Q: Each year every Spaniard dedicates, on average, 408 euros to finance the Army.
How do you relate this data to the wars in the world?
A: The money dedicated to military spending is
not spent in cultivating flowers, it is dedicated to making wars and to the
soldiers that make war: also to scientific investigation to “improve”
weapons, that at the same time are sold to countries in the third world. We
ought to reflect on whether there is any reason why this spending continues.
In the world there are 26 million in the military, and the United Nations has
asserted that it would need between 400,000 and 500,000 blue-helmets to carry
out peacekeeping missions. What are the other 25-and-a-half million for?
Q: Your organization supports war tax resistance; can you explain what this is about?
A: Our organization has been promoting it since
. It concerns an act of civil disobedience,
but it must be made clear that society would not advance if the people did
not disobey unjust rules. We can’t go to the demonstrations saying that we
don’t want war and then finance it.
Q: How does one practice tax resistance?
A: It’s very simple. If the State spends 6% of
its total budget on military spending, when we fill out our tax returns we
take a deduction of that percentage of the total and redirect it to some
independent nonprofit charity and enclose a receipt with our return.
In other news, while activists on the American left seem most interested in getting corporations and rich people to pay more taxes, in Europe more such activists are asking “why are any of us still paying taxes to these crooks when we know we can put the money to better use than they can?”
I mentioned the tax resistance & redirection campaign launched under the ¡Rebelaos! banner and organized by Derecho de Rebelión.
I’m happy to report that the Spanish war tax resistance movement is lending support to this new movement.
Arcadi Oliveres spoke at a conference on economic resistance over the weekend “concerning military spending and resistance to militarism by means of tax resistance.”
They’re also working on a tax resisters’ handbook.
You can read a draft PDF on-line.
The Campaign Against Household and Water Taxes continues its tax resistance campaign in Ireland.
The government introduced a set of amendments to the tax that are aimed at quieting the dissent, but campaign spokesman Bill Michael O’Brien says that, “the only change that can save this government is to scrap the property tax completely.”
The government is instituting something its foes are calling the “Bedroom Tax” — essentially a cut in the housing benefit of people who get government assistance in paying their rent, if the government deems their home to be too large for their needs.
In other words, if you have two children and each has their own room, the government may say: why don’t you move into a smaller place and double-up?
If you have a spare room, the government may say: you probably should rent that out to a lodger — we’re only going to help you pay for the rooms you need.
A veteran of the 1980s anti-poll tax movement [Liz Kitching] says she is not going anywhere.
“I feel worried, frightened, upset. But at the same time I am proud of the campaign and that does give me a little bit of confidence and hope because we did stop the poll tax.
I am not a victim.
This is a policy I am fighting back against.”
The economist Arcadi Oliveres is president of the Justice & Peace foundation, an organization that supported the first conscientious objectors [to military service].
For 30 years it has promoted war tax resistance; in total there are 3,000 people across the country who refuse to pay the Treasury a portion of their taxes proportional to the Defense budget.
Oliveres gives an example with quantities that illustrate how this action is done:
“If you are asked to pay 1,000 euros to the Treasury and during the year you have paid 800, when you make your tax return in June, 200 euros will remain to be paid.
Well, if the Defense budget is 5% [of the federal budget], from these 200 you refuse to pay 10 euros.
But you want to show that you don’t pay because of your disapproval of military spending and not because you don’t want to contribute.
So you make your contribution of 10 euros to a non-governmental organization and ask for the receipt.
When you make your tax return, you write a note explaining that you refuse a part of your taxes destined for Defense and provide the receipt from the donation you have made to the non-governmental organization.”
What happens next?
“If they happen to check your return (because it is proven that they do not check them all) they will send you a letter demanding the 10 euros.
You ignore it and then they come back and send another letter in which, in addition to the 10 euros, they require of you 20 more for interest.
Further demands follow and finally they will end up seizing the amount that remains from your bank account.”
