Disobedience.eu is born, a consultancy designed to resist the Troika
An old guy on my block used to say: “If you’re going to steal, steal big.
Because if you stay small, you’re just a thief, but if you steal big you’ll be
a millionaire. All it takes to be rich is to skim a little from everybody.”
“You make a lot of sense!” I thought. But the old guy never stole, at least
not on a grand scale, and to me, frankly, the proof is in the pudding. The
world is an unfair place, sir, and what are you going to do?
He who has the most pays the least, and this, at least when it comes to taxes,
goes without saying: all of the companies in the
IBEX 35 — those that are
publicly traded and have the most liquidity in Spain — are located in tax
havens and pay minuscule amounts to the Treasury in comparison to their
earnings. Citizens, small- and medium-sized businesses, aren’t so fortunate
with the tax collector.
It’s unfair, but legal. They bask in the sun on a private beach, and to the
rest of us they leave only a miserable puddle to splash around in. Is there
really nothing that can be done?
Beyond complaining, there’s a new plan — a yet untried option: drag our towels
and camping chairs onto the private beach to say, “Hello, buenos
días, good morning, guten morgen, we are also in the
club.”
, Disobedience.eu,
the first tax rebellion consultancy meant for the common people, was launched.
It all began when the artist Núria Güell contacted Enric Duran, the activist
known as the “Robin Hood of the banks” for swindling — or expropriating, you
might say — some half a million euros from various financial institutions in
, with the motive of finding a way to buck
the Troika. From there a small tax advisor emerged, the Troika Fiscal
Disobedience Consultancy.
A score of European activists, and Duran from the underground, launched what
may come to be the largest hack of the financial system in Europe, at least on
the part of the citizenry.
“It starts by resisting the Troika through financial strategies, by playing
with the law in the same ways as the neoliberal corporations,” says Güell.
The idea is to imitate Apple, Google, and Banco Santander — not for personal
gain, but “to stop paying an illegitimate debt and to start financing the
common good.”
“The Troika is dedicated to commandeering and privatizing the commons, it has
a colonizing nature: all the countries that are subjected to it, like Spain,
Ireland, or Greece, lose their sovereignty. We must create a parallel
financial system.”
Fiji, the Cayman Islands, Liechtenstein, your home
If we were to do a math problem, it might go as follows: Say that John has a
balance last trimester that comes to 2,000 euros
VAT. John sends
an email to Disobedience.eu with the amount he
wants to resist (2,000 euros) and they will supply him with an invoice for
that amount.
John will pay 8% for the service: management fees (1%) and a contribution to
a common fund (7%). “The rest (92%), although recorded as paid, will not
actually be charged. As far as I know, to forgive a debt is not a crime,” says
Güell.
So John has an invoice that states that he has made a tax payment in Spain,
although in reality no such thing happened.
“In the EU there
is free trade, but in practice there is no common fiscal policy, and the
justice system is not coordinated. The countries as a result have trouble
obtaining information from one another. The big companies benefit from this,
and now the little guy can do so as well. It would be very difficult for the
administration of the country where he is consulting to know who has not
claimed the income.”
John has evaded taxes, mimicking the techniques of the big multinationals,
but for another purpose.
“92% of the money is yours. The idea is that you can dedicate it to projects
for the common good, which are increasingly privatized or abandoned by the
state.” For example, a support network for refugees or school libraries.
Desobedience.eu was inspired by the
Coperativa Integran Catalana and the Right of
Rebellion Collective, and will be linked to the international Fair Coöp
collective. For this reason, Güell expects there will be a rapid increase of
clients, projects, and affinity groups: “The assignment of the funds is up to
each client. Nobody will be monitoring or checking on where it is going.”
Isn’t this a do-gooder form of tax evasion? How can you prevent “dishonest”
evaders from using this tool?
Activists will sift the clients: “If a capitalist business wants to use this
service to evade taxes, it will be turned down. On the other hand, a group of
lawyers with a social focus have already been accepted.”
Gandhi versus Starbucks
The tax disobedience initiative has sparked interest, but also an
understandable fear of possible legal problems. Güell asserts that the
activists involved have everything sorted out: “The only people who run a real
risk are those who put in their names to form the company, but they are
insolvent and that protects them.”
Throughout history there are numerous examples of economic disobedience. “From
the Boston Tea Party in to the Salt March of
Mahatma Gandhi in .” Though there are also
much more recent examples:
In the residents of Crickhowell, a town in
Wales, grew tired of paying much more in taxes than Starbucks and decided to
declare themselves a tax-free town and to create a company in the Cayman
Islands: “They initiated a collective action of tax resistance, and since then
the State has not done anything.”
