Tax Resistance News from Here & There

Occasionally, you get tax resistance from someone who just gets fed up with paying too much for too little. There’s no grand ideological or conscientious stand involved, just a tax payer getting sick and tired of it.

The leader of The Grimsby Generalist Party has vowed not to pay his council tax to North East Lincolnshire Council, in protest at rising taxes during the recession.

He said: “I refuse to pay a penny — no matter the consequences.

“This council has taken money from us and we have hardly seen any benefit from it at all.

“Until we see an improvement in facilities and the council as a whole, I feel it is time to stand up and say, ‘No more — do better or get out’.

“I do not ask any citizen to join me in my protest, as the risk of not paying council tax is a prison sentence.

“However, I am willing to take this risk on behalf of every citizen in the country who is fed up and annoyed with their tax rises and local authorities.…

“I am refusing to pay the extortionate, crippling and disgusting council tax in my area — in protest at this council and in support of the hard-working citizens of North East Lincolnshire and the country.”

Sarah Fisch takes a good, close look at some of the participants in the underground economy in San Antonio — “a vast and diverse ‘shadow economy,’ a bajillion financial transactions by countless folks whose necessities are paid for through means not accounted for by the GNP, not measured in the Dow Jones, and usually not registered with the IRS.”

Here’s some more information about the war tax resistance campaign in Spain, which seems to have been getting a lot of press lately:

• Start of the 2009 war tax resistance campaign — “The Education for Peace collective has started to promote the 2009 war tax resistance campaign in La Rioja by means of distributing 400 pamphlets and calling a meeting to explain the reasons behind the initiative. The group, which works to promote a culture of peace, explains that this campaign of ‘pure disobedience’ consists of expressing a disposition of non-collaboration with the state in the cost of preparing for war and maintaining a military establishment: ‘active disobedience at the moment of filing an income tax statement.’ ”
• Campaign of War Tax Resistance — “Only ten years ago, conscientious objectors demonstrated that it is possible, through nonviolent action, to resist the impositions of the military. With active civil disobedience they managed to defeat the army and mandatory military service had to vanish. But obligatory financial military service remains. Still we are required to contribute with our taxes to sustaining these immense machines of destruction and death that is the military. Be conscious of the responsibility that we have, and in virtue of this, resist the idea that the things are as they are and that we cannot do anything to change them.”