To end up paying not only the quantity remaining to pay in your tax return, but also the interest, does not discourage Oliveres because “freedoms throughout history never have been given, they have been captured.”
He emphasizes that to avoid a year and a half in the army, the pioneering conscientious objectors spent three in jail, and, although the number of people in Spain doing tax resistance can be described as a “lackluster result,” he adds that “it is an educational and pressure tactic.”
When the Fuse Lights…
To violate the rule carries a punishment, normally in the form of a fine.
“I understand that people want to take these actions as a type of protest,” explains María Teresa Saez, spokesperson for the Professional Association of Magistrates.
“I think it is quite legitimate but has to assume the consequences and this will be implicit in such protest.”
Josep Casadellà was clear that he was doing an act of civil disobedience when he decided not to pay for passing a tollbooth on the road to Barcelona by Girona.
Joseph says that “I’ve already paid too long; 43 years paying for some highways doesn’t match up, it cannot be and that’s that.”
In he went by car with his son and heard on the radio some statements from the Minister of Development Ana Pastor who said they were going to bail out the highway deficit in Madrid with the income from the highways of Catalonia and elsewhere that were in surplus.
Then he denied, but at this moment, he says, he would pass through the tollbooth, and said the now-famous phrase “no vull pagar” (“I don’t want to pay”).
They recorded it, posted it on YouTube, and lit the fuse.
Over the following weekends, people imitated Josep and made the same statement.
Thus, thousands of refusals to pay the tolls: Something previously unheard of.
Although it wasn’t the first time that Josep called for disobedience: the previous year there had been a campaign on Facebook on — the National Day of Catalonia — for people not to pay tolls.
“And I did it myself,” he jokes.
Why did it not work then and then yes one month later?
“I think that it was the right time,” Josep says.
In matters of civil disobedience there needs to be a fuse and a spark, but if there is no explosive there will be no bang.
“It was a very particular time, with the crisis on one hand and on the other the media that published it… and all together it pulled the trigger.”
…and the Fuse Fizzles
We followed in Catalona: in different weekends during there have been some 50,000 refusals to pay tolls on the part of 25,000 people, according to the “no vull pagar” platform, and Albertis, the tollbooth operator, made an appeal to the government.
Fines of 100 euros began to arrive and the protest deflated.
“When I first did the ‘no vull pagar,’ I was conscious that I was breaking a rule, a decree that comes each year with fees to be paid.
So I was aware that it was an act of civil disobedience that could result in repercussions against me.
Now I don’t know if the people who later refused to pay the toll were also conscious of this,” explains Josep.
Fines that, on the other hand, were not legal and that could be appealed since at that time it was considered a contractural infraction and it was the operator, Albertis, and not the Catalan Traffic Service that was responsible for reporting drivers who had not paid the toll.
Furthermore, Josep says that so far he has not paid anything because he has been making appeals.
The “no vull pagar” campaign has had an impact, though not in the form that the promoters of the protest would have liked:
In the general budget for , the government has changed the law to allow sanctioning, now indeed, of people who refuse to pay a toll.
If to this we add the new court fees it is easy to understand the discouragement of even the promoter of the idea, who has opted not to use toll roads.
Nevertheless, the campaign continues to brainstorm new demonstrations to maintain the protest.
For now they will demand accountability for using the highway code to punish an act, failure to pay, that was not punishable at the time.
Nuanced Disobedience
We resumed the conversation with Martí Olivellas, who tells us that, 40 years after the campaign for conscientious objection [to military service], he is about to launch a new civil disobedience campaign called “A call to civil disobedience for civil rights and against the financial dictatorship.”
According to Martí this concerns reviving a campaign made three years ago called “Pledge for fiscal transparency” that included not paying the Treasury and depositing the money in an ethical bank account, until the government could explain with transparency how it was spending the taxes.
