Some recent links from here and there:
- Ruth Benn of NWTRCC reports back from the Tax Day protest at Wall Street that united the War Resisters League and Extinction Rebellion.
- Turkish opposition politician Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu says he plans to refuse to pay his utility bills until president Erdoğan withdraws 50% price hikes instituted at the beginning of the year. He recently addressed supporters from his home where electricity has been shut off for non-payment.
- Robert McGee has conducted or supervised many surveys about the ethics of tax evasion in countries around the world. He has now summarized several of those studies along with a bibliography of additional cross-cultural tax evasion attitude research.
- War tax resistance season in Spain is in full swing.
- What was sometimes billed as the “Confessions of a Failed Tax Resister” (Rebecca Gordon) did the rounds around Tax Day in the United States this year. Gordon was a war tax resister in the 1980s but eventually threw in the towel, paying her taxes, penalties, and interest, and returning to being a compliant taxpayer. “It wasn’t the life decision I’m proudest of, but here’s what happened.” Meanwhile, Owen Silverman at the University of Connecticut’s student paper put in a plug for conscientious tax resistance, though it sounds like he thinks we should wait for the government to legalize it first or something.
- ProPublica has been continuing to do exposés about how the tax system is rigged in favor of the rich at the expense of the little guy. One of the latest is “If You’re Getting a W-2, You’re a Sucker” which is specifically about how wage-earners get the shaft. Peter J. Reilly looks at the comparative woes of the 1099 granfaloon and finds them not too bad all things considered.
- The scrappy human underdogs who are taking on the traffic ticket robot cameras have won more battles in recent weeks, burning and blinding cameras in France, chopping one down in the Netherlands, smashing one in Russia, toppling one in Italy, burning and blinding a few more in France, chopping down yet more in France, and torching & dropping a couple more in Italy in recent weeks.
