You can order it directly from the publisher at this link (I get a bigger cut that way), or, if you’re an Amazon fan or have a gift certificate there or something, you can also order from them (I hope to have a Kindle version up on Amazon soon as well).
The news will start to trickle out to the bookselling world in general over the next weeks, so you can even order it from your favorite brick-and-mortar bookstore if you want.
If you’ve been reading The Picket Line for a while, or if you’ve had a chance to dig through the archives here, you’ll know that I’ve been putting in a nutty amount of time and effort over the past decade to uncover the history of grassroots tax rebellion and to find out what makes it work.
In this book I distill what I discovered and present it in a form that is meant to be vivid and concrete and of direct practical help to the tax resistance campaigns of today and tomorrow.
From here out, thanks to this book, tax resistance campaigns will have a leg up — they’ll be able to quickly learn from the lessons of history to make their efforts more successful.
My new book has gotten a little more attention here and there:
Midwest Book Review gave its thumbs-up:
Everyone dislikes paying taxes, but America has the highest voluntary tax payer percentage of any industrialized western nation.
This is despite widespread inequalities and complexities of our local, state, and federal tax laws and regulations.
But even the most conscientious and law-abiding citizen balks at paying unfair and unwarranted taxes for which they feel they are not legally liable.
That’s the purpose behind 99 Tactics of Successful Tax Resistance Campaigns, an informed and informative compendium of information that begins with identifying the varieties of tax resisters, along with the diverse tactics, strategies, and methods such tax resisters employ.
Author David Gross goes on to cover governmental countermeasures to tax resistance, resistance techniques, the role of education and public relations in tax resistance, and what successful tax resistance measures are available.
Accessible to non-specialist general readers, enhanced with copious Notes and a comprehensive index, 99 Tactics of Successful Tax Resistance Campaigns is highly recommended reading for anyone seeking to redress a tax grievance of their own.
V. Schneider’s take on the ramifications of the Affordable Care Act for war tax resisters.
I’ve shared some of my experiences with the Act’s provisions as a low-income, return-filing resister here at The Picket Line.
Ms. Schneider writes about the challenges of the Act from the perspective of a resister who does not file returns, and therefore has no clear way of proving that she qualifies for the Act’s insurance subsidies.
Schneider has some helpful recommendations for non-filling resisters who cannot afford non-subsidised insurance.
Some notes on the new federal standard deduction and personal exemption amounts for the upcoming tax year, on the new IRS program that allows you to download some of the files the agency keeps on you, on a new website that keeps track of the legal aspects of alternative currencies, and on the troubles of the increasingly overwhelmed and under-budgeted IRS.
Some war tax resistance news, including a report of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day war tax resistance display at a recent anti nuclear weapons protest, a mention of some recent honors given to war tax resisters Robin Harper and Joanne Sheehan, and a brief note on the conviction and jailing of Quaker war tax resister Joseph Olejak.
You can find more about the Olejak case in this recent article from the Times-Union.
Olejak is spending several consecutive weekends in prison, and has agreed (in a plea bargain) to partially and incrementally pay the $242,684 the IRS says he owes since he stopped paying in .
The group is looking for people who want to serve on its Administrative Committee.
The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund — which helps to reimburse any penalties and interest seized from a war tax resister by the government — is now under new management.
The next NWTRCC national gathering is scheduled for and will be held in San Diego, California.
Robin Harper reflects on the development of “redirection” as a war tax resistance tactic: “I think it is fair to say that the essence and origins of the very widespread practice today of WTRs conscientiously redirecting their refused taxes into channels of constructive activism, community building, and addressing human needs, can be traced to [his own case in] .”
The book is a whole lot more than a list of tactics.
This reviewer thinks the publisher chose a misleading title.
The book is not a “cookie-cutter” shopping list of tactics alone.
It is a book that digs deeply into every aspect of tax resistance and how that’s related to a life of learning and practicing nonviolence.
David Gross has put together a helpful compendium of tax resistance tactics.
It is a work that I found stimulating and rewarding to read.
From here he digresses into a discussion about the tension he feels between being a conscientious objector to much of what the federal government does in its budget, and yet feeling supportive of a strong public sector in the abstract and seeing the federal budget as an imperfect incarnation of this.
And so as I read Gross’s book, I find myself in this tension: I do like to pay taxes.
A free, virtuous, and flourishing society depends upon a measure of cooperative public activity, and we should support that.
And yet I do not like to pay taxes that actually undermine a free and just society, those that fuel the destruction of civilization.
Sorting out which is which is an important dialogue.
This book only indirectly treats that larger moral question, but what it does do very well is catalog methods for removing the support of injustice and destruction.
How and when to use these tactics will depend very much on our deeper individual and collective discernment, but I found that even this catalog of action stimulates and informs the larger search for truth.
