The latest news on the tax resistance front:
- The latest tax strike in South Kivu has come to a negotiated end after four days of talks, with the local government agreeing to the strikers’ demands to rehabilitate transportation infrastructure.
- The annual Global Days of Action on Military Spending included some war tax resistance events, particularly in the United States and in Spain — two places where war tax resistance is better-established as a vital part of antimilitarist action.
- In Biscay, resisters held another food-themed protest at a Treasury building, featuring a cake decorated as Picasso’s Guernica: “No weapons, no bombs, better chocolates, no war!”
- In the United States, that campaign culminated on this year. War tax resisters took action from coast to coast.
- Ruth Benn reflected on tax resistance during the recent Gaza attacks.
- And war tax resister Lindsey Britt spoke up in the Brattleboro Reformer.
- Restaurants in Rosario, Argentina have gone on a tax strike, and were soon joined by gymnasiums. The businesses say they cannot afford taxes while they are under Covid-related restrictions that prevent them from operating at capacity.
- The Philadelphia Tribune reminded readers about war tax refuser Eroseanna “Rose” Robinson.
- There’s a roadblock to the Democrats’ plans to use increased IRS enforcement to bring in more money to pay for their ambitious federal budget:
The fact that under Congressional budgeting rules, increasing the IRS budget counts as an expense, but increases in tax revenue that might be expected as a result don’t offset that expense.
Which means Congress has to jump through extra hoops to justify that extra spending.
- As part of the proposals, the Biden administration hopes to force banks to report on how much goes into and comes out of their customers’ bank accounts.
- Republicans smell blood in the water, and suspect that beefing up such IRS tax enforcement might not be politically popular. They hope they can exploit anti-tax-snoop sentiment to stymie Democratic spending priorities.
- The IRS expects to lose 52,000 of its 83,000 employees to retirement over . Hiring freezes and budget cuts have aged its workforce. But now they’re going on a hiring spree to try to make up for it.
- NWTRCC held another national (on-line) gathering.
- Human attacks on traffic ticket robots took casualties in Réunion, France, and Germany and in France, the U.K., and Spain in recent weeks.
- Tax resistance is on the agenda in South Africa as taxpayers there are increasingly fed up with government corruption.
