Some historical and global examples of tax resistance → Turkey → tax revolts of 1906–07

From the 27 May 1906 New York Times:

Turkish Passive Resisters

A significant movement has arisen among the Mussulman population of Erzerum, in Asia Minor, which in the present condition of the European provinces constitutes the only living part of the Ottoman Empire.

An organized and ever-spreading agitation is on foot against the payment of the poll tax imposed by the sultan in 1903. The people do not refuse to pay the tax, but resist passively, declaring that the country cannot pay and that there is no reason for the tax. Such a movement among the Sultan’s faithful subjects deserves to be followed with the closest interest.

This was the first I’d heard of the Turkish tax revolts of 1906–7.

Aykut Kansu devotes some pages to the revolts in The Revolution of 1908 in Turkey. Kansu believes that the Committee of Union and Progress (the “Young Turks”) was able to channel the dispersed and disorganized tax resistance campaigns into a successful revolutionary movement. Excerpts:

[T]he burden of taxes had reached unbearable proportions in the spring of 1904, a situation which the notorious rapacity of the tax-collectors only aggravated. At this time, the collection of the “temettü” tax — some form of income tax — met with such problems in İzmir that the collection of that tax was allowed to remain in indefinite abeyance. Similar events took place in Mytilene in February of 1905, though this time complaints came mostly from the local Greek population of the island.

Kansu says there was a de facto tax strike already, as rural people had become so uncertain that the tax collectors would leave them enough to live on that they had abandoned their farms and occupations to come to the cities and live on charity.

What came to be known as the tax revolts started in early 1906 in various parts of the country upon the decision of the Government to institute two new taxes, one on individuals, the Şahsi Vergi, and the other, a poll tax on domestic animals, Hayvanat-i Ehliye Rüsumu. Immediately upon the Government’s attempt to collect these additional taxes, citizens all over the country began organising acts of civil disobedience, the first of which manifested itself at Kastamonu, a town of little distinction from other towns in Anatolia, except for its high concentration of political exiles of the Hamidian regime.

In late January of 1906, dissatisfaction with the state of affairs in Kastamonu erupted with the issue of municipal elections. The Government put up the customary notices in public places for the elections of city councillors. Nobody in the city, however, paid any attention to these notices and boycotted the elections on the grounds that they had no control over taxation and expenditure, be it provincial or municipal. … One of the most pressing issues was the new tax, Şahsi Vergi, which, they claimed was exacted from every individual at the same rate without concern for the wealth of the person. Considering this a serious breach of justice they demanded instant government attention, and refused to pay the tax, especially in view of the fact that all high-level state officials were exempt in the province. They were especially resentful of the fact that Enis Pasha, the governor of Kastamonu, who was one of the wealthiest persons in the whole province, was not paying a single cent.…

When their demands remained unanswered, they organised a demonstration, on January 21, of about five hundred people in front of the Government offices, after which, they proceeded to the Telegraph Office, and occupied the building. They sent telegrams to the Sultan’s Palace reiterating their demand for the repeal of the tax. During the day the crowd in front of the Government buildings grew to more than four thousand. Both the Muslim population and the Armenians acted in unity in this act of mass demonstration. People eagerly waited into the early hours of the morning for an answer from the Palace to their repeated petitions. Enis Pasha, the Governor, was so terrorised as not being able to leave his residence during the whole day. During the following day two police commissioners tried to enter the Telegraph Office. Both were manhandled, and one of them was seized and taken prisoner, while the other managed to escape. With the full support of a majority of the town’s notables, citizens occupied the Telegraph Office for ten days, during which they continuously corresponded with the Central Government and pressed for the acceptance of their demands. On January 31, fresh demonstrations started, again, in front of the Telegraph Office, in which a huge crowd of Muslims, Armenians, and Greeks participated in the protest to have the tax repealed, and have Enis Pasha, the Governor, and the Tax Commissioner recalled. In solidarity with the crowd, all shops and businesses remained closed during the day. One of the leaders of the revolt was Esad Efendi, a judge. He and some of the exiled intellectuals, who had been in forced residence at Kastamonu, had carefully planned the movement, and had, furthermore, entered beforehand into negotiations with Ali Riza Pasha, the Military Commander of Kastamonu, and obtained his approval as well as his promise not to use force against them. As soon as he learned of the new disturbances, Enis Pasha summoned the Military Commander as well as the Police Chief to his office and ordered them to disperse the crowd and collect information as to the cause and organizers of these demonstrations. Both men objected to the use of force since they judged that the forces under their command were both weak in strength and unreliable. They said they could not take on the responsibility of the consequences of an attempt at military repression. Thereupon, Enis Pasha tried to have the town notables use their influence on the masses to diffuse the situation. He summoned Namik Efendi, one of the members of the City Council, Sheikh Ataullah Efendi, Sheikh Ziyaeddin Efendi, Mahmed Emin Efendi, the mufti of Kastamonu, Said Hemdem Dede, and Merdane Efendi. Upon being requested by Enis Pasha to talk with the masses, they attempted to “normalise” the situation by meeting with the representatives of the revolt. They were told that the reason and preocupation of the current revolt was not the repeal of the tax but the dismissal of the Governor and several other high-ranking provincial bureaucrats. They were, then, taken hostage and were set free only after they agreed to put their signatures on the petition for the dismissal of the Governor which they sent to the Sultan. The occupation of the Telegraph Office continued for one more day, during which the citizens impatiently waited for the order of the Governor’s dismissal. Eventually, their demands for the expulsion of the Governor as well as the Tax Commissioner were met: on the evening of February 1, Ali Riza Pasha was summoned to the Telegraph Office by the Palace officials, and after communication with him, the Palace decided on the dismissal of Enis Pasha. The Government appointed Ali Riza Pasha interim Governor. The crowd cheered after the news were broadcast and celebrated their success into the small hours of the morning.

