Some recent news related to tax resistance:
- ESat reports on a tax strike in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, saying more than 500 merchants have been jailed for tax refusal, and others have closed their shops rather than pay.
- Manoj Viswanathan: “Tax Compliance in a Decentralizing Economy”. Excerpt:
Tax compliance in the United States has long relied on information from centralized intermediaries — the financial institutions, employers, and brokers that help ensure income is reported and taxes are paid. Yet while the IRS remains tied to these centralized entities, consumers and businesses are not.…
- The government of India abruptly stopped acknowledging large-denomination rupee bills as legal tender . This was meant to disrupt the underground cash economy, and force people with large cash reserves to show themselves. It seems to have worked. The government reports receiving 25% more income tax returns this year than last. Governments around the world are toying with ways to discourage cash in favor of more-easily traced and surveilled methods of payment.
- The Municipal Corporation of Gurugram was formed in , and wasted no time claiming to govern and tax the region. Recently, representatives met from 46 villages that the Corporation has brought under its thumb. They unanimously voted to refuse to pay property tax to the MCG, saying that it lacks authority to tax them.
- Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosopher whose books I’ve appreciated (see ♇ 18 August 2008 and 11 January 2011), has apparently taken on the job of writing an ethics advice column for The New York Times Magazine. In a recent column, he attempts to answer “Is It O.K. to Protest Trump by Withholding Taxes?” He concludes that no, it isn’t, and rambles on with some unsophisticated claptrap about democracy and civil disobedience. I have yet to read a newspaper “ethics” column that was worth reading. Something about the advice column format seems to make philosophers lazy.
