Some historical and global examples of tax resistance → Spain → war tax resistance movement → Basque war tax resistance movement

Here’s some information about a war tax resistance campaign in Biscay, in Spain’s Basque region. It looks like it’s still getting off the ground, but they’re hitting the right notes:

No longer can we ignore our responsibility for preparing for wars through taxes to fund armies that we pay year after year.

They are asking people to withhold a percentage of their taxes and to redirect this money “to finance other alternatives and social struggles in solidarity, antimilitarist alternative projects that we offer to you here or others that each considers closer to their idea of what is necessary for real defense” [my, probably inept, translation]. On their site they include a sample letter that people can send in with their tax forms to explain their resistance and redirection.

The good news is that I’ve got a paying gig that’s keeping me very busy. The bad news is that I’ve been very busy, and haven’t been able to update The Picket Line as much as I’d like.

Today: a bunch of links I thought were interesting enough to share but that I’ve given up hope about being able to weave in with some original commentary.

• Michael Kinsley tactlessly wonders where the buck stops on the torture policy.
• The European Court of Human Rights has denied an attempt by The Peace Tax Seven to establish that a country’s unwillingness to allow people to legally refuse to pay for military spending is a violation of the rights and freedoms set out in the European Convention.
• Craig Hancock caught me on film at the San Francisco Tea Party rally. Twice.
• The number and percentage of Earned Income Tax Credit claims that are fraudulent — those in which the person claiming the credit doesn’t qualify for it — has increased exponentially in recent years, and the IRS hasn’t been able to keep up.
• Isaac Stanfield is reading David Beito’s Taxpayers in Revolt: Tax Resistance During the Great Depression and is blogging his observations along the way.
• Winslow Wheeler tells us what to expect from the upcoming military budget and what deceptions and spin you’ll be seeing in the news coverage about it.
• Beware of religions whose symbol is a man being tortured to death.
• Vargarquista at anarkismo.net writes about Smuggling as a strategy of tax resistance (Spanish). This is a particularly urgent subject in countries that rely more on sales and value-added taxes than on taxes like poll taxes and income taxes that individuals can more directly resist. If the “FairTax” scheme that some are pushing in the United States ever came to pass, this would become more of an issue in the U.S. as well. (“Smuggling” is my best translation of “el contrabando,” but the author seems to include a lot of different sorts of underground-economy activity under that term.)
• Here’s another article about the Basque country war tax resistance activists who have been making noise recently: Colectivos antimilitaristas y de mujeres promueven la objeción fiscal a los gastos militares en la campaña de IRPF (Antimilitarist and women’s groups to promote war tax resistance in income tax season)
• David John Marotta has an intriguing idea about manipulating the timing of traditional-to-Roth IRA transfers and recharacterizations so as to maximize your tax-free capital gains. It’s somewhat complex but very clever. Basically, you do a traditional-to-Roth conversion into several different Roth accounts using as many different investment strategies. Then file tax extensions so that you extend the amount of time in which you can recharacterize those conversions. Wait and see which of your new Roth accounts appreciate the most; keep those (if any) as Roth accounts in which the appreciation will remain tax free and pay the taxes on the principle now. For the rest, recharacterize them as traditional IRAs again, and avoid paying taxes on them now. Follow the link for details and a more leisurely and clearer explanation.
• Radley Balko at The Agitator reminds us of this section from Dubya’s address to the nation on March 17^th when he was launching the Iraq War:

  And all Iraqi military and civilian personnel should listen carefully to this warning: In any conflict, your fate will depend on your actions. Do not destroy oil wells, a source of wealth that belongs to the Iraqi people. Do not obey any command to use weapons of mass destruction against anyone, including the Iraqi people. War crimes will be prosecuted, war criminals will be punished and it will be no defense to say, “I was just following orders.”

  I love the smell of moral clarity in the morning.

From today’s DEIA.com comes this story of war tax resistance in the Basque country:

Left Bank Collectives in Bilbao denounce “alarming and exorbitant” military spending

Left Bank Collectives today denounced, in front of the seat of the Diputación Foral de Bizkaia in Bilbao, the current “alarming and exorbitant” military spending. During the protest, they submitted 20,000 pennies to satisfy part of the fine that was attached to two participants in the tax resistance campaign.

