Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
Spain →
war tax resistance movement
Pepe Beúnza pioneered conscientious objection to military service in Spain in .
He was recently interviewed for el Periódico.
Excerpts [my translation]:
On , Pepe Beúnza, 23, was
tried by a military court in Valencia for refusing to perform military
service, then mandatory. He was sentenced to a year of imprisonment in a
punishment battalion in the Sahara.…
There are many things to object to.
Yes. Not to accept military propaganda, nor military expenditures. That
is to say, tax resistance. Now the army, which lacks all prestige, and
needs to find soldiers, searches for young people. Also the schools must
object.
Who must we obey?
Our own consciences, with responsibility. A person must have dignity,
responsibility, and freedom. This is what it is to be human.
Here’s some more information about the war tax resistance campaign in Spain, which seems to have been getting a lot of press lately:
Start of the 2009 war tax resistance campaign — “The Education for Peace collective has started to promote the 2009 war tax resistance campaign in La Rioja by means of distributing 400 pamphlets and calling a meeting to explain the reasons behind the initiative. The group, which works to promote a culture of peace, explains that this campaign of ‘pure disobedience’ consists of expressing a disposition of non-collaboration with the state in the cost of preparing for war and maintaining a military establishment: ‘active disobedience at the moment of filing an income tax statement.’ ”
Campaign of War Tax Resistance — “Only ten years ago, conscientious objectors demonstrated that it is possible, through nonviolent action, to resist the impositions of the military. With active civil disobedience they managed to defeat the army and mandatory military service had to vanish. But obligatory financial military service remains. Still we are required to contribute with our taxes to sustaining these immense machines of destruction and death that is the military. Be conscious of the responsibility that we have, and in virtue of this, resist the idea that the things are as they are and that we cannot do anything to change them.”
A new article about war tax resistance in Spain shows how similar the situation is there to in the United States, in many ways.
The article begins by promoting the idea of war tax resistance and redirection of a percentage of due taxes equal to the military budget to more socially-responsible projects.
It then tries to calculate that percentage, complaining that the official figures understate the real expenses by about half:
Because along with NATO, military expenses
include veterans benefits, the national guard (included in the budget of the
Department of the Interior), and military
R &
D, among others. If, in addition, we add the percent of the interest
on the national debt that corresponds to military expenses, in Spain by
the figure reached €18,609.60 million for
military spending. Even more, if we look closer still, this figure should
increase by approximately 15%, the usual variation between the initial
military budget and the eventual spending.…
For their organized redirection campaign, they have chosen La’Onf, which is trying to educate about, organize, and promote nonviolent conflict resolution strategies and nonviolent resistance techniques in Iraq.
They claim that last year, 874 participants redirected €85,253.86 in this way.
The comments in response to the article also seem very familiar.
One commenter argues that if you redirect your taxes there’s no reason to expect that the government will lower military spending — if there’s a shortfall, they’ll probably just cut social spending.
Also, why are they refusing the income tax, a progressive tax, instead of some regressive tax like the value-added tax?
Also, isn’t conscientious tax resistance a reactionary, assertion of individual conscience over the public good?
After all, couldn’t right-wingers object to welfare benefits and patriotically redirect their their taxes to the military using the same logic?
Everything seems familiar, though the accent is different.
It’s a little like landing in Barcelona and stopping in at a Starbucks.
I have read, with some surprise, an article published on the Rebelión website and signed by Ricardo Rodríguez — Critique of Tax Resistance.
In said paper is found a broad (but intended to be detailed) and harsh critique of this political tactic.
It is not the first time that people — a priori, and not based on our ideas and practices — have made such fratricidal criticisms, and coincidentally a little conveniently at the time of year during which the campaign is made, and of course Ricardo Rodríguez is not the first person to raise these same arguments.
Although Rodríguez says there exist different ways to do “tax resistance,” as one who has spent years working on this within the Antimilitarist Movement, I will try to defend the particular form which we call “war tax resistance” by responding to the criticisms made.
I will try to summarize in five points the principal criticisms that emerge from Rodríguez’s long paper:
Tax Resistance is elitist and reactionary, inasmuch as it is proposed in one of two formulas: a taxpayer redirects a particular percentage of his taxes, such that one who has more money has “freed himself from paying the Treasury more money,” “the right to object increases in proportion to the wealth of the taxpayer.”
That, he indicates, is a “strange notion of economic justice to be promoted by groups on the left.”
On the other hand, the most precarious citizens who are not obligated to file, or whose tax return results in “a refund,” etc. become unable to effectively practice it.
“Employers, but not the employees” may object, which makes it a privilege and an absurdity insomuch as these elites are not going to be particularly interested in disarmament or in other social improvements.
The redirection of money that is to be done via Tax Resistance does not work toward the pursued goal.
The state will not apply this reduction in revenue to the ends proposed by the resisters, but to whatever it finds convenient.
And in the present context, this will be most likely to rebound negatively on expenses for social security and not on those for the military, banks, etc. In fact, we could be contributing to worsening conditions of the least advantaged sectors of society.
Following the previous argument is put forward as a possible response that “still, in any case the money will overflow to social necessities, since it is to this type of destination that the resisters redirect,” and he shoots this down with the argument that such a thing represents “a transfer of resources from free, public, universal services to private entities,” to “a private safety net,” to “the charity of good Samaritans” who usurp the right that we have to receive such benefit from the “powers that be.”
The supposed symbolic function of Tax Resistance to serve as a tool to transform consciences is stopped in its tracks.
The results of the campaign speak for themselves.
Moreover, the campaign is only known thanks to the efforts of its own promoters.
The letters sent to the Tax Agency managers, he affirms, are completely lacking in political significance.
The campaign generates an ideology with neoliberal resonance: it proposes that the payment of taxes can be something decided by individuals and not by the collective “necessity” determined by the “state” or by some type of authority that looks out for the common interest.
Such a thing is very dangerous as from it could derive the right of each individual to oppose contributing to whatever he is not in agreement with, putting the question of financial contributions to the common good on a somewhat objectively slippery slope (do we accept the right of pro-lifers to object to health spending, or Emilio Botín to social policies?).
I would very much like to talk about the base assumptions underlying these questions in the article from Ricardo Rodríguez, such as the nervousness that freedom understood as an individual right appears to produce in him, his faith — that I deduce from reading between the lines — in the “democratic centralism in the Leninist style” as a model of organizing collective decision-making, his commitment to state institutions as the supreme guarantee of the public good and the ultimate manager of of the rights that they permit, or his antagonism to “Conscientious Objection,” which he ends up fancying as reducing to a species of individual moral scruple, ignoring or wanting to ignore everything about the political, public, and transformative dimensions.
However I will not enlarge unnecessarily on this already very extensive response, and I will limit myself to commenting on the arguments related to the topic under debate.
From reading Rodríguez’s text it can be deduced that he does not speak from hearsay and possesses plenty of knowledge with respect to the mechanics of Tax Resistance and of the aspirations pursued by the entities that promote it.
However there are evidently also important lacunæ and deficits of focus.
War Tax Resistance, which is the concrete example to which I will refer, is not an end in itself, nor does it intend to detract from antimilitarist work (much less the anti-imperialism of which Rodríguez speaks), nor do those who promote it proclaim it to be the definitive or unimprovable tool.
In fact most of the groups that promote it emerged from and participate in the larger antimilitarist/pacifist movement, working for decades simultaneously on other types of work such as what was, back in the day, Draft Resistance, promotion of a curriculum for peace education, direct action against military installations, counter-propaganda, etc., etc. In reality, it is not even a campaign in and of itself, but is part of the larger work we call “Campaign against Military Spending” and which includes more time, resources, and actions each year.
The immediate and realistic object of this proposal is not to overthrow the military by means of the method of depriving it of financial resources.
Rodríguez should not imagine us to be so naïve.
We would like that such a thing could be, but for now it suits us to avail ourselves of this gesture — that, as noted, is more symbolic than effective today — in order to amplify our protest, that is against military spending, but also against the institution that is dedicated to this spending, and to its use at the service of certain interests that in the final analysis are those of the capitalist economic system.
Yes, Rodríguez, with this work, to your eyes elitist, reactionary, neoliberal, and — why not say it?
— counterrevolutionary, “politically infantile” and petit-bourgeois, we try, just like you, to combat and transform the capitalist system.
War Tax Resistance helps very many people every year — fewer than we would like but more than what would be if we were not to put forth the effort — become aware of the fact of the matter of militarism in this society and to learn concrete data concerning its importance and omnipresence, its causes and consequences… and in particular data about the way the public treasury dedicates money to these purposes and not to others.
Rodríguez says (point 1) that tax resistance is elitist and reactionary: “with the most spending power, more money can be diverted…” That is one way of looking at it, but you must know that the how-much-money question is the least important in the campaign.
The truth is that we hardly pay attention to the amount of money that is redirected each year.
What interests us is the number of resisters.
We are just as happy if they have redirected a percentage of their tax, or the particular amount of 84 euros, or half a euro, or… a resistance of three thousand euros (which there is) has no more political value than one of ten cents.
Besides being mistaken on this question, it is possible to perform War Tax Resistance, and so we recommend, when your tax return results in a refund, when your tax is zero, or when one does not legally need to file.
It is not true that poor and unemployed people cannot participate, in fact they do participate according to most resisters.
On the contrary, and as is natural, there isn’t much participation from “the elites.”
With respect to the second argument (point 2), that the state will subtract the money that it fails to collect from the budget for social purposes, it is but the subjective presumption of Rodríguez.
In any case, people who make this gesture add force to their communication so that the politicians and the rest of society will be conscious of our desire that this money not be financing armies, armaments, and wars.
If such a demand is ignored, the responsibility clearly has to be imputed to those who disobey the popular mandate and not to us, as Rodríguez aims to accuse.
And effectively — and this is a question of political strategy — the bureaucracies in service to the System may, as is often the case in other times and areas, ignore the citizens’ desires and demands and act illegitimately, but everything has its limit.
I am convinced that in this case the limit is quantitative.
If resisters represent a small percentage of the population, they may amount to nothing, but at the moment when they present a significant figure, it will not be so easy to deal with them.
The approaches that I have outlined in point 3 look to me a bit out of place as they seem to reflect a very particular political ideology.
There is no time to waste in questioning here the faith of eurocommunists and some Leninist groups in the “Welfare State” and in the “State as guarantor of services, rights, and liberties,” and diametrically opposite, in a Manichean way, is all that is not “State,” conceived of as “privatization, Samaritanism” and other such monsters.
It is a point of view that seems to me tendentious and reductionist.
To compare solidarity organizations that receive money from War Tax Resistance with capitalist enterprises in search of profits and without social utility, I believe is totally excessive, and to proclaim that such social assistance provided by the state will be better than any alternative, seems the same.
In fourth place, according to my summary, Rodríguez questions the extent of Tax Resistance.
Here I must submit to reason.
Certainly it is only the efforts of the promoting groups that gives part of society access to the political message that is hoped to transmit.
Unfortunately, the mass media tend to ignore the campaign, with some honorable exceptions.
Indeed, Rodríguez proposes alternative actions such as gathering before the tax agency doors at the beginning of tax season, actions for that matter — as he acknowledges — we are accustomed to do.
Perhaps it is our responsibility that the work of War Tax Resistance has a limited scope.
But even if it is a solid argument against it, I don’t believe that this alone can dismiss it.
There are struggles that last a long time in bearing fruit; and while they go on with no significant results they come to affect the way many people see things, and, in this case, as I say all the time, this is no more than a part of a larger work, it’s complementary.
However, as things are, and to look at it from another point of view: what revolutionary political struggle today is making an end of the System?
That would not lead us to come to the conclusion that none of those existing have validity and sense.
Finally, the fifth point of the summary brings us to a disquisition of an ethico-political sort.
The principal determinant of the actions of each of us is what: individual conscience or collective agreement?
Rodríguez sticks with the second; me with the first.
And in fact I believe that the collective agreements must be fabricated, and then applied, by means of the free consent of personal choice and not some type of victory of majorities over minorities.
Because being the majority is not synonymous with being right, and because our individual conscience — this concept that appears to have so little credit with Rodríguez — is that which makes us people and not pieces of machinery.
Neither do we agree in the value we give to the institution of the State as administrator and arbitrator of rights.
That’s why he didn’t issue, for my part, enough skepticism at this time about the possibility of people of different ideologies refusing to pay taxes.
In the transformative and revolutionary horizon, which unfortunately for now we are far from as Rodríguez points out, until a society without the State, without accumulation of power or of wealth, in which people can be really free and interact with dignity and justice, it is reasonable to neglect to pay part of or all of the taxes to the actual administration, as it is reasonable not to have a big problem with other people, the way things are, doing the same.
I should not neglect to refer to a couple of inaccuracies in Rodríguez’s text, to wit:
It is to be expected that the Tax Agency will issue its own return and charge us for what we failed to pay.
For this eventuality, the promoters of resistance ask us to comfort ourselves until the end with the idea of converting each such letter into a new opportunity to protest
Though Rodríguez appears to not be familiar with it, some years back the opposite was recommended.
This is a symbolic political gesture that works in the face of the arousal of the society, it is not masochism or an act of martyrdom.
This path of appeal is only recommended with certain conditions, and if it will be used effectively as a means of protest to amplify the denunciation of military spending, knowing full well that the appeal may not technically succeed in a legal sense, except for those relating to fines.
And if once discovered but not charged, this is likely because the debt is so low that the administrative procedures to force payment would cost more, or because, given the growing scarcity of personnel, the Tax Agency offices are concentrating on larger debts.
This argument only applies with respect to tax returns with tax owed, but in the many in which the result is a refund and the Treasury refunds what it has to, then is refunding more via the WTR, how do you explain that?
Finally I strongly call attention to the suggestions that Rodríguez made with his possible alternatives (that are no improvements) to Tax Resistance.
On the one hand, he calls out for tax resistance to indirect taxes (the VAT, etc.) in place of the “very revolutionary” — according to Marx and Engels — progressive taxes like the income tax.
Indirect taxes, according to Rosa Luxemburg, increase the capability to finance militarism.
Also, inconsistent with the previous in my view, he proposes to refuse paying direct taxes in certain cases that he judges to be more legitimate.
For example, he cites the refusal of some Americans to pay taxes on such grounds during the Vietnam War.
Such a gesture is considered by Rodríguez as “true civil disobedience” while that of War Tax Resistance is entitled “denouncing imperalism and the massive crimes of the system and then merely being satisfied with pilfering small change from the purse.”
Finally, a sort of uprising called anti-bank actions à la
Enric Durán, represents something like the true way to proceed.
In conclusion:
This criticism doesn’t seem to me very pleasing, and less at this particular time of the year.
If Ricardo Rodríguez is a revolutionary activist so conscious of the necessity of overthrowing the capitalist system, why don’t present realities occur to him as more worthy of criticism and denunciation than this?
Even assuming he were right in all or in part of his critiques, could War Tax Resistance really present an obstacle so capital as to warrant such an onslaught?
And along with the questions, does Ricardo Rodríguez wander so lazily in his revolutionary work that he does not have another thing to aim against than those who, with methods more or less far from his, work for a similar objective?
One is to believe that Ricardo Rodríguez is an active member of one or various revolutionary collectives and that they take themselves seriously at this — than many people promoting War Tax Resistance and who back in the day performed Draft Resistance — in the front of the struggle that he considers more useful and practical.
However the current reality, that there are not many struggles going on that appear to be seriously undermining the System, must give us a certain humility and a certain consideration for the work of others.
Because it does not seem that the Leninist parties in their various guises are anywhere near the point of winning elections, nor does it appear that any massive anti-bank movement is at the point of achieving a financial collapse.
But, because we believe in humanity and have hope, we continue forward.
In any case, thanks also for the chance to reflect, assess, and take stock of what is involved in this public critique.
Carlos S. Olmo Bau, a philosopher who specializes in the theory of civil disobedience, has written a short piece on tax resistance that was picked up by La Opinión de Murcia (awkward translation mine):
was the deadline for submitting personal income tax returns. It was also the
commencement of a peculiar dynamic called “tax resistance,” which in the
Murcia region was promoted mostly by Antimilitarist Alternative-MOC,
the General Confederation of Labor-CGT, and Ecologists in Action.
A commencement because the campaign in question has yet other chapters and
because next year, in mid-Spring and until recently into Summer, reemerges
again with an intention that goes beyond the generic slogan: Demilitarize our
taxes.
Despite its name, tax resistance (la objeción fiscal) is not
properly a conscientious objection. This is not an individual intent to
escape compliance with a normative duty imposed by a legal order (in this
case the payment of taxes) in order to advance some motives of conscience
that conflict with said duty.
It is an act of civil disobedience, a public, collective, premeditated
transgression, conscious of the law, that does not seek individual gain but
a common good, seeking changes in the laws in force or in the existing
policies (in this case the tax laws and the security and defense policies).
It consists in redirecting a particular amount of money, withheld from the
income tax return, declaring it there in the section on “Withholding and
Other Estimated Payments,” and notifying the tax administration. Sending, not
evading, because this money is destined to finance some alternative project
(in Murcia are put forward as examples the Autonomous Squatted Social Center at The Ice Factory, and the Social Library of Asunción in Paraguay).
The amount?
Either a fixed amount or a percentage equivalent to that of military
spending — direct and/or indirect — in the general state budget. In this way
is given the active form of the old slogan “military spending for social
purposes” while influenced by the necessity of radicalizing the critique of
militarism that plagues our societies.
But it is not only to not finance wars, or more exactly, belligerence. Tax
resistance brings to the table many other questions linked to the promotion
of a culture of peace, radical democracy, and the drive for citizen
participation.
This dynamic of civil disobedience puts the finger on the problem by
recalling that the democratization of the defense of Spain remains a work
in progress, and that the role of the citizen before the questions of
internal and external security continues to be reduced to the role of passive
recipient without having effective mechanisms of participation in
decision-making.
Equally note the deficiencies in budgetary and fiscal policy. If the debate
some years back about tax decentralization and fiscal autonomy was closed
dishonestly, the question about the forms of citizen participation in
fortuitous policies or in those funded by our taxes (beyond, clearly, the
paying of the same), hardly was open.
Q: Each year every Spaniard dedicates, on average, 408 euros to finance the Army.
How do you relate this data to the wars in the world?
A: The money dedicated to military spending is
not spent in cultivating flowers, it is dedicated to making wars and to the
soldiers that make war: also to scientific investigation to “improve”
weapons, that at the same time are sold to countries in the third world. We
ought to reflect on whether there is any reason why this spending continues.
In the world there are 26 million in the military, and the United Nations has
asserted that it would need between 400,000 and 500,000 blue-helmets to carry
out peacekeeping missions. What are the other 25-and-a-half million for?
Q: Your organization supports war tax resistance; can you explain what this is about?
A: Our organization has been promoting it since
. It concerns an act of civil disobedience,
but it must be made clear that society would not advance if the people did
not disobey unjust rules. We can’t go to the demonstrations saying that we
don’t want war and then finance it.
Q: How does one practice tax resistance?
