Tax Resistance in Ireland, Spain, Italy, and Moonshiner Country

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

  • Irish protesters are continuing their campaign to block the installation of water meters, including recently at the Ardmore Estate neighborhood in Cork.
  • While homebrewing is legal in the United States, home distilling is not. Distillation of drinkable alcohol is highly regulated (and taxed). But nonetheless, home distilling has become a popular hobby, and the federales have been largely looking the other way and not harassing hobbyist-level distillers (as opposed to commercial moonshiners). That sadly appears to be changing.
  • The Other Eye, a Catalan journal, recently published Carles Valentí’s essay on tax resistance, which is another example of the Spanish tax resistance movement expanding beyond war tax resistance to a broader critique of corrupt, wasteful, and harmful government spending.
  • Italy’s “Northern League” likes to talk about tax resistance a whole bunch, but I don’t see as much evidence of them moving from talk to action as I’d like. The latest example of this big talk comes from party Secretary Matteo Salvini, who called for a tax strike to begin on . We shall see.