In this regard, representatives of the advisory center for women of Barakaldo and Sestao indicated that during this tax season, several hundred people have performed war tax resistance, and explained that “now that the deadline for submitting taxes passes, some people are finding that in the Diputación Foral de Bizkaia their current accounts are being seized in demand for partial payment of money withheld on the tax return that was destined for military spending.”

“For this reason, we submit part of the fine that the Diputación requires in pennies. In particular, 20,000 pennies were handed in to meet part of the fine that was attached this year to two participants in the tax resistance campaign,” they said.

With this “symbolic” action, they intend to denounce the current “alarming and exorbitant” military spending in our society, while “many [social] necessities” they find are “without coverage.”

Additionally, they protested that “military spending” at the level of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country is “at 1,966.69 million euros, 9 percent more in comparison to last year.”

There’s something kind of… I don’t know… petulant maybe? about the pay-your-bill-in-pennies idea that makes it unappealing to me, but I think I may just be being persnickety. The press love it, so it’s a good opportunity to get your point-of-view out. And the inconvenience it causes to the tax collector probably offsets somewhat the money received.

A couple of links that caught my eye:

Antimilitarists with carts of mala leche

• Antimilitarist activists and women’s groups call for war tax resistance in Bilbao (español) — a news report of a public demonstration designed to highlight the cost of military spending and encourage redirection. The demonstrators gave cartons of milk to passers-by, using the slogan “el gasto militar nos pone de mala leche” (military spending puts us in “bad milk” — a bad mood).
• CNNMoney reports on what it calls “an all-but-overlooked provision of the health reform law” that was recently signed into law that would dramatically expand the requirement for businesses to file 1099s. According to the article, “beginning in 2012 all companies will have to issue 1099 tax forms not just to contract workers but to any individual or corporation from which they buy more than $600 in goods or services in a tax year.” TaxGirl takes a closer look at the details. And here’s some commentary from Cato @ Liberty.

War tax resisters in Spain held a protest barbecue this week. (“Chorizada” derives from “chorizo” — “sausage” — but also means “swindle.”)

Barbecue against the “chorizada” of military spending

They encourage tax resistance with a “barbecue” in front of the Palacio Foral of the Provincial Council of Biscay to denounce the robbery that supports military spending.

This morning [8 June] representatives of different social collectives have gathered at the gates of the Palacio Foral of the Provincial Council of Biscay to conduct a symbolic action of war tax resistance.

Various persons dressed as cooks and soldiers have come forth to hold a barbecue at the gates of the Palacio Foral of the Provincial Council of Biscay. The main course was a “chorizada” with the aim of denouncing the theft of public resources that supports military spending. Also, they distributed pieces of fried sausage to those who passed by at the time along Bilbao’s main street.

This initiative is meant to promote war tax resistance in this year’s tax return. This symbolic format is meant to denounce the alarming and exorbitant military spending that exists in our society while many social necessities are found to be unmet, and even more so in a time of economic crisis like this: decreased social spending on health and education, evictions and increases in poverty, reduction in funds destined for social security. Military spending does not meet any social need and itself is a waste of resources that are needed now more than ever in these times of economic crisis.

Military Spending for Social Needs

The lack of resources to develop public services of quality (education, health, dependent care, social security) is more than evident. So it clearer than ever is the urgency of increasing public services with the money allocated to military spending.

One way of spreading the tax resistance message and of targeting potential tax resisters when they may be most receptive to that message is to propagandize them at the time and place when they make their tax payments.

This tactic is prominent in the modern war tax resistance movement, which often conducts demonstrations and other outreach activities on the day when income tax forms are due (for instance, around April 15^th in the U.S. nowadays).

