War tax resisters Frank Donnelly, Larry Dansinger, and Dan Jenkins were on WERU’s “Voices” show early . Here’s a podcast:
War Tax Resisters Frank Donnelly, Larry Dansinger, and Dan Jenkins
Residents of Villa Nueva, Argentina have been urged to refuse to pay for road work on the grounds that the work is being paid for with federal grants that have come out of their taxes once already. Translation (mine, caveat emptor):
Villa Nueva — The town set the blame on radicalism but later, on [Mayor] Vivas.
They cover the whole city with anti-government pamphlets
The town awoke with leaflets that call on citizens not to pay for street work. The government summoned the press and condemned the deed.
It isn’t the first time. This has happened on numerous occasions, but in this case, the pamphlets appear to be signed by a Grassroots Group of Citizens, such that the Government was prompted to contest them publicly. Nevertheless, this group disassociated itself from the act and emphasized that they don’t have partisan goals and don’t seek confrontation.
Villa Nueva awoke yesterday with leaflets that called on the citizens not to pay for road work, because it came to be by means of a nonrefundable subsidy from the national government. “Seek advice,” the pamphlet said to the residents.
As is known, in the last year the city moved forward as never before in paving work with funds that mayor Guillermo Cavagnero negotiated before the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. In , the Executive sent to the Council a scheme under which residents would be charged a percentage of the work, as with that money to carry out others of vital importance.
The publication, which flooded the streets of the town, stresses that sewers, pavement, and lighting are brought about with money from the federal government, and that these things should not be charged.
The article goes on to relate a string of denials and finger-pointing, as everyone tries to pin the pamphlets on somebody else and to deny that they had anything to do with it.
IRS “customer” service has been getting worse, particularly their phone service. It used to be that your big problem when calling the agency at tax-time was in getting a reliable, correct answer to your tax questions. Nowadays, the problem is getting any answer at all. In , only 64% of callers got through, and each of them had to wait on hold for an average of 519 seconds first.
This year the agency has gone begging to Congress for more money just so it can meet the pathetic goals of raising those numbers to 71% and 698 seconds (wait a minute… shouldn’t that second number be getting lower, not higher?).
698 seconds will get you through the classic “Help on the Way” → “Slipknot” → “Franklin’s Tower” studio version on Blues for Allah, so… tax filers, I recommend lighting up a doobie, dropping the needle on side one, and writing down your tax question ahead of time in case you forget it by the time someone picks up the phone.