A: It’s very simple. If the State spends 6% of
its total budget on military spending, when we fill out our tax returns we
take a deduction of that percentage of the total and redirect it to some
independent nonprofit charity and enclose a receipt with our return.
Military Spending: Not With My Money
The issue of Rojo y Negro, a Spanish anarcho-syndicalist monthly, has a couple of articles about war tax resistance.
(Translations mine, and I’m not very good at it.)
We Continue Our Disobedience to Military Spending
At least 875 people have resisted taxes in , redirecting up to €80,600, which has been allocated to alternative projects
One year more we publicly present the data that we have compiled on objectors to military spending in different regions of the Spanish state in the tax season.
Although we are aware that there are several more, there are 875 people who have reported their objection in this campaign by directly informing Antimilitarist Alternative/Conscientious Objectors Movement or other groups that promote war tax resistance and are responsible for collecting these data.
In particular we are aware that at least €80,600 has been deducted from Spanish military spending and has been redirected to other citizens’ organizations that certainly will apply it to a superior end.
We Are at War
We are at war.
Although the bombs do not drop on our territory, or spray us with shrapnel, the Spanish state participates in military conflicts all over the world (Afghanistan, Lebanon, Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, the Congo…), subsidizes the war industry with sweet public contracts and does business in the arms trade.
Armies in the world are sustained by three fundamental pillars: human resources (reserve and active military, professional or conscript), ideological justification (these days they legitimize their existence with the excuse of global security; rich countries, that is), and, of course, the important economic pillar.
All three are necessary for the functioning of the military machinery of modern armies, with their hypocritical humanitarian façade that has the function of defending the interests of the most rich and powerful to sustain a situation of injustice that condemns three-quarters of the world population to poverty.
Military Spending: Data That Is Obscured
All of this is done, whether we like it or not, with our money.
The Spanish army is a real consumer of economic resources.
The state has budgeted for military spending that amounts to a whopping €18,161 million.
Rather than covering the real social necessities (sustenance, shelter, education, health…), an average of €394 per person will be spent every day in preparation for war.
It is not an accident that the money budgeted for the Defense Ministry will not be more than 42% of actual military spending.
In order to get the complete figure, one must add the money corresponding to military R&D (nice self-contradiction!) since most of the military industry is financed with this money, those parts of the Foreign Affairs Ministry budget destined for spending on NATO and the EU, military pensions, and more spending besides, with which they hide the final scandalous figure.
The fact that the state will not be transparent in its public accounting is an indication that they have something harmful to hide.
And our objective is to undo this harm.
War Tax Resistance
War Tax Resistance, as we know, is a a form of civil disobedience that consists of refusing to pay the taxes for military spending, and aims to stop it.
Anyone can be a tax resister by nothing more than deducting, on one’s tax return, a quantity of money for military spending (a symbolic amount, or a percentage that corresponds), which is then destined to some project of solidarity that actually contributes to constructing a more just world.
In this way we demonstrate that the redirection of money to non-military purposes can be effective.
Together with the tax return, is included a declaration of the redirected money and a letter explaining to the Treasury the reasons for our disobedience: we commit tax resistance because we refuse to collaborate in the sustaining of the military machine and because we want to make a public denunciation of this injustice.
War Tax Resistance is now in its third decade in the Spanish state.
It has involved many thousands of people over the years and has also managed to redirect substantial amounts of military spending that have enabled the realization of numerous social projects of solidarity both in the Spanish state and in various countries.
In recent years it has supported antimilitarism, nonviolence, feminism, and different struggles and basic skills in places like Colombia, Zimbabwe, Chile, Russia/Chechnia, Palestine/Israel, Iraq… or the Spanish state itself.
Appeal to Common Sense: Invitation to Disobedience
Antimilitarist Alternative/Conscientious Objectors Movement wants to make an appeal for sanity and common sense in order to fight against the army and military insanity.
In a world where capitalist imperalism has gone so far that the destruction of the planet is, in this day, a work in progress, and where the domination of the powerful over the impoverished majority forms part of the “inevitable” scenario, disobedience is necessary.
It is necessary that we say no, it is necessary that, like years ago in the disobedience campaign, we set forth and refuse to collaborate with the army.
Not a single woman, not a single man, not a single euro for war!
Hugo Alcalde and Jorge Güemes
Two tax resisters stand up to the Treasury
Valencians Hugo Alcalde and Jorge Güemes have been practicing war tax resistance for several years.
For example, Hugo deducted from his tax returns about €1,500 which he donated to various pacifist, nonviolent resistance, and social media organizations in protest against war and militarism, as he stated in an explanatory letter along with his returns which included an accounting.
In each of these tax returns he deducted a percentage equal to that which in the Federal General Budget represents spending on military and armaments, and he recorded this on the form itself, creating his own handwritten line-item deduction “For War Tax Resistance.”
A few months ago the Treasury demanded the amounts deducted along with penalties and interest.
Both Hugo and Jorge maintain the legitimacy of their action, and each one, on his own, decided to resist the administrative decision, appealing it.
With this they are not seeking for preferential tax treatment for themselves, of course, nor the recognition of an individual right not to pay the part of the taxes related to the military establishment, but rather the active demand of a collective right to live in a world at peace, which involves the progressive dismantling of the machinery of war.
So far, with the support and advice of Antimilitarist Alternative/Conscientious Objectors Movement, Hugo Alcalde and Jorge Güemes have appealed their tax claims before the Regional Administrative Economic Court and plan to gather public support and to appeal to the Superior Court of Justice in Valencia, Hugo in the coming months, and Jorge in the coming weeks.
Hugo and Jorge are only two of nearly a thousand people each year who redirect a percentage of their income taxes as an active, conscientious, open, and committed signal for demanding the progressive elimination of the military budget and the abolition of the military.
All this forms an even more outrageous picture today, seeing all the generous aid to banks, carmakers, and the housing industry, and in the midst of significant cuts in social rights in connection with a crisis of capitalism that fiercely struck the most vulnerable sectors.
In view of this, it appears necessary to update the classic antimilitarist pacifist proposal: We end war (and the economic crisis) by dismantling the army.
Let the army pay for the crisis.
War Tax Resistance (WTR) is the refusal
to collaborate with one of the worst ways in which capitalism extends
worldwide: with militarism and war, even if the spin as of late is
“humanitarian interventions” or “wars against terrorism.”
What is War Tax Resistance /
WTR?
With WTR we
are actively resisting military spending at the moment we fill out our income
tax return. At a purely technical level, this would consist of deducting from
our taxes the part that is destined to be spent for military purposes.
With WTR we
are not encouraging or promoting some sort of “a la carte taxation” as some
people believe, as though it were not being used as a tool for civil
disobedience, which is to say, to disobey and to disrupt, publicly and
collectively, a law or rule that is considered unjust, seeking to overcome
it together (in this case, military spending and militarism).
The ultimate goal of
WTR is the
elimination of armies, military research, and the military-industrial
complex, through a progressive reduction in military spending. By resisting
war taxes we show our collective refusal of military spending in particular
and militarism in general, at the same time that we are in solidarity with
other struggles taking place in our society by means of the projects we
select.
With the money that we redirect when we file our
WTR returns,
the CGT
aims to financially support concrete struggles, resistance funds, or social
projects related to anarcho-syndicalist organization and ideas. Providing
these funds that are withheld via our acts of disobedience is achieved by
carrying out social projects that do not receive subsidies, and that allow
continued working for a more just and equitable society:
Project One: Home Territory
We are women from various countries, of different nationalities and
experiences. Some have legal documents, others do not. We do domestic labor.
We have certain work conditions that make us very vulnerable. The difficult
conditions and fear function to isolate and separate us.
For this reason we have decided to struggle together, in a real challenge to
isolation and fear, as a way to make us stronger.
Domestic work sustains the life of thousands of households daily, and,
nevertheless, is invisible, undervalued labor. We want this to change and to
be included in the Régimen General, an important step in the
recognition of its value. Also that undocumented workers should have the same
rights as everyone else. We cannot forget that this work is moving out of the
hands of some women (those of Northern countries) to others (those of
Southern countries), making the problem far from disappear, but globalize.
Project Two: Antimilitarism in Paraguay
For years in Paraguay various antimilitarist groups have been working for a
demilitarized society and are supporting other struggles (peasants, human
rights, the youth movement,
etc.).
Tax Resistance will be dedicated to
supporting the antimilitarist movement in Paraguay and the action that War
Resisters International has prepared for the
, which this year focuses on the
situation in Paraguay.
The Treasury seizes the accounts of tax resisters who withheld from their tax returns the percentage of defense spending — The government does not recognize ideological objections as justifying a waiver
Jaime Prats,
Under the rallying cry of “No more VAT,” on began the “rebellion” that was launched by [Madrid President] Esperanza Aguirre against the tax increase agreed on by the government.
So far, the campaign has kept to the distribution of leaflets, the collection of signatures, and the holding of rallies.
“It’s a rebellion in the sense of putting up resistance, not in a military sense,” explained Aguirre.
And much less is it supposed to be an invitation to insubordination, as leaders rushed to announce when Aguirre called for rebellion.
“It’s a way to remove the shame in the system,” declared a resister.
They have seized 276 euros from Hugo, and they claim another 1,713.
Part of the protest consists in redirecting the funds to humanitarian NGOs.
“Taxes are a whole and cannot be cut up in pieces,” says one professor.
Resisters broadcast their acts; evaders hide them.
Anti-abortion movements have taken note of the tax rebellion.
Tax resistance is another thing, as Hugo Alcade and Jorge Güemes know, two Valencian antimilitarists whom the Treasury has prosecuted for having withheld from their tax returns a percentage equivalent to the defense budget, which is approximately 12%.
In Spain, sources from the Conscientious Objection Movement (MOC) calculate that there are some thousand people each year who protest against military spending in this way and who redirect to humanitarian organizations the money deducted from the tax agency.
“It’s a tool of civil disobedience, as was insubordination in the military in its time,” said Carlos Pérez, former resister and spokesperson for MOC from Valencia.
Beyond the moral arguments that may be behind this form of protest, it is a difficult matter to defend legally, for to the Treasury it is a fraud like any other.
Also, it raises other problems when justifying this practice.
What is the difference between this action and resisting taxes for health spending if you pay for your own health insurance?
Or for education if you enroll your children in private schools?
Where is the limit of this practice?
Some professors of the philosophy of law believe that the answer is in the difference in defending something related to the common good from protecting an individual interest.
The first approach, they argue, would have a moral justification.
The second would not.
“Tax resistance is a nonviolent way to remove the shame in the system,” said Jorge Güemes, 32. The surveyor got in contact with the antimilitarist campaign during conflict resolution workshops he attended as a member of the Boy Scouts of Valencia.
“They seemed to me to be just and easy claims to make.”
He started during the tax season.
“In the tax return, I crossed out one of them and scribbled in ‘for objection to military spending’ ” he says.
And the resulting share from the self-made deduction subtracted 12%, equivalent to the military spending in the Budget, which in this case showed a result of 210.43 euros that he redirected to Per L’Horta, an organization that defends the traditional rural landscape in the outskirts of Valencia.
A key part of the campaign consists in making the protest totally open.
So the motive for this particular deduction is not only reflected in the way the tax return is formulated.
In the documents sent to the tax agency, he also sent a letter in which he explained his reasons for objecting, and even sent a receipt for his payment to the NGOs to which the money was sent, “to make it clear that I don’t want to defraud.”
The probability that the Treasury notices the objection is very low.
There are those who have spent years practicing tax resistance and have never met with the government.
However, Jorge was caught immediately.
“They sent me a letter saying that I was wrong, and I replied to them that there was no error, that I had done exactly as I intended.”
There are some who receive notices from the Treasury refunding money.
Jorge who currently works with youth, began a long bureaucratic battle that is still on-going.
First in the arena of the tax administration, which ended with a defeat in the Regional Administrative Economic Tribunal of the Valencian Ministry of Economy and Finance, which dismissed his claims. After this defeat, the taxes, claims and judgments against, a seizure for 263 euros (the 210 original plus a fine of 53 euros), Jorge has not given up the fight.
Now, he is finalizing an appeal to the High Court of Justice of Valencia.
“I have been able to speak out,” he said.
“I continue to object.”
Hugo Alcalde, 38, joined active antimilitarism after the war in Iraq.
“I felt incredibly powerless to see how aggression was carried out so clearly in opposition to civil society,” and therefore came to the conclusion that, “it is more effective to fight against militarization than to stop an ongoing war.”
Hugo began to resist in his tax return, but got no notices from the tax agency until .
Then he received a notice that demanded 450.98 euros from his return.
As with Jorge, he decided to appeal and filed a claim.
The response that the Treasury had was to demand the outstanding amounts corresponding to the taxes for .
“It appears that with my claim they revisited all of my records and my returns that had not yet been audited.”
But the problems don’t end there.
Recently he received notice for the taxes from , “and I suppose that those from will not be far behind.”
From a professor from the institute of Valencia they have seized 276.73 euros by now, and between seizure orders and payments due, interest, and penalties, the Treasury has asks for another 1,713.99 euros.
In total, the debt reaches 1,990.72 euros.
And despite this, he has decided to stand firm until the end.
He has drawn on the five counter-arguments that he has sent to the Treasury: “More than anything I do it for the symbolic character of the protest,” he said.
“Yet I hope to unify all of the processes into one, because otherwise it will be a mess.”
“In the worst case, there will be no choice but to pay the money and charges.
But, despite the fines or the inconvenience of the taxes it is much more comfortable than to spend two years, four months, and a day in jail, as did those condemned for insubordination who abandoned the barracks,” he explained.
Among the arguments put forward to reject the devices of the tax resisters, the Treasury refers to the military and tax obligations of the Spanish.
Alongside conscientious objection, “is also a fundamental right to the defense of the state, which is not only a right but also a duty.”
On the other hand, it points out that the tax obligations are drawn up by “principles of equality and progressivity, according to the economic capacity” of citizens, “not the state of the social conscience of an individual at some particular moment.”
For this reason, to the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the attitude of Jorge, Hugo, and the rest of the war tax resisters is the same as that of any other person who engages in tax fraud.
“There do not exist any mitigating factors in the law to argue for ideological or conscientious reasons that justify a waiver from the tax agency,” the department pointed out.
In any case, it is not considered tax fraud.
For this, it would be necessary that the money not declared would be more than 120,000 euros.
Additionally, there must be bad intent, “for example, to create a structure designed to hide assets,” the same sources said.
Javier de Lucas, professor of the philosophy of law at the University of Valencia, warned a few years ago of the difficulty of justifying this behavior before the Treasury.
De Lucas, who collaborated with the Conscientious Objection Movement, analyzed together with tax experts the possible mechanisms that could be used to support this form of defense, and did not find any.
“Taxes are considered as a whole, and cannot be separated by personal criteria,” he insists.
“It is not clear that a person has the power to decide in what way to make an exception and up to what point one can take this behavior, for example, to health or education.”
Because of all of this, he came to the conclusion that the approach was “technically indefensible.”
The arguments of the Treasury
Defense of the State: In a filing against the resisters, the Ministry of Finance argued that conscientious objection “appears as a fundamental individual right alongside the defense of the State, which is not only a right but also a duty of Spaniards, in Article 30 of the Constitution.”
It also argues that [legal] objection “relates only to the personal obligation of rendering military service (given the extraordinary nature of the armed forces).
Tax Reasons: “Like the obligations of the Spanish in relation to Defense established in Article 30 of the Constitution, taxes are according to the principles of equality and progressivity and according to one’s economic capacity, and not according to the state of the social conscience of the individual at any particular moment, in Article 31.” In the written report of the General Secretary of the Treasury, was added that this Article “in no way authorized deduction, with a claim of a supposed personal conviction, however respectable, a particular quantity of Personal Income Tax or any other tax.”
“I think that the difference is the moral attitude,” suggested Francisco Fernández Buey, professor of ethics and political philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University.
Fernández Buey was one of the first tax resisters in Spain, back in the 1980s, and also then suffered persecution on the part of the Treasury.
“I came to empty the account before they seized it.
I kept the money at home, among the pages of the first volume of Karl Marx’s Kapital,” he recalled gleefully.
The distinguishing feature, according to Fernández Buey, is that it is not comparable to defend approaches “considered acceptable for achieving a more just and beneficial society for the collective good, that would have a moral justification,” with others that only seek “personal interest.”
For example, to stop paying for a public service with the excuse that one has no use for it.
Aside from this problem, Javier de Lucas does consider that there exists a safeguard that serves to differentiate the practice of the resisters from the tax evaders.
“To demonstrate that the money is not withheld from the public interest, it was redirected to other general purposes.
Therefore it is important to account for the percentage of income that is redirected to NGOs.”
There is another, more fundamental question that consists of presenting an idea of defense that is separate from the military.
It is that which Hugo Alcade defines as “human security,” one of the ideas promotes the UN focus on protection and the basic necessities of human beings, contrasted with the conventional meaning of military security.
In the face of this, the Treasury refers to the basic concept of the “military obligations of the Spanish.”
For José Antonio Estévez Araujo, also a professor of the philosophy of law, the legal case against the Treasury is not a significant part of the conduct that is situated centrally in the context of civil disobedience and that, essentially, involves breaking the law.
This type of “symbolic” protest is that which fundamentally intends to “generate controversy.”
And here is, according to this professor at the University of Barcelona, the characteristic that distinguishes tax resistance from acts of crime or of mere convenience.
In contrast with tax evasion, for example, in which the objective is to hide the fraud, tax resisters above all want to publicize their acts: “They seek publicity, controversy, and to open a public debate.”
Therefore, to Estévez Araújo, the behavior of these young antimilitarists is not a case of conscientious objection but of civil disobedience.
“It is not intended to have the right not to comply with an obligation [in this case to entirely pay the taxes], but to debate the issues they raise.”
This professor of philosophy emphasizes the importance of civil disobedience as a means of vindication.
“In Spain we would have the example of the squatters, who are considered civil disobedients, or the more recent Palestinian activist Aminetu Haidar, in the protest campaign she carried out in Lanzarote.”
This formula, which has actively supported the World Social Forum, perhaps has its greatest exponent in the movement of landless workers in Brazil.
“The Constitution of provides that for a land reform that has not been carried out,” he says.
“There are groups of peasants who occupy land, which is an illegal activity,” although fundamentally they count on the approval of the constitutional spirit.
“For this reason, there are even judges who have ruled in their favor.”
Tax resistance is not a method exploited only by left-leaning groups.
The professor Francisco Fernández Buey notes the campaign that was carried out for decades in Sweeden as a form of protest against the country’s high tax burden.
Or more recently, in Venezuela, by the opposition to Hugo Chávez.
In Spain, the most clear example is the campaign that anti-abortion movements encourage.
The proposal consists in withholding taxes equivalent to the percentage of public spending destined to the practice of abortion and to redirect this money to organizations that call themselves pro-life.
“This would have been very striking at other times,” reflected Fernández Buey.
