A few updates on the Household Tax resistance campaign in Ireland:
- There’s now talk of the Civil and Public Service Union threatening to go on strike if the government attempts to deduct the tax from the salaries of resisting members.
- Resister Joe Conway puts the movement in historical context:
I believe this to be a defensible form of civil protest against a measure that hits the poorest hardest.
Tax resistance — such as the withholding of this latest charge — has been used for centuries. Our forefathers risked eviction or death when they refused to pay tithes or exorbitant rents during the Land War. American colonists refused to pay taxes to their putative overlords. French peasants risked everything when they refused to pay the corvee — an enslaving tax on their labour. When there is an unjust tax, resistance is a political right and a moral stance.
I will be donating the €100 to two good causes in Tramore looking after our young people and our aged. I am infinitely happier to give the money to those who deserve it rather than conspiring in the transfers to Frankfurt or Paris to further fatten the bondholders’ wallets.
- Fewer than 20% of the households in Ireland have registered and paid the tax so far, with the registration deadline looming at the end of this month. It will be at least October before the government is equipped to pursue the hold-outs.