Now the campaign is resuming but in order to be huge they intend to make their deposit in the Government Depository, an administrative body of the Economic Ministry that is charged with the management and control of securities and deposits that have been made with the Civil Administration.
Martí Olivellas says that “you’re not evading.
What you say is that the day on which they [the government] have the transparency law, end corruption, and know how to manage our money, I’ll pay my taxes that I have retained in the Depository.”
But until then, you are not failing to pay but are retaining the money in an account in the same agency, are we still talking about civil disobedience?
“This is a very nuanced action of disobedience and is intended for the general public.
But everyone can modulate the risk: for example sending that which you have to pay to the Treasury in an interest-free loan to a social entity that should have received money from the State but has not received it.”
And do they think anything will happen next?
“We hope so, next 16 February there is a gathering which will finish the outline.
And then tax season begins.
It is the right moment.”
At that time we will see if society is willing, or not ready, to disobey.
Catalan separatists are trying to keep Catalan taxes in Catalonia, and some have used tax resistance strategies — including paying their federal taxes directly to the Catalan local government.
Chile
Guillermo Durand Cornejo, president of the government-owned mining monopoly Codelco, and a legislative representative, called on Salteños (citizens of Salta, Chile) to refuse to pay a municipal tax, in the wake of property tax increases and new taxes in electricity and water bills.
“Until such time as the mayor gives a response to the people concerning the tax hike, I suggest that you do not pay this month’s municipal tax,” he said.
“I call for civil disobedience.”
Cornejo says he views the thirty-day tax strike as a wake up call for the government, and suggests that strikers who restrict their strike to the single month will not be subject to government reprisals.
The tactic has a name, redditometro, and it involves a detailed “lifestyle” audit that tips off tax authorities to noncompliance.
If the police observe an Italian resident living the high life (for instance, by zooming around in an expensive sports car) they can stop the individual and demand their taxpayer identification numbers, regardless of whether any criminal offense has taken place.
The information is conveyed to the tax authorities, the Agenzia delle Entrate, which subsequently audits the driver.
On audit, revenue officials ask probing questions about how the taxpayer was able to afford the fancy wheels given their meager reported income.
Nowadays being seen driving a Ferrari isn’t so cool; it has become a glaring audit flag.
Ditto for renting a weekend villa in the Tuscan hill country, or applying for membership at a Ligurian yacht club.
And don’t even think about heli-skiing at Cortina.
Other activities being monitored include shopping for high-end fashion items.
So think twice before you hit the Gucci boutique.
Redditometro was approved by Parliament in , but wasn’t widely enforced until .
Most Italians don’t like the practice.
They find it intrusive.
Piero Ostellino, an Italian news commentator, recently told the BBC:
“I’m against the Redditometro not because I’m in favor of evading taxes, I don’t think tax collection should be done by trampling on individual liberties.”
He then added, “I would like to live in a country where a cardinal can, every month, buy a pornographic magazine without having to explain this to the tax authorities.
This is like the former East Germany.”
Greece
Tax resistance continues in Greece, where the government has been raising taxes and reducing government benefits and services.
The numbers could have been worse as the government gained revenues from doubled property taxes and big hikes in income taxes that have hit most Greeks except for tax cheats who continue to largely escape sacrifice or prosecution.
Direct tax revenues increased by about 9 to 10 percent in compared with a year earlier.
Given the country’s devastating recession, which has created a record 26.8 percent unemployment and is in its sixth year, the only options left for the government is to collect from tax evaders and improve tax collections, although tax hikes have led to many more Greeks trying to hide their income, statistics showed.
Meanwhile, the government won a court victory against the tollgate runners.
The Greek Supreme Court ruled against Oropos mayor John Oikonomakou who had challenged his €200 fine for running the gate on the grounds that the toll and fine money was being siphoned off by foreign companies rather than being used for road maintenance and traffic safety.