This professor of ethics and political philosophy stresses the paradox that supposes that these right wing positions have migrated from “defending law and order, to advocating behavior of this sort,” with, for example, the anti-abortion campaign.
Some attitudes that could be defined, this time certainly, as a clear invitation to rebellion, in this case tax rebellion.
I get bent when I see the attitude of “tax resistance is conscientious and good when I do it, but when those uncouth people over there do it, there’s something wrong with it.”
That said, it’s an interesting article, and shows that there are strong similarities between the war tax resistance movement (and its critics) in the United States and in Spain.
Today: more about the war tax resistance movement in Spain.
The present state of War Tax Resistance at the level of strategy
The ideological debate
From its origins to the present day, War Tax Resistance (WTR) has been criticized on both political and strategic grounds: that it does not grow sufficiently, that it does not accomplish reductions in military spending, that the practice is bureaucratic and cumbersome, that each time it is more complicated to object to the income tax because of technical changes that are introduced every year by the tax agency, that it does not exhaust the possibilities that civil disobedience can accomplish… There are even those who brand it as reactionary in that it challenges the only progressive tax or plants the possibility that conservative groups may use it as a springboard to obtain “a la carte objections” to those public issues that they don’t want to pay for.
On the other hand, and from another political point of view, it is also accused of being reformist by not questioning the right of the state to levy taxes.
Conscious that most of these criticisms contain some truth, we remain confident in the validity of the reasons with which we embarked.
In times of great social demobilization and the lack of real confrontation between social movements and the institutions, like those we are experiencing, WTR allows us to articulate a statewide campaign to denounce the present militarism with great potential to reach different classes and social sectors with its message.
The other alternative that the pacifist/antimilitarist movement has at the present time in order to achieve the wide participation of people, is the protest against military operations abroad, or the successive military invasions by the international (or should we say imperial) coalition led by the US.
But this type of work, which is also undertaken, and which affords us with good results, only functions intermittently as the media spotlight shines.
Furthermore, the anti-war demonstrations often end up being a jumble of different political persuasions, often with messages difficult to assimilate by the nonviolent antimilitarism/pacifism, which is where we have enrolled ourselves.
The message of WTR is much sharper and more difficult to instrumentalize; it does not question a particular military intervention, but the very existence of the military, fought from the same root, that is, the money that society invests in making it possible.
WTR is an ongoing task, in the short, medium, and long term, and even if nothing comes of it, it does not function reactively in response to the injustices of the governments.
It not only questions the negative reality, but also proposes alternatives and points out the real needs that a society should want to defend and the most ethical methods to bring that about.
In addition, the argument is still valid that this political action has great possibilities to be exercised by many people because of its simplicity and the low level of repression that is suffered.
Also we can mention the educational element present in it: WTR is a dignified exercise of civil disobedience that in practice appeals to society and invites it not to be afraid, to confront injustice and to learn to be the master of its own decisions.
For these and other reasons it would take too long to explain, we don’t agree with the groups that understand the campaign as an effort to obtain an officially recognized WTR box on their forms when making a tax return.
Reforms in the Campaign
Some years ago, in Antimilitarist Alternative-MOC, a nationwide organization that belongs to our group, we restructured the campaign and made some modifications.
Mainly we consider that it is more advantageous to emphasize the dimension of disobedience and protest against military spending, and not so much the aspect of solidarity that comes from redirecting quantities of money to entities that we want to support, usually in poor countries.
It’s not that we had become insensitive, or that we don’t see this solidarity as important, which in any case has been ongoing; but the gamble was only to sharpen the political point capable of transforming consciences.
So we decided to call for a “Campaign against Military Spending” and introduced a second motion of protest in Autumn, approving it during the processing of the General State Budget.
Also, we decided to encourage the existence of local recipients of the redirected money, because we feel that it could, as it were, be a way of involving many different people and groups in the campaign, which could only result in the expansion and dissemination of its contents.
Finally we focused on collecting a good set of data and on its subsequent release, to reaffirm the collective and political nature of WTR.
We believe that the result of this effort has been good and has contributed to a campaign that is more well-known.
At the moment, we are trying to improve the part that has to do with a possible continuation of disobedience in those cases in which the Treasury reclaims the redirected money.
We are improving our legal resource materials and are designing political campaigns to help resisters who are trying to exhaust all legal possibilities for their resistance.
(See: campaign to support the war tax resisters of València.)
Booster organizations are lacking
Without a doubt the main obstacle that we face is the lack of organizations to promote the campaign in their cities and regions.
This reality poses a real obstacle to its growth potential.
And certainly, as we have said, such a group exists and the campaign can be carried out with an minimum of effort and responsibility and does guarantee certain results.
We can give an example of our own Antimilitarist Tortoise Group.
In the last five years, since we began to make a more committed effort to the campaign, the number of resisters in the province of Alacant, though always in small numbers, has not stopped growing.
Our commitment to generate local destinations [for redirected taxes] at the provincial level has provided us with a rich set of contacts with numerous groups on the ground which have learned of the campaign and the same reality of military spending, converting some of these into local destinations and therefore into new disseminators of the campaign and its political content.
In various places in Alacant each year, public events are staged to extend WTR, the occasional explanatory lecture is given, and informative materials are released, always in increasing numbers.
It doesn’t work more or better than in other places, but we think that it can be a good example to inspire other people and groups to make similar efforts, as certainly they are not that onerous.
Everybody can participate
Given the small number of antimilitarist/pacifist groups in the state, it’s very important that they join in the campaign and with other groups of socialist, libertarian, feminist, ecological, local, syndicalist, and north/south solidarity natures… and also groups of resisters at a particular level.
We have an archive with email addresses of resisters scattered in different parts of the state, and also groups more or less interested in the campaign.
It would be more than interesting if in each place some of these people could meet and organize a small or large campaign at the local level.
Since our group will gladly supply the addresses necessary to establish the pertinent contacts.
If one flinches in the end at the deed of contacting with different entities, in order that in each zone there will be local destinations the least one can do (including photocopying) is distributing a leaflet from the campaign.
Anything is good for restarting where years ago the collective work left off with WTR,
We have the good fortune to have sufficient documentation to know the whole labyrinth of military spending in Spain, and can calculate the different percentages that they represent in public spending.
Our own Antimilitarist Alternative-MOC, and the J.M. Delàs Center for Justice and Peace, the Gasteizkoak group or the investigator José Toribio, among others, each year provide plenty of basic documentation for the campaign (see estimates for ).
We also have graphic material for distribution that you can ask for from us and we will try to get it to you free of charge, and our Tortoise Group offers free-of-charge to adapt annual diptychs or tryptychs of the campaign of AA-MOC to the local facts of the groups that ask us (tortuga nodo50.org).
Also we are working on studies of the legal basis for resisters whose resistance is rejected by the state but who want to continue.
By now, you know that such recourse has little or no likelihood of success, but it can be a good opportunity — as was realized in València — to propagandize WTR and the critique of military spending, provided that there is a support group behind the person resisting.
Obviously with this writing we are not uncovering anything new, nor saying things that have not been said before, but we have hope that it can serve to to generate hope and desire in some people and groups to dedicate a little effort to a cause as beautiful and transformative as the dream of a demilitarized society.
As Gandhi said, “there is no way to peace; peace is the way.”
Conscientious Objection to military spending, or Tax Resistance, consists in refusing to pay the State the money that is destined to build and maintain militarism, and to divert it to an alternative destination that shows your identification with the objectives of the campaign.
For this, it is necessary to fill out your tax return according to the Treasury, including the resisted amount in the section for deductions and adjusting the corresponding justification.
This documentation must be remitted to the deputy of the Treasury along with a manifesto-printout from the campgian.
(View letter examples.)
This year, the newspaper Diagonal comes to form part of the tax resistance, with a project that is identified with the construction of critical attitudes about the militarization of society.
For all who want to engage in tax resistance helping Diagonal, the steps to follow are:
Pay the amount to object (84 euros, in protest of the 84 countries impoverished by external debt) to the account of the Asociación Punto y Coma (La Caixa 2100‒4065‒10‒2200111082).
Send a copy of your receipt and a manifesto-printout to the deputy of the Treasury along with the rest of your paperwork.
From here, they go on to try to estimate the “military percentage” of the Spanish budget.
The group Antimilitarista-MOC came up with two numbers, one based on a more strict definition of military spending (11.8%), the other with a more inclusive definition that includes spending on police, intelligence gathering, and incarceration (17.21%).
They recommend four possible methods of resistance:
Redirecting a percentage of your taxes corresponding to the percentage of the budget that goes to the military (such as one of the numbers above, or as little as 5.7% if you strictly base this on the budget of the Ministry of Defense).
Redirecting a fixed amount, such as the 84 euros suggested in the Diagonal-sponsored campaign.
If you’re not ready to try tax resistance yet, calculate the amount of taxes you are paying to the military and send a check for that amount to an alternative project (in addition to your taxes), and make note of this in writing when you file your return.
This isn’t tax resistance per se, but increases awareness of the war tax and seeks to mitigate its negative impact.
If you have zero net tax payable, or don’t have to file, you can still send a letter demanding the recognition of the right to conscientious objection to military taxation.
All of this feels very familiar to me from my involvement with the war tax resistance movement in the United States.
Although, ironically given the countries’ relative military budgets and ongoing military operations, the war tax resistance movement in Spain seems to be undergoing a resurgence while the one in the United States is in the doldrums.
Reliance on robotic warfare has escalated from the Bush to the Obama administrations, with very little significant public debate.
More than ever before, it is true that the U.S. doesn’t want our bodies to be part of warfare; there’s also not much interest in our consent.
All that is required is our money.
As I may have mentioned, a provision of the recently-enacted health care industry legislation — one that was little-noticed at the time but that has attracted some commentary since — requires businesses to file 1099s with the government for every other business from whom they purchase goods or services totalling at least $600. Some commentators have focused on the paperwork headache this involves, others on whether it is intending to lay the groundwork for a new value-added tax, but Gary North thinks it may be an opportunity for resistance-via-over-compliance:
The IRS will be buried in billions of new forms. I’m an older guy.
I think back to Carl Sagan’s memorable words in the PBS series, Cosmos: “billions and billions.”
These forms will have to be scanned into the system.
If businessmen want to protest this law in a legal but effective way, they will have their tax preparers write in the numbers by hand.
Then IRS will have to type in the data on each form by hand.
Billions and billions!
Business owners and managers will be outraged.
But what if word spreads?
“No electronic filing!”
What if the tax preparers fill in all the forms by hand.
It is legal.
It is not efficient, but it’s not all that much extra work.
Pay a few dollars more per filing.
At the other end, the IRS will get to process these forms by hand.
Think of what happens if businesses were to challenge every challenge by the IRS?
The business’s CPA simply asks in writing — I do mean writing (hand-written) — for the IRS to review the case.
Point out one mistake made by the IRS.
Automatically, every business should challenge every request for more tax money.
No exceptions.
Be polite.
Just ask the IRS to review its case in terms of this new information.
There are always gray areas.
Put them to use.
Pay a few bucks to your tax preparer.
Paperwork is the essence of every bureaucracy.
Let’s do it by the book: with paper.
There’s a new issue of More Than a Paycheck out, full of news about the war tax resistance movement, including:
A campaign poster depicts euros turning into bombs.
About 20 taxpayers from Pallars have resisted their military taxes.
The Tax Resistance Assembly of Pallars (Jussà and Sobirà) has completed the annual campaign with the presentation of the Collective Declaration of War Tax Resistance.
Ten taxpayers have addressed, jointly, a letter to the tax office in Lleida in order to express their refusal to contribute to military spending, which, according to the General State Budget, is 4.7% for the Ministry of Defense, but can also be found camouflaged in spending for Science and Technology, Industry, R&D, National Guard, international cooperation (Afghanistan War, Kosovo, Colombia…)
, at least eight additional taxpayers have opted to present their declaration of resistance in their own way.
In all, 1,418.84 euros have been rescued and have been allocated to the common project of the campaign this year, in support of the movement of refuseniks and conscientious objectors in Paraguay and of other peace and development initiatives.
The Tax Resistance Assembly of Pallars treasures the positive and helpful
manner of this year’s campaign. They report that
talks have been held in
Sort, La Pobla de Segur, and Tremp, and 350 posters have been put up,
indicating that in some places they didn’t last 24 hours.
The number of people who resist war taxes has increased in the two Pallars,
by about 15% per year, they reported.
In a communique, the assembly considers it “an insult to the intelligence
to speak of [economic] crisis in order to justify cutting social investment
when with the cost of three Leopard tanks a hospital can be built and operated
or the worth of two Tomahawk missiles could run a school.”
“Exports of the Spanish military industry, principally in private hands, have
grown 44%, selling to Morocco, Israel, Venezuela, Thailand, Brazil, Cuba,
Ghana, Mauritania, Senegal, Georgia, Syria, and Iran,” they reported.
Another brief note about the war tax resistance movement in Spain, this time from the Antimilitarist Assembly of Gran Canaria (one of the Canary Islands).
Complaining of Spanish arms sales to Morocco and of the government’s use of the economic crisis to force cuts in social spending (while military spending is “the only thing that has not been cut”), and eager not to be complicit in military spending, the assembly called for war tax resistance.
And now we’re off for a few weeks in Mexico.
I’ve got a few pages of archival material pre-written and I may stumble in to an internet cafe from time to time and slap them up on-site, but other than that you shouldn’t expect to see much here until .
Concerning the debate over the campaign of resistance to military spending
War tax resistance has developed in Spain for more than two decades.
Although the aim of becoming a civil disobedience campaign that calls into question the very foundations of military spending and that generates a debate about its abolition has not generated the same dynamic as the rebellion, certainly some thousand people continue to exercise this form of protest.
El País has excerpted in an article published on , some of the contradictions from a theoretical point of view when you enter philosophical and legal debates on this subject, and, in general terms, adequately summarized the state of thinking with respect to these areas.
Viewed from the perspective of the aspirations and possibilities of spreading a campaign of disobedience related to military spending, to the point of decisively affecting it or of mandating political changes, we understand that tax resistance, as it has been put forward, has not been as successful as had been hoped.
The worst that could happen is for tax resistance to be considered on the same level as the tax protest of Esperanza Aguirre [a tax-cutting Spanish politician who provocatively (but merely so) called for a tax rebellion against a VAT hike] or other such initiatives.
Neither would the answer be lobbying for the authorities to agree to authorize a right of conscientious exclusion or objection (which continues military spending but my direct taxes remain excluded from their financing, so that a) military spending continues, and b) furthermore I pay it with the rest of my taxes and with the authorization of some general state budgets whose purpose we don’t depict at all), or that they permit us a certain right of determination (the way [a taxpayer may designate] a share of the personal income tax for other social purposes or to support the Catholic church).
Without entering into the important personal testimony and the political commitment of tax resisters who continue persisting, certainly we should agree to a deeper discussion about the reasons why there has been no growth in the number of resisters or in the effectiveness of the campaign — both what effects the current conditions of transmission in very unfavorable conditions of messages and proposals in our society, in order to achieve a greater number of resisters, such that they can affect the methods employed and the limits that may exist, and the need to think of other (greater or different) methods and so forth — we believe, could serve as an incentive to make criticism of military spending a pillar of the antimilitarist struggle and for the abolition of armies.
In any case, this is another example that one can struggle against militarism in many ways and that we are not alone in this struggle, that they gather, in some approaches or others, an important number of people willing to do direct and conscientious action as a tool of social change.
You don’t have to be an American to file for a fraudulent tax refund with the IRS. You don’t even have to be in America.
I’m imagining huge overseas sweatshops filled with children with stubby pencils and poor lighting conditions filling out 1040 forms all day long as their bosses make millions mining the U.S. Treasury.
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.
CGT, Ecologists in Action, and Antimilitarist Alternative will gather this Tuesday to promote tax resistance
Murcia, (Europa
Press) — Members of CGT-Murcia, Ecologists in Action, and Antimilitarist Alternative/MOC
will gather in
front of the door of the tax office in Murcia to encourage taxpayers “not to
collaborate with their taxes in military spending.”
Also, these organizations will encourage people to actively disobey at the
time they file their income tax returns during tax season, according to the
reports of sources from CGT in a statement.
By this tax resistance, they intend to combat “the support of one of the
worst ways that capitalism has of extending itself worldwide, which is
militarism and war, although these may be made up lately as humanitarian
interventions or wars against terrorism.”
Tax Resistance consists technically “in not paying from our taxes the part
that is destined for military spending,” according to
CGT,
which added that “when filling in the tax return and one reaches the part for
Deductions and other payments, a deduction in one of the unused boxes is
made, marking alongside ‘for war tax resistance.’ ”
Furthermore, “it is necessary to indicate the refused amount, which may be a
percentage, the 11.8 percent that is the official budget of the Defense
Department; a fixed amount of 84 euros, in protest of the 84 countries
impoverished by external debt; or a zero amount for those who do not have to
file.”
“The money redirected by tax resistance, is intended to help economically
concrete struggles, funding for resistance, or social projects associated
with the organization, with which social projects can be achieved that do not
receive subsidies and that permit them to keep working for a more just and
equitable society,” added
CGT.
Ecopacifist activists protest against public spending for war preparation
They espouse the “Campaign of War Tax Resistance,” which has come to pass in recent years during income tax filing season.
Activists from the ecopacifist social organizations Ecologists in Action and Antimilitarist Alternative / Conscientious Objection Movement, who have espoused a “Campaign of War Tax Resistance.”
This is a campaign of statewide non-violent civil disobedience, which for more than two decades has each year brought together more disobedient citizens, with the goal of achieving the demilitarization of economic policy and the reclaiming of taxes for goals consistent with the values of solidarity, peace, and justice.
The objectors have come to the Special Delegation of the Tax Agency of Madrid, a day before the deadline established by the Agency for the filing of the tax return.
There, they have publicly presented their returns, which included tax resistance to military spending, meaning that they subtracted a symbolic or proportional quantity representing military spending by the state.
This quantity is destined for a collective entity or project that contributes to the construction of a more just, cooperative, and peaceful world.
According to Abel Esteban, spokesperson for the ecologist organization, by means of the Campaign of War Tax Resistance “we are many people who decided consciously, publicly, and collectively not to finance the militarist system, not to collaborate with the armies, and decided to work for its abolishment.
We have no intention of tax fraud, since our objection is made in a public manner and is communicated to the Director of the Treasury.”
The activists also associated military spending with cuts to social spending included in the public budgets.
According to Mar Gimena, spokesperson for the antimilitarist organization, “in a context of economic crisis and the major cuts in social spending at all levels, the Spanish state devoted €20,405.58 million to military spending in , 12% of all state spending, according to the work of independent investigators.
This amount represents an expense of €538 per person going to the preparation for wars.”
The activists also denounced the state general budget for for deepening its severe cuts in areas that undergird the welfare state, like education (−8.1%), health (−8.2%), social services (−8.1%), or environment (−13%), while still betting on higher military spending, budgeted at €17,244.75 million, 5.19% less than in .
