The movement plastered posters around Palermo proclaiming:
“A population that pays the pizzo is a population without dignity.”
Now run by 50 people, the group is encouraging shoppers to buy products only from stores that refuse to co-operate with the Mob.
More than 7,000 residents have signed up in the past few weeks.
A poster from Palermo decrying the Mafia’s tax
I’m back!
We had a great time in Mexico, and now I’m unpacking and reassuring our cat that we still love him and trying to get caught up on what I missed while we were away.
Here are some of the things I would have been covering at The Picket Line had I not been off-the-grid:
The War Resisters League is promoting a blockade of the IRS headquarters in Washington on .
“Just as military recruiters supply the bodies for the war, the IRS supplies the funding.
Just as some soldiers have the courage to resist the war, we — as tax payers — should have the courage to resist paying the taxes that send soldiers to war.
We call on all war opponents to help dramatize our opposition and to disrupt business as usual by joining this nonviolent blockade.”
The store is part of an anti-Mafia groundswell that started four years ago when activists plastered Palermo with bill stickers stating: “An entire population that pays the pizzo is a population without dignity.”
That spawned “Addiopizzo,” an organisation promoting stores and suppliers that publicly vowed to pay no more.
Today, 9,000 Palermitans are registered customers and the list contains 241 businesses, 30 of which have their products on Messina’s shelves.
Punto Pizzofree also stocks produce from farms seized from jailed Mafia bosses including Salvatore “The Beast” Riina.
The Sicilian Mafia, on the back foot since the arrest in of fugitive godfather Bernardo Provenzano, was hurt again when powerful industrial association Confindustria said it would expel any members paying protection money.
A paper by Odd-Helge Fjeldstad and Joseph Semboja — “Why people pay taxes: The case of the development levy in Tanzania” — is now available on-line and provides a few more clues for those of us who like to investigate the factors that promote tax compliance or tax resistance.
War tax resisters in Farmington, Maine held a workshop recently.
Resisters including Eileen Kreutz, Eileen Liddy, Henry Braun, and Larry Dansinger shared their experiences.
“Since Congress continues to fund the war despite all our letter writing, demonstrations, and protests, I am joining others to try to affect the war funding directly by not paying all of my taxes,” Liddy said.
“This is more than just symbolism.
Legislators need to know that people are ready to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience in order to get them to do the job they are elected to do.”
Pente Player, in the comments here at The Picket Line, has done some back-of-the-envelope calculations to see what effect this year’s economic stimulus package will have on those of us who are trying to stay under the federal income tax line.
San Francisco area artist Doug Minkler has created another war tax resistance-themed poster featuring a paraphrase of William Reich: “People tend to ascribe the responsibility for war to those who wield power.
But the responsibility for wars falls directly upon the citizenry, for they possess all the necessary means to avert war.
To place guilt on ordinary people — to hold them solely responsible — means to take them seriously, whereas, to view them as victims means to treat them as small, helpless children.”
The essay Tax Resistance: The Moral and Legal Defense from redpill8 has been bouncing around blogland since it was posted late last month.
It asserts that you have a legal obligation to stop paying taxes to the U.S. government in order to keep from being considered an accomplice in its criminal behavior.
Raleigh Booze at Sword of Peace shares his conscientious objector statement and discusses how tax resistance fits in to a Christian conscientious objection position.
In Palermo, Italy, there are two overlapping groups collecting taxes — above-ground are the formal Italian governments, and underground is the Mafia.
Until recently, almost all businesses, large and small, paid both the “pizzo” — protection money — to the Mafia and taxes to the formal government.
But over the past five years, a group calling itself AddioPizzo has organized an unprecedently coordinated and successful tax resistance movement against the pizzo.
It includes a network of businesses who have pledged to resist the pizzo, a pizzo-free “brand” that these businesses can use to advertise their stance, and a group of consumers who have pledged to shop only at pizzo-free businesses.
One of the campaign’s organizers had this to say:
Why did we focus on the pizzo, rather than drugs, weapons or
shady deals? Because we immediately realized that the pizzo
was a tool the Mafia used to create a culture that accepts their control of
territory. If you take that away, everything else the Mafia does will
collapse.
Anyone know where I can get an AddioPizzo t-shirt?
One of the recently-WikiLeaked U.S. diplomatic corps cables concerns the “addio pizzo” tax resistance movement in Sicily.
Excerpts:
¶3. (U) Business owners have been emboldened by the continuing string of law enforcement victories, with more and more reportedly refusing to pay extortion money (known in Italian slang as the “pizzo”), particularly since [Bernardo] Provenzano’s arrest.
According to the recent annual report issued by the National Traders Association (Conferescenti), up to 80 percent of businesses in Palermo and Catania paid protection money in , and the cost of extortion is higher in Sicily than any other part of the country.