The government has recently also added a €5 tax to medical services, which the movement is urging people to refuse to pay, and offering their legal support to anyone denied service for such refusal.
While I was busy going through Friends Journal back
issues, I didn’t attend much to tax resistance news in the here-and-now, so
I’ll try to give a recap today of some of the news about international tax
resisters that caught my notice:
Since the fall into hell of the American financial giant Lehman Brothers in
, international banks have
received injections of public money coming from various governments to the
tune of $4.6 trillion, an amount sufficient to eradicate world hunger 92
times over. This embarrassing data forms part of an investigation from Arcadi
Oliveres, professor of Applied Economics at the Autonomous University of
Barcelona and president of the organization Justícia i Pau
(“Justice and Peace”). Oliveres was, 30 years ago, one of the originators of
the first tax resistance initiative organized in our country. He decided, in
defiance of the Law, but favoring his conscience, not to contribute to the
government’s military spending. He became a tax resister. Today, for reasons
like the data cited above, many citizens have begun processes of resistance
that involve new ways to use their money.
Those first war tax resisters of
opened a new path for the honorable citizen. It was not meant to trick the
Treasury so as to keep the money. The taxpayer challenged the collector, and
questioned the legitimacy of the spending they considered immoral. In the
absence of ethical behavior from the state, the good citizen, they argued,
did not have to obey it. “The people are afraid to disobey, but if nobody had
done so before there would still be slaves on the streets and blacks would be
standing in the back of the bus,” Oliveres told Números
Rojos. The professor took as model conscientious objectors who refused
to do compulsory military service in : “For not wanting to do their military year and a half they were
sent to prison for three years, even to penal colonies in the Sahara. They
had no fear; for this reason they were so important.” That struggle is
won — compulsory military service was abolished in Spain on
— though war tax
resistance, which began to be practiced in
continues to be considered illegal evasion.
Calculating the Deduction
The process of becoming a tax resister is very simple, although there is no
fixed rule. It amounts to adding to your tax return a new deduction of
x euros, corresponding to your personal contribution to government
military spending. But the calculation of this option can have a variety of
sources: some people estimate military spending in the total federal budget
each year and apply this percentage directly as a deduction on their return
(between 6–15%, depending on which items are considered military spending).
Others take as their reference the data suggested each year by antimilitarist
platforms (last year military spending of €666.14 per person was calculated).
And others redirect a fixed amount each year from the taxes owed on their
return (traditionally €84). Then, depending on how the final result changes,
the objector may have to pay less to the Treasury than is owed — if it is
positive — or may recover more money from the Treasury than it has to
pay — if it is negative.
In either case, before filing, the objector has already redirected the amount
he or she does not accept as legitimate government spending to an institution
for social good — whichever the objector wants, although there are lists of
groups to contribute to. Of course, the reasons for resisting are specified
on the return itself, and also communicated to the tax agency at the time of
filing. But what happens next? “if it comes out negative, you will claim an
amount from the Treasury, which is not returned to you, and generally that’s
that. But when it is positive, you neglect to pay a part. In this case, it
may be that nothing happens — according to Ecologists in Action, in 90% of
cases the incident goes undetected — but the tax agency may come after you
and end up levying not only the amount you refused to pay but also an
administrative penalty,” Oliveres said.
With exceptions, like in when the Supreme
Court of Catalonia found in favor of the former Catalonia Parliament deputy
Joan Surroca, who in deducted from the
amount that he had to pay in taxes a percentage corresponding to military
spending and gave the money to an
NGO
that assists African women. The treasury then fined him 54,896 pesetas (€329),
a penalty that Surroca appealed. Finally the court ruled in his favor by
understanding that the offender, by sending his resisted taxes to an
NGO,
did not have the intent to profit from his action. A landmark judgment, but
precise.