“We are suspicious of this reduction, because every year the final military spending is around 15% greater than in the initial budget,” complained the ecologist spokesperson, who adds, “billions of euros of public money will go again this year to the construction of armaments or to the financing of military operations in Afghanistan or Libya, that support the murder of thousands of civilians each year, the death of Spanish troops, and the entrenchment of the violent conflicts that traumatize such societies.
The priorities of those who have political power are clear: to prepare to kill is more important than to care for or to educate.”
I pointed out some discussion that was taking place on the wtr-s email discussion group about the possibility of turning the loose affiliation of American war tax resisters into something more like a war tax resistance movement.
To summarize: Larry is trying to describe a war tax resistance movement that would be able to exert political power and act as a “counter-friction” (in Thoreau’s sense of the word) against the war machine.
He thinks in order to do this, resisters need to narrow down the large variety of techniques they use to a subset that has the following characteristics:
It is illegal (that is, actual civil disobedience)
It is public (not just trying to avoid taxes and stay under the radar)
It is accompanied by a common set of clear and specific demands for change on the part of government
He is critical of the sort of war tax resistance that is primarily conscientious objection rather than protest.
If a resister is satisfied merely to wash his or her hands of militarism by personally not paying for it, without making his or her resistance confrontational, Larry thinks, the resister is missing an opportunity to make the resistance make a difference and to make a noble individual stand stronger by making it part of an effective collective movement.
That at least is my understanding of what he means.
I have some doubt about whether such a movement would be practical to organize or would be politically effective at this stage of the game.
I also think that the variety of methods of war tax resistance is one of the strengths of the movement, such as it is, today — it gives people more options and is respectful of people with a variety of lifestyles, risk tolerances, and goals.
I worry that trying to narrow down these options to a subset of “real” war tax resistance varieties might weaken the movement rather than strengthen it, by making it seem less possible or attractive to some potential resisters.
(For some other perspectives on the proposal, see the responses by Claire Schaeffer-Duffy, Karl Meyer, and Bill Glassmire in the latest issue of More Than a Paycheck.)
For us, tax resistance is, among other things, a struggle.
And as we struggle against militarism, this struggle must be nonviolent.
It contains within itself a model of the society that we are aiming for.
Here we express some of the characteristics of our struggle:
Collective
Because we want to transcend the very noble and respectable personal and
individual choices in order to constitute a group of disobedient activists.
Public
Because in the face of institutions we must make very clear our
intentions for what we are putting into practice.
And in the face of public opinion we must act in the streets, write in the press, demonstrate, bicycle from Vitori to Nanclares, etc.…
Active
In this way, through tax resistance, we also reclaim the right of all
people to participate in democratic life in a profound and responsible way, without losing track of the serious problems that affect humanity, in the neighborhood around us [“el barrio de al lado,” probably an idiom I’m unfamiliar with —♇], in social services.
Because in tax resistance we are required to go beyond opinion, that we stop to take a stand against military spending, the manufacture and trade in armaments, against the military.
A topic so grave cannot be left in the hands of the professional chatterboxes that join the legislature.
And by means of tax resistance, together we contribute to the citizenry a small seed for growing a deep democracy, one that is participatory and as direct as it is possible for us to imagine.
Non-violent
We struggle against an unjust order of militarist violence, but always
we do so without using violence, preferring the strength of our reason.
We strike out against the state of affairs, while valuing people.
Constructive
Our objective is to transform state policy, the use made of public
funds, in order to employ them effectively in the regulation of social conflicts.
If we do not advance toward this goal, we do not find our work useful.
We intend to convert the military power into the popular power of civil society.
Illegal
Tax resistance is a form of struggle that consists of disobedience to an
unjust law that promotes violence as a way of resolving conflicts.
There are many historical examples of disobedience to unjust laws.
Must we ask for a law that would legalize the right to conscientious tax resistance?
Here there are not many who ask for this.
If such a law were made, military spending would not go away, but would be further legalized.
The total revenue from the state would not diminish military spending.
They will not make the law that we want.
So meanwhile we will publicize the justification for disobeying unjust laws.
Educational
The tax resistance campaign will be more effective if the relationship
between the ends and the means used are consistent; if we perform all actions such that we clearly demonstrate what we hope will follow and explain our reasoning; if we will open real and possible paths to social transformation even for people who are less committed.
We will continually reflect on what we do and on alternatives we propose.
Now I ask myself if he were not still talking, because otherwise how in half an hour had he time to say such valiant things?
Although this was not so important, he was young, tall, handsome, and unkempt; he wore jeans and a sweater; he stepped from foot to foot while he spoke to me, fervently, from his chair; he cracked his knuckles; with something like a nervous tic he was pushing his glasses back up from where they had slipped down his nose.
“You have written that the peacemakers are not those who do not make war, but those who make peace — that peace is not an absence of confrontation, but something superior: equality, solidarity, and justice — and that all else is merely to postpone war, and such is called truce, not peace… therefore one must go against the immediate cause of war, which is to say, against militarism.
As Gandhi said: non-cooperation with evil is as certain a duty as cooperation with good.
It even comes first [“Incluso es un bien previo”], I think.
And our way of being against militarism, what is it? the most direct: preventing the amount of our taxes that is destined for military spending.
In this way, tax resistance is defined in very few words… Look, Mr. Gala: a couple of years back, while our military spending reached one and a quarter billion — and 120 billion worldwide — fourteen million children under five died of need in the third world.
And how many people died or were lost in the same way right around us, in that which surrounds our cities, the marginalized, which we are told is inevitable?
Nobody knows because nobody cares… There are effective remedies to avoid such disasters, but the militarists and bureaucrats shrug their shoulders: ‘we don’t have the money.’
Survival of the fittest.
Life goes on.
[“Los que mueren son los que no pueden sobrevivir.
Sobran vidas.”] This is called the Ministry of Defense.
From what do they defend? against what? how? with what do they defend? and whom?
Me? no.
Many like me? no.
You?
I think not either.
And if they do not ask us what it is that in truth there is to defend… what do they fucking ask of us, or is this not a democracy?
We would answer, a healthy, dignified, and cultured life; we would say human rights and the environment and international cooperation; we could say the deprived, the humiliated, the persecuted races and minorities of all kinds… Is this the ‘welfare state,’ Mr. Gala?
For the welfare of whom?
Don’t they go out in the street; don’t they look, or are they blind?”
The ring he had been fussing with fell to the floor.
He looked under the table without stopping what he was saying.
“There are walls less visible and less photogenic than the Berlin Wall, which have not fallen.
Disgraceful walls, increasingly thicker, between us and those who have nothing but suffering and death.
There are those who defend those walls to the death, as the Russian soldiers defended, by the orders of their superiors, the Iron Curtain.
For this is what the great powers need armies and weapons for.
And might we not have another possibility but to keep quiet and pay up?
By no means.
There is tax resistance, which advances peace because it supports disarmament.
With this we deny to the Treasury, when paying the income tax, what corresponds to the Ministry of Defense [“Con ello negamos a Hacienda, al liquidar el Impuesto sobre la Renta, lo correspondiente al Ministerio de Defensa.”].
“It is a meager solution: the Ministry spends much more and our income tax is only a third of what the state takes.
But even so, our objection signifies a cry of alarm, a critical and public disobedience in the face of those who propose a totalitarian power over individuals, obliging us to collaborate against ourselves.
The state has the laws, and those who wield them apply them against ourselves; whereas we have no more power from what we are than what we are, right?
[“nosotros no tenemos más fuerza de lo que somos y que los que somos, ¿es o no es?”] Very well, they can change the law or they can throw us in prison.
And then we will shout to the whole world why this is: because we refuse to kill, because we refuse to participate in the absurd game of defending those who oppress us and push us into to war and madness, because this money that we avoid giving we dedicate to those who work for that which is the true defense and true progress of humanity.
Whoever wants to know that for which we look, who wants to oppose abuse arm-in-arm with us, who wants to join us, who shouts with us: Not one man, not one woman, not a penny more for war.”
He left my house, and he still was shouting in the street.
And he left me shouting to myself also.
What a marvelous power of persuasion the truth has when it is expressed with conviction.
As you can see, I had trouble with some of the language (darned poets).
But I think I got the gist.
Here is some more news from the war tax resistance movement in Spain.
This comes from the Canal Solidario site (translation mine):
First signs of support for the work presented by the Coordinator.
Thanks “Blanquita”!
The group Coordinadora d’ONGD i altres Moviments Solidaris de Lleida [Coordination of Development NGOs and other Solidarity Movements of Lleida] participates in the Military Awards
The first conclusion from the awards organized by the Ministry of Defense is that the economic crisis has not reached everywhere.
More than €45,000 in prizes for praising the activity of the Spanish military and the military life.
These figures outrage, but in reality represent only the crumbs from the table of military spending in Spain, which exceeded €17 billion in .
Seeing as cuts in social spending (in cooperation, education, health, …) are emphasized in all administrations, we will try our luck in the “Military Awards.” The work we are presenting in the competition is “Tax Resistance, disarm your taxes,” and our dream is that, if the work sticks as a painting, we will win the prize for general painting (€7,000) in order to spend this money to spread the word about the tax resistance campaign that we are about to launch.
You can support us on Twitter using the hashtag #EjercitoSinCrisis [economic crisis-free military].
Wish us luck!
Daily military spending in Spain: €47.24 million
During there was €17,244,750,000 of military spending (source: Report 7: The truth about 2011 Spanish military spending, Delas Center).
Military activity is justified, even in times of crisis and social cuts, by the false idea of “security.”
But, what if we would address international problems not from a military perspective but from the view of peaceful conflict management?
Fewer humanitarian wars and more serious policies.
One option is tax resistance: the readiness to refuse to collaborate with the government in the costs of preparing for war and the maintenance of the military.
It consists of diverting, in a simple way, a part of this tax to a project or organization that promotes the culture of peace.
In other news, while activists on the American left seem most interested in getting corporations and rich people to pay more taxes, in Europe more such activists are asking “why are any of us still paying taxes to these crooks when we know we can put the money to better use than they can?”
I mentioned the tax resistance & redirection campaign launched under the ¡Rebelaos! banner and organized by Derecho de Rebelión.
I’m happy to report that the Spanish war tax resistance movement is lending support to this new movement.
Arcadi Oliveres spoke at a conference on economic resistance over the weekend “concerning military spending and resistance to militarism by means of tax resistance.”
They’re also working on a tax resisters’ handbook.
You can read a draft PDF on-line.
The ultimate goal of WTR is the elimination of armies, military research, and the military industrial complex, by means of a progressive reduction in military spending.
Engaging in WTR demonstrates the social rejection of military spending in particular, and militarism in general, while at the same time we show solidarity with other struggles going on in our society through the chosen projects [that we support with our redirected taxes].
Support for the Vialía Málaga strikers is one of the alternative projects of this campaign.
War Tax Resistance is declared when you fill out your income tax return.
It is best to complete your ordinary or simplified tax return and not the
rapid-return sheet. This can be done by hand, with the help of a computer
program from the Treasury Department.
We suggest to you the symbolic figure of €84.00 in protest of the 84
countries impoverished by debt, or any other amount from €1 up.
You deposit the amount of your tax resistance in the project you have chosen
(ask for two receipts: one for you, and the other to include with your tax
return).
It is advisable to attach also a note addressed to the Treasury Secretary
(see the example at www.nodo50.org/objecionfiscal)
giving the reasons for your Resistance to military spending; in this, you
announce the total amount of money redirected and the alternative social
project you have chosen.
You fill out the forms of your return and on reaching the general deductions,
cross out the declaration for one of the boxes and add “for war tax
resistance” and the amount chosen.
If you use tax software, you can include it in any of the sections in which
the deduction from the total is set to a “certain percentage,” or even
include it directly by hand.
And to finish, send us the details of your Tax Resistance (type of return,
quantity refused, and chosen project) to the address
CGT — OF
2012, C/
Sagunto, 15 1ª, 28010, Madrid, or by email:
sp-a.social@cgt.org.es
Remember:
Although your tax return will come out as owing taxes, getting a refund, or
breaking even, you can always declare yourself a tax resister, reclaiming the
money from your taxes that is destined for military spending, and redirecting
it to the alternative project.
War Tax Resistance
(WTR) is the
unwillingness to collaborate with one of the worst ways that capitalism
expands globally: with militarism and wars, even as they are dressed up
lately as “humanitarian interventions” or “wars against terrorism.”
With WTR
we are actively resisting military spending at the moment of filing an
income tax return.
Technically, this would consist of deducting from our taxes the part that is
destined for militarist purposes.
With WTR
we are not encouraging or promoting “à la carte taxes” as
some people think, but the use of a tool in the framework of civil
disobedience, which is to say, disobeying and breaking, publicly and
collectively, a law or norm that is considered unjust, seeking to overcome
it for society (in this case, military spending and militarism).
With the money that we redirect by means of the
WTR in our
tax return,
CGT
suggests financial help for concrete struggles, resistance funds or social
projects related to anarcho-syndicalist organization and ideas. Giving this
money that is taken from our acts of resistance establishes social projects,
and they allow continued work for a more just and equitable society.
The article goes on to describe two suggested projects: support for a strike
of janitorial workers at a train station in Málaga, and supporting a group
organizing nonviolent resistance among Palestinians under Israeli control.
Tax resisters frequently face the criticism of being freeloaders who enjoy the benefits of organized society without cooperating in the taxes necessary to fund them.
This rhetorical attack paints the tax resisters as self-interested, anti-social tax evaders.
One way resisters have countered this attack is by staging flamboyant giveaways of their resisted taxes — both to make it clear that the resister does not have only selfish motives for resisting, and to demonstrate that the money is being spent for the benefit of society (and to a greater extent than if the money had been filtered through the government first).
Redirection is also a way of forging or strengthening ties with the recipient groups, and of making them aware of tax resistance as an option.
Today I will briefly describe some of the many examples of tax resisters and tax resistance campaigns that have used this technique, and the many variations they have come up with.
Julia “Butterfly” Hill in redirected more than $150,000 of federal taxes that she owed that year, and made a point of saying “I ‘redirect’ my taxes rather than ‘resisting’ my taxes”:
I actually take the money that the IRS says goes to them and I give it to the places where our taxes should be going.
And in my letter to the IRS I said: “I’m not refusing to pay my taxes.
I’m actually paying them but I’m paying them where they belong because you refuse to do so.”
They are not directing our money where it should be going, they are being horrific stewards of that money.
Antor Odu Ndep, executive director of Common Ground Health Clinic, accepts redirected taxes during a War Tax Boycott granting ceremony.
NWTRCC
organized what it called the “War Tax Boycott” in .
It encouraged people to resist as a group, and as part of their resistance, to redirect any refused taxes to one of two groups: one that concentrated on providing health assistance in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and the other that provides assistance for Iraq War refugees.
The campaign kept track of how much money had been redirected over the course of the boycott, and then held a press conference at which oversized checks adding up to about $325,000 were given to spokespeople for these campaigns.
The People’s Life Fund, associated with the group Northern California War Tax Resistance, accepts redirected taxes from resisters.
If the IRS successfully seizes money from the resisters, the resisters can reclaim their donations to the Fund.
Otherwise, the money remains there and earns interest and dividends.
Every year the group pools these returns on investment and gives them away to local charitable organizations in a granting ceremony.
Usually the grants are small — $500 or $1000 — but they give them to a dozen or more groups, which makes their granting ceremonies a good way for local charities to network with each other and for news of war tax resistance to spread in the local activist community.
This same model, or one similar to it, is followed by a number of regional redirection funds associated with war tax resistance groups.
A family in Vermont figured out a way to get extra mileage out of their redirection: “They refused to pay 50% of their tax liability and redirected it to Plan International’s Childreach program.
Childreach has a fund drive for a project to help children in Nepal and Ghana, and has received a challenge grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
This means that the $211.69 that the WTR family has redirected will result in a $423.38 matching contribution from the U.S. government!”
In , several hundred Spanish war tax resisters redirected over €85,000 to the group “La’Onf,” which was organizing and educating about nonviolent conflict resolution techniques in Iraq.
The Mennonite Central Committee has established a “turning toward peace” fund especially designed for people who want to redirect their tax dollars from the government to more constructive projects — for example, education for children in Afghanistan.
War tax resisters Paul and Addie Snyder made a point of saying “we believe in paying taxes” as they explained in that they wouldn’t be paying those taxes to the federal government, but instead would be giving the money directly to rural poverty projects nearby.
In several hundred American Quaker war tax resisters paid their tax dollars to a Catholic soup kitchen in Philadelphia.
The Women’s Tax Resistance League largely suspended its campaign during World War Ⅰ, but one woman, writing as “A Persistent Tax Resister” wrote a letter to the editor of a suffragist paper suggesting that women “should contribute the sum she owes to the Government to a National Fund of her own choosing, and should send her donation as ‘Taxes withheld from the Government by a voteless woman.’ ” Charlotte Despard, for example, “said she had offered to give voluntarily the amount demanded of her by Revenue authorities to any war charity, but her offer had not been accepted.”
A war tax resistance group in Iowa used the proceeds from their redirection fund to create a scholarship for college students who would be ineligible for government financial aid because of refusal to register for the draft.
Another, in Pennsylvania, made an interest-free loan to a defense committee that was supporting a group of draft resisters who were on trial.
In , 70 war tax resisters went to the phone company offices in Boston to pay their bills minus the federal excise tax.
They then collected this refused tax ($142 worth) by passing an army helmet around, and donated it to the United Farm Workers to help them set up a clinic in California.
Also , the Cornell branch of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam did a similar phone company office protest and collection of redirected phone taxes, donating the money to a local Early Childhood Development program.
In , war tax resister Irving Hogan stood outside the Federal Building in San Francisco and redirected his federal income tax dollars one at a time — by handing them out to passers by.
“I want this money to be used for the delight, not the destruction, of men,” he said.
“Here: go buy yourself a beer.”
John and Pat Schwiebert did something similar: “One year they converted their war tax debt into five-dollar bills, which they gave to individuals waiting in line at the city unemployment office.
They included a letter with each donation telling why they were doing this, and they notified media beforehand.
Their actions garnered them an interview on NPR, and they received letters and cards from around the world.”
In a group of war tax resisters in New York redirected their war taxes as nickels that they handed out to people waiting at the bus stops on lines where fare hikes were being proposed, saying “this is where our tax dollars should be going.”
And here’s something kind of similar that doesn’t fit into any of my other categories, so I’ll toss it in here:
When the IRS seized back taxes from war tax resister Mary Regan’s retirement account in , she threw a fundraising party to try to raise an equivalent amount of money — not to reimburse her, but to give away to charities like “the Boston Women’s Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Friends Service Committee, a homeless shelter for youth, and the peace movement in Israel.”
Francisco José Sarrión Torres reports on the activities of the Tax Resistance Group of Ciudad Real [Spain]:
“This year we wrapped up the war tax resistance campaign with no refunds
redirected to two-thirds of the tax resisters in Ciudad Real. It has been
reclaimed as though it were an error, but we have already stated publicly
and in writing that it was not, but was an exercise of conscientious
objection in the face of the misuse of our taxes by the government. We
have redirected €870 to organizations like Ecologists in Action of Ciudad
Real, the 0.7% Project of the Rural Christian Movement, the Anselmo
Lorenzo Foundation, or Doctors Without Borders, from believing that these
are some that actually contribute to progressing toward a peaceful
world.”