Several anti-racket associations have been formed, reportedly with good results.
The most prominent is “Addio pizzo” (“Goodbye, pizzo”), formed in , which counts 210 traders and entrepreneurs as members and over 9,000 consumers committed to buy only at shops belonging to the “pizzo-free” list.
Palermo police and the prefect have agreed to discreetly look after the member shops.
“Addio pizzo” has organized programs in more than 90 schools and educational institutes, with the participation of prosecutors and police, and also conducted a “pizzo-free” festival in one of Palermo’s main plazas in .
(One of the association’s leaders has been selected for a State Department International Visitor program in , which will focus on awakening public opinion to rule of law and supporting NGOs who fight organized crime.)
¶4. (U) In , the Sicilian branch of the industrialists’ federation (Confindustria) voted unanimously to expel any of its members who continue to pay the Mafia’s tax.
The vote came in support of Andrea Vecchio, a well-known construction company owner who told the Cosa Nostra he would no longer pay.
Since taking this bold decision, he has received four death threats and two of his building sites have been sabotaged.
Vecchio and his family are now living under police protection.
¶5. (U) On , forty Sicilian business owners launched a new “anti-pizzo” association to assist entrepreneurs who refuse to pay extortion money.
The group is called “Libero Futuro,” which translates “Free Future,” but also pays homage to Libero Grassi, a Sicilian businessman who was murdered in for refusing to pay the “pizzo.”
In response to the organization’s founding, Palermo mayor Diego Cammarata promised 50,000 euros to assist merchants who have been victims of extortion.
The association’s inauguration was attended by national political leaders; in fact, the auditorium was packed, whereas when a similar launch was attempted two years ago, only around 30 people showed up.
¶6. (U) During the night of , the offices of Confindustria in the central Sicilian city of Caltanissetta were broken into, and computer disks containing confidential details of business owners backing a campaign against the payment of protection money were stolen.
Confindustria leaders immediately blamed the Mafia and declared that they would not be intimidated by the act.
Tax resistance campaigns like this one can get a real leg up if they have the support of a competing government that would rather have all of the tax revenues itself.
Another cable adds further details:
¶12. (C) Lo Bello, the President of the Sicilian Confindustria, took the bold step in of instituting a policy (adopted by unanimous vote) of expelling members who have paid protection money to the Mafia and not complained to police.
Since that time, around 35 members have been asked to leave the Confederation.
This courageous move has been praised by business owners, the media and political leaders.
Lo Bello told us in that “The time has come [for Sicily] to move from an archaic, feudal past to modernity.”
When we met with them in late , the Calabrian Industrialists were much more timid, looking over their backs before telling us that the time is not right for business owners to take a public stand against extortion there.
(In , one of the founders of the Calabria anti-racket association, Fedele Scarcella, was brutally assassinated; his charred corpse was discovered in his burned car in what authorities described as “very probably a Mafia homicide.”)
Nonetheless, the media reported in on talks between the two regions’ Industrialists Confederations on collaborating against organized crime.
Lo Bello was quoted as declaring, “It may seem simple, but what has happened has changed the framework of the entire region: the idea that the fight against the Mafia cannot be delegated only to the State, but needs to include an assumption of responsibility on the part of Southern Italian society: in this case, the world of entrepreneurship.”
Also in , the Industrialists Confederation in Caserta (Campania) took initial steps toward a similar policy, drawing praise from the anti-Mafia prosecutor.
Lo Bello hopes to enlist other business and trade associations to adopt similar rules.
Unfortunately, most Sicilian business owners are still unwilling to complain about extortion.
In , a prominent businessman, Vincenzo Conticello, who has refused to pay protection money for his Palermo focaccia restaurant, told the CG that he had heard (probably from his police escort) that of 170 companies named in the accounting books of apprehended Mafia boss Salvatore Lo Piccolo, only three have owned up to it, while the others claim the accounts are in error.
¶13. (SBU) Sicilian businesses, emboldened by the arrests of top Mafia bosses, are openly defying the Mafia by signing on with a grassroots organization called “Addiopizzo” (Goodbye “Pizzo,” the Italian word for extortion payments), which brings together businesses in Palermo that are resisting extortion.
The campaign was launched in by a group of youths thinking of opening a pub.
They started off by plastering Palermo with anti-pizzo fliers, reading “AN ENTIRE PEOPLE THAT PAYS THE PIZZO IS A PEOPLE WITHOUT DIGNITY,” and eventually brought their campaign online where it struck a chord with Sicilians fed up with Mafia bullying.
The rebellion has since spread to other strongholds of the most ruthless Mafia clans, including places such as Gela, an industrial coastal town, where some 80 business owners in recent months have denounced extortion attempts.
This is a dramatic turn since the early 1990’s, when a Gela merchant who denounced extortion was slain by the Mafia, and a Gela car dealer, whose showroom was repeatedly torched, had to move his family and change his name after he testified in court.