But how many pacifist tax resisters are there in Spain? It is difficult to
calculate — not everyone who does it talks about it — but according to the
associations and platforms associated with this movement there may be between
1,000 and 2,000 people each year: “the number is very stable, although there
are sharp peaks in times of armed conflict when Spain is involved, as with
the Iraq war,” explains Arcadi Oliveres. So in the fiscal
campaign, it is estimated that at least
5,000 people became tax resisters. Today, the economic crisis has not
produced a significant increase in antimilitarist objectors, “even allowing
for awful data, like the fact that in the
state spent €1,300 million to construct a combat aircraft, the same amount of
money that it saved by freezing pensions.”
From pacifism to rebellion
In , the Right of Rebellion movement
(www.derechoderebelion.net),
with the help of more than €8,000 raised through a crowdfunding initiative,
printed 5,000 copies of the “Manual of Economic Disobedience” (the edition is available on the web), a
document intended, in its own words, “to all of those people who would like
to take steps to make their lives exemplars of their thought and feeling.” So
the group intended to “initiate and extend a campaign of tax resistance aimed
at the Spanish state and at those who control it… to show that we will not
pay their debts, because we do not recognize the existing Constitution or the
existing puppet government of global financial capitalism…”
As the most important step of disobedience, the manual teaches the option of
making a partial income tax resistance, similar to that of the war tax
resisters, but including also deductions for such items as the amortization
of public debt, the interest on the debt, payments for the monarchy, the
Senate, the prisons, the police, or the church, until the total comes to
almost 30% of the federal budget. The authors of the manual make it clear that
the decision about what parts to deduct must be decided by the taxpayer, but
suggest a standard 25% of what is on the return.
Offices of Disobedience
The goal of resistance is to divert money that doesn’t go to the Treasury to
“autonomous projects that will be useful to meet the needs of the people.”
After publishing its manual, and without much time to prepare, Right of
Rebellion began organizing a series of Offices of Economic Disobedience in
various cities around the nation, which learned about and advised anyone who
was interested in becoming a tax resister in the tax resistance campaign of
. Although it is difficult to know the exact
number of people who joined this campaign, the figures tossed about by
different offices were very modest, not reaching even a hundred or so
resisters. In spite of this, the constituents of the Office of Economic
Disobedience in Lavapiés (Embajadores, 49; Madrid), considered the
accounting “very positive”: “not so much with the economic level of project
supported — just over €18,000 in total — but by, above all, the number of
people, from all classes, who were interested in this issue.”
Meanwhile, as the tax season numbers are coming in, Right of Rebellion
continues to promote other forms of disobedience, such as certain techniques
of resistance to the
VAT (in the
declarations of independent companies or cooperatives), rent for people who
have been evicted (preventing or indefinitely delaying the eviction), or
bankruptcy (as freedom to carry out different actions). The ultimate goal
would be an actual departure from the “official” economic system and the
creation of new, alternative forms of living.
Integrated Cooperatives
The “Manual of Economic Disobedience” relies on a call for comprehensive
cooperatives, “a legal form that allows construction of an arena of
autonomous economic relations among the participants that is protected from
public or private liability, and quite legally minimizes tax and social
insurance liability, shielding as much as possible from the acts of the banks
or government.” Furthermore, this new way of life permits “bankrupt or
unemployed beings as people, according to the system and the existing legal
framework, but at the same time to be able to live completely normally,
working and consuming in an autonomous manner, without worrying about
seizures of prior debts.” In short, a permanent economic disobedience, a
collective evasion of the system clinging to a self-sufficient,
multisectorial structure, where the members, involved to a lesser or greater
extent, coexist and cooperate at the margin of the system. Indeed, the
cooperatives possess a system of communal services, using alternative
currencies and relying on self-financing social cooperatives to obtain credit
without interest.