…there are reasons to protest, most of us understand that the national books have been cooked and since we are shackled with deep debt, the most workable, quick, and “EU-recommended” solution is budget cuts, to be prioritized in terms of their expendability — and it is here that most of us feel betrayed, by seeing how expendable the citizens are and how comparatively vital are the political class, who have barely changed their privileges.
Lopez has decided to become a “social rat” — reducing his consumption as
much as possible so as to avoid paying the value-added tax:
…I declare a consumer strike, and I will get the most out of every cent I earn; I subscribe to “lonchafinismo” (responsible consumption).
I’ll stretch out the time on my monthly contact lenses, I’ll cut my hair less, I’ll give up on going to the movies and watch films at home, I’ll stretch expiration dates, will drive more economically.
Certainly the shops are not to blame, and I’m sorry for them, but if the government comes to realize that it [the VAT increase] is a useless measure, perhaps they will rethink it.
He also recommends a few other methods of tax resistance. There were over
a hundred comments on the article last I looked, many of them off-topic
in the classic internet fashion, but giving some clue as to the reach of
the article.
Say… what’s going on with the tax resisters in Spain these days?
There are two active tax resistance campaigns that I know about: one is a sort of expanded war tax resistance campaign that has grown to include a critique of centralization and of austerity budgets that favor international bankers over taxpayers and citizens; the other is part of a Catalan independence movement that is upset that the region is paying far more in taxes to the central government than it receives in government benefits and services.
The first of these groups is updating their “Right of Rebellion” manifesto for the coming tax year and is fine-tuning the way in which they encourage people to redirect their tax money from the central government to local, autonomous social welfare projects.
They are also continuing to staff “economic disobedience offices” to give face-to-face advice to resisters.
Something that’s new to me is that they’re promoting something they call “Desobediència Integral” (Comprehensive Disobedience):
Comprehensive disobedience involves breaking the social contract with the state of the territory where you live, in order to make a new social contract with a community in which the individual feels really connected.
This campaign has provoked a backlash from that portion of the left that sees the central government as an important part of its program and is threatened by proposals to weaken it.
An organization called the “Grupo de Trabajo Economía Sol” (Sun Economy Working Group) made the following criticisms:
If people withhold taxes from the government, the government will probably begin cutting the budgets of education, health, and social welfare programs before those of the more objectionable parts of the government.
The law now requires Spain to make debt payments a priority over social spending, so if you reduce tax revenue, you do nothing to fix the problem of illegitimate debt, but only hurt recipients of social spending.
Tax revenue should be managed by the people as a whole, and not by small groups on a local scale.
The projects proposed as recipients for tax redirection may be nice, but they are lacking in transparency and in democratic control.
Meanwhile, the Tortoise Antimilitarist Group is ramping up its more traditional war tax resistance campaign.
In the second of these campaigns, some 650 municipalities in Catalonia have decided not to forward the taxes they withhold from their employees (and certain other taxes they administer) to the central government in Madrid, but instead to give the money to the Catalan Tax Agency.
This is something of a symbolic measure as the Catalonian government itself sends this money along to Madrid, but the rebellious towns see this as an opening gambit in a series of measures it hopes will lead to increased Catalan independence.
While I was busy going through Friends Journal back
issues, I didn’t attend much to tax resistance news in the here-and-now, so
I’ll try to give a recap today of some of the news about international tax
resisters that caught my notice:
Since the fall into hell of the American financial giant Lehman Brothers in
, international banks have
received injections of public money coming from various governments to the
tune of $4.6 trillion, an amount sufficient to eradicate world hunger 92
times over. This embarrassing data forms part of an investigation from Arcadi
Oliveres, professor of Applied Economics at the Autonomous University of
Barcelona and president of the organization Justícia i Pau
(“Justice and Peace”). Oliveres was, 30 years ago, one of the originators of
the first tax resistance initiative organized in our country. He decided, in
defiance of the Law, but favoring his conscience, not to contribute to the
government’s military spending. He became a tax resister. Today, for reasons
like the data cited above, many citizens have begun processes of resistance
that involve new ways to use their money.
Those first war tax resisters of
opened a new path for the honorable citizen. It was not meant to trick the
Treasury so as to keep the money. The taxpayer challenged the collector, and
questioned the legitimacy of the spending they considered immoral. In the
absence of ethical behavior from the state, the good citizen, they argued,
did not have to obey it. “The people are afraid to disobey, but if nobody had
done so before there would still be slaves on the streets and blacks would be
standing in the back of the bus,” Oliveres told Números
Rojos. The professor took as model conscientious objectors who refused
to do compulsory military service in : “For not wanting to do their military year and a half they were
sent to prison for three years, even to penal colonies in the Sahara. They
had no fear; for this reason they were so important.” That struggle is
won — compulsory military service was abolished in Spain on
— though war tax
resistance, which began to be practiced in
continues to be considered illegal evasion.
Calculating the Deduction
The process of becoming a tax resister is very simple, although there is no
fixed rule. It amounts to adding to your tax return a new deduction of
x euros, corresponding to your personal contribution to government
military spending. But the calculation of this option can have a variety of
sources: some people estimate military spending in the total federal budget
each year and apply this percentage directly as a deduction on their return
(between 6–15%, depending on which items are considered military spending).
Others take as their reference the data suggested each year by antimilitarist
platforms (last year military spending of €666.14 per person was calculated).
And others redirect a fixed amount each year from the taxes owed on their
return (traditionally €84). Then, depending on how the final result changes,
the objector may have to pay less to the Treasury than is owed — if it is
positive — or may recover more money from the Treasury than it has to
pay — if it is negative.
In either case, before filing, the objector has already redirected the amount
he or she does not accept as legitimate government spending to an institution
for social good — whichever the objector wants, although there are lists of
groups to contribute to. Of course, the reasons for resisting are specified
on the return itself, and also communicated to the tax agency at the time of
filing. But what happens next? “if it comes out negative, you will claim an
amount from the Treasury, which is not returned to you, and generally that’s
that. But when it is positive, you neglect to pay a part. In this case, it
may be that nothing happens — according to Ecologists in Action, in 90% of
cases the incident goes undetected — but the tax agency may come after you
and end up levying not only the amount you refused to pay but also an
administrative penalty,” Oliveres said.
With exceptions, like in when the Supreme
Court of Catalonia found in favor of the former Catalonia Parliament deputy
Joan Surroca, who in deducted from the
amount that he had to pay in taxes a percentage corresponding to military
spending and gave the money to an
NGO
that assists African women. The treasury then fined him 54,896 pesetas (€329),
a penalty that Surroca appealed. Finally the court ruled in his favor by
understanding that the offender, by sending his resisted taxes to an
NGO,
did not have the intent to profit from his action. A landmark judgment, but
precise.
But how many pacifist tax resisters are there in Spain? It is difficult to
calculate — not everyone who does it talks about it — but according to the
associations and platforms associated with this movement there may be between
1,000 and 2,000 people each year: “the number is very stable, although there
are sharp peaks in times of armed conflict when Spain is involved, as with
the Iraq war,” explains Arcadi Oliveres. So in the fiscal
campaign, it is estimated that at least
5,000 people became tax resisters. Today, the economic crisis has not
produced a significant increase in antimilitarist objectors, “even allowing
for awful data, like the fact that in the
state spent €1,300 million to construct a combat aircraft, the same amount of
money that it saved by freezing pensions.”
From pacifism to rebellion
In , the Right of Rebellion movement
(www.derechoderebelion.net),
with the help of more than €8,000 raised through a crowdfunding initiative,
printed 5,000 copies of the “Manual of Economic Disobedience” (the edition is available on the web), a
document intended, in its own words, “to all of those people who would like
to take steps to make their lives exemplars of their thought and feeling.” So
the group intended to “initiate and extend a campaign of tax resistance aimed
at the Spanish state and at those who control it… to show that we will not
pay their debts, because we do not recognize the existing Constitution or the
existing puppet government of global financial capitalism…”
As the most important step of disobedience, the manual teaches the option of
making a partial income tax resistance, similar to that of the war tax
resisters, but including also deductions for such items as the amortization
of public debt, the interest on the debt, payments for the monarchy, the
Senate, the prisons, the police, or the church, until the total comes to
almost 30% of the federal budget. The authors of the manual make it clear that
the decision about what parts to deduct must be decided by the taxpayer, but
suggest a standard 25% of what is on the return.
Offices of Disobedience
The goal of resistance is to divert money that doesn’t go to the Treasury to
“autonomous projects that will be useful to meet the needs of the people.”
After publishing its manual, and without much time to prepare, Right of
Rebellion began organizing a series of Offices of Economic Disobedience in
various cities around the nation, which learned about and advised anyone who
was interested in becoming a tax resister in the tax resistance campaign of
. Although it is difficult to know the exact
number of people who joined this campaign, the figures tossed about by
different offices were very modest, not reaching even a hundred or so
resisters. In spite of this, the constituents of the Office of Economic
Disobedience in Lavapiés (Embajadores, 49; Madrid), considered the
accounting “very positive”: “not so much with the economic level of project
supported — just over €18,000 in total — but by, above all, the number of
people, from all classes, who were interested in this issue.”
Meanwhile, as the tax season numbers are coming in, Right of Rebellion
continues to promote other forms of disobedience, such as certain techniques
of resistance to the
VAT (in the
declarations of independent companies or cooperatives), rent for people who
have been evicted (preventing or indefinitely delaying the eviction), or
bankruptcy (as freedom to carry out different actions). The ultimate goal
would be an actual departure from the “official” economic system and the
creation of new, alternative forms of living.
Integrated Cooperatives
The “Manual of Economic Disobedience” relies on a call for comprehensive
cooperatives, “a legal form that allows construction of an arena of
autonomous economic relations among the participants that is protected from
public or private liability, and quite legally minimizes tax and social
insurance liability, shielding as much as possible from the acts of the banks
or government.” Furthermore, this new way of life permits “bankrupt or
unemployed beings as people, according to the system and the existing legal
framework, but at the same time to be able to live completely normally,
working and consuming in an autonomous manner, without worrying about
seizures of prior debts.” In short, a permanent economic disobedience, a
collective evasion of the system clinging to a self-sufficient,
multisectorial structure, where the members, involved to a lesser or greater
extent, coexist and cooperate at the margin of the system. Indeed, the
cooperatives possess a system of communal services, using alternative
currencies and relying on self-financing social cooperatives to obtain credit
without interest.
The Solidarity Scam
One of the major promoters of the Catalan Comprehensive Cooperative is Enric
Durán. This activist burst into the limelight in
when he announced himself, in
an article in the self-published Crisi, which had
“stolen” €492,000 from the banks. Step by step, he described how he had taken
out 68 different loans from 39 banks on various pretenses: to buy a car,
renovate his house,
etc. And how he
had created a shell company and falsified documents to justify nonexistent
income, in order that the credit control system would not detect its growing
debt.
While the mainstream media were trumpeting his “exploit,” Enric fled to South
America with €8,000 in his wallet. The rest had been given, as was explained
in the manifesto, to autonomous social project. This action, whether described
as financial disobedience or a solidarity con, sounded around the world and
the press named its actor the “Robin Hood of banks.” Enric returned to take
credit for the legitimacy of his action, and was imprisoned
. He was finally
released, though with a pending criminal trial that was to have been held
. Enric failed to attend “because
he doesn’t believe that the judicial system has standing to judge,” so the
Provincial Court put out a bench warrant for him on
. The prosecutor asked for an
eight-year sentence, six for an ongoing offense of falsifying a commercial
document, and two for criminal bankruptcy.
While eluding justice, Durán continues to vindicate resistance: “any act of
insubordination is a welcome step, and although at first it may seem like an
isolated action, it is from such small actions that we build a strategy with
a long-term goal,” although clearly these processes are initially marginal,
“historically risky actions, if they involve individual responsibility, are
taken only by the minorities involved. The key is that these minorities are
able to organize to better influence the majorities.”
Disobedience of the system
Other citizens who dissent from the economic relations imposed by the system,
like the lawyer, writer, and expert on disobedience José Luis Carretero, do
not understand the processes of economic disobedience as an “exit”: “you have
to take a step toward disobedience, but not as an alternative to
confrontation. You can’t get anything without an effective, mass
confrontation.” Carratero has reservations about measures like tax
resistance, “it has a very limited and token run. I get these dynamics if
they are done with other actions, like the occupation of vacant housing for
instance. In the short run, I think we should try to find an alliance with
various sectors that are confronting austerity. In the long run, turn back
the social segmentation processes that have taken place in recent decades.
But from the grassroots, not from outside of the system.” For Carretero, since
the 15-M outbreak,
as the topic of disobedience is no longer taboo, “those who talk about these
things were once marginal — I felt like a Martian. Most saw capitalism as a
good thing that allowed you to have a house or a car. That has changed
somewhat, but the problem remains that they see no alternative.”
With less theory and more concrete actions, the campaigns of economic
disobedience of the “I won’t pay” movement have taken root in many sectors
through social networking, where they already have some 30,000 followers.
They called a rebellion against toll roads in Catalonia and managed to get
some 60,000 people, according to Abertis, the collecting company, to refuse
to pay to use the road. They managed to mobilize,
, hundreds of people in several
demonstrations in Madrid against the so-called “rate hikes” for public
transit, which upped the price of tickets for members of the community some
11%. Another action called “I won’t repay” inspired citizens not to pay the
euro-per-prescription in the communities where it was imposed — Catalonia and
Madrid — before it was suspended by the Constitutional Court. According to
the founder of “I won’t pay,” Álex Corrones: “Not only do we believe that it
is right to disobey laws that are unjust, but that it is our obligation as
responsible citizens.” For Corrones, it is not enough to demonstrate:
“demonstrations have been controlled. And if they get out of hand, there are
200 cops to fire on command.”
war tax resisters in Asturias
A report on
the war tax resistance campaign in Asturias this year said that it had
“led workshops in all parts of Asturias, conducted five street actions, and
has delivered thousands of information packets, which have been supplemented
by the educational conference with Tica Font and Pere Ortega of the
Centro Delás research center, and
the contributions of Arcadi Oliveres in another conference.”
The group is pushing for a referendum on Catalan independence, and is meanwhile trying to create a new state within the shell of the old, by creating new Catalan institutions and trying to vest in them the authority currently held by federal ones.
One of these is a Catalan tax agency, and some resisters have adopted the tactic of paying their federal taxes there instead of to the federal agency.
Italy’s is the latest government to try to slip new taxes into utility bills as a way of trying to sneak tax hikes past its subjects — the latest is something called “tares” which is ostensibly part of the garbage bill.
A “No Tares Steering Committee” is preparing a tax strike in protest.
Peggy Thomas, a retired teacher who lives in Hebden Bridge, is refusing to
pay the Inland Revenue some of her income tax. She is a conscientious
objector and against taxes being used for warfare.
Peggy told the HebWeb that the nature of conscientious objection had
completely changed. Today, it is not about young people refusing to fight; it
is about money. Today’s wars can be fought with just a few men but the
weapons are much far more expensive and deadly. That’s why she’s withholding
a proportion of her tax, a proportion which would otherwise be spent on war
and weapons.
Peggy told the HebWeb, “At the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, the then
Chancellor Gordon Brown, told the House of Commons not to worry about how our
participation in the ‘coalition of the willing’ would be financed. He assured
MPs and the country that all the
money needed would be available. Of course it was; 10% of the Government
budget is set aside for warfare.”
Peggy is not alone in withholding taxes.
An organisation called “Conscience” is campaigning to end compulsory contributions to warfare.
Conscience believes that those who object in principle to warfare should be able to divert 10% of their taxes to peaceful pursuits.
For example, some people donate their 10% withheld tax to charities such as Oxfam.
When Peggy first started withholding her tax, the Inland Revenue ignored her,
and just took the tax she owed out of any refund she was due. If she sent a
letter explaining, they’d reply that they couldn’t enter into correspondence
about the matter.
But this year the Inland Revenue started to get a little more serious with
Peggy and started to talk about debt collection agencies. Conscience were
able to reassure Peggy that in the first instance the debt collection agency
would not be allowed to take anything from her. And that what she should do
is write to the debt collection agency explaining the situation.
In her letter, Peggy wrote, “The right of conscientious objection, which was
won, not without a struggle, during the First World war, protected people who
did not want to kill other people from having to take part in warfare. Once
conscription was abolished, this right was taken from us. Now our money is
conscripted and used to finance killing.”
“The poorest are footing the bill for those in multiple occupancy. The burden
is put on the very poor,” she said.
“I am doing this for many of us, not just myself. Everyone I speak to says
‘we support you, our mother or our father is like you, they are struggling
too.’
“The only weapon we have got is not to pay council tax.”
She said she has been paying some of her council tax but she could not afford
to pay all of it.
“I have been paying £25 a month and that is all I can afford,” she said.
One student donates to the social struggle an award presented by
[Education Minister] Dolores Serrat
Alba Pedro, a student of Computer and Telecommunications Engineering from the
University of Zaragoza who
received one of six Student Prizes (education and values) issued by the Social
Council of the Aragonese campus, will donate the amount received (500 euros)
to “a resistance fund,” which is a temporary institution based on support and
solidarity used to alleviate specific economic problems.
The academic, who received in a green shirt
[a symbol of protests
against education budget reductions] against cuts the prize from the
hands of the Minister of Education, said that “my outcomes, my effort, and my
very existence have been possible thanks to all those who came before me. I
would not be here without a public education and the incredible teachers that
I have had, who have not only formed me academically, but have inculcated in
me enormously worthy and noble values,” he elaborated later in a statement.
The recipient is the antimilitarist activist collective
Mambrú, which carries out campaigns such as War Tax
Resistance, which will begin at the end of this month with the objective of
not accepting previous declarations that the Treasury submitted for the
income tax return and then redirecting the funds from military spending to
social projects.
You can read Pedro’s full statement (in Spanish) at
this link
It’s time for another international tax resistance news update:
Austria
The Hypo Alpe Adria bank bailout scandal has proven to be the last straw for some Austrian taxpayers.
I’ve mentioned before the case of tobacconist Gerhard Höller, who recently started to refuse to pay his taxes and who started a website to encourage others to join his strike.
This article introduced me to Wolfgang Reichl, who is paying his taxes into an escrow account to protest the Hypo bailout.
Small business owners in Italy are also rebelling against the taxes and fees that are pushing their businesses into bankruptcy.
Bed and breakfast owner Alessandra Marazzi laid off staff and started doing everything herself — working from six in the morning to eleven at night — and she still couldn’t keep above water.
Then she sat down with her books and discovered that fully 84% of what she was bringing in was going to pay taxes and state-monopolized utility fees.
She decided to stop paying taxes just so her business (and her family) could survive.
