Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
Spain →
anti-bullfighting tax resistance movement →
Rubén Pérez
A couple of modern tax resistance outliers:
Harry Carless has stopped paying a portion of his council tax in a London suburb.
He’s deducted the part of his tax that pays for the police because, three times now, his car has been stolen, and the police have done nothing about it.
He was dragged into court, but the judge wouldn’t hear his argument:
“The issue of you having a car stolen is not relevant to the matters we are dealing with this afternoon.”
Mr. Carless said:
“My summons ordered me to appear in court to explain the reasons why I have not paid this amount.
Do I not get the chance to do this?”
Mr. Adams said:
“It is unfortunate and we sympathise with you but it’s not due cause to not pay.
If everyone who was a victim of crime refused to pay taxes there would be complete anarchy.”
A group of animal rights activists in Padrón, Spain, is threatening tax resistance against a government that tolerates bullfighting while at the same time neglecting its legal obligations to protect animal welfare.
[Rubén] Pérez explains that the tax disobedience or resistance is a protest technique used when there is a disagreement with the nature of the entity collecting the taxes or the purposes for which the money will go, and that “it’s a strategy linked to reasons of conscience such as the opposition to bullfighting.”
More on the anti-bullfighting tax resisters from Padrón.
Rubén Pérez, a spokesperson for the resisters, says that the city has at the same time claimed that it doesn’t have enough money in the budget to comply with animal welfare laws, but that it does have enough money to organize and fund an annual bullfighting festival.
“The city of Padrón has no moral authority to force citizens to pay taxes when it does not comply with animal protection and animal welfare laws.”
Cindy Sheehan reminds anti-war taxpayers that you get what you pay for, and there’s no sense in getting shocked when the troops you “support” do what supported troops do.
Then she suggests an alternative:
I haven’t paid my income taxes since my son was killed in Iraq in 2004.
I am ashamed that I ever paid taxes to fund the crimes of this Empire.
I started paying taxes around and this Empire was embroiled in crimes then as it was before and has been ever since.
Get this, in , Exxon, a multi-national billion-dollar crime syndicate paid zero dollars in income taxes!
Some years since , I have made enough to be required to file, most years my reportable income has been way below the filing level.
I rarely even receive letters from the IRS.
However, I would rather go to prison than know that one of my dollars went to pay for the murder, torture, false imprisonment, or oppression of one person here or abroad.
Think of it this way — what if St. Obama himself walked up to you and asked you to write him a check for two-grand so he could have money to buy a water board, or other torture apparatus, or for bullets, or for one square inch of a bomber?
Would you do it?
Some of you might, but most of you wouldn’t.
There are many ways to be war tax resisters and there are a handful of us doing it.
If more of us who really believed in peaceful conflict resolution did it that would be a far more effective and more courageous way of opposing this Empire than marching in circles.
Growing numbers of people and groups in Galicia who prefer social to military spending
The budget of the Defense Department was €18,181 million, a quantity that thousands of people around the State considered not only exorbitant, but also immoral and useless, a sentiment that they testified to in their income tax returns by exercising war tax resistance (OFGM) in increasing numbers since the 1980s in Spain and more noticeably in the last few years with the economic crisis.
More than 4,000 taxpayers resorted last year to this form of active resistance to military spending in which, basically, each one deducts from their taxes a portion corresponding to military spending and invests this portion in social, environmental, or humanitarian causes.
“With OFGM we do not promote an ‘a la carte’ tax return as many people say,” explained Ignacio Ruibal, a tax resister for eight years, according to reports of the Vigo CGT, one of the groups that promotes this type of action.
“We use a tool of civil disobedience,” he adds.
“Publicly and collectively we break a law that we consider unjust — military spending — in order to transcend our social level and we show solidarity with other social projects to which we choose to direct our funds.”
Boycott of other items
In Galicia more than 200 tax resisters to these and other spending items were registered , as the refusal is more numerous than against military spending, but also extends to boycotting spending for the Catholic Church (the State allocates part of its budget to this entity through its related associations and collectively by determining the number of the faithful registered via baptism), bullfights, and other spending.
Groups like CNT, CGT, CUT, or CIG-Mocidade, and platforms like Espazo Aberto Antimilitarista de Vigo report on their existence and on how to carry them out, and propose every year certain projects and social organizations around the world for tax redirection.
In this way, the World March of Women in Galicia has spent years urging the redirection of funds to groups of women victims of armed conflicts in the ex-Yugoslavia, Israel, Palestine, Colombia, Congo, Rwanda, Guatemala…
, Galicia Mellor Sen Touradas [“Galicia, better without bullfights”] called not only for tax resistance in order not to fund bullfights, but for tax rebellion against the city council of Padrón, A Coruña, for financing the national fiesta with public funds, arguing that the council “does not have moral authority to force the payment of taxes, when it does not comply with the legislation for the protection and welfare of animals which for 17 years running was never fulfilled by the municipality,” as spokesman Rubén Pérez described this pressure tactic, asking his neighbors to rebel at municipal tax time and to submit complaints in the local registry.
For its part, the Gallacian sections of Ecologists in Action / Association for the Taxation of Financial Transaction for the Aid of Citizens, members of the “Who owes whom?” campaign, and InspirAction came together in tax resistance against the heart of of the federal government’s economic crisis measures, submitting tax returns in which they subtracted €84 in protest against the federal government’s economic crisis measures that qualified as “socially and environmentally regressive” and redirecting this to specific humanitarian associations.
“The process is very simple,” explained Almudena Trillo of Cangas de Morrazo, member of the state platform of the Conscientious Objection Movement: “In your tax return, in the section for tax deductions, cross out one of the unused boxes, writing above ‘for war tax resistance’ and the disputed amount.”
You can choose the amount, but there are different possibilities, he continued: “A percentage, that of 4.32% is the official Defense Department budget, or 11.64% for total military spending.”
Also you can retain €84, “a figure chosen symbolically in protest of the 84 poorest countries based on their external debt,” said Trillo, “or any other symbolic amount — one euro or 84 cents — the important thing is to resist,” he insisted.
Finally, those who do not owe taxes and those who do not have to file can join the protest by attaching a statement in the form of a letter demanding the recognition of a right to conscientious objection to military spending.