[S]imilar incidents began to appear in other parts of the country as well. In Sinob, several thousand people marched on the government offices, captured the Telegraph Office, and forcibly placed the Sub-Governor of Sinob on a ship bound for İstanbul. In the Mosul province, a riot took place in late January, also in connection with the collection of these taxes.

However, the most important revolt following the events at Kastamonu took place in Erzurum in February of 1906. The population had already been financially suffering under the rapacious administration of Nâzim Pasha, the Governor, since 1902. Instead of using the money for the needs of the province, he had been sending about twenty-five percent of the collected amount to the capital in return for personal favors from the absolutist regime. When the new taxes… were announced this became the last straw that broke the camel’s back. Thirteen representatives of the local merchants responded to the news of increased taxation by immediately signing a petition and presenting it to the Governor, requesting the repeal of the tax on domestic animals as well as the extraordinary tax levied in order to raise money for the Hedjaz Railway. Nâzim Pasha promised to convey the grievances of the population; instead, he sent a telegram, on March 2 to İstanbul, informing the Sultan that certain provocateurs had conducted a propaganda against the new taxes, but that he had taken the necessary measures to suppress the revolt. After receiving no reply from İstanbul, the leading livestock merchants of Erzurum gathered to discuss the situation. They decided to send another telegram reiterating their demand for the repeal of the tax. When they again received no reply, the local members of the Committee of Union and Progress, organized under the name of “Can Veren,” decided to take radical action against the local representatives of the Central Government.

Almost from the start, the tax revolt in Erzurum was both more organised and larger in scope than on previous occasions. The population demanded the Governor’s recall, and merchants closed their shops in solidarity, as citizens took possession, on March 13, of the Telegraph Office in order to directly communicate with the Palace. When the Governor asked the mufti to pacify the population, the latter refused to make a speech to calm the citizens of Erzurum, and, instead, joined the revolt, disregarding political authority by stating that the imposition of the new taxes went against the principles of Islam and that therefore the protest was justified. During these events, military troops at Erzurum disobeyed the orders of the Governor and of their officers, and did nothing to suppress the revolt, despite the fact that military officers supported the established order.…

The tax that was most unpopular with the general population was the poll tax, or Şahsi Vergi, levied on individuals. Here, the unequal levying of the tax had been instrumental in its universal rejection. The particular grievance was that the amount to be paid under the new tax had been fixed at 400, 200, and 35 piasters, according to the category under which each person might be placed. It was generally considered that, under this method of assessment, the burden of the tax would fall heavily on the poor, while the sum to be paid by the rich would remain ludicrously small as compared with their means. The serious ferment which this tax provoked among the Muslim population of Erzurum led them to join forces with the Christians. As no satisfactory answer had yet been received, they, together, organized a mass protest to be held in front of the Government buildings. The population, however, brought the demonstration to the governor’s residence, tearing down the placards which the Government had posted giving public notice of the imposition of the new taxes. The demand for the Governor’s recall was renewed and shops were closed again on March 28. During these protests, the city was for nearly ten days in the hands of the population, the usual representatives of the civil authority having practically abdicated their functions.

The rebels then cut off the governor’s private telegraph line and kept him confined to his residence. The central government responded by dispatching troops to the area in order to put down the rebellion and arrest its leaders. But by this time, the army was in no mood to follow such orders, and the central government was forced to cave in — swapping Nâzim Pasha with the governor of Diyarbakir, which placated the protesters somewhat.

By the beginning of April, agitation had also spread to Bayburt, Narman, and Hasankale — closeby towns — though Erzurum’s example of closing shops seemed to have been followed only at Hasankale. Tax revolts had also spread to other commercial centers in Anatolia such as Trabzon, Giresun, Sivas, Kayseri, and other places. The new taxes… caused great hardships to the Macedonian subjects of the Empire, where there were rebellions in April against these taxes, analogous to the ones that had taken place at Kastamonu, Mosul, Erzurum, Sivas, and other places. In Zeytun there was grave unrest in June, the cause of which was the attempt to collect taxes in arrears as well as the imposition of these new taxes.

In Trabzon, the example of other provinces was repeated. A serious outburst of popular resentment concerning the imposition of the new taxes occurred which could be repressed only by the use of military force. Although the troops managed to repress the revolt, the Government could not enforce the collection of taxes…

The Governor there also had to find a new job.

In mid-July tax revolts also took place at Samsun, where the citizens protested the new taxes. There was not a day that passed without serious incidents not taking place, including deaths of citizens. In order to keep the disturbances secret, the authorities did not allow anyone, especially the Armenians, into the Telegraph Office.

In the meantime, no attempt had been made to collect any of the new taxes, the imposition of which had been the cause of the trouble. Encouraged by their apparent success, the population of Erzurum grew bolder on its criticism of the current regime and began to question the administration’s right to impose special taxation of any sort, except for purely local needs.…

The unpopularity of the new taxes created similar outbursts of civil disobedience and revolt in Ankara as well. There too, the local post office was occupied by the citizens and telegrams were sent to the Palace demanding the repeal of the taxes and the removal of the Governor of the province. The Government, as in similar cases, yielded to the demands of the people and dismissed the Governor of Ankara.