With the activists of Disobedience.eu there is
more resolution to attack the core of the system than fear of the possible
repercussions. Furthermore, for Güell, economic disobedience is better
politics than voting in democratic elections.
“If we do not have autonomy with respect to the Troika and the markets, there
is no way to advance the many initiatives that we put forward. They are the
obstacle, because they are above democracy. The dictator is only a dictator if
he has subjects; disobedience is the only way remaining to us. Furthermore,
disobedience is intrinsic to democracy.”
The real hurdle is to go beyond the environmental activists and the more
politicized minorities and to extend the initiative across the whole
population.
“Workplace exploitation; inability to make ends meet; a rainbow assortment of
pills for depression; daily suicides from eviction, foreclosure, or
meaninglessness; and murderous barbed-wire over some fictitious dividing
lines. Why dedicate your life to feed this machinery that only benefits a
minority?” asks Güell.
“You just need to open your eyes to notice that Europe is at a dead-end,
caught between the technocrats of the Troika and the anti-immigration
nationalists. The European Union is no more than a financial plan for
plundering social wealth and impoverishing the workers, a set of legalized
financial crimes that act to transfer the income of citizens to the banks and
large corporations.” And as such, the response should be collective and in the
financial sphere.
As Aristotle told us, politics does not manage the public sphere, rather our
everyday actions are what create policy.
The actual mechanism by which the tax evasion happens is left a little
obscure by this article, but as best I can gather it’s something like this:
In Europe there is a value-added tax, which is something like a sales tax. It
is added to the price of the good as it increases in value during its
manufacturing stages, but intermediate goods that are sold to other sellers
(for instance, goods purchased by merchants for resale) do not have more tax
added to them.
If you’re buying something for resale, rather than paying the tax at the time
you buy it, you indicate to the seller that you’ll be adding the tax to the
price of the goods at the time you resell it, and then whoever sells the goods
to you sells you the goods tax-free. An exchange of invoices allows the tax
agencies, in theory, to follow the supply chain to whoever is responsible for
collecting and remitting the tax.
But this process is frequently gamed. For instance, if the final seller is a
sort of Potemkin business that vanishes before taxes are due, then the taxes
never have to get paid. Or, apparently, if that seller is officially domiciled
outside the European Union — say, in the Cayman Islands or something.
So what the Consultancy seems to be doing is to be providing invoices saying
that they’re responsible for paying any value-added tax that ordinarily
would be paid by a resisting small business. They charge the business for the
cost of the goods, but they don’t bother to collect most of the money. So the
business is off the hook for the tax, the Consultancy doesn’t generate any
income that might make it liable, and everyone walks away a little happier.
Something like that, anyway.
They also seem to be doing some of their transactions (the percent of the
invoice they do intend to collect, for instance) in
“FairCoin” — a bitcoin-like currency.
I’m not sure what advantages if any this gives to the Consultancy or the
businesses that use it, but it seems like something that could boost the value
of FairCoin as a currency, and maybe that’s the point.
John Clifford, leader of the Passive Resistance movement
I have a single article in my sample of articles from
concerning the tax resistance
campaign against elements of the Education Act. This, from the
Northampton Mercury, concerned an auction of goods
seized from tax resisters in which, somewhat bizarrely, one of the resisters
was also the auctioneer. Excerpts:
Passive Resistance in Northampton.
The first sale of the distrained goods of Passive Resisters in the Borough of
Northampton took place at the Auction Mart, Abington-square Cafe, Northampton,
on . About 90 Passive
Resisters who conscientiously objected to contribute to the rates that
proportion of the amount which would be devoted to the support of sectarian
teaching, were summoned at the Northampton Borough Police Court on
. The
distress warrants were issued in due course, and they were executed, generally
by the assistant overseers of the several parishes, about ten days or a
fortnight ago. Mr. G.W. Beattie, one of the resisters, proffered his services
as auctioneer free of charge, and needless to say the offer was gratefully
accepted. The sale took place in Mr. Beattie’s auction mart, where he had
stored the goods free of charge from the date of their seizure. There were in
all 87 lots, including two from the village of Duston. The auctioneer himself
had his goods seized on three distress warrants — one for his residence, the
second for his office in College-street, and the third for his auction mart.
One or two other resisters were summoned for two rates. A complete list of the
resisters, the goods seized, and the amounts required by each warrant,
appeared in ’s
Northampton Daily Reporter.