“Addiopizzo” has recently launched a supermarket selling products certified as being “pizzo” free, and maintains a public list on the internet of businesses rejecting extortion.
Another NGO was launched by forty Sicilian business owners to assist entrepreneurs who refuse to pay extortion money.
The group is called “Libero Futuro,” which translates “Free Future,” but also pays homage to Libero Grassi, a Sicilian businessman who was murdered in for refusing to pay protection money.
In response to the organization’s founding, Palermo mayor Diego Cammarata promised 50,000 euros to assist merchants who have been victims of extortion.
“This rebellion goes to the heart of the Mafia,” says Palermo prosecutor Maurizio De Lucia, who has investigated extortion cases for years.
“If it works, we will have a great advantage in the fight against the Mafia.”
Another cable complains that in another part of the country, Calabria, it is the mafia that seems to have gotten the upper hand in the tax war:
¶5. (C) The Prefect of Vibo Valentia province, Ennio Sodano, has practically written Calabria off.
In his view, “the entire Calabrian society is involved” in perpetuating an intractable situation.
“Business owners pay extortion, but don’t complain.
They don’t pay their taxes,” he said.
“It’s a cultural problem, this indifferent society.”…
People will be less reluctant to take risks in a tax resistance campaign if
they know other people are willing to share those risks. One way of providing
this sort of reassurance is for resisters to join together in a mutual
insurance plan, so that if the government takes legal action against a
resister, or retaliates against them in some other way, they won’t have to
bear these consequences alone.
Today I’ll review some examples of how a variety of tax resistance campaigns
have created mutual insurance plans to protect resisters.
War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund
The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund
reimburses American war tax resisters who have penalties & interest
seized by the
IRS.
The fund is operated by a team of resisters and sympathizers, and has hundreds
of subscribers:
In a core group of 83 people across the
country decided we could easily share $463.14 in penalties and interest
incurred by a few military tax resisters who appealed to the war tax
resistance community for help. The more people we could recruit to shoulder
the penalties and interest of resisters, the lighter the burden for everyone.
With the modest help we could provide, conscientious resisters were able to
keep on keeping on.
The penalty fund had the added benefit of making us all tax resisters, not
just those who withheld all or a portion of their income taxes. The base list
of supporters has been as high as 800 people sharing the weight. In nearly
every appeal, at least 200 people respond, usually more. In all we’ve paid
out about $250,000 to help resisters stay in the struggle.
Resisters who have had money seized by the
IRS
send the fund documentation showing how much of the seizure was the result
of interest and penalties, and then the fund sends out an appeal to its
members to help reimburse the cost:
We divide the total amount for all resisters by the number of active names on
the membership list to arrive at a “share.” We then send out an appeal to
both actives and inactive members. Each contributor pays all of a share or
whatever amount she can afford. Some pay more than a share. If we collect 75
percent of the total we ask for, each resister gets 75 percent of the amount
they requested. We cannot promise that we will collect the total amount
requested; usually, however, we can reimburse between 50% and 80% of each
appeal.
I have personal experience with this mutual insurance plan. In
the
IRS
seized some bank accounts of mine to recover taxes I had refused to pay. This
included $813 in interest and penalties. I applied to the War Tax Resisters
Penalty Fund, which sent me a check for $649 from the amount the subscribers
to the fund pledged.
Irish Land League
When the
National
Land League launched a rent strike targeting English absentee landlords in
Ireland in , it made sure resisters knew
it would have their backs if the landlords tried to evict them. The leaders
of the League issued a rent strike manifesto from Kilmainham Jail that
declared:
If you only act together in the spirit to which within the last two years
you have countless times pledged your vows, they can no more evict a whole
nation than they can imprison them.
The funds of the National Land League will be poured out unstintingly for the
support of all who may endure eviction in the course of the struggle. Our
exiled brothers in America may be relied upon to contribute if necessary as
many millions of money as they have contributed thousands to starve out
landlordism and bring English tyranny to its knees.
One of the ways this played out was for evicted tenants to be temporarily
put up, along with their livestock if any, on the property of unevicted
tenants and sympathetic landowners, in what came to be called “Land League
Villages.” Each family was given a small monthly allowance from the Land
League.
Dublin Water Charge Strike
In , the resistance campaign against the
water charge in Dublin initiated a mutual insurance fund. One of the campaign
leaders recalls:
Obviously the council/government tactic was to try to individualise their
intimidation. By summonsing individuals to court maybe they could bypass the
mass participation that the protests against disconnections had seen. The
campaign immediately took a decision that when any individual was summonsed
to court, we would turn up and contest every case — and that we would turn up
in force. It was at this time that we made a decision which would prove
crucial to the success of the campaign. We decided to initiate a membership
of the campaign at £2 per household. This money would go into a warchest to
pay legal fees so that no individual would be left facing a legal bill. The
idea that the individuals being taken to court were representing all of us
was paramount. Within weeks 2,500 households had paid the £2 membership fee,
and within 12 months there were over 10,000 paid-up households making the
campaign without doubt the biggest to have existed in decades.