In early October serious disturbances took place at Trabzon on the issue of the new taxes. The revolt of the citizens, who refused to pay the newly imposed taxes, could only be taken under control by the intervention of military troops. The authorities, however, had to momentarily decide not to press the issue further, and postponed the collection of these taxes.

The disturbances at Erzurum erupted again in the Fall of 1906. On October 21, both the Muslim and Christian citizens of the city acted in unison in demanding the repeal of the new taxes, saying that it was beyond their means to pay any more taxes. The mufti conveyed the grievances of the population to Mehmed Ata Bey, the Governor of Erzurum. Mehmed Ata Bey, however, stood firm and said that there was no question of repeal of the taxes and that he was determined to collect them. Upon being rejected, the population made a violent demonstration directed against established authority. The local police force and the gendarmes opened fire upon the demonstrators, killing many. Infuriated by this act of violence, the crowd replied with equal vehemence by killing the commander of the gendarmerie as well as many policemen and gendarmes.

Bey ordered an investigation into the rebellion.

There were twenty-two people who had been found to be leaders of the movement. Among them were Haci Lütfullah Efendi, the mufti of Erzurum, prominent merchants and lawyers, and Durak Bey, one of the local leaders of the underground revolutionary organization which had ties with the Committee of Union and Progress.

On October 23… the Government in İstanbul instructed Mehmed Ata Bey to arrest the mufti and many other Muslims, all of whom were suspected of taking the most active part in the events of last March; they were to be sent into exile. During the night the number of arrests reached about sixty. On the same night, the mufti and others were immediately deported after their arrests. Haci Akif Agha, one of the important local notables and a leader of the revolt, however, offered a successful resistance to the gendarmes who came to arrest him. His resistance publicised the arrests, and the citizens immediately organised themselves for the release of the prisoners. The morning after the arrests, a large crowd of furious Muslims surrounded the Governor’s residence, demanding the return of the exiles. The Governor escaped to a private house, but was captured and kept prisoner in the İbrahim Pasha Mosque.

The crowd also took revenge against the local police, and went to retrieve the exiled mufti and his companions, “the Governor having been compelled under the threat of death to give orders for their return.”

…Civil authority remained completely in abeyance, the Government Offices being closed and guarded by strong detachments of troops. Throughout the day no action was taken by the troops, who apparently sympathised with the populace.…

The next year things came to a head again:

Demonstrations ensued, and continued without interruptions from March 5 to March 22, during which there were held several huge ones. The demands were the same: repeal of the unjust taxes. The revolutionary committee in Erzurum sent two telegrams to İstanbul stating their demands, one on March 8, the other, on March 11. As usual, no satisfactory answer was received. On March 15, a crowd estimated at twenty thousand surrounded the Telegraph Office. After direct communication with the Palace, the Sultan, realising the seriousness of the situation, agreed to make concessions. The Government issued a decree to the effect that all exiles in connection with the disorders of March 1906 would be pardoned, and a general amnesty granted for the events of the following October. In addition, charges against those who had killed the two police commissioners and a policeman, as well as those who had wounded Mehmed Ata Bey, the Governor, during those events would be dropped. However, although the arrears of the last two years would be remitted, the poll tax had to be paid, as no exception could be made for Erzurum. The population was far from pacified. On the contrary, on the following day a large but perfectly orderly deputation of Muslims visited the Governor, and after having stated that they were too poor to pay the taxes in question, begged him to procure their remission from the Government. Further negotiations were made between the citizens and the Palace, and on March 22, the continued and pervasive resistance against both the poll tax and the tax on domestic animals forced the Government to totally give in to the demands of the population. Finally it was announced in the local newspapers of March 25 that an imperial decree had been issued and communicated to the proper departments which abolished the new taxes.

There are many ways to support tax resisters when they are targeted by the police or courts, including:

1. supporting the families of imprisoned resisters (see The Picket Line for 27 September 2012)
2. accompanying resisters to and from prison and visiting them while inside (see The Picket Line for 28 September 2012)
3. rallies outside the courthouse or prison (see The Picket Line for 3 October 2012)
4. attending their trials (see The Picket Line for 4 October 2012)

Another way to help is to disrupt the trials or to break resisters out of prison. Today I’ll give some examples of these tactics.

• Alexander Hamilton complained of the American Whiskey Rebels: “The audacity of the perpetrators of those excesses was so great, that an armed banditti ventured to seize and carry off two persons who were witnesses against the rioters… in order to prevent their giving testimony of the riot to a court then sitting, or about to sit.”
• The American tax rebels in the Fries rebellion did what they could to break their comrades out of prison:

  As soon as it became known the arrests were made, the leaders of the opposition to the law determined to rescue them, if possible. For the purpose of consulting on the subject, a meeting was called at the public house… Notices were carried around the evening before land left at the houses of those known to be friendly to the movement. By ten o’clock a number of people had assembled, and considerable excitement was manifested. The general sentiment was in favor of immediate organization and marching to Bethlehem to take the prisoners from the hands of the Marshal. The crowd was formed in a company, and John Fries elected captain. They were variously armed; some with guns, others with swords and pistols, while those with less belligerent feelings, carried clubs.