Here are some examples from the modern U.S. war tax resistance movement:

• “pickets paraded before the internal revenue offices during the lunch hour today, carrying signs which read ‘Don’t pay your income tax. Refuse to finance World War Ⅲ.’ and ‘Your taxes pay for the H-bomb.’ ” (1950)
• “demonstrators picketed the office of the Third Internal Revenue District… [and] distributed leaflets saying that the ‘real crime in connection with the Bureau of Internal Revenue’ is not corruption but collection of money for ‘preparations for mass murder — for a third world war.’ ” (1952)

• 

• “vigiling with banners and leafletting will take place in addition to an alternative peace tax counseling table being set up on the fifth floor office of the IRS. …the protesters will be vigilling and distributing war tax resistance literature at the mobile IRS tax unit… They will be accompanied by ‘Little Boy,’ a replica of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The presence… will conclude with a short religious service inside the office.” (1977)
• “Farmer [Ralph] Dull drove a truck filled with 325 bushels of corn to the IRS office in Dayton, trying to pay his taxes with this harvest. ‘I didn’t think they would take it and they didn’t,’ said Dull, who was protesting the large percentage of tax dollars that is used for the U.S. military buildup.” (1982)
• “volunteers of the Centre County Campaign for a Nuclear Weapons Freeze distributed leaflets against military spending in front of the U.S. Post Office” (1987)
• “The Makarewiczs, along with about two dozen other people, protested outside a federal building in downtown St. Louis during Tax Day. They superimposed the photo of an Iraqi child they said was wounded by an American bomb over 1040 tax forms, which they placed in area libraries near the official tax forms and handed out on the street with literature explaining war tax resistance. ¶ They also attempted to deliver medical supplies for wounded Iraqi people in lieu of taxes, which they said the IRS politely refused. The group sang a song about Tax Day, with lyrics including, ‘For the cost of cluster bombs that maim and leave to bleed, our kids could have more teachers helping them to read.’ ” (2003)
• “I got to play the part of a suit-and-tied IRS agent, coming to the lectern to bring balance to the otherwise anti-government proceedings. I told the crowd: ‘You seem like politically-savvy people. But do you realize that you wouldn’t have anything to protest here today if it weren’t for the things the government funds with your money. Your taxes make protests like this possible! You should thank us! …cluster bombs don’t grow on trees, barbed wire doesn’t grow on trees! It takes your money to make all this possible. We can’t do it without you! We can’t do it without you! We can’t do it without you!’ (2004)
• “demonstrators will be hanging signs demanding No Money for War from the Burnside Bridge during the morning rush in Portland, OR; while others will be out in the evening until the midnight sharing coffee with last-minute filers at post offices in White Plains, NY, and Manchester, NH, and handing out flyers showing where income tax money goes.” (2005)
• “taxpayers at the main Baltimore City post office will find mailboxes labeled Halliburton, Bechtel, and Lockheed Martin to mail their checks straight to the [military contracting] corporations.” (2005)
• “In Portland, Oregon, war tax resisters braved the morning chill to hold up ‘Burma Shave’ style signs along the roadside for people to read as they passed by on tax day:

  “$ SIX BILLION A MONTH
  AND DEATH EVERY DAY
  DON’T LIKE THE WAR?
  THEN REFUSE TO PAY

  “INSTEAD OF BOMBS
  LET’S USE THE TAX
  TO FEED MORE KIDS
  OURS & IRAQ’S.”

