How you can resist funding the government → about the IRS and U.S. tax law/policy → how the government deals with tax resisters → seizure of inheritances

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

• The radical personal finance podcast has been broadcasting some very interesting material lately, including
  • an extensive interview with Jacob Lund Fisker of Early Retirement Extreme
  • what can we learn about finance from dumpster divers, freegans, vagabonds, and hobos?
• Leanne Brown has published Good and Cheap: A SNAP Cookbook — a handsome guide to cooking tasty, nutritious meals on a budget — that’s available for free on-line.
• Contrepoints has an interesting recap of the original bonnets rouges of Brittany, from 1675 (in French).
• Cindy Sheehan puts in another good word for war tax resistance at her blog: “Petitions, Marches, and Rallies, Oh My!” — “I had a showdown with the IRS and the IRS was the one that blinked. I am not a legal expert or expert on WTR, but it’s lucky that I know some people who are and I also know that they would be happy to answer any questions you have. I think the time has long passed that we just give lip service, or shoe leather to what we believe in. It’s time to take a stand. If you oppose war, why do you pay for it?”
• At his Forbes blog, Peter J. Reilly reminds people to consider whether their heirs have tax debts before designating them as beneficiaries (“Don’t Leave Money To Children Buried Under IRS Liens”).
• American conservative radio show host Jason Lewis walked off the air a few days back after announcing that he would be “going Galt” to avoid paying taxes (or, I suspect, mostly to publicize his new project: galt.io).

There’s a new National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee newsletter out, with content including:

• Lincoln Rice considers war tax redirection as a form of slavery reparations
• Ruth Benn examines the implications of inheritances for war tax resisters
• Tax law and policy changes:
  • lock-in letters that interfere with resisters’ who want to block paycheck withholding
  • the new W-4 forms that have come out to conform to the new tax law
  • standard deduction amounts for the 2019 tax year
  • the toll of ongoing IRS impersonation scams
  • the recent drastic collapse of IRS enforcement effort against non-filers and non-payers
• Some international news of resisters from Spain and Turkish Cyprus
• A profile of NWTRCC’s new outreach consultant, Chrissy Kirchhoefer

In other news:

• IRS employees got back to work after the “shutdown” and found that over 5,000,000 letters had piled up on their desks while they were away.
• TaxProf Blog gives a fascinating overview of the bureaucratic morass the IRS slogs through even on a good day, when it’s not shut down. There are multiple oversight bodies and committees all demanding that the agency do this or that, and obsolete laws demanding that it collect irrelevant data. It’s a wonder they can get anything done.