The Solidarity Scam
One of the major promoters of the Catalan Comprehensive Cooperative is Enric
Durán. This activist burst into the limelight in
when he announced himself, in
an article in the self-published Crisi, which had
“stolen” €492,000 from the banks. Step by step, he described how he had taken
out 68 different loans from 39 banks on various pretenses: to buy a car,
renovate his house,
etc. And how he
had created a shell company and falsified documents to justify nonexistent
income, in order that the credit control system would not detect its growing
debt.
While the mainstream media were trumpeting his “exploit,” Enric fled to South
America with €8,000 in his wallet. The rest had been given, as was explained
in the manifesto, to autonomous social project. This action, whether described
as financial disobedience or a solidarity con, sounded around the world and
the press named its actor the “Robin Hood of banks.” Enric returned to take
credit for the legitimacy of his action, and was imprisoned
. He was finally
released, though with a pending criminal trial that was to have been held
. Enric failed to attend “because
he doesn’t believe that the judicial system has standing to judge,” so the
Provincial Court put out a bench warrant for him on
. The prosecutor asked for an
eight-year sentence, six for an ongoing offense of falsifying a commercial
document, and two for criminal bankruptcy.
While eluding justice, Durán continues to vindicate resistance: “any act of
insubordination is a welcome step, and although at first it may seem like an
isolated action, it is from such small actions that we build a strategy with
a long-term goal,” although clearly these processes are initially marginal,
“historically risky actions, if they involve individual responsibility, are
taken only by the minorities involved. The key is that these minorities are
able to organize to better influence the majorities.”
Disobedience of the system
Other citizens who dissent from the economic relations imposed by the system,
like the lawyer, writer, and expert on disobedience José Luis Carretero, do
not understand the processes of economic disobedience as an “exit”: “you have
to take a step toward disobedience, but not as an alternative to
confrontation. You can’t get anything without an effective, mass
confrontation.” Carratero has reservations about measures like tax
resistance, “it has a very limited and token run. I get these dynamics if
they are done with other actions, like the occupation of vacant housing for
instance. In the short run, I think we should try to find an alliance with
various sectors that are confronting austerity. In the long run, turn back
the social segmentation processes that have taken place in recent decades.
But from the grassroots, not from outside of the system.” For Carretero, since
the 15-M outbreak,
as the topic of disobedience is no longer taboo, “those who talk about these
things were once marginal — I felt like a Martian. Most saw capitalism as a
good thing that allowed you to have a house or a car. That has changed
somewhat, but the problem remains that they see no alternative.”
With less theory and more concrete actions, the campaigns of economic
disobedience of the “I won’t pay” movement have taken root in many sectors
through social networking, where they already have some 30,000 followers.
They called a rebellion against toll roads in Catalonia and managed to get
some 60,000 people, according to Abertis, the collecting company, to refuse
to pay to use the road. They managed to mobilize,
, hundreds of people in several
demonstrations in Madrid against the so-called “rate hikes” for public
transit, which upped the price of tickets for members of the community some
11%. Another action called “I won’t repay” inspired citizens not to pay the
euro-per-prescription in the communities where it was imposed — Catalonia and
Madrid — before it was suspended by the Constitutional Court. According to
the founder of “I won’t pay,” Álex Corrones: “Not only do we believe that it
is right to disobey laws that are unjust, but that it is our obligation as
responsible citizens.” For Corrones, it is not enough to demonstrate:
“demonstrations have been controlled. And if they get out of hand, there are
200 cops to fire on command.”
war tax resisters in Asturias
A report on
the war tax resistance campaign in Asturias this year said that it had
“led workshops in all parts of Asturias, conducted five street actions, and
has delivered thousands of information packets, which have been supplemented
by the educational conference with Tica Font and Pere Ortega of the
Centro Delás research center, and
the contributions of Arcadi Oliveres in another conference.”
The group is pushing for a referendum on Catalan independence, and is meanwhile trying to create a new state within the shell of the old, by creating new Catalan institutions and trying to vest in them the authority currently held by federal ones.