  (2005)
• “Thirty activists from Eugene-Springfield forcefully protested the war in front of the main mail drop-off point for last minute Lane County tax filers. About five thousand cars with eight thousand people passed by our group at an average of 5 mph as we stood lined up for nearly six hours along their path, holding graphic images of the injured casualties of the war: children, men, women, and soldiers, bearing messages like, ‘Your tax dollars paid for this,’ or ‘It’s our money, stop the war.’ ” (2005)
• “from Chico, California, to Fort Collins, Colorado, and Louisville, Kentucky, to Cambridge Massachusetts, members of the public will be asked to take a ‘penny poll,’ by dropping coins into jars representing budget categories to show how they would like their tax money disbursed.” (2006)
• “Northern California War Tax Resistance went to the nearby post office to hold up banners, hand out flyers, and project a slide show of war tax resistance info for the traffic jam of last-minute tax filers. We were joined by… members of the National Treasury Employees Union who came to the post office fresh from a union meeting to protest the IRS’s plans to use private debt collection agencies to pursue delinquent taxes. ¶ At first it seemed a little awkward to be protesting alongside IRS agents who today were fighting to keep their jobs from being outsourced but tomorrow might be trying to seize our assets. But the ones who had no signs of their own to wave took extra ones from us and, to our delight, we had employees of the U.S. Treasury and their families protesting war taxes right along with us! (2006)
• “We really mis-calculated on the number of pie chart flyers we could have given out today. We had ordered 500 from the War Resisters League… They were all gone at both P.O.’s by 11 AM!” (2007)
• The Occupation Project in St. Louis, Missouri held up large orange “Caution Signs” at the post office on Tax Day: “The first sign will say: ‘Caution, War Tax Payment Zone’ The next will read ‘Pause before you Pay for’ And the then the following signs will read, ‘House to House Searches’ ‘Torture’ ‘Hundreds of Thousand of Refugees’ ‘Over 3200 U.S. Military Dead’ ‘Over 600,000 Iraqi Dead’ ” (2007)
• “Donning sackcloth and ashes, they entered the federal building shortly after it opened for the day. All acted in remembrance of the death and destruction wrought upon Iraq by the United States. They sang the names of Iraqi citizens and U.S. soldiers who’ve been killed during the war in and occupation of Iraq.” (2007)
• “About a half-dozen war tax protesters handed out $3,400 to community groups Saturday: It was their way of observing the federal tax day. … The noontime protest, in front of the U.S. Courthouse on Main Street, which also houses the post office, drew onlookers as well as representatives from the groups that received the money.” (2007)
• “Kevin Flaherty, a postal employee who ducked out in the afternoon for a smoke break, said it was encouraging to see the war tax resisters give away their money. ‘It’s great,’ he said, pointing out that it was Kevin Flaherty the citizen — not Kevin Flaherty the postal worker — who was supporting the group. ‘Sometimes when people are paying their taxes, I joke that somebody has to pay for the Iraq War. Maybe this will make them pay attention.’ ” (2008)
• “A large display board with options for people to place pennies in the categories they think tax money should be spent was available, and information on how the government actually spends it accompanied the poll. Amy Antonucci, member of SPR, helped provide the pennies to those wishing to weigh in, and said the goal of the event was to educate people on how their taxes are being spent. ‘It’s always interesting to find out what’s important to people,’ said Antonucci. Antonucci said it’s amazing how different the perspective is from residents as opposed to where the money is actually going.” (2008)
• “Protesters gathered at the IRS office… Banners, pie charts graphically depicting how tax monies are spent and hand painted ‘bibs’ that read ‘1 day of the Iraq War = 1 Yr Salaries For 12,478 teachers’ delivered the demonstrators’ message as they leafleted outside at the IRS. Overhead an electronic sign gave the current figures for the national debt — some 9 trillion dollars — and each family’s share, over $78,000.” (2008)
• “All I kept thinking about was just how many people oppose the war, wish the war wasn’t happening and don’t really see a clear way of doing anything about it. On tax day, everybody’s scrambling to pay the government and feeling like their hard earned dollars are being sopped up and wishing that that money went to roads and to schools and to healthcare. We were able to interject some information about where that money really goes — and to offer some alternatives… about how people can withdraw their own complicity.” (2008)
• “Eye-catching banners from Bread and Puppet Theater declared ‘Whose $,’ ‘In Whose Name?’ War tax resisters carried an oversize ‘check’ for $29,886, representing money they were refusing to pay to the IRS but giving to soup kitchens, youth programs, and to help Iraq war refugees and victims of [Hurricane] Katrina.” (2008)
• A group grabbed hundreds of 1040 forms from public places where such things are found (libraries, post offices, and the like), then printed ghostly images of coffins and of children wounded in war over the forms, and then replaced them where they had originally found them. (2009)
• “We pitched canopies, set up our casket replete with name of corporations that profit from arms production, and, undeterred by the pouring rain, bravely paraded through Saturday and Farmers Markets. We were led by mourners for the wars and war expenses that continue, followed by some in Fashion Resistance to Militarism costumes, signs and flags. We chanted, ‘We’d rather pay for schools!’ ‘We’d rather pay for farmers!’ and were cheered by bystanders.” (2011)
• “It was blessedly sunny on Tax Day. We set up in front of our downtown post office, where we think there have been tax day actions since the late 1960s. … We had our traditional penny poll and WRL flyers. Several local nonprofit groups sent representatives to accept some of our tax redirected money and promote their groups. … Labor singer Mark Ross regaled us with some great songs, we had an effective pitch for labor, and an open mike to an attentive if modest audience. At least four TV, radio stations, and newspapers interviewed us, so we were well-covered that evening and the next day.” (2011)

And here are a couple of additional examples:

• “Instances have been brought to the attention of officials,” said a New York Times article about “pro-German agents in the United States” in October, 1917, “where buyers [of World War Ⅰ ‘Liberty Bonds’] have been approached, apparently in a spirit of great friendship, and advised not to buy the bonds.”
• War tax resisters in Spain held a “chorizada,” or barbecue, in front of the Palacio Foral in Biscay, to protest the “chorizada,” or swindle, of military spending, passing out pieces of “chorizo” (sausage) to passers by while promoting war tax resistance and redirection.