Breton Association
When Charles Ⅹ of France attempted to bypass the legislature and enact his own
taxes in , French liberals in the Breton
Association organized tax resistance and created a fund to defray the costs of
any tax resisters who were prosecuted. By the terms of the Association’s
manifesto:
We declare… [t]o subscribe individually for ten francs… This subscription
will form a common stock or fund for all Brittany, destined to indemnify the
subscribers for any expense they may be put to by their refusal to pay any
illegal contributions imposed upon the public…
And this is how the fund was to be administered:
[Elected procurators are to] receive the subscriptions, to afford indemnities
conformably to the [section quoted above], at the request of any subscriber
prosecuted for the payment of illegal contributions; to sue in his name…
for justice against the exactors by all possible means allowed by law…
War of the Regulation
The Regulator movement, a tax resistance rebellion in pre-American Revolution
North Carolina, had an oath that members took that committed each of them to
come to the aid of any others who might be arrested or whose property was
being seized for nonpayment:
I will, with the aid of other sufficient help, go and take, if in my power,
from said officer, and return to the party from whom taken; and in case any
one concerned should be imprisoned, or under arrest, or otherwise confined,
or if his estate, or any part thereof, by reason or means of joining this
company of Regulators, for refusing to comply with the extortionate demands
of unlawful tax gatherers, that I will immediately exert my best endeavors to
raise as many of said subscribers as will be force sufficient, and, if in my
power, I will set the said person at liberty…
The oath also created a mutual insurance pledge:
I do further promise and swear that if, in case this, our scheme, should be
broken or otherwise fail, and should any of our company be put to expense or
under any confinement, that I will bear an equal share in paying and making
up said loss to the sufferer.
Reformed Israel of Yahweh
Members of the small Christian group called the Reformed Israel of Yahweh
were, like its founder, conscientious objectors to military taxation. When
some of the members of the group were convicted on tax evasion charges, the
Reformed Israel of Yahweh organization paid their fines.
Pacific Yearly Meeting
A committee of the collection of American Quaker congregations known as the
Pacific Yearly Meeting administers something it calls “the Fund for Concerns:”
Its purpose is to assist members and attenders of Monthly Meetings to follow
individual leadings arising from peace, social order, or spiritual concerns.
… Up to $100 per fiscal year per person will be available to help with the
interest and penalty expenses of war tax resisters who are members or regular
attenders of a Monthly Meeting. The Monthly Meeting must indicate approval
and provide matching funds.
New York Yearly Meeting
During the Vietnam War, the New York Yearly Meeting advocated war tax
resistance and “promised financial help through special committees if [Quaker
resisters] changed jobs or refused to pay taxes in protest against the war.”
Papuan Courier
In 1919, Papua, which had been a territory occupied and run by the German
Empire until World War Ⅰ when Australia took over, began to agitate against
taxation without representation, and many people refused to pay.
The Papuan Courier, which was sympathetic to the
tax resisters,
…as evidence of its bona fides on the question, has decided, to form a fund
for the defence of any resident who may by victimised, persecuted, or
prosecuted for failure to pay the tax, and to that end we open the list with
a contribution of Five Guineas.
Tithe War
In , Irish Catholics rebelled
against paying government-mandated tithes to the Anglican church. In this
case, the Catholic church itself provided some insurance to the resisters.
The Anglican archbishop Richard Whately complained:
Every possible legal evasion has been resorted to to prevent the incumbent
from obtaining his due. A parish purse has been raised to meet law expenses
for this purpose, and the result has been that in most instances nothing
whatever, in others a very small proportion of the arrears, has been
recovered. … [One Anglican clergyman] instituted a tithe-suit which was
decided in his favour; but, instead of receiving the amount, he was met by an
appeal to the High Court of Delegates, and is informed that a continued
resistance to the utmost extremity of the law is to be supported by a parish
purse.
Addio-Pizzo Movement
In , a number of individuals and businesses
opposed to paying mafia protection money began to use a number of techniques
to interrupt the payments and to support those resisters whom the mafia was
threatening with reprisals. The mayor of Palermo, Diego Cammarata, pledged
€50,000 to assist merchants who had been victims of extortion.
Peacemakers
The group “Peacemakers,” which launched the modern American war tax resistance
movement , had a mutual
insurance component from the beginning:
Peacemakers at the Ohio cell… established the Peacemaker Sharing Fund, a
mutual aid plan designed to insure aid to dependents of imprisoned
Peacemakers and to help finance group projects. During the Vietnam war, the
sharing fund became the main vehicle for donations to meet the needs of war
resisters’ families.
