I’m Off to the Bogotá War Tax Resister Conference

Tomorrow I leave for Bogotá, Colombia, where I will be attending the 14^th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns, representing NWTRCC at its first meeting as a formal member of Conscience & Peace Tax International, and giving a presentation based on my research into tactics that have been used by varieties of tax resistance campaigns around the world and throughout history.

But that doesn’t start for another couple of weeks. First off, I’m going to get in some sightseeing and Spanish language classes. Then, after the conference, I hope to explore a bit more of the country before coming home. It’ll be a month before I’m back in the States.

Which is to say that things are likely to be quieter than usual in Picket Line land. I’ve saved up some excerpts from the archives that I can post at intervals when I find myself with some time to kill and an internet cafe nearby, but otherwise, I’m on vacation. When I get back I’ll let you know all about how the conference went.

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

• Another town in Catalonia, Alella, has begun refusing to forward its municipal taxes to the Spanish central government and is instead paying the money to the Taxation Agency of Catalonia, as part of a spreading Catalan nationalist tax resistance movement. (Més)
• I haven’t heard anything further from War Resisters International to justify their decision to pay their previously resisted taxes to the British government “under protest” while trying to portray their capitulation as some sort of war tax resistance action. Ruth Benn of NWTRCC, however, reports that “I did get a bit more explanation from someone with WRI, which has been refusing to turn over withheld taxes since about 2003. They would keep the money withheld in an envelope in the office if the Revenue folks came to collect, which may have happened in 2007. ‘This time, however, they threatened to take us to court,and we thought that would be a good opportunity. So we wrote saying that we’d rather they took us to court so we could explain to a judge why we thought it was important to resist taxes when the government is behaving so badly… That’s why they sent round a debt collection company. We didn’t have the money in the office, and then decided that trying to pay in cash (which they won’t normally accept — especially when it’s about 2,700 pounds) to see if it might make our protest a more newsworthy event.’ ” That’s a little confusing, but if I’m reading it right, still sounds pretty pathetic.
• If you missed the conference call with Cindy Sheehan, Ruth Benn, Ed Hedemann and three other war tax resisters talking shop, you can hear a recording here.
• The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has an update on tax fraud perpetrated by U.S. prisoners, an industry that has been growing in recent years. In 2010, prisoners filed at least 91,434 tax returns that claimed $757,600,000 in refunds that they did not legally qualify for. The IRS caught most of this in time, but still issued $35,200,000 in refunds they wish they hadn’t.