The IRS says that it’s implementing new processes that ease up on the liens it files against people who haven’t paid their federal taxes.
This includes raising the tax-debt threshold at which the agency decides to file a lien, making it easier for newly-recompliant taxpayers to have their liens lifted, and making it easier to enter into installment agreements and “offers in compromise.”
This was partially in response to complaints from the Taxpayer Advocate’s office about the agency’s heavy-handed and counterproductive enforcement methods.
Refusal to pay Imperial taxes, which has been described as the best of all
protests, was the subject of an interesting address given by Mrs. [Margaret]
Kineton Parkes at the Caxton Hall on , when Mrs. [Edith] How Martyn presided and Mr. Bart Kennedy was
also amongst the speakers. Mrs. Parkes introduced her subject by explaining
that as one of the planks of the Suffrage platform was “Taxation without
representation is tyranny” it was inconsistent for any Suffragist to pay
Imperial taxes. They should not refuse to pay rates, for they had the
municipal vote, but they should, if they wanted to be consistent to their
principle, decline to pay Imperial taxes, such as inhabited house duty, taxes
on armorial bearings, income-tax,
&c. The
society she represented, which was organising this refusal to pay Imperial
taxes, had been in existence , and included Suffragists from every camp, Conservative,
Liberal, Socialist, as well as non-party, and was making every effort to get
a large number of influential women to refuse to pay taxes, and thus cause a
block at Somerset House. The isolated refusal to pay was ineffective and only
caused trouble to the refuser; but a large and unexpected number would cause
considerable trouble to the Government and would bring the question at issue
home to them. Even now it had been found that the Government rather than go
to the trouble of selling up the recalcitrant “debtor,” and attracting
attention to the principle involved, had quietly dropped the matter in
several instances. Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard had had no application for taxes
since she had been sold up .
This principle of taxation and representation she had found appealed to
women who had not given the subject any previous consideration, and it always
had an immediate influence on a male audience. A working woman was not asked
to pay less taxes because she was a woman, though she was usually asked to
receive less by her employer.
To married women with incomes she suggested that they should ask their
husbands not to fill in the amount in the space left on the income-tax
paper for details of wife’s income. Then, if they sent her a separate paper,
she could refuse to pay. In the past they had not given the Government half
enough work, and they should make it as difficult as possible for them to
recover money from women. She asked anyone present who knew women who paid
taxes to send in their names, that they might be approached by her society.
The Women’s Freedom League had been the pioneers in this method of Government
resistance.
Miss [Muriel] Matters, who spoke subsequently, observed that, while the
Government gave the male taxpayer a vote as receipt for his money, they said
to the woman, “Pay up and shut up.” Mrs. [Dora] Montefiore gave a brief
account of how to make it difficult for the Government to recover taxes from
women.…