One of these is a Catalan tax agency, and some resisters have adopted the tactic of paying their federal taxes there instead of to the federal agency.
Italy’s is the latest government to try to slip new taxes into utility bills as a way of trying to sneak tax hikes past its subjects — the latest is something called “tares” which is ostensibly part of the garbage bill.
A “No Tares Steering Committee” is preparing a tax strike in protest.
Peggy Thomas, a retired teacher who lives in Hebden Bridge, is refusing to
pay the Inland Revenue some of her income tax. She is a conscientious
objector and against taxes being used for warfare.
Peggy told the HebWeb that the nature of conscientious objection had
completely changed. Today, it is not about young people refusing to fight; it
is about money. Today’s wars can be fought with just a few men but the
weapons are much far more expensive and deadly. That’s why she’s withholding
a proportion of her tax, a proportion which would otherwise be spent on war
and weapons.
Peggy told the HebWeb, “At the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, the then
Chancellor Gordon Brown, told the House of Commons not to worry about how our
participation in the ‘coalition of the willing’ would be financed. He assured
MPs and the country that all the
money needed would be available. Of course it was; 10% of the Government
budget is set aside for warfare.”
Peggy is not alone in withholding taxes.
An organisation called “Conscience” is campaigning to end compulsory contributions to warfare.
Conscience believes that those who object in principle to warfare should be able to divert 10% of their taxes to peaceful pursuits.
For example, some people donate their 10% withheld tax to charities such as Oxfam.
When Peggy first started withholding her tax, the Inland Revenue ignored her,
and just took the tax she owed out of any refund she was due. If she sent a
letter explaining, they’d reply that they couldn’t enter into correspondence
about the matter.
But this year the Inland Revenue started to get a little more serious with
Peggy and started to talk about debt collection agencies. Conscience were
able to reassure Peggy that in the first instance the debt collection agency
would not be allowed to take anything from her. And that what she should do
is write to the debt collection agency explaining the situation.
In her letter, Peggy wrote, “The right of conscientious objection, which was
won, not without a struggle, during the First World war, protected people who
did not want to kill other people from having to take part in warfare. Once
conscription was abolished, this right was taken from us. Now our money is
conscripted and used to finance killing.”
“The poorest are footing the bill for those in multiple occupancy. The burden
is put on the very poor,” she said.
“I am doing this for many of us, not just myself. Everyone I speak to says
‘we support you, our mother or our father is like you, they are struggling
too.’
“The only weapon we have got is not to pay council tax.”
She said she has been paying some of her council tax but she could not afford
to pay all of it.
“I have been paying £25 a month and that is all I can afford,” she said.
Some links that have crossed my browser tabs in recent days:
Arcadi Oliveres was recently in Bilbao to speak at a conference on war tax resistance.
He was interviewed for El Salto. Excerpts (translation mine):
What is war tax resistance? What does it cover?
In Spain, war tax resistance launched in
, following our incorporation into NATO
.
At that time it was said that in order to standardize all of the Spanish armed forces into NATO systems, it was necessary to increase spending a lot on the military tech budgets, arms manufacture budgets, etc. We realized that this was barbarous and began to practice tax resistance, following an analogous path with what had already been done with conscientious objection to military service.
There were people who did not want to participate in the preparation for war with their bodies and their effort and who therefore declared themselves to be conscientious objectors.
The same thing goes for those who do not want to participate with their money in the financing of war.
That means that in your taxes, which is where you you can act, you stop paying the percentage that the Defense Department gets in the federal budget.
If military spending is 2% of the budget, and I have to pay 100, I will pay 98 because I want to stop paying this amount to the state.
The way to go about it is to choose an NGO or some social action, send those two resisted euros, and tell the Treasury: “I would be willing to pay 100 but as two are going for very bad spending, here are the other 98.”
Is this treated as an act of civil disobedience?
Obviously the act is not recognized by law, and if they catch you,
which doesn’t always happen, they can demand that amount.