Penalty Sharing Community
The Iowa Peace Network maintains a mailing list of persons who have made a
commitment to the Penalty Sharing Community
to share in the penalties assessed to individuals and families who have
chosen to resist war taxes or have participated in civil disobedience or
non-violent direct action. When a request for assistance is received, a
mailing is sent out which explains the resister’s situation and the amount of
money needed. For example, if the resister was assessed a $300.00 penalty,
each of the persons in the Community would pay an equal portion of the
$300.00. Thus if there were 200 people in the Community, each would pay
$1.50. The Iowa Peace Network will also add into the amount requested its
costs for printing and mailing. Such costs have proven to be minimal.
Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters
Members of the Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters redirected their federal taxes
into an “alternative fund” that served partially as an escrow account, and
partially as a way of redirecting some of the money to charitable
organizations. Part of the fund was reserved to help defray any legal costs
incurred by members in the course of their resistance.
“New Rush” Resisters
White miners at the “New Rush” in Kimberly, South Africa, voted in
to form “a Defence League and Protection
Association… not to assail the Government, but to protect individuals if
assailed unrighteously by the Government.” The pledge of the association said
in part:
I shall to the utmost of my power, with purse and person, protect any and
every officer and member of the League against coercion or consequences of
what nature soever arising out of the action necessitated by this pledge.
The pledge had a clause that made it binding when it would be signed by 400
men, whereupon:
The Government will be defied if they dare to touch a single claim for
non-payment of license. The diamond buyers will refuse to pay further license
and will be defended from harm.
Ruhrkampf
When the Ruhr region of Germany began resisting reparation payments to the
victorious nations of World War Ⅰ, France and Belgium occupied the region
to take the payments by force. Germans responded with a campaign of mass
nonviolent resistance, including tax resistance, and were backed up by their
own government.
One of the ways the German government supported the campaign was by paying
the strikers itself, to the tune of 715 million marks. It did this in part by
printing off more currency, which helped fuel the hyperinflation of
(itself a sort of resistance strategy that
made it difficult or impractical to account for reparations payments).
Louisiana Anti-Reconstructionists
During the “Reconstruction” period after the American Civil War, white
supremacists in Louisiana refused their allegiance to a federally-backed,
mixed-race state government, and demonstrated this through tax resistance.
Several attorneys issued a statement offering to “engage themselves, without
compensation, and as a matter of public service, to defend professionally all
[tax resisters].” A mass-meeting issued a tax resistance pledge, and resolved:
That a committee of five be appointed to draw up a plan by which the citizens
may co-operate, to employ counsel and mutually assist each other in their
refusal to pay taxes.
Satyagraha in South Africa
Gopal Krishna Gokhale, an officer in the Indian National Congress fighting
for the independence of India, pledged £2,000 a month to support Indian
satyagrahis in South Africa who were engaged in tax resistance and other
tactics under Gandhi’s direction.
Tax resistance campaigns have occasionally utilized buycotts and boycotts to
give businesses incentives to support tax resisters or withdraw support from
tax collectors. Today I’ll summarize a handful of examples:
The Addio-Pizzo Movement
Boycotts and buycotts are the signature tactic of the Addio-Pizzo movement
in Sicily, which is trying to encourage businesses to stop paying taxes to the
mafia. The movement launched when one hundred Palermo businesses announced
that they would no longer pay the tax (another 100+ businesses later joined
them), and 9,000 residents signed a pledge to only buy goods from businesses
that joined the refusal.
The movement also launched its own supermarket — “Punto Pizzofree” — that
stocked nothing but products grown or manufactured by resisting suppliers, and
it held a “pizzo-free” street festival. It called the strategy “Critical
Consumption” and encouraged consumers to break the back of the “pizzo” (mafia
tax) by changing their shopping habits.
Poll Tax Rebellion
During the poll tax rebellion in the United Kingdom in
(see ♇ 6 September 2012) the
government tried to recruit newsstands and convenience stores to be
collection points where people could pay the tax. Poll tax resister Danny
Burns recalls:
In Bristol, the city council identified twenty newsagents who they hoped
would collect the Poll Tax. Within weeks of the list being circulated six
pulled out. Local communities made it plain that they would no longer use
the shops if they continued to collect.
Liberty Bonds
The United States government raised money to fight World War Ⅰ by selling
“Liberty Bonds.” Some Americans who opposed the
U.S. entry into
the war were alleged to have threatened to boycott banks that handled the
bonds. According to one newspaper account:
Efforts to prevent banks from handling the bonds have centered chiefly in
Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Missouri and
Oklahoma. The President of a Wisconsin bank has advised the Treasury that his
depositors, mostly Germans, or of German parentage, have withdrawn many
thousands of dollars from his bank because he aided the First Liberty Loan.