Today, an international tax resistance round-up:

Greece

Tinos Today brings us a flashback to a tax resistance campaign that happened there in 1833. It didn’t seem to have ended well for the resisters: sixteen leaders were tried under martial law and given prison terms, and the local Bishop fled to Russia.

Iceland

Citizens of Iceland are required to register their religious affiliation with the government, which then doles out tax money proportionally to the various denominations. Thousands of citizens who are fed up with this government subsidy of religion are flocking to a newly-revived ancient Sumerian religion, Zuism, whose officials promise to refund all of their subsidy to the members of its church.

India

The Times of India story describes it as a “threatened” tax strike, but quotes in the article suggest that the strike has already begun. Residents of Jaivishwabharti Colony in Aurangabad have decided to withhold property tax in protest against the government’s failure to provide basic municipal services.

Mexico

Residents of Uruapan have started withholding municipal taxes and using the money to fund private Neighborhood Watch groups, in exasperation at the inability of law enforcement to protect them from criminals. Resisters are also refusing to pay certain utility rates.

Russia

A new tax on truckers in Russia has led to a strike that is unsettling the Putin regime.

South Africa

President Zuma abruptly fired his finance minister, whom many saw as the only person willing to apply brakes to Zuma’s profligate and corrupt spending. Investor confidence in the South African markets, debt, and currency took a big hit, and South African taxpayers began to consider cutting off Zuma at the source. The Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance, which had spearheaded an earlier campaign against road tolls, immediately announced that it was considering a broader tax revolt, but judging from how many people are tweeting tax refusal vows along with their #ZumaMustFall hashtags, the organization had better hurry if it wants to be at the head of the parade.

Spain

War tax resisters in Bilbao took to the military barracks to hang up signs denouncing military spending, including a ten-foot-tall human silhouette cutout labeled “890€” which is the amount the group estimates each person in Spain is forced to spend on the military annually. “This enormous amount of money comes from our taxes,” one explained, “so every year in Bilbao we open our tax resistance office where we give people the opportunity to disobey this injustice, refusing the payment of part of their taxes that are devoted to military spending and redirecting them to social ends.”

United States

Louis J. Adler didn’t like how he was treated at the Oregon Department of Revenue, so he set loose a flock of chickens in their office.

I’ve spent most of the month vacationing with my brother in South America. I had been a little concerned, but apparently the IRS hasn’t gotten around to having my passport revoked for non-payment of taxes yet.

I hope to have some big news to share with you soon, but until then here are some links of interest to tax resisters that have accumulated during my absence:

• Claire Wolfe, on the downhill slope of her recent book project Basics of Resistance, gives me a shout-out over at her Practical Freedomista blog:

  He has written a book on tax-resistance techniques.

  In addition to being a personal inspiration, he’s written about other tax resisters like Ammon Hennacy, who conducted a One-Man Revolution and Henry David Thoreau, who wasn’t the pacifist some imagine.

  Some of his writing is political and philosophical, like “The Roots of Political Authority.” Other entries on his blog are highly practical, like “A Post-Game Analysis of a Civil Disobedience Action.”

  If you’re looking for helpful information from a man who has walked the walk, David’s blog is a good place to start.