For all that, things take their course.
Up to now you stopped paying the two euros, they demanded them, and furthermore added a fine or costs and so you end up paying eight.
Concerning this there is a judgment of the Catalan Superior Court of Justice in which an objector was told that he should only pay the delinquent tax but not the fine.
With good sense, the judgment held that the Treasury can only impose a fine when the taxpayer has intended to be deceptive.
It’s clear that the objector doesn’t have such an intent because from day one he turns up with a receipt from the NGO or group to which he has donated.
A single judgment does not create jurisprudence but I realize that it is necessary to keep winning more so that, finally, this is so.
What other alternatives do citizens have to oppose spending on the
military and arms industry?
There are some that form part of what we would call conscientious
objection, and others that would be broader.
I think that a basic way of fighting is in education for peace, which is already practiced but less than is needed.
From television shows to schools, and especially from families, we have to try not to impose a violent response to conflicts.
Certainly, we also have to work politically, with actions for disarmament.
If we look at conscientious objection, until now we have discussed two actions: objection to military service and tax resistance, but there should be others, such as labor objection.
Right here in Bilbao, there was the case of a firefighter who refused to work overseeing the exportation of military equipment.
A few years ago in Catalonia, two sailors refused to participate in the transport of Spanish soldiers who were going to the Iraq War, and lost their jobs, but these are isolated cases.
There is also another type of objection.
Some 15 years ago, there was a conference in Zaragoza in which more than a thousand professors declared ourselves scientific objectors, which is to say, signed a manifesto to say none of our scientific investigations were to be used for military purposes.
Or, also, there is financial objection.
I refuse to put money in a bank so that it will wind up invested in weapons, starting with the one that invests the most money in that business, BBVA.
Cincinnati.com looks at the long career in direct action of war tax resister DeCourcy Squire.
The Greek “Won’t Pay” movement’s guerrilla electricians have reconnected the power at the home of another needy family cut off by the government utility monopoly for inability to pay new surcharges.
Three foes in particular are enabling tax dodgers, making their ploys more common and more damaging: reduced support for the IRS, new incentives for people to become cheaters and widening partisan distrust.
Some recent tax resistance links of note:
Long-time war tax resisters Arcadi Oliveres and David Zarembka have died.
Oliveres was one of the founders of the modern war tax resistance movement in Spain, while Zarembka was one of those who helped NWTRCC get off the ground in the United States, serving as its first treasurer.
More info:
Chuck Faber’s tribute to David Zarembka on A Friendly Letter, including autobiographical writings from Zarembka himself that go into his five decades of war tax resistance in detail
In my last update I noted that the city government of Vic had decided to stop remitting its taxes to the Spanish federal government, instead sending those taxes to the independence-minded Catalan government.
Vic has now been joined by Girona, capital of Girona province, as well as some other medium-sized towns.
The U.S. State Department can refuse to give you a passport or can revoke your existing passport if the IRS tells them you’re way behind on your taxes and aren’t doing anything about it.
And the IRS can make this happen just by notifying the State Department.
Is that unconstitutional? To take away your fundamental right to travel without due process of law?
Paul L. Caron, at TaxProf Blog, investigates the issue and a recent test case that did a poor job of trying to test it in Tax Court.
Caron doesn’t think the constitutionality argument will work, even if it is raised more competently in a more receptive legal forum.
For one thing, the right of an American citizen to travel internationally is not very well protected by American law: the courts do not consider it to be all that important.
For that reason, the courts’ threshold for what they consider sufficient “due process” to deprive you of such a right is pretty low.
President Biden has now come out and said explicitly what had been suspected: that he hopes to help fund his spending spree by increasing IRS enforcement spending, as part of a sock-it-to-big-business plan that also includes increasing corporate tax rates, broadening the corporate tax base, and eliminating big business loopholes.
We’ll have to keep an eye on this as it burbles through the legislative tract.