At , when the sale
commenced, the room was full, quite 250 persons being present, the resisters
being well in evidence. Mr. Beattie was greeted with hearty applause when he
took his stand at the table. In opening the proceedings he said that if he had
not been a passive resister and in full and hearty sympathy with the movement
nothing possible could have induced him to take that position that evening
(hear, hear, and applause), for it was at once an unpleasant and unpopular
duty. (Hear, hear.) To the greater part of that audience he knew that he need
make no apology. (Hear, hear.) He thanked the overseers for allowing him to
act as auctioneer at that sale. (Hear, hear, and applause.) The conditions of
the sale were: Cash upon delivery and before removal. (Laughter.) He had
arranged with the Rev. J.F.
Nodder, the secretary of the Citizens’ League, that Mr. Nodder should start
bidding for those resisters who desired their goods to be bought in. Mr.
Nodder would in such cases name the sum required by the warrant, plus the
expenses, and if there were no further bids the goods would be at once knocked
down to Mr. Nodder.
The sale then commenced. The proceedings were most orderly and good humoured.
In nearly every case the goods were bought in by Mr. Nodder or by the owner
personally. Once or twice some would-be humourist bid
2d. or
3d. for a ten-shilling
article before Mr. Nodder could bid the amount required, and now and again
there was a little competitive bidding, but in hardly any case was there any
serious attempt to purchase the articles. Of the 87 lots about 70 were knocked
down to Mr. Nodder’s first bid without any attempt at competition. In half a
dozen cases where the bidding did not equal the amount required by the
overseers the auctioneer announced that the articles were by arrangement
bought in by the assistant overseers concerned.
The names of one or two prominent ministers and citizens who are well known in
the movement were received with hearty applause as soon as their goods were
offered…
…Mr. Frank Bates put into the sale a framed portrait of the
Rev.
Dr. Clifford, and, needless to
say, the portrait of the apostle of passive resistance, who is such a
favourite in Northampton, quite brought down the house…
Mr. Beattie [said]… he was only sorry that in Northampton, known throughout
the world, and certainly throughout the length and breadth of this kingdom, as
a town which stood for religious freedom, that there were only 90 resisters.
(Hear, hear.) They had not reached the end of the struggle yet by a very long
way. There were some in connection with the League who, if he had judged them
aright, intended to show their resistance in a very different form ere long if
the occasion demanded it. (Applause.)
The sale occupied barely an hour.
A protest meeting was held shortly after. Hymns were sung, a letter from John
Clifford was read, and the usual speeches were given. One of these was by
Rev. Arthur Morgan, who
said in part:
He was beginning to think that instead of a Passive Resistance Brigade, they
would have to have a Prison Brigade. (Applause.) They knew the inconvenience
of having their goods sold, and some of them knew what it was to have to pay
more than they could afford for the rights of conscience, but when they saw
men sneering and laughing at their action they were beginning to wonder
whether they should not rise to a higher level and say to their critics, “If
you think this is a joke, if you think this is a mere trick on our part to
overthrow the Government, you have sadly mistaken us, and sadly mistaken our
action. (Applause.) We are prepared to go to prison for the Right (applause),
and I for one,” added Mr. Morgan, “am prepared to step across the dividing
line from being a Passive Resister into becoming a member of the Prison
Brigade.” (Cheers.) The Education Act must be killed, and if the only way to
destroy it was through the prison, then, God help them to put upon themselves
the brand of the prison, the stain of the prison house, for they must kill it.
(Loud applause.)
I also found an early mention of suffragette Dora Montefiore’s tax resistance,
in which it is suggested that she learned the tactic from the anti-Education
Act campaign. This comes from the Leamington Spa Courier and Warwickshire
Standard:
Dora the Determined.
“Evil communications corrupt good manners.” So wrote Tertullian, so quoted
Paul, so it has happened in the case of Mrs Dora B. Montefiore, of
Hammersmith. The lady being undoubtedly of Hebrew origin, we cannot suppose
that she has much sympathy with
Dr. Clifford, the apostle of
passive resistance. But that she has been studying
Dr. Clifford’s methods is
evident. She has not only studied them, but has resolved to put them into
practice. Not indeed so far as the education rate is concerned, but with
respect to a rate of much more importance, the Income Tax to wit. Upon what
grounds? Non-representation. She holds strong views on the subject of female
suffrage, and she has informed the Daily News that
she has resisted the claim for Income Tax because she is refused a voice in
the spending of the taxes, and “taxation without representation is tyranny.”
Her goods have been seized, and will be sold on
. There
is, of course, no reason why “passive resistance” should not be adopted by the
whole army of faddists; but what becomes of civilised and constitutional
government in the meantime?