Her “protesta fiscale ad oltranza” (tax protest to the bitter end) movement is also gaining adherents.
Caterer Andrea Polese, for instance, stopped paying and put a sign on her door reading “I am a tax resister.”
Bar owner Mariano Pavanello posted a selfie with a sign saying “I decided to stop paying protection money to a state thief.”
Meanwhile, the planned tax strike of the Venetian secessionists continues to progress, despite the recent arrests of two dozen separatists.
Jordan
Well, I can’t make heads or tails of the dialog in this video, but apparently it shows residents of Bani Obeid explaining why they have decided to stop paying taxes to protest against governmental incompetence.
Spain
The “comprehensive disobedience” movement that began in Catalonia has a new website, that includes material in several languages (including English).
Its purpose: “to construct an international political and ideological space on the basis of the Integral Revolution.”
The newly-declared Venetian Republic issued its first decree — that Venetians are exempt from taxation until the Republic is able to set up a tax agency independent from Italy.
The government has responded with raids and arrests there as well.
Find out… pay in… attach… explain… correspond… show off!
The war tax resistance movement in Spain has been ramping up lately. I haven’t
found a whole lot of news to report, as the campaign itself and the techniques
and rhetoric surrounding it are more or less the same as in previous years. But
I have been impressed by the quantity of and the creativity shown in the
graphics being used in the campaigns this year. Here are some examples:
Tax resistance workshop in Mallorca. When injustice is law, disobedience is the only way. [Catalan]
Don’t pay for war with your taxes. Engage in war tax resistance.
If you want peace, don’t pay for war! 2014 tax resistance campaign. Disarm our taxes! [Catalan]
2014 war tax resistance campaign. So that another world should be possible, other education is necessary.
Did you know… (cash equivalents) [Catalan]
Military spending 0%. We do not need any army. Engage in war tax resistance.
Disobey and construct with your taxes. Tax resistance.
Our proposal: disarm your taxes! and of course disobey everything that seems disgraceful to you; prioritize the rightful over the legal!
Wipe out military spending. Make tax resistance on your income tax return.
2014 Tax Resistance — Disarm Your Taxes — Not With Our Money
An international tax resistance news round-up:
Samantha Prime
France
A trial of several bonnets rouges on charges of highway tax portal destruction has been put off until September, and the defendants are now all out on bail.
But meanwhile, the government has won its first conviction in another case:
Samantha Prime, a 19-year-old student, was recently convicted of burning a highway radar outpost .
She was given a six-month suspended sentence along with 175 hours of community service and an as-yet-undetermined fine for damages.
Rural Catalans, who are legally organized under a quasi-municipal government called the Decentralized Municipal Entity, approved a tax resistance motion that would have people in Catalonia redirect their federal taxes to the Catalan regional government.
The federal government took them to court for this, but the court ruled that the non-binding motion of advocacy was “political speech” and was within the Entity’s authority.
El Confidencial, however, has declared the campaign a failure, claiming that fewer than 1,500 people have begun redirecting their federal taxes in this way so far, a much lower figure than the movement had hoped for at this stage.
Sales tax refuseniks in Salzburg, motivated by disgust at bank bailouts, have won the applause of their neighbors, but have had a hard time making their resistance stick. The government froze Wolfgang Reichl’s bank account until he paid taxes and penalties, for instance, but he vowed to resist again.
…if we pay taxes that maintain the military structure, we are collaborators with the acts and effects of this structure.
We either admit this responsibility or exercise civil disobedience against the laws that are against our conscience, as in our era the Movement of Conscientious Objection to military service has done.
Some conscientious objectors to military service thought that in order to be consistent, beyond personal military refusal, they must continue in the same vein in their economic behavior with their taxes and they declared themselves war tax resisters, an action that they continue today in their struggle against the tax agency and therefore against the state, redirecting “military taxes” to social projects.
It came as news to me, but I think it may have been established last year: Sciopero Fiscale (Tax Strike), a project of Democracy in Action.
They believe that the Italian government is taxing excessively and performing dismally, and that the time has come to stop buying it.
“Paying taxes is a duty, but it should be the right of every citizen not to pay them if they are used for evil or immoral purposes.”
Bray Water Meter Watch activists pose with captured junction boxes
Ireland
Activists with Bray Water Meter Watch captured two junction boxes that workers intended to install to facilitate the metering and taxing of residential water service.
They held the boxes hostage until the workers reinstalled the old, unmetered stopcocks and repaired the torn-up sidewalk.
Spain
War tax resister Pepa Pretel, under threat of having her home seized and sold by the government, gave in and paid the amount due.
She says, however, that “the important thing is that people know that there is this disobedience.”
Pretel was one of several hundred people in Spain who redirected a percentage of their tax bill, equivalent to the military percentage of the Spanish government budget, to charitable causes.
“These resources wasted in the preparation for war, could be redirected to satisfy the basic necessities of the people and to promote egalitarian and nonviolent values that surpass the values of fear and aggression promoted by the military system we suffer from.”
She says that despite the setback, she plans to continue resisting.
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.
According to a Government Accountability Office report, people filing phony tax refund claims by using appropriated identities stole $5.2 billion from the IRS during the .
(An additional $24.2 billion in such refund claims were detected before the IRS sent any money.)
To put that into perspective, $5 billion is roughly the amount of money that was in the entire IRS enforcement budget (before recent cuts, anyway).
Which is to say that nowadays the government pays more to organized tax cheats than it pays to combat tax cheats.
The identity theft industry is a significant (and growing) part of the federal budget.
When the Syriza coalition looked like it was on track for a shocking victory in the Greek elections, people across Greece stopped paying their taxes.
After all, Syriza had campaigned in part on the abolition of some new taxes, and had hitched its wagon to the “won’t pay” tax resistance movement.
Well, now that they’re in power, they’re more apt to be caught talking about tax-paying as a “patriotic duty,” but the Greeks don’t seem to agree: tax collection is down by 23% from expectations.
An Italian priest, Don Marino Ruggero, has been making waves by promoting tax resistance to his flock.
In his parish bulletin he wrote: “Catholic doctrine notes that there are fair taxes that are to be paid under pain of mortal sin and of the penal law, unfair taxes that you may evade without sin and without offense, and even perverse taxes that are contrary to the divine law and that should not be paid even if you have to risk your life.”
He says he feels that the tax burden has become so grotesque in Italy that the taxes are no longer fair enough to be obligatory to Christians: “I wonder if it is better to pay utility bills and taxes and then have to go begging for charity.
When a family sinks into despair because they have nothing to eat, one has to decide.
I call for a tax strike.
Yes, a peaceful revolution, in which it would be enough that everyone fearlessly stop paying any tax, with a single purpose: to undermine an out-of-control ‘meat grinder’ tax system.
Gandhi said: ‘Withholding payment of taxes is one of the quickest methods of overthrowing a government.’
He and his people, they got it.”
Current affairs in Greece are often described by American commentators as
being about a spoiled populace that wants to keep a generous welfare state
doling out pensions and plum jobs but won’t pay taxes to pay off the
creditors who have sustained the party. But the Workers
World reminds us
there’s another side to the story:
…austerity and unemployment in Greece have brought the proportion of people living under the poverty line from 3 percent in 2010 to 44 percent today.…
Why did this austerity hit Greece with the most devastating blow?
The Wall Street Journal of , answered this question for its business audience: “Greece, with a population of just 11 million, is the largest importer of conventional weapons in Europe — and ranks fifth in the world behind China, India, the United Arab Emirates and South Korea. Its military spending is the highest in the European Union as a percentage of gross domestic product. That spending was one of the factors behind Greece’s stratospheric national debt.”
An article in the ,
British newspaper the Guardian explained the
impact of the years of weapons purchases:
“According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute…
, Greece was the
world’s fourth biggest importer of conventional weapons. It is now the
10th.
“ ‘As a proportion of GDP,
Greece spends twice as much as any other
EU member on
defense.… Well after the economic crisis had begun, Germany and France
were trying to seal lucrative weapons deals even as they were pushing us
to make deep cuts in areas like health,’ said Dimitris Papadimoulis, who
now represents Syriza in the European Parliament.”
For many years, Greece was the biggest customer in Europe for German
military corporations and also a major purchaser of French weapons. These
are the two imperialist countries that hold the largest share of Greek
debt.
The contracts for these weapons purchases and decades of maintenance and
parts supplies are provided by bank loans from the countries supplying
the weapons — Germany, France and the United States. The incentive for
the huge unneeded purchases is a network of bribes from the military
corporations, especially to the generals and top political leaders.
Angelos Philippides, a prominent Greek economist, explained: “For a long
time Greece spent 7 percent of its GDP
on defense when other European countries spent an average 2.2 percent. If
you were to add up that compound 5 percent
, there would be no
debt at all.
“ ‘If Athens had cut defense spending to levels similar to other
EU states
over the past decade, economists claim it would have saved around
€150bn — more than its last bailout. Instead, Greece dedicates up to €7bn
a year to military expenditure — down from a high of €10bn in 2009.”
(Guardian, )
A couple from Llanllwni, Wales, has stopped paying the so-called “bedroom tax” to the Carmarthenshire Council.
They say their council home is so poor that, to avoid the condensation and subsequent mold in the bedroom, they have been forced to sleep on the living room floor.
If the government is going to play slumlord, they’ll go on strike.
“War is financed with your taxes,”
headlines an article in Spain’s Nueva Tribuna about the war tax resistance movement there, which is probably the most-active such movement in the world today.
“Disobey!” reads the protest banner on an altered €5 note
Some tax resistance news out of Spain:
The Nueva Tribuna of Spain reminds its readers that “war is funded with your taxes,” and describes the latest war tax resistance campaign launched by pacifist and antimilitarist groups like Ecologists in Action.
The Association of Catalan Municipalities and the Association of Municipalities for Independence are launching a campaign to get local government bodies in Catalonia to pay their federal taxes to the Catalan regional government rather than to the federal government.
This is currently mostly a symbolic gesture, as the Catalan government is forwarding such payments along to the central tax administration, but the groups see this as a way of laying the groundwork for independence and as giving the regional government financial leverage in its fight.
They also hope that by convincing local governments to do this they will also encourage people and businesses to follow suit.
The Knowckers.org site has tried to tally up how much the Bonnets Rouges movement cost the French government during its successful campaign against the highway tax, and to explain the cross-ideological appeal of the movement.
Some news of interest to war tax resisters in particular:
C.J. Hinke has a book coming out: Free Radicals: War Resisters in Prison. Here’s an excerpt.
You can also follow the PrisonWarResisters blog which contains a lot of good accounts of mid-twentieth-century conscientious objection in the United States.
The entries touch on war tax resistance from time to time, mostly in passing, but include information about the tax resistance stands of Juanita & Wally Nelson, Ernest & Marion Bromley, Eroseanna Robinson, Karl Meyer, and Art Harvey.
The Spanish anti-militarist group “Tortuga” has created a comic book to explain why and how to refuse to pay war taxes.
War tax resisters have been making the tactic known hither and yon, including at a Fellowship of Reconciliation regional conference, a Fourth-of-July parade, a “People’s Budget” gathering, and the U.S. Social Forum; also, the New England Gathering of War Tax Resisters and Supporters is coming up in .
Some international tax resistance news that has flashed over my screen in recent days:
Catalonia
A report in Negocios.com suggests that the campaign to get Catalan municipalities to send their taxes to the Catalan government rather than to Spain has flopped.
According to the report, only 70 to 80 of the 941 municipalities signed on to the largely-symbolic tax resistance plan, even though in 248 of them, Catalan separatists have a governing majority.
On the other hand, this report says that Catalonia is well on its way to creating an independent tax agency and that mass tax resistance is only a matter of time.
The U.K.
Low-income workers in Britain are becoming subject to council taxes from which they were previously exempt.
The councils are expecting mass tax refusal and some are comparing it to Thatcher’s Poll Tax.
The Diputació de Barcelona, which governs the largest province in Catalonia, voted to stop paying value-added and income taxes to the Spanish federal government, instead forwarding the money to the Catalan Tax Agency.
The left-wing separatist party Candidatura d’Unitat Popular proposed the measure, which managed to also win support of the center-left Entesa bloc.
The Catalan Tax Agency currently forwards such taxes to the Spanish government, so the practical effect of this is currently minimal, but it sets the stage for an eventual Catalan independence bid in which its government will stop relinquishing such funds.
Meanwhile the Spanish Constitutional Court declared Catalonia’s attempts to strengthen the independence of its own tax agency “unconstitutional and nullified.”
France
I recently became aware of the French Revolution Digital Archive, on which I discovered the following propaganda images or political cartoons from that struggle:
In many parts of Honduras, crime syndicates / protogovernments rule the streets, often extorting more money from their subjects than does the internationally-recognized Honduran government.
Some people resist these taxes, known locally as “impuesto de guerra” or “war tax,” but the consequences of refusal can be, and frequently are, deadly.
The latest victims included eight bus company employees in Choloma, who were gunned down in broad daylight, a block away from a police station and by attackers in police uniforms, in retaliation against drivers who did not pay the tax.
In bus drivers there took collective action, going on strike to demand better security.
Ireland
Right 2 Water Galway claims that it has learned via a Freedom of Information disclosure “that 71% of those expected to pay a water charges bill hadn’t done so by .”
They are urging people to continue to hold out, noting that there are no penalties for nonpayment until four quarters have passed without paying, and collection action cannot take place until much later still.
Spain
The Spanish war tax resistance movement has recently released its tallies of war tax resistance and redirection for this tax season.
According to the group, some €92,514 was resisted by the 647 people whom they were able to find in their census.
The complete report breaks this down by region and municipality and lists the 162 destinations to which these resisted taxes were redirected.
Wales
The town of Crickhowell has decided it’s no use complaining about the strategies big multinationals use to avoid paying taxes — if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!
They’re pairing up with a television show to try to come up with similar “offshoring” tax strategies to those the big guys use:
By mimicking the methods multinational companies use to pay less tax in Britain, business owners in Crickhowell hope to protest against those who do not pay their fair share of tax.
Advised by experts and followed by a BBC camera crew, family-run shops in the Brecon Beacons town have submitted their own DIY tax plan to HMRC.
Residents want to share their tax avoidance plan with other towns, in a bid to force the treasury into legislation to close loopholes which allowed companies such as Amazon to pay just £11.9m in tax last year on £5.3bn of U.K. internet sales.
They’ve created a website, Fair Tax Town, and hope, if they’re successful in their scheme, to share their techniques, open-source-style, with other towns, in hopes of getting the government to close the loopholes that allow the multinationals to outcompete them by avoiding their taxes more successfully.
The movement is using tax resistance in service of a pro-tax agenda, which they acknowledge may seem ironic:
Robert McGee, whose scholarship on the attitudes of people concerning tax evasion and resistance in different cultures has been a topic here before, has published a new paper, this one on The Ethics of Tax Evasion in Islam.
In contrast to his more typical work, this one is more speculative than empirical, and summarizes the opinions of Muslim authorities about the proper limits of the government’s authority to tax, and of the subject’s obligation to submit to such taxation.
Not long ago the news was full of interest about Facebook gazillionaire Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to launch a new enterprise dedicated to making the world a better place, and his decision to fund it with 99% of the Facebook shares he owns: about $45 billion worth. Cynics were quick to see this as a tax dodge.
It’s not obvious to me that the tax advantages are quite as enormous as some are making them out to be, but even so, as Simon Black points out, if Zuckerberg managed to avoid taxes on any of that $45 billion, that alone would contribute to making the world a better place!
Jason Rawn, at NWTRCC’s blog, urges climate change activists to divest from the Pentagon to fight the single biggest contributor to fossil fuel consumption.
NWTRCC is again collecting names for its War Tax Boycott.
If you’ve signed on in the past and you’d still like to be considered part of the boycott, sign on again as they’ve started with a clean slate.
Some new links of interest to war tax resisters in particular:
The next national gathering of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee will be held in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania (near Philadelphia).
Check this page for details.
Paper Money carried an article on the “Thoreau Money” banknote-like leaflets that were used by war tax resistance groups in the United States during the Vietnam War.
The article goes into unusual detail about the history and structure of the war tax resistance movement in that period.
The group Conscience, from the U.K., has finalized its version of “peace tax” legislation, which it hopes to get Parliament to consider.
It differs in some ways from other countries’ versions of this plan for implementing legalized conscientious objection to military taxation.
In a proposal similar to the “comprehensive disobedience” movement that was pioneered by Spanish activists, a group in the United Kingdom has inaugurated a “Golden Rule Tax Disobedience” campaign.
In their words:
The latest tax scandal is bringing the erosion of our democracy into ever
sharper focus. Britain suffers under an enormous democratic deficit due to
state capture by “free”-market neoliberal fundamentalism and its associated
corporate and financial interests, in aggressive ascendancy
. Notwithstanding the
financial crisis, this capture of the state
has remained unaddressed, with successive governments shamefully complicit in
it. Despite copious corroborative research and endless petitioning and
protesting, all we’ve seen is disingenuous hand-wringing and political
evasion.
Our collusion with this apology for a “democracy” must stop. We, the
citizenry, are therefore taking matters into our own hands — with a “Golden
Rule Tax Disobedience” whose intention is grassroots mobilisation against
systemic injustice, favouring far greater equality, shared and stable
prosperity, enhanced quality of life and, most importantly, an environmentally
sustainable future.
The evidential rationale for this action is overwhelming. Not least, £93bn of
“corporate welfare” is given as handouts annually to businesses operating in
our allegedly “free” market; and the government spends £26bn subsidising
harmful fossil fuels, yet a mere £3.5bn subsidising renewables. “Free”-market
fundamentalism has been an astonishing failure for the vast majority.
Our Golden Rule Tax Disobedience initiative asks citizens to withhold a small
amount of tax (through
VAT or their tax
return — everyone can join in), and then donate it to conducive campaigning
groups. This principled modelling of a redistributive ethos intends to shame
our politicians into taking effective action.
Principled tax activism has a long and distinguished history in circumstances
where the state has shown itself incapable of defending the public interest.
With no serious attempt by government to correct Britain’s massive democratic
deficit, our initiative is an idea whose time has come. We ask you to join
with us in taking back power in order to create a fairer and more sustainable
society.
Dr Gail Bradbrook — Director, Compassionate Revolution
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett — Co-authors of The Spirit Level
George Barda — Social justice and Occupy campaigner, Compassionate Revolution
Leon Rosselson — Writer/musician
David Drew — Former Labour MP for Stroud
Polly Higgins — Lawyer advocating for Ecocide Law
Joel Benjamin — Debt Resistance UK and People vs PFI
Professor Andrew Samuels — Analytical psychology, University of Essex
Professor Karín Lesnik-Oberstein — Critical theorist
Rev Paul Nicolson — Taxpayers Against Poverty
Dr Richard House — Chartered psychologist, education campaigner, Stroud
Liam Barrington-Bush — Co-founder, More Like People
Max Graef — Broadcast engineer, company director
Andrea Halewood — Chartered psychologist
Ben Jarlett — Digital media consultant
Martin Large — Publisher and author
Jojo Mehta — Environmental campaigner
Beatrice Millar — Steering group, Psychotherapists and Counsellors for Social Responsibility (PCSR)
Gabriel Millar — Teacher, Stroud
Alice Murray — Political activist and campaigner, Stroud
Aliyah Norrish — Digital content associate
Mark Nurse — NHS paramedic, Stroud
Councillor Brian Oosthuysen — Gloucestershire
Maja Passchier — Cellist and cello teacher
Hazel Raee — Mobile digital champion, Isle of Skye
Aline Sitoe Diatta was, says Wikipedia, “a Senegalese heroine of the opposition to French colonialism, often called the Joan of Arc or the Marianne of Senegal.”