• Barakaldo Digital reports on the outreach actions of war tax resisters from Barakaldo, Biscay. “They have protested that the ‘diversion of public resources’ to military expenses or bank bailouts ‘translates into a town like Barakaldo, with high rates of unemployment, poverty, and precariousness, with many deficits in social services.’ ” The Spanish government, under pressure from the U.S., says it plans to double its defense spending so as to take on a higher percentage of the total NATO budget. Concerned Basque taxpayers are encouraged to contact their Office of Tax Resistance in Bilbao.
• Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) is a technique for applying economic pressure to states, usually from without, by trying through multiple avenues to deny them economic resources. The tactic was famously applied to apartheid South Africa, and is now enjoying a resurgence in the attempt to curb Israel’s oppressive policies towards Palestianians. But isn’t it overdue to BDS the U.S.?
• I speculated last month that Congress was passing a set of window-dressing IRS “reform” bills as a way to cover for a boost to the agency’s budget. Looks like I hit that nail on the head: “Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee released a spending bill on Wednesday that would increase the IRS budget, including new funds to help implement the GOP tax law.”
• Remember Google’s famous “Don’t Be Evil” corporate code of conduct? A dozen Google employees took it seriously, and resigned from the company when Google refused to stop working on a Pentagon program to use machine learning to better identify targets for military drones. Thousands of Google employees signed a letter begging the company to “commit to not weaponizing its technology” and to express this commitment by ending its Pentagon contract, to no avail.
• Attacks on tollgates and traffic ticket cameras continue worldwide:
  • French and Italian cameras disabled with paint, a German speed camera was swiped from under the nose of its operator and smashed on the pavement, and a Scottish camera was torched.
  • Swiss camera swiped, Welsh camera blockaded, English camera sabotaged, French cameras spray-painted or burned, Italian and Polish cameras ripped apart or twisted.
  • Tollgates forcibly opened to drivers on the Biju Expressway in India by members of the local bar association.

From El Salto Diario earlier this month (translation mine):

Military Spending

The tax resistance campaign in the Basque Autonomous Community has more adherents than in 2017

One of the new elements of the campaign against payment of taxes destined for military spending this year is a workshop in which those interested can make out their return on their own.

The number of people who resist taxes for military spending rises every year in the Basque Country. The Eragozpen Fiskala-Objeción Fiscal platform has accounted for at least as many disobedient tax returns as last year with almost a month still to go before the tax filing season ends. This is the third year that offices have been established in three Basque capitals to help people not to collaborate with the State’s war taxes.

“It reminds me of the assemblies [permanencias], during draft resistance [insumisión],” says Idoia Aldazabal about her experience in the Bilbao office. Then, the antimilitarist movement was focused on stopping mandatory military service. The objectors refused to take part, disobeying the laws. For one or two days a week, they met in some location to share their doubts, talk with other people about civil disobedience, give support, etc. “It’s a way to do politics, in a sense of togetherness, of welcome,” explained this activist.

“We work from non-violent direct action,” explains Arrate Vivar, who is also part of the conscientious objector movement. Vivar says that once the struggle to end the draft was complete, the antimilitarists could devote more energy to other paths to do away with the military, in this case by attacking the budget. The law does not have a category for tax resistance; it’s alegal, that is to say, an irregular but not illegal way to file. “It’s one of the few ways that we have to protest,” says Vivar in reference to the backlash on civil rights and political rights because of the Gag Law.

Last year they redirected some 100,000 euros to social projects by means of tax resistance. The figure is still far from the nearly €20 billion in military spending anticipated in the General State Budget from the Partido Popular. However, more and more people are rebelling in the face of this situation.

This year at least two people are preparing returns each weekend in the office, and they have nearly all shifts filled through the end of June. “We are, as they say, victims of our own success,” jokes Miguel Martínez, also a KEM-MOC activist. For the year to come one of the challenges facing the campaign is to meet the need for help from all the people who have been interested.

To meet this need, for the first time this year, a workshop was held in which the participants, with the help of one person, made out their own tax return including tax resistance. “This is more empowering and more participatory,” explained Martínez, who notes that the objective is for the people to become capable of resisting on their own, in order to free up the office so it can bring in new people. “If in the future 10,000 people do tax resistance in the Basque Country and we finish off the military, we won’t be able to attend to all of them,” he says with some wishful thinking.

War tax resisters in Bilbao, Biscay chained themselves to the gates of a military building, dressed in medical scrubs, to protest the government’s prioritization of military spending over healthcare during the pandemic. The activists have opened “Tax Resistance Offices” in Araba, Biscay, and Gipuzkoa in which they counsel Basque taxpayers about how to redirect their taxes from the government to useful and important projects.