  The people of Northampton, meanwhile, had also taken action in reference to a rescue of the prisoners. A meeting to consult on the subject was called… Notice was also given for two or three companies of light horse to meet there at the same time…

  Fries led a group of about 140 armed rebels to the building where the prisoners were held, and then after a tense standoff with the Marshal and about twenty of his posse, managed to win the surrender of the prisoners. Victory was sweet, but brief, as this provoked President John Adams to send in the militia. Fries and some of his companions were captured, convicted of treason, and sentenced to be hanged (Adams pardoned them).
• Those 18^th Century forefathers to the Rebecca Rioters known as “Jack a Lents” rescued two of their number who had been arrested for their roles in toll booth destruction. A news account said:

  [T]he whole gang appeared soon after, who demanded the said prisoners, threatening, in case of refusal, to pull his house down, and burn his barns and stables, and immediately discharged several loaded pieces into the house, which happily did no damage. The justice finding himself and family beset in such a manner, discharged several blunderbusses and fowling-pieces at them, whereby one was shot dead on the spot, and several so wounded, that ’tis not believed they will recover. At this the rioters fled with precipitation, leaving their two companions behind them.

  But the Jack a Lents weren’t giving up. A later dispatch reads:

  [A]bove twenty of those turnpike cutters or levellers, as they call themselves, though that is a character by much too good for them, met with the said keeper [of the county jail] at the King’s Head Inn at Ross fair, and demanding his reasons for detaining those two men in custody, without giving him time to return an answer, dragged him out of the inn into the street, knocked him down several times, and almost murdered him, notwithstanding all that the innkeeper and his servants could do to prevent it, who were used in a very cruel manner for assisting him. The villains immediately carried the keeper to Wilton’s Bridge, where at first they concluded to throw him into the river Wye; but at length they agreed to carry him to a place where they would secure him till they themselves had fetched the prisoners out of custody. The better to complete that design, they dragged him four miles in his boots and spurs, to a place called Horewithey, a public-house, where he was kept prisoner, beat in a shameful manner by those merciless wretches, and obliged to write a discharge to the turnkey, being threatened, in case of refusal, to be hanged upon the spot.

• When pensioner Sylvia Hardy was taken to court for her refusal to pay her council tax in 2005, her supporters in the Devon Pensioners’ Action Forum tried to blockade the court and prevent the officials from entering.
• More recently, hundreds of British “constitutionalist” tax protesters “stormed a courtroom and attempted to make a citizens’ arrest on a judge in support of a man challenging his council tax bill.” One of them shouted “seal the court” and another sat in the judge’s seat and officiously ordered the accused to be released. A number of protesters staged a sit-down blockade of the police vehicles that were summoned to the courthouse. The court hearing was postponed.
• During the tax revolts in Turkey in 1906–07, the government tried to quietly round up the leaders of the rebellion in the dead of night. That didn’t work out too well, as the rebels turned the tables:

  Haci Akif Agha, one of the important local notables and a leader of the revolt, however, offered a successful resistance to the gendarmes who came to arrest him. His resistance publicised the arrests, and the citizens immediately organised themselves for the release of the prisoners. The morning after the arrests, a large crowd of furious Muslims surrounded the Governor’s residence, demanding the return of the exiles. The Governor escaped to a private house, but was captured and kept prisoner in the İbrahim Pasha Mosque.

  The crowd also took revenge against the local police, and went to retrieve the exiled mufti and his companions, “the Governor having been compelled under the threat of death to give orders for their return.”
• In 1737, in North Carolina, rumor spread that a man had been imprisoned for refusing to pay a property tax (he had in fact been imprisoned for contempt of court). 500 armed people marched on Edenton, where the prisoner was held, meaning to free him, but by the time they got there he had already been released.

  The “mob” thereupon dispersed, threatening, however, “the most cruel usage to such persons as durst come to demand any quitrents of them for the future.” This was the account of the affair the Governor himself gave, to which he added a declaration of his inability to punish them if they carried out their threats.

One way that governments have tried to make taxes more palatable is to allow the citizens to elect their own local tax assessors and collectors. And one way citizens have responded to this gambit is by refusing to elect anyone at all. Here are some examples:

• During the Fries Rebellion, people refused to serve as assessors. On one occasion, Commissioner Eyerley addressed a crowd of tax resisters:

  Mr. Eyerley proposed that inasmuch as they were opposed to the present assessor, he would give them the privilege of electing one of their own number, to whom he would give the appointment. This they declined, saying: “We will do no such thing; if we do, we at once acknowledge that we submit to the law, and that is what we will not do.”

  on another occasion, the principal assessor, James Chapman, held a public meeting to try to mollify critics of the tax:

  and also to inform them they would be permitted to select their own assessor, and that any capable man whom they might name would be qualified. The offer, however, did not meet with much favor in that section of the township, and the people declined to have anything to do with it.

• When Governor Andros tried to impose taxes on colonial New England without the consent of the colonial Assembly, he held a town meeting in Ipswich at which the town was to choose its Assessor. The town refused, saying “that they are not willing to choose a commissioner for such an end.”
• In the wake of the Panic of 1837, in some parts of the United States, tax resistance was resorted to out of fury at having to pay off foreign speculators and in the hopes of sovereign debt repudiation (all much like what is going on in Greece today). One newspaper noted that “they have resisted the collection of taxes and defeated, at least temporarily, the operations of the law; in some cases, by the resignation of officers whose duty it was to collect the taxes and in others by the refusal of the people to elect the proper officers for that purpose.”
• In Kastamonu, Turkey in 1906, the citizenry boycotted the elections for city councillors on the grounds that it did not matter whom they elected, since they had no control over taxation or spending.