When the French colonial administrators of the region where the Diola people lived began conscripting locals to fight in European wars and to engage in confiscatory taxation of rice and cattle, the Diola resisted.
Aline Sitoe Diatta was one of the leaders of this resistance, and also a martyr: she was arrested and tortured, and died while imprisoned in exile.
Emitai is a film about these uprisings from the Senegalese point of view.
Sieglinde Baumert has spent two months in prison for her refusal to pay a €17½ monthly television tax to support the government-run station.
The tax, which formerly was based on the number of televisions in a household, is now assessed on everyone in Germany whether or not they have a television.
Taxi drivers in Quebec, upset at being outcompeted by upstarts like Uber, are threatening to stop paying taxes if the government doesn’t act to protect their industry against competition.
Have you caught the tax evasion bug?
The recent leaks of the “Panama Papers,” with their details of how the 1% stash their money in shell companies in tax havens, have increased perceptions that the tax system is gamed by the rich and powerful — and have decreased the willingness of the average joe to continue getting fleeced.
[IRS chief] Koskinen
says the main factor that drives ordinary Americans to stop paying their
taxes, or to try to cheat on their taxes, is the perception that others
are doing the same. If you think that your neighbors are not paying their
fair share, you’re just a little less likely to pay your own tax bill in
full or in part.
Some Tax Day Reflections from Bryan Caplan, from back when he was a grad student (he’s now a professor of economics at George Mason University).
Excerpt:
It isn’t a model regulated by the Treasury, but a campaign of civil
disobedience that has been practiced for more than thirty years in
countries like Spain, the
U.S.,
Canada, Holland, Germany, France, or Italy. Simply, it is the use of
the tax return as a tool for redirecting to socially useful purposes
the portion of military spending from each citizen. Antimilitarist
Alternative coordinates a state-wide campaign to help the maximum
number of people to participate. We collect data from various peace
research centers and we compose a study that adds the Defense
Ministry budget to the spending on other armed forces and also other
items that are dispersed by other ministries, such as credits to arms
companies for so-called research & development of a military
character. These credits, in reality, have ended up financing the
arms industry, generating along the way €27,000 million in debt. We
also include spending that, in our view, tends to a more militarized
society: for example, a large part of the prison population is there
because the system does not facilitate social integration. So, with
all of the global military spending and spending on state repression
and social control, we calculate that the military spending per
person is greater than €700 this year. In any case, we make it clear
that the objective is not to object to a particular amount, but that
people take this step of disobedience and demonstrate that we are not
going along with this. From conscience, acting collectively, it is an
organized political campaign of disobedience. We also make it clear
that this is not a campaign for paying less to the Treasury: the tax
resister pays exactly the same tax the Treasury asks for, but a part
of this money is not allocated to military spending, but to a social
project.
Have any cases of war tax resistance reached the court system?
We don’t put much stock in the legal process; recognition of the
right to tax resistance has already been rejected on two or three
occasions in various instances. The philosophy of the vast majority
of campaign groups is not to search for a legal body to give us a
legal right; it is fundamentally a protest campaign. That said, there
is one unusual judgment from the Supreme Court of Catalonia
concerning the tax resistance of representative Joan Surroca of the
PSC:
although the Court rejected the right to tax resistance, it also
declared it illegal for the Treasury to fine Surroca for something
where he could not be considered to have committed fraud, that is,
the intent to conceal money. We consider this a small victory that
the Court recognizes that it is not simply an individual matter or a
scheme to pay less. There is a space for someone who does not do what
the Treasury orders, but who does so in a public way, without
concealment.
“Divest from Pentagon, invest in people,” headlines the People’s World in their article about a war tax resistance demonstration in San Diego.
The resisters there redirected $6,000 in federal taxes from the Pentagon, including a donation to an organization that is trying to build tiny, affordable homes for the homeless.
One of these homes was wheeled to the outdoor redirection ceremony to give it some extra splash.
Raul Perez is going to try to figure out some new angle to get the U.S. courts to recognize a right to conscientious objection to military taxation.
He also wants to make a documentary film about the process.
“Is it
immoral to evade taxes?” asks a columnist for Tiempo
Digital of Honduras. He reviews some of the historical tax
resistance campaigns in the service of justice, and then asks: “Can we in
Honduras feel morally comfortable and have clear consciences while paying
taxes?” Citing corruption, the bulk of government spending compared to
national gross domestic product, and the abysmal lack of security and legal
protection for citizens, he concludes that Honduran citizens do not owe
allegiance or tax to the government.
Kirk Johnson at the New York Times looks at counties in southwest Oregon where popular anti-tax sentiment has grown to the point where citizens have been able to largely defund their local governments through the ballot box.
Peter J. Reilly assesses the new IRS policy of deputizing private debt companies to pursue delinquent taxpayers, and he concludes: “You Should Just Hang Up On IRS Collection Calls, Legitimate Or Not.”
This is for two reasons: 1) there are still a lot of scammers out there impersonating the IRS who try to fool people into paying them money, and it may not be easy for the average Joe to distinguish “legitimate” collection calls from scammers;
and 2) the “legitimate” private debt collection agencies can’t negotiate or adjudicate the amount of your debt, nor can they seize the money from you.
All they can do is badger you about it.
So your best bet is just to stonewall them, ignore them, and wait patiently for the statute of limitations to run out on your debt.
Laura Saunders, in the Wall Street Journal, notes that many online sellers and workers in the gig economy fall into an income-reporting shadow:
A loophole is helping gig-economy workers, online sellers and home-sharing hosts cheat on their taxes.
Under a law enacted in and later clarified by the Internal Revenue Service, many online-platform businesses that connect buyers and sellers and take credit-card payments, such as Airbnb, TaskRabbit, Etsy and ride-sharing firms, fall into a special category.
These businesses have to report a provider’s income to the IRS only if that person earns more than $20,000 and has more than 200 transactions.
In that case, the company sends both the provider and IRS a Form 1099-K listing gross income.
By contrast, freelance workers who don’t use such platforms often face a much stiffer reporting threshold of $600 for Form 1099-MISC.
For example, if a hardware store pays a plumber $750 directly for work done, the store is supposed to send both the IRS and the plumber a 1099-MISC listing that amount.
Larry Bassett, a long-time war tax resister who, because of an inheritance, engaged in an unusually-large tax refusal this year, is now also the focus of a documentary-in-progress:
The Pacifist.
Marco Mori advocates a low-risk tax resistance strategy for Italians that seems to involve withholding taxes as long as possible, putting up with the civil penalties and interest, and only paying at the last minute before your case becomes a criminal matter.
I don’t know Italian, so have to piece things together from Google Translate.
The shit-stirrers and would-be provocateurs at 4chan’s “/pol/” forum (which stands for “politically incorrect,” but is largely just puerile racist caricatures), struck upon the idea of trying to invent a #NoTaxForBlacks (or #NoTaxFromBlacks) movement.
They would do this by means of a variety of more-or-less plausible-looking meme images, crowdsourced by the /pol/glodytes.
Ostensible Black Americans (fake Twitter accounts with names like “Tyrone Johnson”) would post these, saying they were refusing to pay taxes based on roughly the same sort of grievances that have motivated #BlackLivesMatter.
The way this was supposed to play out so as to titillate the 4chan crowd was that unsophisticated black people would go along with the ruse and refuse to pay tax, this would give the government an excuse to cut welfare and to arrest more black people for tax evasion, ergo much lulz for 4chan.
In more recent war tax resistance news:
Humans of New Mexico did an in-depth profile/interview with war tax resister Don Schrader.
The seed of peace, stresses this group, must be planted with coherent
actions. “This is the point where our individual consciences become a method
of social transformation, when we disobey the obligation to pay taxes for
military spending and declare this together and publicly.”
Michael McCarthy plugs war tax resistance in The Times Herald. Excerpt:
This Pentecost season when we call on the Holy Spirit to renew our faith,
let us resolve to take steps to stop giving Caesar our first fruits of
federal income tax with which to make war, and convert these monies to God’s
peacemaking purposes.
For the practical measures, risks, responsibilities and spiritual benefits
please contact the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating
Committee — nwtrcc.org — and seek prayerful
informed support within your faith community. Whether conservative, liberal,
tea party, radical or independent, some real investigation of national and
world affairs shows how badly our money is being spent.
Some tabs that have slid through my browser in recent days:
Miscellany:
The U.S. Department of Defense budget is notoriously sloppy.
This is by design, as it allows for a lot of kickbacks and graft and such, and is the most popular place for politicians to put their pork projects.
An independent audit recently conducted by “a Michigan State University economist [Mark Skidmore], working with graduate students and a former government official,” concentrating on the budgets for , found trillions of dollars of Pentagon spending that was never authorized by law.
The Defense Department has announced that for the first time ever (!) the agency will conduct an audit of its finances.
According to a new study by Marius Frunza, the underground economy in the European Union succeeds in resisting €132 billion in Value-Added Tax each year, about 14% of the total amount of that tax the Union collects.
Compare this to the “tax gap” in the U.S., which is estimated to be about 16%.
This suggests to me that if the U.S. were ever to drop its income and payroll tax in favor of a VAT (as so-called “Fair Tax” promoters advocate), this might not have much effect on the over-all tax gap.
Quaker Peace & Social Witness is a project of Britan Yearly Meeting.
They have a new project called “Take Action on Militarism.” War tax resistance is nowhere mentioned as one of the actions you might consider taking, however, so chalk this up as another example of the decay of the practice of war tax resistance among Quakers since the end of the Cold War.
Kimberly Amadeo, at the balance, has written up a good summary of the various aspects of the new U.S. federal tax law.
Some of it is still sketchy (she documents parts of the bill that were dropped before the bill was passed, for instance), so read it with caution, but it’s more thorough than most summaries I’ve seen.
Parts of the new law reduce the ability of people to deduct state taxes on their federal tax returns.
This has the effect of raising federal taxes on people in higher-tax states — these are typically states like California and New York with high property values and affluent cities… also, not coincidentally, states that tend to vote Democrat.
Those states are now considering ways to fight back by rejiggering their own tax systems in such a way that they can bring in as much revenue while preserving their citizens’ federal deductions.
This may end up making the new tax law even more damaging to the fiscal health of the federal government than had been originally anticipated.
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.
Some tabs that have schlepped past my browser window in recent days:
In the face of the massacre by the Ortega-Murillo government of the
Nicaraguan people, from the University Alliance for Democracy and Justice
we call on the private sector and to Nicaraguan society in general, to
strengthen their actions of tax resistance and to stand firm in the face
of state violence, declaring a general strike for 48 hours or until the
Ortega-Murillo government complies with the following conditions:
Stop the cruel paramilitary repression in Masaya and other
territories besieged by the National Guard and Sandinista Youth shock
troops.
Send invitations to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human
Rights, the European Union, and the Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights, to establish permanent missions of these organizations
in our country.
The call is to use every civic mechanism we have at our disposal to curb
these criminal acts of the Ortega-Murillo government.
We cannot live normal lives while they massacre our brothers!
A
survey of thousands of smokers in California showed that more than a
third of them had used legal methods to get around the state’s prohibitive
excise tax on tobacco, and nearly one in five had used illegal techniques.
And that survey was taken before a $2-per-pack hike in the tax
rate took effect. “About a third of cigarettes in California are estimated
to be from out-of-state (and thus tax-avoiding) sources.”
One of the features of the big tax law that Republicans passed last year
was one that caps the tax deduction for state and local taxes. This has
the effect of raising taxes on wealthier people from high-tax states.
These tend to be the Democrat-leaning, wealthier, coastal states, and so
this has been seen as partially a partisan poke at the Democrat’s donor
base and a thumb-in-the-eye at blue states in general — increasing the
amount they’re subsidizing their red cousins. But blue state lawmakers are
getting creative and trying to deny the U.S. Treasury this extra tax money.
Some of these workarounds would even have the effect of allowing people to
deduct more than before.
Links have been piling up in my bookmarks as I spent
poring through
back issues of The Mennonite.
International Tax Resistance News
A new law in Samoa requires previously untaxed church
ministers to pay income tax. Many, including those from the country’s
largest church,
are refusing to pay.
The United States government has begun
denying passports to people with large tax debts.
If you’re one of the 362,000 or so Americans who owe more than $51,000 and
you haven’t entered into an installment payment plan (I’m one of those),
you will likely soon find that you cannot successfully apply for or renew
your passport. While the government also has the legal authority to revoke
existing passports from such people, it is not yet exercising that
power.
Guerrilla electricians in Greece continue to
reestablish electric power
to households who have had their power cut off for inability or
unwillingness to pay the state utility monopoly’s bills which have been
inflated to support the state’s austerity budget policies.
Veterans of the successful campaign to abolish the
“écotaxe” in Brittany held
a celebratory picnic
on the anniversary of the destruction of one of the highway portals that
would have enforced the hated tax. In part the picnic was meant to show
solidarity with those who had been convicted of criminal charges for the
parts they played in destroying such portals, and in part it was meant as a
show of strength to let the government know they would not tolerate any
attempts to reestablish the tax.
The increasing use of traffic-ticket-issuing cameras worldwide as a
government revenue booster has led to a rash of direct action by the victim
population. This usually takes the form of destroying, disabling, or
blocking the cameras. Here are several recent examples:
Launched on as another variety of civic struggle against the dictatorship, the proposal to carry the thesis of civil disobedience to the extreme of applying a “tax strike” is still in force, but has not yet switched on, except in the Mercado Oriental.
On that date, the Academy of Sciences, and the Academy of Legal and Political Sciences, called for “civil disobedience as a national imperative to be put into operation immediately,” inviting employers, workers, students, and taxpayers to immediately suspend the payment of taxes to DGI, DGA, and city hall, in particular “withholding of Income Tax from salaries.”
Although the call for tax resistance enters the popular imagination as a civil form — and for that reason a legitimate one — of resisting the regime of Daniel Ortega, neither businesses nor individuals have responded with determination to the proposal, from fear or from caution.
Caution as demonstrated by the sources consulted for this article, who requested anonymity as they explained that people, business-owners and managers in particular, are afraid that the tax administration will fine them or, worse yet, temporarily take over operation of their companies or shutter their business.
Not all of the sanctions are catastrophic.
There are cases in which the fine applied is equivalent to 2.5% of the amount not paid in the case of the monthly advance payment of the business income tax, or 5% in the case of the value-added tax or of income tax withheld from the salaries of employees.
“Technically, it’s an invalid appropriation of withholdings, and can be criminally sanctioned,” in addition to being shut down, fined, or temporarily put under government management, explained a source with extensive experience in tax matters.
That said, this source sees a variety of reasons to doubt that they would decide to take such extreme measures, beginning with “as far as I know, they have never applied them to anyone.”
Another is that to close a business means sending its workers into unemployment, which implies that they will not receive taxes from the business or from those consumers.
But beyond believing in the mercy that any of these reasons implicitly assumes, the source points out fact that is easier to accept:
“If the resolution is massive, the tax administration simply does not have the capacity to audit and penalize everyone at once.”
Larger Companies Have More Fear
If it is decided to penalize only some in order to set a precedent that strikes fear into the others, surely one of the larger ones will be chosen, which not only has more ability to defend itself in the courts, but also to negotiate, precisely because of its size.
Another source asserts that “although it may seem obvious, the businesses that take the least risk are the most powerful ones, for the simple reason that they are not big taxpayers but big tax collectors.
“The DGI, does not want to be bothered with them, because if they weaken them, this affects tax revenues, principally value-added tax withholding.”
When the big companies that could take such measures don’t apply them, despite their intrinsic power, they are demonstrating “the cowardly face of big capital.
If they would decide, the blow to DGI would be immense,” s/he says.
Róger Arteaga, former director general of Revenue, agrees, saying that “big capital has not wanted to go all-in.
It is true that it gave its approval to the strike, but did so with fear and only temporarily.”
There is at least one group that risks more in a tax strike: import and export companies, which require clearances that can only be obtained once they have paid the corresponding taxes.
“If one of these business doesn’t make its monthly statement, or makes it but doesn’t pay, it falls into insolvency, and can neither import nor export.
The only importers who could afford that ‘luxury’ would be those that have sufficient product already on hand, especially at times like these, when there is little movement of inventory,” explained one of our sources.
Small- and medium-sized businesses — both fixed-quota and general regime — can stop paying taxes as long as the situation does not normalize, and while this makes them vulnerable to penalties, it is not likely that this will occur, especially, again, if a critical mass applies this measure of fiscal chastisement.
How long can the government last without taxes?
Our sources note that before making tax payments, the employer must guarantee the salary of its employees, and that the decision not to pay taxes is “protected by the higher legal concept, legally enshrined in the national legislation, as the Act of God and the Force Majeure.
Nobody is obligated to do the impossible, and the reason for this impossibility lies outside the control of the employer or employee.”
Citizens, on their part, could put pressure on big and medium-sized business, offering to act together if the Treasury moves against them.
“In this context, big capital must play a consistent role, acting firmly in the face of a Treasury that has granted them such special privileges.
It would be their most authentic repentance for the eleven years of tax advantages they have taken in the shadow of power.
That stain should be washed out right away,” they say.
As an expert, Arteaga proposes “that the businesses do not charge value-added tax, and the citizens not pay it.
Income tax also.
There are penalties, but the penalties and decisions of this government must be ignored, as they have no legitimacy.
How long can the government last without taxes?” he asked.
“Tax resistance aims to respond to Ortega’s claim that he will stay on through : we must find a solution, and one of these is for the private sector finally to decide on civil disobedience of a monetary and tax nature,” he explained.
Pedro Muñoz Fonseca, president of the executive committee of Costa Rica’s Social Christian Unity Party, urged Nicaraguans to use tax resistance against their government:
Social Media Tax Protest in Uganda
The government of Uganda has imposed a 5¢-per-day tax on using social media and
other services. This was designed as both a revenue measure and a way of
reducing what Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni calls lugambo
(“fake news”). Amnesty International has been among those to see through the
government’s rhetoric and cast the tax as
“a
clear attempt to undermine the right to freedom of expression.”
Robert Kyagulanyi, a Member of Parliament better known by his musician
stage name Bobi Wine, whose election is in part credited to his success on
social media, has been at the forefront of protests against the tax.
He was arrested, along with
three reporters when a march protesting the tax was attacked by police
with tear gas and rubber projectiles, but they managed to escape.