Gross speaks to all forms of tax resistance.
He studies tax resistance around the world and throughout history.
His primary topics are war and militarism, but he also addresses tax resistance focused on other concerns — persecution of the women’s suffrage movement, racism, colonialism, and other forms of oppression and intimidation.
There is considerable attention given to Quakers, but we read also about the Amish, the Mennonites, and other religious groups.
Inspiration and insight come from examining Roman-occupied Judaea, Gandhian nonviolence and the Indian independence movement, women’s suffrage movements in Great Britain and the United States, historical labor movements, poll tax resistance, the American Revolution and the Whiskey Rebellion, as well as the actions of contemporary war tax resisters.
…for less than $20 in print or less than $10 in electronic form, the book is a bargain for anyone wanting to do serious work on putting faith into practice in the area of tax resistance.
This work and an earlier volume by Gross — American Quaker War Tax Resistance (Second Edition) — are both useful additions to the meetinghouse library.
I have released my book 99 Tactics of Successful Tax Resistance Campaigns as a free, on-line e-book.
I updated it with some examples from campaigns that erupted since its original publication.
I also changed the title to the snappier Tax Strike Tactics.
A tax resistance campaign will be more successful if it takes advantage of the rich resources history provides.
But there are better and worse ways to go about that.
Superficial fetishization of the theatrical residue of history gets you a renaissance faire, not a successful activist movement.
There are four common varieties of tax resister with distinct goals.
Learn what to do if your campaign contains resisters of multiple varieties who, as a result, may find it hard to agree on tactics.
As an example of such a conundrum, consider the modern American war tax resistance movement, which is challenged by containing resisters of all four varieties.
Your tax resistance campaign is less likely to succeed if it limits itself to tax resistance.
To be most successful, your campaign must deploy an appropriate and effective set of tactics on a number of additional fronts.
You also must decide whether to make a commitment to nonviolence.
Beware of the temptations to petulant protest or to make a fetish out of getting arrested, which can distract a campaign from its proper goals.
The heart of a tax resistance campaign is its resisters.
A successful campaign encourages, supports, and sustains these resisters, and facilitates their resistance.
Tactics in this category are also opportunities for people who are sympathetic to the campaign but who are unable to resist paying taxes themselves.
People who cannot resist taxes directly can support those who can and do.
For many tax resistance campaigns there is strength in numbers.
When enough people resist, the government’s ability either to fight back or to ignore the problem falters.
Successful tax resistance campaigns make it easier for people to begin resisting, and they also develop ways to reduce attrition in the movement.
Governments combat tax resisters and tax resistance campaigns with a variety of weapons.
They may arrest and detain resisters, seize and sell their property, declare them outlaws, exile them, and so forth.
Your resistance campaign should anticipate that as it becomes more successful, the government will use increasingly fierce and desperate methods to fight back—and you should be prepared to adopt tactics that limit the effectiveness of these countermeasures.
When you introduce new resistance techniques, you stay one step ahead of government countermeasures, you keep your movement from growing stale and becoming “yesterday’s news,” and you bring in new resisters who find the new techniques more appealing or practical than the old ones.
Communicating well can be crucial to the success of your campaign.
Evaluate your tactics with an eye not only to their primary effects, but also to the message they send.
In some cases, the message is the primary effect of the tactic (even when this is not what you had in mind).
Good communication helps you recruit resisters and blunts the effects of the government’s countermeasures.
It can also help your campaign develop the support and sympathy of non-participants, and even of former antagonists.
What does victory look like?
In some tax resistance campaigns, it seems obvious: perhaps it is the abolition of an odious tax, or the overthrow of the government, or the recognition of the rights of the disenfranchised, or a particular change in state policy.
But in some cases it is not so obvious, and in other cases the obvious answer isn’t necessarily the best one.
There are even campaigns in which the resisters don’t seem to have given much thought to victory at all—as though they were resigned to being a perpetual opposition movement.
Perhaps, contrary to what the organizers of the world are always telling us, the key to curing society’s ills is not necessarily to organize at all.
You don’t need to build a majority, or a critical mass, or a disciplined revolutionary vanguard.
Just get your own house in order and commit yourself to your own one-person revolution—that’s the most crucial, practical, and effective thing you can be doing right now.
So while the previous chapters have concentrated on tactics that help tax resistance movements succeed, this chapter will consider how tax resisters can succeed even without being part of a movement.
Now it’s time to apply what you’ve learned to strengthen your own tax resistance campaign.
In this exercise, you’ll methodically and carefully examine your campaign, looking at its strengths, its weaknesses, its vulnerabilities, and its potential.
You’ll then choose some new tactics to strengthen your campaign on the fronts where it is weakest or most vulnerable.