Tax resistance movements have often coordinated with labor strikes or business shut-downs as a way of further restricting government resources, demonstrating solidarity, and freeing up the time of resisters to engage in more campaign-oriented activities. In some cases, these strikes are themselves a form of tax resistance — reducing the income or sales tax base by simply reducing the amount of income earned or sales made. Here are several examples:

Labor strikes

• In Germany, in 1920, “A movement for a general refusal to pay taxes, originating in Württemberg, spread rapidly to other towns, principally Stuttgart, which was without gas, electricity and water for several days. The strike began in the Daimler motor works in Württemberg, where the workers refused to allow the deduction of the legal tax of ten per cent from their weekly wages…”
• A tax strike in 2003 aimed at the Hugo Chavez regime in Venezuela was accompanied by a multi-week labor strike that “bled the Chavez’s government’s economic lifeline, costing it millions of dollars a day.”
• Prisoner slave laborers in the American state of Georgia went on strike in 2010, refusing to work for the profit of the prison system.
• In Savannah, Georgia, in 1867, the city tried to impose a $10 tax on “stevedores and other laborers on the wharves,” which they refused to pay. The city then locked them out of the wharves.

  This, of course, seriously interfered with the shipping interests of the city, and the Council, finding that the laborers were not at all disposed to yield, and that meanwhile the “strike” was damaging the business community to the amount of thousands of dollars, and was driving all the vessels from this to other ports, met and reduced the tax to $3. This, however, only tended to increase the feelings of the laborers, who had resolved not to pay any tax whatever, deeming it unjust, unconstitutional and oppressive to tax unskilled labor, and they determined that none of their number should work, whether they paid the tax or not.

• During the recent Household Tax agitation in Ireland, the Civil and Public Service Union threatened to strike if the government tried to deduct the tax from the paychecks of resisting union members.
• Ship stokers in France went on strike when the government tried to tax their incidental benefits like meals as income in 1923. The standoff kept the largest French trans-Atlantic ship stranded in port until the stokers’ employer agreed to pay the extra tax on their behalf.
• In Birmingham, Alabama, in 1901:

  The plant of… [a] Paint company at North Birmingham, employing 200 men, closed down because a deputy tax collector served garnishment on five employees for the non-payment of poll tax. Many of the men quit work causing the plant to shut down. … The men persist in their refusal because they claim the tax is an unjust one and not constitutional. The citizens all side with the strikers.

Hartals and business strikes

• When Argentina tried to increase taxes in the midst of a drought in 2009, farmers there went on strike for a week and set up highway roadblocks.
• American farmer Bob Williams, disgusted at the U.S. military budget, decided in 2008 to henceforth donate all of his produce to charity rather than sell it for taxable income.
• For a week in 2008, a strike spread amongst the vendors in Tehran’s bazaar until hardly any were open for business. They were protesting a new VAT that would have applied to them. Apparently this was a nonviolent resistance tactic that bazaar merchants used successfully before the 1979 Iranian revolution, but this was the first time they’d done it since.
• 20,000 lawyers in Delhi went on strike in 2009, “paralyzing the lower courts,” when India tried to extend its sales tax to cover legal services.
• In 1810 in Benares, the British imperial government tried to impose a house tax. The residents responded with a hartal, or general strike: “the shops were closed, every kind of occupation was abandoned… a solemn engagement was taken by all the inhabitants to carry on no manner of work or business until the tax was repealed. Everything was at a stand: the dead bodies were cast unceremoniously into the river, because there were none to perform the obsequial rites; and the very thieves refrained from the exercise of their vocation…”
• Hartals and strikes, sometimes of specific industries and other times general strikes, were also frequently used in the later Indian independence movement led by Gandhi, sometimes in coordination with tax resistance campaigns such as the salt raids. During the Bardoli satyagraha, for example, shopkeepers frequently shut down their operations whenever officials came to town, and hartals sometimes broke out spontaneously on other occasions. Gandhi also led a strike of Indian miners in South Africa in 1913 that was directed against a poll tax on Indian immigrants, a strike in which hundreds were arrested, and which eventually drew in strikers from “harbour, corporation, and railway employees, as well as the drivers, cooks, waiters, and messengers.” That campaign was successful at forcing the government to rescind the tax.



• When the tax inspector called at St. Cere during the Poujadist tax strikes: “The tax inspector rapped on steel curtain after steel curtain, demanding to be let in to see the books. Nowhere did he get an answer. When they found that even the bistros were locked, the hapless inspector and his guards gave up their mission and beat a humble retreat…”
• During the first intifada in Palestine, the Unified National Command responded to a crackdown on the tax strikers of Beit Sahour by calling “an unprecedented five day in six general strike,” while “[s]torekeepers in the town launched a commercial strike that lasted three months…” The Israeli practice of seizing equipment, supplies, and goods from businesses that refused to remit taxes also had the effect of putting those businesses into a state of strike whether or not that was their intention.
• In 1981, in support of Palestinian doctors who were refusing to pay an Israeli income tax, shopkeepers in Gaza City launched multiple two-day strikes.
• In 2010, Greek kiosk owners held a one-day strike to protest an increase in tobacco taxes.
• In the Dutch West Indies in 1921, “[m]erchants, as a token of their approval of [a] doctor’s refusal to pay the tax,” (the government was attempting to auction off his goods that day) “closed their places of business during the afternoon.”
• In the waning days of the rule of the Gyanendra monarchy in Nepal in 2006, people stopped paying taxes and utility bills, and accompanied this with a general strike.
• In 2011, cashew traders in Guinea Bissau went on strike: “We cashew exporters have decided to boycott the current marketing season to protest the payment of a 50 CFA franc ($0.11) per kilogram export tax,” said the head of the exporter’s association.
• In sympathy with the tax protests in Turkey in 1906, there were often business strikes:

  …all shops and businesses [in Kastamonu] remained closed during the day…

  …merchants [in Erzurum] closed their shops in solidarity… shops were closed again…

  Erzurum’s example of closing shops… [was followed] at Hasankale…

• In the Ruhr, during the French/Belgian occupation of 1923, businesses shut down rather than pay reparation taxes:

  The owners of the German coal mines and foundries in the Ruhr are determined not to pay the 10 per cent. export tax imposed on coal by the French… The owners will refuse to export an ounce of coal or coke. They will dump the supplies in the yards, and are prepared for a long seige.

  This was accompanied by a large-scale labor strike, which the German government supported by directly financially supporting the individual strikers.

Consumer strikes

• In Cairo in 1947, a boatload of cruise ship passengers refused to disembark because of a landing tax they would be forced to pay. This so upset the tourist-dependent shopkeepers that they rioted and forced the tax officials to waive the tax.
• In Melbourne, Australia, in 1917 “[b]etween 500 and 600 young men refused to pay the amusement tax at the Stadium last night to witness a boxing match between Edwards and Palmer. They were patrons of the lower-priced seats. The manager of the Stadium argued with the spokesmen for the crowd for some time, but neither side would yield, and the result was that the attendance was much smaller than usual.”
• In the U.S., school districts often get government funding based on how many students are attending on certain “count days.” One parent decided to use this as leverage, saying she would keep her children home from school on count days, and thereby deprive the district of money, to protest against poor district policies.

(I’ll cover consumer strikes of government-monopoly products in another episode of this series.)

One tactic tax resisters have used from time to time is to pack up and leave when the tax collector comes calling. Here are some examples:

• Around the time of the Dharsana salt raids in Gandhi’s independence campaign in India, the government there was also stymied by mass migrations. Here are some news accounts from the period:

  Government agents began at once to attempt tax collecting, but in most cases found the natives had departed from their lands. The situation was viewed with great anxiety, as continued maintenance of the tax strike would seriously hamper government revenues at the end of the year.

  The evaders lock their doors and flee when tax collectors appear or hide in the fields, so attachment was resorted to.

  The anti-tax campaign which it was said would replace the campaign against the salt laws already has been initiated in the Bardoli district where officials are arriving to post signs warning the peasants that their lands will be forfeit if they refuse to pay the dues. Thus far they have found the villages deserted.

  All-India national congress reports say that 50,000 peasants of the Bardoli region [population ~88,000] have left their homes resolved not to pay land taxes until swaraj, or home-rule is established. Many left their household goods, chattels, crops behind, the government confiscating and auctioning them off. [Though another account said “The inhabitants had left, taking everything movable, including the newly harvested rice crop, household goods, and cattle. It was discovered that the villagers had been secretly removing goods and crops by night across the border into Baroda State territory, where the Baroda villagers harboured and helped them.”]

  The peasants are said to have for their slogan, “No swaraj, no revenue.” The leaders of the movement declare the peasants do not desire to evade payment, but simply will not pay until Mahatma Gandhi is released from jail and has ordered them to pay.

  The congress characterizes the peasants’ actions as “an unrivaled example of a migration movement on the part of the people who are resolved to forfeit their all in the interest of the Gandhi cause.”

• There is a movement of sorts nowadays that goes by the initials “P.T.” — often said to stand for “permanent tourist,” but also “prior taxpayer,” and a handful of others. One advocate explained:

  In a nutshell, a PT merely arranges his or her paperwork in such a way that all governments consider him a tourist. A person who is just “Passing Through.” The advantage is that being thought of by government officials as a person who is merely “Parked Temporarily,” a PT is not subjected to taxes, military service, lawsuits, or persecution for partaking in innocent but forbidden pursuits or pleasures.

• Terry Gilliam, Monty Python’s Yankee animator and director of such masterpieces as Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Brazil and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, told an interviewer he renounced his American citizenship to become a taxpatriate: “I got tired of my taxes paying for exciting little wars around the world. Then I discovered that when I died, my wife would probably have to sell our house to pay for the taxes in America. The fact that Bush was [in office] there made it easier.”



• Jeff Knaebel left his life as an American entrepreneur to become a stateless mendicant in India in order to stop paying for American military adventures:

  Having made the decision to cease filing and paying income tax, I undertook a radical reorganization of my life. I would have to emigrate, to become a “tax exile.” It would not be right to benefit from the facilities and protection of my country while not paying my share.

  I made the decision to leave my own, my native land forever. I would become a man without a country, separated by a vast ocean from friends, family and my young adult children. No more would I smell the rain on high desert sagebrush, nor hear wolves howl across moonlit tundra, nor watch the Northern Lights dance in Arctic sky.

  I would owe allegiance to all of humanity and to no State. I would be the indentured servant of no gang of murderers sitting in any legislative body. By paying no tax to any State would I finally make a farewell to arms. I would seek peace and brotherhood. I would attempt Satyagraha, that strong adherence to truth which is love. I would aspire to a life of Ahimsa — nonviolence — which is the active force of love.

