and arrested 35 of its leaders in advance of the protests.
- A report on
migrants from Central America reminds us that fleeing ruinous and
immoral taxation is among the motives causing people to flee. The case
of Guillermo, who as a Central American teenager became the head of his
family, is one example:
Instead, he fled with his siblings on a 1,500-mile journey to the United States where he crossed the border, legally, as an asylum-seeker. But here he faces the threats of yet more criminal government gangs, this time in Trump’s ICE, the farcical court system set up to deny refuge in asylum cases, and the for-profit prison systems that exploit and abuse immigrant detainees.Criminal organizations targeted and killed Guillermo’s cousin. The relative had failed to pay a gang’s “war tax” — money the gang extorts from people through threats of violence.
They then turned their attention to Guillermo for payment.
In , he was kidnapped and beaten by two uniformed police officers carrying out the gang’s orders. Their message was clear: Pay the war tax or face the murder and rape of his siblings. He realized that as long as they stayed in the region, they would never be free from gang violence — or the gangs’ attempts to pull them into a life of crime.
- Drivers’ war on speed cameras and other traffic-ticket-generating robots
continues:
- Speed cameras were toppled, removed, burned, painted over, and blinded with glue and tape in the United States, Russia, Italy, and France.
- A complete speed camera trailer was hauled away in Joplin, Missouri.
- Paint, explosives, collisions, metal rods, and fire were used to disable cameras in Italy, England, Norway, France, and Taiwan.
Tax Administration
- Another news agency has noticed that after budget cuts, the IRS’s work against tax cheats is facing “collapse”. As the number of tax returns has grown, new responsibilities have been thrust on the IRS, and identity theft has turned tax filing into a cross between a minefield and a slot machine (thieves stole $1.6 billion from the U.S. Treasury via the IRS in ), IRS funding has plummeted. As a result, there hasn’t been a better time in recent years to cheat on your taxes.
- The economy has been chugging along pretty well for a while now, the job market is tight, and individual income tax receipts are up in the United States. So why has the budget deficit jumped up 17%? Two reasons, mainly: the recently passed tax law has led to a sharp reduction in receipts from corporate income tax, and Congress has been spending up a storm. Also, interest on the national debt continues to balloon, rising 24% just .