The latest news on the tax resistance front:

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

Some tabs that have slid through my browser in recent days:

War Tax Resistance

• The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee is holding its biannual conference from April 29 through May 1 this year. It will be an on-line conference. You can find the conference schedule and information about how to register at the NWTRCC website.



• War tax resistance season has kicked off in Spain. Activists in Bilbao scaled the fence surrounding the Juan de Garay military barracks and hung banners reading (in Basque) “Military spending €43,000 million”/“#TaxResistance”. They have also opened up “Tax Objection Offices” in various parts of the country at which people can come to get counseling on how to resist their taxes effectively.
• At the NWTRCC blog, tax resister William E. Ruhaak shared his experience trying to get the government to acknowledge his carefully-drafted, personal “statement of conscience.” He fought a determined pro se legal battle to get the U.S. Tax Court to admit his statement of conscience as evidence in his tax appeal. He believes such a struggle is important in order to defend “The fundamental human right to publicly express an opinion or belief. And also the right to have a written expression of that belief included in government documentation for future reference.” The Court eventually gave in and added his statement as a piece of evidence, but seemingly only to humor him. The ruling in his case reads in part:

  We nevertheless admonish petitioner that instituting future proceedings before the Tax Court for the purpose of advancing frivolous arguments relating to his conscientious objection to the payment of Federal taxes is likely to result in the imposition of a significant section 6673 penalty against him. We recognized four decades ago that “there has been a long and undeviating parade of cases in this and other courts” rejecting the arguments of conscientious objectors who sought to avoid paying “the part of their taxes which they estimated to be attributable to military expenditures and to which they objected because of their religious, moral, and ethical objections to war and because of their claimed ‘rights’ under various constitutional provisions, the Nuremberg Principles, international law, and numerous international agreements and treaties.” Greenberg v. Commissioner, 73 T.C. 806, 810 (1980). At this late date, the Court will not condone the continued assertion of similar frivolous positions in meritless litigation that wastes both its own limited resources and those of the IRS.



• The War Resisters League has released its annual “Where Your Income Tax Money Really Goes” pie chart fliers, based on the Biden Administration’s proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2023. As Pentagon spending continues to rise, and yet more millions are being spent to arm Ukraine, pie chart aficionados may be surprised to see that the military-spending slice of the pie chart seems to have noticibly shrunk this year. Ed Hedemann and Ruth Benn, who do the research and composition for the pie chart, explain why. In part, the reason is that they are operating on the proposed budget, not whatever budget (and supplementary appropriations) Congress will eventually, tardily enact. The Biden Administration’s proposed budget is chockablock with a wish list of non-military spending that Congress will probably not enact. The absolute amount of military spending has risen substantially, but relatively it looks smaller because of all that extra wish list spending.
• The latest NWTRCC newsletter is out, with a preview of the upcoming tax filing season and other news from the American war tax resistance scene.

IRS Woes

• Nina Olson was the “National Taxpayer Advocate” from 2001–2019, a sort of independent ombudsman/oversight office within the IRS. She says the agency now is the worst she’s seen it. Excerpt:

  The only thing that comes close to the problems we’re seeing now at the Internal Revenue Service was in 1985, when the agency was rolling out some new technology—technology it’s still using today. Back then, the processing centers got so behind on their work that employees started hiding tax returns in closets and putting them in bags in the trash. Now it’s way worse, with the IRS, for the second year in a row, entering the filing season with a backlog of millions of not yet processed returns and pieces of correspondence.

• The current National Taxpayer Advocate released an amusing blog post about how pathetic and outdated the IRS processes for handling tax returns are. Excerpts:

  When I released my annual report in January, I said that paper is the IRS’s Kryptonite and the IRS is buried in it. The reason paper returns are so challenging is that the IRS still has not implemented technology to machine read them, so each digit on every paper return must be manually keystroked into IRS systems by an employee.

• The IRS has announced that it plans to hire thousands of new workers to try to deal with its paperwork backlog. But, in a tight labor market, and unable to offer competitive pay rates to compensate for the soul-crushing tedium ($15.61/hour anyone?), they’re finding it a challenge to turn those plans into personnel. The Washington Post took a look at a recent job fair the agency held.
• A while back, the U.S. government decided it would take some of the IRS’s stale inventory of unpaid tax debt out of its hands and turn those accounts over to private debt collection companies to see if they’d have any more luck collecting. That initiative “has brought in only about half as much money as projected, according to a new audit, while racking up costs the agency has not properly reported.”
• IRS employees don’t follow the rules on paid time-off, with a suspicious pattern of sick leave days allowing employees to make their own three-day weekends and extended holidays.