• When the tax inspector came to town during the Poujadist uprising in France in 1955, there might be nothing left to inspect — the business district having been abandoned in anticipation of the inspector’s arrival. One account put it this way:

  The tax inspector rapped on steel curtain after steel curtain, demanding to be let in to see the books. Nowhere did he get an answer. When they found that even the bistros were locked, the hapless inspector and his guards gave up their mission and beat a humble retreat…

• Leaving the United States for tax reasons seems to be a growing trend. One “taxpatriate” wrote:

  I sleep much better knowing I no longer fund the military-industrial-banking complex. Anybody can get mugged, but every U.S. taxpayer is a constant patsy for the political establishment. The rip-offs are so unthinkably big and endemic, there’s nothing an individual can do to stop them.

  If you fall for the political fallacy that “the government is the people,” you end up with the faulty conclusion that America must be overrun by war-crazed, lawsuit-happy, debt-addicted criminals. How could anybody buy this after even a moment of clear thought? There’s certainly no resemblance to the American people I know. These problems stem from the military-industrial-banking complex, the dark heart of the U.S. political machine. Why continue being the stooge that supplies the money to run it?

  Looking at the world with fresh, open eyes isn’t easy. One of the great benefits of liberating yourself from the grip of the U.S. political system is that the world becomes your oyster. You’re free to embrace places that welcome individuals who seek to live peaceful and prosperous lives.

• In Sierra Leone in 1898, collectors of a new imperial government “hut tax” found fewer huts than they expected:

  The trouble in Sierra Leone has arisen by the enforcement by the Government of a tax of 5s each annum on native huts. In many cases the huts are not worth 5s, and when the tax collectors went round in January last many of the people knocked down their huts and slept under trees.

• The tax collectors in Mytilene, Turkey, were so rapacious that much of the rural Greek population there abandoned their farms and “emigrated to the towns and cities in the hopes of subsisting on private charity” in early 1905 rather than risk losing their farms to the tax collector before harvest time. This passive resistance was the precursor to a more active tax resistance campaign that swept Turkey starting in early 1906.

And here is an example from the Boston Evening Transcript on this date in 1897:

Remarkable Tax Controversy.

J.F. Hathaway of Somerville Says He Will Move Rather Than Pay Tax Assessed.

A long-standing controversy between James F. Hathaway of Somerville, president of the Sprague & Hathaway Company, engaged in the manufacture of portraits, and the board of assessors of that city has culminated in a statement by Mr. Hathaway regarding his attitude in the matter. It seems that in the spring of 1896 the principal assessors taxed Mr. Hathaway for corporation stock which he was supposed to own. Mr. Hathaway and business friends made strong efforts to induce the assessors to abate the tax. Acting upon the advice of the city solicitor, the board refused an abatement, and turned the bill over to the city collector for collection. Mr. Hathaway says he will remove the plant from Somerville if the collector forces payment. It appears from the statement he has given to the press that he made the same threat in 1891, and that on April 29, 1892, he packed up his furniture and prepared a move from the city rather than pay a tax. Why he did not carry out his intention he explains as follows:

“While my household goods were being loaded on a wagon in order to get them out of Somerville before the first day of May, I received a message to come to the City Hall at once on important business. When this message came over the telephone the wagon had not been at my house more than fifteen minutes. Evidently they had someone watching my movements; they did not think I intended to move out of the city. I went down to City Hall and fond the full board of assessors there, the city solicitor, the mayor and several others, who were probably never there at that time in the morning except by appointment. When I arrived, they asked me what I wanted, and I said: ‘Gentlemen, this is a nice time to ask me what I want.’ They proposed that I should pay one-half the tax, which I refused to do. Then they proposed that I pay one-third of the tax. I said: ‘Gentlemen, I will never pay one cent of it; if any part of it is just, it is all just.’

“They were all very anxious to find some way out of the difficulty and keep me in Somerville. The city solicitor told them then and there they had no right to abate the tax; it had been legally assessed, and there was no legal way out of it. But in a very few minutes they told me they would drop it; they were anxious that nothing more be said about it, and desired to let the matter drop out of sight as quietly as possible; they said they would never force the collection of the tax. The day this matter of the tax of 1891 was settled the chairman of the board of assessors brought me home in his private carriage. On the way, he said: ‘Mr. Hathaway, I am very sorry this ever occurred, and I am glad to find some way out of it.’ I asked him how about the future, and told him that if this thing was to be repeated next year or at any future time, my goods were all on the wagon then, and I might just as well get out of Somerville immediately. He said: ‘This taxing of foreign corporations never has come up before, and probably never will again. I assure you that so long as I have anything to do with the assessing of the taxes in this city you will never hear from it.’ ”

Hathaway went to jail in 1897 for refusing to pay the tax, but emerged victorious, as the Somerville Board of Aldermen voted to rescind his taxes. “He had threatened to take his business out of Somerville if this was not done,” a news account says.

