Tax Resistance News from Here and There

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

  • Two Irish legislators who were convicted of participating in a direct action against U.S. armaments passing through the Shannon airport have refused to pay their fines. One of them, Clare Daly, told reporters: “We have no intention of paying a financial contribution to a State which allows this behaviour [the arms shipments] to continue.”
  • Seacoast Peace Response got some press for their annual tax day “penny poll.”
  • A man who calls himself “Squirrel” was arrested in Florida for phoning in a threat to destroy the IRS building in Miami.

Here’s an amusing story of one lonely man’s resistance to the state “bachelor tax” on sex-discrimination grounds:

Montana Man Refuses to Pay Tax as Bachelor

Helena Falls, Mont.,  — Declaring that “spinsters are responsible for my not being married in their refusals of my wooing in the past,” William Atsinger, 35, a member of the board of directors of the Montana state fair, notified the assessor of Chouteau county that he will refuse to pay the poll tax of $3 levied by the last legislature on bachelors. “Tax the spinsters of the same age, and I will gladly pay, but otherwise it is class legislation and I stand upon my rights,” he declared. “Furthermore, I refuse to get married to escape jail, and I refuse to pay a bachelor tax to escape jail.”

The same item appeared in a number of newspapers but I didn’t see any indication of which wire service sent it around or who authored it.