These depositors, he added, had taken their accounts to two rival banks on
the understanding that those banks would not aid the second Liberty Loan. The
two banks, he reported, were not aiding the loan in any way.
The Carrotmob Model
A new buycott model has been developed in recent years that, though it has not
to my knowledge been used by a tax resistance campaign, may have some promise.
In this model, an organization holds out the promise of a mob of buycotting
activists swarming a business on a certain day to buy its products, then it
asks a number of businesses to bid for the right to be the targeted business
by promising to use the profits from that day’s business in a particular
way.
For instance, one liquor store won a bid by promising to devote that day’s
profits to improving the energy-efficiency of the store’s refrigerators.
Customers lined up around the block to make their purchases at the targeted
stores on Carrotmob day, and everybody came out a winner.
Tax resistance campaigns might use a similar approach to encourage businesses
to stop stocking goods with high excise taxes, or to stock alternative
tax-free goods, or to stop collecting or remitting certain taxes, or to stop
participating (as in the Poll Tax Resistance campaign above) in tax collection.
A tax resistance campaign can increase participation by means of a social boycott practiced against non-resisting by-standers.
Here are some examples of social boycotts of this sort:
Vallabhbhai Patel, commander of the Bardoli tax strike
Social boycott was an important tool of the Bardoli tax refusal campaign during the independence struggle in India.
Mahadev Desai, in The Story of Bardoli, writes:
It is this weapon that exasperated the Government, but they were helpless because social boycott was no offence under the Penal Code.
And the Sardar [Vallabhbhai Patel, who commanded the campaign] poured ridicule on Government for grudging the people the use of this their only weapon.
“What do you do yourselves?
Yours is a close corporation maintained by force of arms and its motive is no nobler than keeping a nation in bondage.
We resort to this weapon simply for the sake of self-defence and self-preservation.”
But he never omitted to emphasize its limitations, the very first being that in no circumstances should a Satyagrahi refuse to minister to the physical needs of the party boycotted.
“Eschew by all means molestation or oppression.
We may not refuse anyone milk, water, foodstuffs, help in case of illness or worse.
We cannot afford to prosecute boycott at the expense of our humanity.”
Among the ways they could boycott landowners who capitulated to the government and paid their property taxes was to refuse to rent their fields or to work as agricultural laborers for them.
During the American revolution, boycotts of British imports were enforced by social boycott.
One resolution of boycotters read in part:
[W]e further promise and engage, that we will not purchase any goods of any persons who, preferring their own interest to that of the public, shall import merchandise from Great Britain, until a general importation takes place; or of any trader who purchases his goods of such importer: and that we will hold no intercourse, or connection, or correspondence, with any person who shall purchase goods of such importer, or retailer; and we will hold him dishonored, an enemy to the liberties of his country, and infamous, who shall break this agreement.
another said:
That whoever shall directly or indirectly countenance this attempt, or in any wise aid or abet in unloading receiving or vending the Tea sent or to be sent out by the East India Company while it remains subject to the payment of a duty here is an Enemy to America — … That a Committee be immediately chosen to wait on those Gentlemen, who it is reported are appointed by the East India Company to receive and sell said Tea, and to request them from a regard to their own characters and the peace and good order of this Town and Province immediately to resign their appointment.
An Ipswich town meeting resolved:
[W]e will not by ourselves or any for or under us directly or indirectly purchase any goods of the persons who have imported or continue to import, or any person or trader who shall purchase any goods of said importer contrary to the agreement of the merchants in Boston and the other trading towns in this government & the neighboring colonies until they make a public retraction or a general importation takes place.
Sicily’s branch of the “Confindustria” industrialists’ union unanimously voted in to expel any member who was caught paying protection money to the mafia, and a few dozen members in fact were expelled from the group under this policy.
Many Quaker “meetings” (congregations) had a policy of “disowning” members who failed to practice war tax resistance.
Sometimes, even failing to report that the government had subjected you to “sufferings” for your resistance could make you suspect, and Quakers would be appointed to visit you and ask how you had managed to avoid government reprisals while maintaining your refusal to pay.
Disowning was something akin to excommunication, and had the effect of removing the benefits of meeting membership from the disobedient Quakers until such time as they repented and made satisfactory amends — which might include reading an acknowledgment of the wrong of their behavior at a future meeting.
Occasionally, as during the American Revolution, disownings like this would lead to schisms and the emergence of rival meetings.
During the Tithe War in Ireland, it was reported that
Immense meetings are held, which form themselves into tribunals, before which persons accused of the crime of tithe-paying are summoned to appear, and give an account of their conduct; and defaulters undergo the punishment of being abandoned at once by every person in their employment.
Country gentlemen and farmers are left without a servant or labourer to perform the most necessary work.