Pickets and other such public demonstrations commonly accompany tax resistance campaigns. Here are some examples that caught my eye:

• During the Tithe War in Ireland, one parliamentarian noted with some panic a news account of a mock funeral held in Ireland, attended by 100,000 people “who assembled to carry in a procession to the grave two coffins, on which were inscribed ‘Tithes’ and ‘Rent’.”
• The Women’s Tax Resistance League used signs, banners, handbills, chalked-slogans, and sandwich boards to help get their “No Vote — No Tax” message across at their public demonstrations.
• The Benares hartal of 1810–11 was in part a strike, but in part a huge demonstration, the duration and peaceful discipline of which pointed out the determination of the demonstrators.
• When the Rebecca Rioters came to Carmarthen, they came en masse and during the daytime, almost as a parade. They were “preceded by a band of musicians playing popular airs, and men bearing placards with the following enscriptions in large printed letters:” “Justice and lovers of Justice are we all.” “Freedom and better food.” “Free tolls and Freedom.”
• The tax strike in the French wine-growing region in 1907 was preceded by huge demonstrations and parades. Wrote one observer:

  All observers were struck by the extraordinary perfection of the organization. It was not necessary once for the troops or police to interfere with the multitude which was variously estimated was made up of from 400,000 to 600,000 persons. A feature of the parade was the large proportion of women participating. Groups from various cities bore banners with various inscriptions and carried coffins, guillotines, &c.

  Another wrote:

  …all night long trains entered the station every quarter of an hour with crowds, many of whom had been travelling fifteen and twenty hours. Looking worn and dishevelled, they formed in serried battalions, and, headed by bands and trumpets and drums, young and old, men, women, and children, marched to their quarters…

  This morning five huge columns, approaching from various quarters, welded at the Arch Peyrou into one procession nine miles long, and the march through the streets began at 11. Placards threatened, “The day of reckoning is at hand,” “We will take up arms,” “Down with the deputies.” Here were 200 handsome Norbannese women in mourning, there 500 young girls robed in white muslin, with tricolor robes.

• In 1906 in Turkey, mass tax refusal was backed up by mass demonstrations of as many as 20,000 people, demanding the repeal of the taxes.
• In 2003, anti-Chavez protesters launched a tax strike by tearing up their income tax forms in a demonstration in which thousands of demonstrators marched on the tax offices in Caracas.
• Farmers in New Zealand threatened to drive their farm equipment onto the highways to jam the roads in protest against a new greenhouse-gas-targeting “flatulence tax” on livestock in 2003.
• When the authorities tried to impose a tax on dogs in Breslau, Germany, in 1925 5,000 dogs (and their owners) descended on city hall to protest.
• One of Gandhi’s first experiments with satyagraha was a strike in South Africa to protest against a tax on Indian immigrants there. The culmination of that campaign was a massive protest march of striking workers that deliberately violated laws restricting the right of travel of Indians.
• Ammon Hennacy was fond of accompanying his solitary tax resistance with periodic fasts and picketings at IRS headquarters, typically around the time of the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. He would hand out to passers-by copies of the Catholic Worker as well as leaflets that described his own particular protest — while also carrying a sign and wearing a sandwich-board that put things more concisely.
• The previously-untaxed caste of Bhats in India responded to being subjected to the income tax in dramatic fashion: “Two thousand men turned out to remonstrate with the Superintendent of Police who appeared on the scene. He remained firm, whereupon they cut themselves with knives, cursed the Assessors, bespattering them with their blood, and declared they would rather die than surrender their birthright. When several were apprehended, their wives began to hack their persons, and so severely that several have since died. Up to the last intelligence the Bhats still gloried in their refusal.”
• American war tax resisters frequently hold rallies, pickets, street theater, and other such actions around “Tax Day” (the date when federal income tax returns are due). This among other things helps make sure that their message is one of those represented in the obligatory tax day news stories. Here is an example:

  The group then left for the federal building, in which the IRS and a number of other offices are located, at which 75 people burned tax forms and blockaded the street for a bit. There were no arrests. In conjunction with the tax form burning, they used a banner with the quote: “Pardon us, friends, for the fracture of good order, for burning paper instead of babies,” sent from prison during the Vietnam War by Daniel Berrigan… They offered their apologies for burning tax forms instead of Colombian villages, Palestinian schools, Iraqi hospitals, Filipinos’ mosques and Afghan homes.

  In another case:

  After a mock President Clinton bragged to onlookers about the many areas in which the U.S. was #1 - military spending, arms sales, violent gun deaths, etc. — he drove home the point with an 8-foot Patriot missile tossed into a group of students, parents, nurses and other ordinary people.

  Mass dying ensued, followed by an appearance by the grim reaper himself. Ostensibly there to collect bodies, he assented to an interview with M.C. Daniel Woodham. Death was the only one at the rally willing to even attempt an explanation of the maniacal logic of a still-bloated U.S. military budget.

  Here are some street theater tips from war tax resister Steve Gulick.
• Some war tax resisters in Wales brought their tax payment to the tax office in a bucket of blood. When the payment was refused, they poured the blood over the steps of the building.
• In 1997 members of the Magdalene House Catholic Worker held a demonstration at the IRS office in which they “laid out a cloth altar with candles, flowers, and health care items to represent life, and tax forms with their blood poured on them to represent death. They held a worship service and talked about why they were there.” This was enough for several of them to get arrested.
• During the rebellion against Thatcher’s poll tax, there were several demonstrations.
  • The Scottish Trade Union Conference organized a number of rallies, including a 30,000-person march in Edinburgh, but then it put its weight behind a strange 11-minute-long general strike at which people all over Scotland were supposed to briefly stop working to engage in some short anti-poll-tax activism. That protest didn’t go anywhere and the Union Conference lost some credibility as a movement organizer.
  • Hundreds of thousands of people turned out to demonstrations in England, with some of these rallies and marches turning into riots (or being attacked by police, depending on whose stories you believe). On such occasions, the riots became the message of the demonstrations, whatever the intentions of the organizers were. This had mixed consequences for the movement.