Ugandan protest marchers wearing shirts featuring a smart phone screen that
reads “This Tax Must Go”
War Tax Resistance Around the World
ABC reports on war tax resisters in Valencia — “the new refuseniks”.
War tax resisters there typically refuse to pay some percentage of their taxes, often basing this on the percentage of the federal budget that is spent on the military and similar items, and redirect this money to more worthy charities.
They declare this deduction on their tax forms in such a way that the tax agency typically does not treat it as illegal tax evasion but as an error or mistake.
The Global Day of Action on Military Spending Final Report has been released.
It gives a summary of the various events that took place around the world, including several by war tax resisters and groups promoting war tax resistance.
There’s a new NWTRCC newsletter out, with content including:
Ideas & Actions concerning weapons-free investing, responding to arguments against war tax resistance, a fast for nuclear disarmament, and more
You can now listen to audio excerpts from the upcoming documentary The Pacifist, about war tax resister Larry Bassett, on Spotify.
Erica Leigh pores through back issues of Conscience, the newsletter of the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign, an American war tax redirection group that slightly predates the founding of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.
Raymond Hunthausen has died.
As Catholic archbishop of Seattle, he took a remarkably strong stand on nuclear weapons — famously calling the Trident nuclear submarine program being developed nearby “the Auschwitz of Puget Sound” — and began practicing war tax resistance in response.
This earned him enemies in Washington and in the Catholic hierarchy. Here are some of the obits and remembrances:
A biography of Hunthausen, A Disarming Spirit, will be released soon.
David McReynolds has died.
He was a long-time War Resisters League and Socialist Party activist and was also on the staff of the Committee for Nonviolent Action which helped to spearhead war tax resistance as a tactic during the campaigns opposing the American war in Vietnam.
He was among the signers of the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” in and of a similar public pledge .
David Paul Irish has died.
He was active with the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Peace Brigades International, and Witness for Peace.
He was an advocate for war tax resistance in the Society of Friends, drafting a minute in favor of of war tax resistance that the Twin Cities and Minneapolis Meetings approved in .
Some links that have bobbed up in my browser in recent days:
How does what was once seen as morally insignificant come to be seen as monstrous, and how does what was once seen as morally repulsive come to be just one of those things?
Cass R. Sunstein has a theory. The spectrum of what behavior we observe becomes the “normal” against which we contrast outliers.
As we become exposed to more aberrant behavior, that behavior shifts into the normal; as more conduct shifts into an unacceptable category, other things nearby to that category can get sucked into the objectionable void.
This has implications for “outrage culture” and how we share on social media.
The gilets jaunes movement in France has turned out to be more of a threat to the established order than anyone anticipated.
It started as a protest against fuel tax increases, but when its increasingly threatening demonstrations finally forced the government to delay, then drop those increases, rather than stopping, they continued, more emboldened than before.
I don’t have much to add to what is now being decently covered in the English-language press, but here are a few links I found interesting:
Amnesty International issued a statement against police brutality towards gilets jaunes demonstrators, including “rubber bullets, sting-ball grenades and tear gas against largely peaceful protesters who did not threaten public order and… numerous instances of excessive use of force by police.”
Consciousness of the cruelty and tyranny of the House of Saud is finally starting to enter the conversation in the United States.
Who is paying for the barbaric war on Yemen? U.S. taxpayers are.
In Luján, Argentina, a local tax on farmers went up 1200%. So an assembly of farmers voted to stop paying.
The National Network of Independent Producers backed the tax strike.
They are asking for a reduction in the rate and a guarantee that the proceeds will be used for rural road improvements.
335 Spanish war tax resisters documented their resistance for Antimilitarist Alternative / Conscientious Objectors’ Movement this year. Collectively they refused and redirected €35,882.34 (a little over €100 each, on average). The report lists dozens of organizations that received the redirected funds.
Some links that have slid past my browser window in recent days:
The War Resisters League’s pie chart flyer:
“Where Your Income Tax Money Really Goes”
has been updated for the proposed 2020 federal budget. The flyers, which
show about half of the federal non-trust-fund budget going to pay for past
and present military-related expenses, are good conversation-starters,
especially during tax season as people in the United States tally up how
much they’ve been contributing to this budget over the year.
NWTRCC
is keeping a running tally of
“Tax Day” actions taking
place in the
U.S.
The head of the police in Paris was dismissed and the government brought in
the army, while banning protests in French cities, as it attempts to quell
the frequent outbreaks of gilets jaunes protests.
Meanwhile, the
destruction of
traffic cameras
continues in France, and to a lesser extent elsewhere.
Some tabs that have passed through my browser in recent days:
War tax resisters in the United States celebrated “Tax Day” with the usual protests, penny polls, leafletting, and other methods of outreach.
The Berkeley Daily Planet covered the People’s Life Fund annual granting ceremony in which they redirected $15,000 in taxes from the federal government to local charitable groups.
The refusal to collaborate economically with the state, in the financing
of military spending and other things that we consider socially unjust
or harmful, empowers us and allows us, collectively and cooperatively,
to show our opposition to certain state policies, to generate a social
debate about the model of society that we want, while at the same time to
promote the construction of “another possible world” by giving economic
support in solidarity with other transformative struggles that exist in
our society and elsewhere.
Mike Causey, at Federal News Network, adds another article to the growing consensus that the IRS is in a world of pain. Causey includes a long quote from an anonymous “long-time career IRS manager” who says:
…There are barely enough people left keeping the lights on to barely
allow enough people to barely meet far reduced goals.… Millions of
dollars of production are lost due to not having hundreds of dollars of
resources on a regular basis.
Most of the personnel with most of the talent and experience have retired
or fled to the private sector…
The Republican tax reform legislation does seem to have cut taxes for just
about everyone. But only a minority of people think they personally got a tax cut.
This may be in part because of Democratic talking points about the cuts
having only gone to the wealthy — they seem to have hit their target and
sown doubt about what the legislation accomplished. It may also be because
tax refunds haven’t gotten any bigger for the typical taxpayer,
and changes in tax withholding aren’t salient enough to make an impression.
This may also erode tax morale by contributing to the impression that
lawmakers are jiggering the tax code to favor the other guy.
A majority of Americans
believe the federal tax system is not fair, and among Democrats in
particular, perceptions of the fairness of the federal tax system are lower
than they have been in recent memory.
Automated traffic-ticket-dispensing radar cameras in France have undergone
an extraordinary wave of attacks by frustrated motorists. Statistics on the
extent of the attacks and their effect on government revenue continue to
come in. The latest show that revenue from radar vans in particular dropped 42% last year.
The IRS is hoping to get a bunch of new funding for a desperately-needed computer modernization effort. Problem is, this isn’t the first time, and the last couple of times they’ve gotten a bunch of new funding for desperately-needed computer modernization efforts, they’ve bungled it badly. Will Congress let them take another swing? Do they have a choice?
Meanwhile, the Spanish war tax resistance movement is also gearing up for tax season.
El Salto reports,
“Tax resistance is designed as a tool of civil disobedience that allows us
to overcome the role of mere spectators or victims of these policies, and
become active agents in the denunciation of military spending in particular
and militarism in general.” Apparently, the government is responding more
forcefully with fines against war tax resisters
this year, and the campaign is ramping up its legal support and counseling to counter this.
Property owners in Denton County, Texas have been taking advantage of a law
that permits them to challenge their property tax appraisal, and have been
overwhelming the system with such protests.
War tax resister Tom Shea has died. Fellow resister Robert Burrowes penned
an obituary notice here.
April 15th — the usual federal income tax return filing deadline in the U.S. — was in the more whimper than bang category this year.
The powers that be decided to extend the filing deadline to , and for that and other reasons, taxes are less on people’s minds than usual this time of year.
But here are some items that have recently come to my attention:
The U.S. government is sending out “stimulus” payments willy-nilly.
Thousands of dollars in forgivable “loans” are being made available to businesses (though it’s something of a crapshoot which businesses will and won’t get them), and most Americans are also getting some free money as well.
The individual stimulus checks are already starting to go out.
Americans who got tax refunds direct-deposited in their bank accounts last time they filed their taxes were the first to see money.
The rest of us have to wait a bit.
There was some worry that people who are so poor that they don’t have to file tax returns would be overlooked, but the IRS has created a method for non-filers to apply for the stimulus money too.
Businesses in Mexico are threatening a tax strike to pressure the government into granting tax relief or other financial aid during the pandemic crisis, and some state governors there are also making noise about withholding taxes from the federation.
The Mennonite Church USA is holding a Cost ☮f War webinar .
Mennonite war tax resisters will be among the presenters.
The war tax resistance movement in Spain does a periodic census of war tax resisters there, asking them how much they resisted and, if they redirected the taxes, where they redirected.
I don’t know how representative census-responders are of the war tax resistance movement there.
I have a feeling that if we tried the same thing in the United States, we’d get a pretty small percentage of resisters responding.
We’re not very good survey people.
But anyway, according to their census the 258 people who responded to the Spanish survey redirected €18,088 to 92 different projects.
The average resister redirected €70.
Follow the link for more details.
Peter J. Reilly, at his Forbes tax blog, writes about the “hey hey just don’t pay” tax strategy.
He writes about war tax resisters who see their tax debts erased by the statute of limitations and notes:
I find this situation demoralizing.
I believe that making an effort to be reasonably tax compliant (Perfection is impossible unless your situation is pretty simple) is one of the duties of good citizenship.
I also used to believe that it was prudent even for people who are of the “taxation is theft” school of thought.
I am doubtful of the latter now.
It is still too risky for my taste, but I can’t make the argument that scofflaws are being reckless.
And moreevidence that the Democratic party is gunning to use its new power to try to give the IRS a bigger budget and a more aggressive mandate.
Some recent links of interest:
War tax resister Lindsey Britt reminds readers of the Brattleboro Commons that “our taxes are our legacy.” Excerpt:
Taxes are part of a legacy that each person creates which will shape the world long after their death.
But with a large portion of tax money in the United States directly paying for weapons of death and destruction, all of us owe it to ourselves to consider the legacy that we are creating with our role in the war machine.
The decay of enforcement at the IRS has come to the notice of the very wealthy, who are hiding their wealth from the tax collector with impunity.
This in turn came to the attention of a few economics researchers, who compared the data from a variety of audits of people in the top-earning 1% to show that tax evasion is rampant among the ultra-rich.
And that study has come to the attention of journalists and pundits, who summarize the news in this way: “An underfunded and overworked IRS has enabled a handful of plutocratic tax cheats to live large at the expense of everyone else.” This is the sort of thing that causes “taxpayer morale” to collapse.
The city government of Vic, the capital of the Osona comarca in Catalonia, has decided to stop remitting its taxes to the Spanish federal government, and will instead send those taxes to the Catalan government.
In doing so, they are joining the Catalan nationalist “Jo Pago a Catalunya” tax resistance campaign.
Currently, the Catalan government forwards these taxes to Spain, so this is mostly a symbolic campaign.
But when enough people and institutions pay their taxes through the Catalan government, that government will be empowered to stop forwarding these taxes to the federal government as part of their declaration of independence.
In Defence of Marxism has reprinted Rob Sewell’s recap of the “We Won’t Pay” anti-poll-tax movement that brought down the Thatcher government, from the point of view of the Militant Tendency, which played a major (and controversial) role in that movement.
Groups in the Ituri province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo have launched a tax resistance campaign aiming at forcing the resignation of the governor, who they say has made the security situation worse in the province.
Recent links of note:
Some more details have emerged about the Biden administration plan to beef up the IRS enforcement budget.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says the administration is seeking a $1.2 billion / 10.4% total increase in the agency budget, most of which would go to tax enforcement.
Every once in a while, the IRS crunches the numbers and tries to figure out the size of the “tax gap” — the difference between what Americans owe and what they actually cough up.
The problem is that there are a lot of unknowns — unpaid taxes that the government currently has no way of knowing that it is owed.
So it has to make guesses and extrapolations.
Now, in testimony to a Congressional committee, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig has admitted what I’ve long suspected: the agency’s estimates of the “tax gap” have been far too low and the real number is more than double what has been reported.
Meanwhile, the IRS is still struggling to get through its backlog of tax year income tax return filings as this year’s tax filing season hits its peak.
This is further complicated this year by the agency’s role in administering a new stimulus check dispersal, and last-minute retroactive changes to the tax laws that made some already-filed returns incorrect and that gave the agency responsibility for rolling out a new tax credit.
Our movement has only scratched the surface of what non-violent civil disobedience can achieve.
While they deceive and seek to oppress us further, we can take a stand against their ecocidal leadership — by simply withholding council tax then telling the world why we’ve done it.
The campaign is asking local groups in the U.K. to demand that their local councils declare a climate emergency and suspend projects that are ecologically irresponsible.
Another detail of the Biden administration’s plan to beef up IRS tax enforcement has come out.
They hope to force banks to report information about everyone’s bank accounts: how much came into and out of each account over the year.
This would help them identify income sources that people and businesses fail to report on their tax returns.
But it would also put more bank accounts on the agency’s radar.
Currently, they only seem to be very aware of interest-earning bank accounts, via the reporting of this interest on annual 1099 filings.
This has allowed some tax resisters to have bank accounts that are relatively invisible to the IRS (and thereby less-vulnerable to seizure) by having non-interest-bearing accounts.
The proposed reporting changes might remove this protection.
Catalan separatists have amplified their tax resistance campaign.
For some time now the Catalan National Assembly has been promoting a campaign in which individuals, businesses, and (an increasing number of) municipalities would redirect their national taxes from Spain to the Catalan regional government.
That government would forward those taxes along to Spain, so the effect of this (and its risk) was minor, but in theory if the Catalan regional government decided to pull the trigger on political independence, this would establish the groundwork for fiscal independence as well.
But now, the separatist “Council for the Republic” is trying to push things further: asking resisters to redirect €300 of their taxes from the government to the Republican Fund for Solidarity Action.
That money will not be forwarded to Madrid, and so this is a more confrontational act of civil disobedience.
Attorney Peter Goldberger will discuss the prospects for people who might try to assert that people have a legal right of conscientious objection to military taxation in U.S. courts.
The discussion will be held online, on Zoom .
In South Kivu, the government is striking back at the three-month-old tax strike, announcing that it will call in police to enforce the tax law.
Strikers are protesting the lack of road maintenance in the region, and the spokesperson for the strike says it will continue until the main road is repaired.
Chrissy Kirchhoefer, over at NWTRCC’s blog, recaps some of the Tax Day actions war tax resisters have engaged in this extended tax season.
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.
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 .
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.
Tax resistance is on the agenda in South Africa as taxpayers there are increasingly fed up with government corruption.
In other news…
Hotels in Mar del Plata, Argentina announced a tax strike, saying that they cannot both pay their employees and their taxes while the tourist trade is lost to Covid.
A research paper into tax resistance in Ivory Coast finds that it does not behave according to theory. For example, Ivorians who believe elected officials are corrupt and the government is opaque are no more or less likely to resist taxes than those who believe elected officials are honest and the government is open. A stronger sense of national identity corresponds to a greater enthusiasm for tax resistance there (which is the opposite of what is usually found). It goes to show that reality is complicated.
The human war on traffic ticket robots continues to rage, with the robot hordes taking casualties in France, Luxembourg, and Italy(more of the same). Tiny Luxembourg installed 24 such cameras five years ago, and more than half of them have been knocked out of service, while none of the human rebels have yet been caught.
A new war tax resistance season is culminating in Spain. The movement there is particularly active, with “tax resistance offices” counseling resisters in several cities during tax-filing season, and lots of coordination between war tax resisters, climate activists, border demilitarizers, and other such activists.
Some recent tax resistance news of note:
Jane Rogers & Alex Pension from Extinction Rebellion’s “Money Rebellion” tax resistance campaign in the U.K. and José “Cuti” Cutillas from Spain’s Antimilitarista Tortuga war tax resistance movement spoke at the recent NWTRCC national gathering about how tax resistance plays out in their work:
The “Build Back Better Act” as currently proposed includes among its many provisions $498 million for the Department of Justice specifically to prosecute tax evasion, and $80 billion for the IRS (both figures are spread out over ten years).
Both Democrats and Republicans have reason to exaggerate the practical effect of this.
Democrats will insist that this new funding will mean the government can finally pursue fat cat tax evaders, close the tax gap, and result in lots of new tax revenue that will pay for the rest of the spending in the bill.
Republicans will paint a picture of vast swarms of jack-booted thugs running rampant over innocent families and small businesses across the land.
The purportedly nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analyzed the bill and said that according to their calculations, the new IRS funding would lead to less than a third of the increased revenue that the Democrats were trumpeting.
As a result, the bill as a whole will put the government yet further in the red.
I have seen no signs that the IRS bank-account-monitoring proposal will sneak its way back into the bill, despite some Democrats’ hopes.
The council tax resistance campaign that is part of the opposition to the Edmonton Incinerator has so far attracted eleven tax resisters.
As previously reported, the version of the “Build Back Better Act” passed by the House did not include a feared provision that would require banks to report to the IRS about more of their customers’s accounts and transactions.
There was a long-shot chance that those provisions would reappear in the bill as passed by the Senate, but thusfar no such provisions have appeared in the Senate’s version of the bill.
There is still some chance that the bill will be amended in the Senate to include such provisions, and I believe it’s not unheard of for provisions to get tacked on during the reconciliation process even if they weren’t in the versions of the bill that passed in either of the houses.
So we won’t know for sure until the bill hits Biden’s desk.
But I wouldn’t lose sleep.
One of the bill’s provisions would remove the requirement that IRS agents get written approval from their supervisors before assessing penalties against a taxpayer.
My gut feeling is that this isn’t a big deal (contra the Titanic alarm in the linked-to article about it).
It might make it marginally easier for the agency to apply penalties, or somewhat more likely that those penalties will be applied in inconsistent and haphazard ways.
But I suspect it mostly amounts to the trashing of a red-tape, rubber-stamp provision that didn’t have much practical effect.
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 ().
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 .
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.
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 , 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.
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.
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 , 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.
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.
Robert McGee has conducted or supervised many surveys about the ethics of tax evasion in countries around the world.
He has now summarized several of those studies along with a bibliography of additional cross-cultural tax evasion attitude research.
What was sometimes billed as the “Confessions of a Failed Tax Resister” (Rebecca Gordon) did the rounds around Tax Day in the United States this year.
Gordon was a war tax resister in the 1980s but eventually threw in the towel, paying her taxes, penalties, and interest, and returning to being a compliant taxpayer.
“It wasn’t the life decision I’m proudest of, but here’s what happened.”
Meanwhile, Owen Silverman at the University of Connecticut’s student paper put in a plug for conscientious tax resistance, though it sounds like he thinks we should wait for the government to legalize it first or something.
ProPublica has been continuing to do exposés about how the tax system is rigged in favor of the rich at the expense of the little guy.
One of the latest is “If You’re Getting a W-2, You’re a Sucker” which is specifically about how wage-earners get the shaft.
Peter J. Reilly looks at the comparative woes of the 1099 granfaloon and finds them not too bad all things considered.