The hay is left to rot on the ground, and the cattle to perish for want of the necessary food, drink, and care; and even on the roads it is common for the horses of the mails and stage-coaches to be changed by the coachmen and passengers, because the unhappy recusant innkeeper has been deserted by every one, even to his hostler.
Such is the terror of this new species of judicial authority, that numbers of highly respectable persons have found it necessary, in order to avert ruinous consequences, to appear before these self-constituted courts, acknowledge their jurisdiction, and promise to give obedience to their decrees!
Another report complained: “The man who in any way upholds the obnoxious system, whatever his previous character or services may have been, is branded as an object of universal execration.”
When resisters at the “New Rush” in South Africa in pledged to refuse to pay further taxes, they also pledged, “that I shall buy from, sell to, or deal with only such men as have also taken this pledge or obligation.”
Women in Pennsylvania who found themselves suddenly taxable in the wake of women’s suffrage were subject to strong social pressure to join in a largely unorganized but widespread tax boycott.
According to one report:
[A] woman, who is reported to have failed to pay her tax, asserted she was laughed at by her friends when she paid her tax in former years, and she would not be laughed at any longer.
I mentioned boycotts of government-produced or -taxed goods and services as a variety of tax resistance or a tactic that has accompanied tax resistance campaigns.
Today I’m going to cover a related tactic: the manufacture and sale of untaxed alternatives to taxed goods.
This tactic was put to good use in the American Revolution.
Boycotts of British products like tea, paint, cloth, were supplemented by expansion of local industry to make alternative products:
Members of Boston’s Whig Party demonstrated their patriotism by nursing tea leaves and mulberry trees in their gardens.
New England farmers were exhorted to convert their oak plains into sheep pastures and produce enough wool to clothe every American.
Colonists were urged to abstain from eating lamb or mutton in order to encourage American woolen manufactures.
In less than a year the boycott had so disrupted Transatlantic trade that thousands of British workers lost their jobs.
Gatherings at which dozens of people would card and spin yarn, weave fabric, or sew clothing, were simultaneously acts of resistance and patriotic rallies.
Towns competed with each other over how many yards of cloth they could produce, with results breathlessly reported in the newspapers.
At society balls, a woman who turned up in anything but a homespun cloth dress would be shunned.
…at the first commencement exercises of Rhode Island College (later Brown University), the president proud-spiritedly wore wholly homespun clothing.
At Harvard, the faculty and students had all taken to homespun in support of their women spinners, of whom the Boston Chronicle had bragged “[T]hey exhibited a fine example of industry, by spinning from sunrise until dark, and displayed a spirit for saving their sinking country, rarely to be found among persons of more age and experience.”
American tea drinkers switched to “balsamic hyperion” — dried raspberry leaves — which could be produced domestically.
Homespun cloth, or khādī, was a signature part of the Indian independence movement (which also, famously, promoted the domestic production of salt to break Britain’s taxed monopoly).
Gandhi insisted that everyone in the resistance movement should participate in producing, and of course should exclusively wear, domestic cloth.
I’ve tried to promote home-brewing beer and cider as a way of avoiding the federal excise tax on those products.
Home distilling is another option, though it’s not legal in the United States.
When Britain increased the excise tax on distilled spirits in Ireland in , “the only effect was to increase illicit distillation.
The decrease in the duty was £7,361 4s. The number of persons in confinement for breach of the revenue laws had increased from 84 to 368.” A few people have started growing their own tobacco as a way of combating the increasingly prohibitive tobacco excise taxes.
Audrey Silk grew and cured enough tobacco at her Brooklyn home in to roll nine cartons worth of cigarettes, which would have cost more than $1,000 at taxed rates at the time.
The “Addiopizzo” movement in Italy founded a supermarket, the shelves of which were stocked exclusively with goods from producers who had vowed not to pay any more protection money to the mafia.
They also maintain a buycott list of such companies to help consumers make pizzo-free shopping choices.
When Greece tacked new taxes onto electric bills as a way of combating tax evasion, the sales of gas-powered electric generators shot up.
One way to win a tax resistance campaign against a government that is stubbornly trying to squeeze money out of you is to appeal to an even bigger, badder government to take your side.
Here are some examples of campaigns that have attempted this.
In in Bolivia, a Jehovah’s Witness named Alfredo Díaz Bustos was drafted into the military and claimed conscientious objector status.
The authorities, recognizing no conscientious objector exemption, granted him an exemption certificate that classified him as unqualified for service, but demanded in exchange a special “military tax.”
Bustos then appealed to international law, in this case to the American Convention on Human Rights, saying he should not have to pay a tax to exercise an internationally recognized human right.
Incredibly, it worked!
The government of Bolivia backed down and released Bustos from any obligation either to serve in the military or to pay the exemption tax.