Miscellaneous

• The human battle against robot traffic ticket cameras continues, with cameras spray painted in France, chopped down in Italy, shot in England, rammed in Belgium, shattered in Spain, torched in France, belled in Australia, destroyed in France and Réunion, and stoned in Germay in recent weeks.
• Catalan separatist group / government-in-exile Council for the Republic is promoting a tax redirection campaign in which Catalan citizens withhold the portion of their taxes that would go to the Spanish monarchy or to its repression apparatus, and give that money instead to Front Republicà d’Acció Solidària or some such group working for Catalan independence.
• Doomed, quixotic, gonzo tax resister John McAfee is trying to get in the last word by means of a set of interviews he gave when he was on the run from the law. In them, he explains why he stopped paying. Excerpts:

  I’d just had enough. I’d paid $50 million in income tax over the years. I thought that was plenty. I hadn’t paid tax since I went to Belize, but technically, as an American citizen, even if you’re not living in the country, using the services and driving on the roads, you still have to file and pay 30% of your income to the United States. The only two countries in the world that enforce that rule are the United States and Eritrea! How [frigging] bizarre is that? Anyway, I just said, “I’m sorry. This is insane. I’m not doing this anymore.”

  [I]n America, income tax is in fact unconstitutional anyway. It was only ever created to fund the war effort in 1913, but that edict, like many others, was never extinguished after the need for it ceased to exist.

  I was telling people that I thought taxes were illegal, and if they also felt that they were illegal and/or unjust they should just stop paying, too. Not just that, I was showing them how to do it without getting caught.

  Sounds like McAfee drank the constitutionalist tax protester koolade.
• I stumbled somehow on the No Obligation Challenge website. It looks like a U.K. version of the familiar U.S. tax protester song-and-dance (“Did you know there is no law obligating you to pay council tax?”) but I was impressed by the quality of the graphic design and layout of the website, which is head and shoulders above what I usually see from that segment of the fringe.

Some tabs that have recently graced my browser:

• NWTRCC has posted a recap of this year’s “Tax Day” actions with photos of various protests, penny polls, and redirection ceremonies around the United States.
• The American Prospect published an editorial by Robert Kuttner recommending that Democrats respond with mass tax refusal to the next presidential election if it is won by fraud by the Republican candidate.
• A group of towns surrounding Barcelona have organized a tax refusal campaign aimed at a “Barcelona Metropolitan Area” tax that they say benefits city residents at their expense. Tax receipts are down by about 25% during the (so far) three-year strike.
• Taxpayers owed considerably more money than usual when they filed their income taxes this year — hundreds of billions more. And this is contributing to a record amount of income tax collection — both in terms of the raw amount, and in terms of the percent of GDP. This is probably because of a surge in capital gains last year (from which taxes are not withheld over the course of the year) but may be also because much of the recent increases in wealth have gone to people in higher tax brackets. This increase in the amount owed may cause a little extra “sticker shock” among affected taxpayers. On the other hand, refunds were also higher than usual this year, so I suppose it could even-out, attitudes-wise.
• Spanish war tax resisters have been ramping up their activity as the Ukraine war prompts ever more military spending in Europe. In the Basque Country, for example, activists have set up offices of war tax resistance in Donostia, Gasteiz, and Bilbao to help people through the process of resistance and redirection.
• Ruth Benn of NWTRCC shared her story of trying to access her IRS account on-line. The IRS is trying to let taxpayers access their information on-line so that the agency can take some pressure off their grievously swamped phone service lines. They’re also extra-sensitive to security issues, both because taxpayer account information can be private and sensitive, and because international fraudsters use such information to siphon money from the U.S. treasury. But at the same time, the steps they take to tighten security are frustrating and user-hostile (as Benn found), and raise the hackles of privacy advocates. This has put them in a tight spot, and the solutions they’ve come up with don’t seem to be solving their problem while at the same time they’re causing frustration for everyone involved.
• There’s a new NWTRCC newsletter out.