Spanish Activists Unite to Promote Tax Resistance

A dispatch from Spain (inexpert translation mine):

CGT, Ecologists in Action, and Antimilitarist Alternative will gather this Tuesday to promote tax resistance

 — Members of CGT-Murcia, Ecologists in Action, and Antimilitarist Alternative/MOC will gather in front of the door of the tax office in Murcia to encourage taxpayers “not to collaborate with their taxes in military spending.”

Also, these organizations will encourage people to actively disobey at the time they file their income tax returns during tax season, according to the reports of sources from CGT in a statement.

By this tax resistance, they intend to combat “the support of one of the worst ways that capitalism has of extending itself worldwide, which is militarism and war, although these may be made up lately as humanitarian interventions or wars against terrorism.”

Tax Resistance consists technically “in not paying from our taxes the part that is destined for military spending,” according to CGT, which added that “when filling in the tax return and one reaches the part for Deductions and other payments, a deduction in one of the unused boxes is made, marking alongside ‘for war tax resistance.’ ”

Furthermore, “it is necessary to indicate the refused amount, which may be a percentage, the 11.8 percent that is the official budget of the Defense Department; a fixed amount of 84 euros, in protest of the 84 countries impoverished by external debt; or a zero amount for those who do not have to file.”

“The money redirected by tax resistance, is intended to help economically concrete struggles, funding for resistance, or social projects associated with the organization, with which social projects can be achieved that do not receive subsidies and that permit them to keep working for a more just and equitable society,” added CGT.


From the New York Times:

War Protester’s Term Cut

The son of a Vermont congressman was freed from jail after having served eight days of a twenty-day jail sentence for contempt of court. Judge Walter J. Labuy of United States District Court reduced the sentence of Karl Meyer, 22 years old, who is the son of Representative William H. Meyer, a Democrat. Young Meyer was jailed on for the third time for passing out handbills urging a boycott on payment of Federal income taxes. He says he feels the money will be used to wage war.