A number of European war tax resisters have tried to bring cases before multi-national bodies there in the hopes of getting conscientious objection to military taxation recognized as a human right that governments must respect.
For instance Roy Prockter is appealing to the European Court of Human Rights.
In some Quaker and Baptist officials in Massachusetts refused to collect tithes that were for the support of Puritan ministers, and were imprisoned for it.
They appealed to the King of England, who rescinded the tax and instructed the Massachusetts Assembly to free the resisting nonconformists.
The Addio Pizzo movement in Italy cooperates with the above-ground government there in its resistance campaign against mafia extortion schemes.
The police in Palermo “have agreed to discreetly look after the member shops” that conspicuously sell only goods from manufacturers who refuse to pay the pizzo mafia tax.
The police have also arrested some mafia leaders, and offer to defend people who have been threatened by mafia reprisals.
In , saloon keepers in New York City enlisted the cooperation of the local government in their attempts to resist the payment of police shakedown money.
In the shakedowns, the police would threaten to have the saloon keepers prosecuted on real or fanciful charges if they didn’t cough up bribes.
To resist this, the New York County Liquor Dealers Association teamed up with the local District Attorney, the Police Commissioner, and the Society for the Prevention of Crime.
The city agreed to waive fines against saloon owners who were prosecuted after failing to pay police protection money, thus making ineffective that common and effective police threat.
White Americans living in Muscogee (Creek) territory before Oklahoma became a state in resisted paying taxes to the Creek Nation government, hoping the federal government would back them up if push came to shove.
And in fact the federal government abolished the tax (and the independent Muscogee governments) shortly before Oklahoma statehood.
People from the United States who had set up shop in the Isle of Pines, south of Cuba, in the hopes that the United States would keep the island for itself after wresting it from Spain were disappointed when the newly independent Cuba asserted sovereignty and started to tax them.
In they declared that they would refuse to pay, and would defend themselves against Cuban tax collectors with force if need be — and they appealed to the United States to reclaim their island from the Cubans.
Nothing doing, said the U.S. Secretary of State.
Some tax resistance news from here and there:
The Spanish war tax resistance movement has issued its annual report on war tax resistance in Spain which includes the number of resisters who registered with the campaign, how many euros total they resisted, and where they redirected their money.
The number of objectors has dropped somewhat from totals, which the group suggests is probably from two causes: underreporting by resisters and the government’s insistence that people file electronically, which discourages some resisters who do not know how to register their resistance using the filing software.
They break the numbers down by region, too, which may help them figure out where to concentrate more of their outreach in the coming year.
Tax Day has come and gone… twice! — since the
IRS had
to extend it by a day at the last minute when their on-line payment system
went down.
War tax resisters around the country
dusted off their penny poll
jars and protest signs and did what they could to remind people of the
cruelty and destruction that results from their tax compliance.
Author Alice Walker (The Color Purple) wrote a poem for an anti-war march in Oakland, California, which reads in part:
How do grownups
Truly say No
To War?
By not paying for it.
Some so-called grownups will harass you when
You attempt to do this: Not Pay For War. But do not be discouraged.
As your elder, it is my job to help you think
Your way around this obstacle of taxes
That have the blood of the children
Of the world on them.
The poem goes on to encourage an “I Don’t Need It” movement in which concerned people withdraw from the consumer economy.
“We can stop war by not shopping our way through the bad news of it; as it creeps ever closer to our door.
We can stop war by not funding it.”
The Freedom Highway show on Radio Kingston interviewed Gabe Roth from Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings about the song he wrote for the group:
“What If We All Stopped Paying Taxes?” and also interviewed war tax resister Daniel Woodham.
Reason’s Brian Doherty gives a rundown of some of the more pettily infuriating uses of our taxes, and experiments with describing them in terms of how many American taxpayers had to pay taxes all year so that, for example, EPA head Scott Pruitt could install a soundproof booth in his office to take his phone calls in, or so that the New England Foundation for the Arts could put on a version of Hamlet performed by dogs.
Sarah Vowell managed to put a meandering and mostly-pointless op-ed in the New York Times encouraging people to read their Thoreau on tax day, or something.
In other news…
The Italian group Addiopizzo organizes and promotes businesses that refuse to pay the pizzo protection money to the mafia.
They’ve now extended this from brick-and-mortar businesses and recently announced an on-line Addiopizzo store.
(Alas, when I tried to use it they didn’t have shipping options to the United States, but you might be luckier if you live somewhere in the European Union.)
They encourage people to buy from non-mafia-tainted businesses as an action they call consumo critico (critical consumption) in order to make sure the profits from resistance exceed the risks.
Spanish war tax resisters created a video to showcase the little school (esquelita) they funded with redirected taxes.
The school helps children in a neglected school district, has a food pantry, and also offers Spanish language instruction for immigrants.
