Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
anti-abortion tax resistance →
Michael E. Bowman
Some tabs that have arisen in my browser in recent days:
Add Michael Bowman to that short list of Americans who have followed their anti-abortion convictions through to tax resisting conclusions.
Bowman objects to his tax dollars going to Planned Parenthood, and has been resisting taxes .
He was recently indicted for what the government insists is his “frivolous” objection.
Bowman explains his stand in this video.
In part he is trying to use the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Hobby Lobby case to further his legal stand, a strategy American war tax resisters have also considered.
PopularResistance.org covers CodePink’s new “Divest from the War Machine” campaign.
It’s frustrating to read.
The aim of the project is “to redirect U.S. tax dollars from the war economy and into the peace economy.”
But rather than forthrightly redirecting their own tax payments at the source, the campaigners plan to try to lobby institutions to reduce their investments in the profits of military contractors in the hopes that this will have some effect somehow someday.
Why take this winding, dusty back-road to your destination when there’s a paved expressway?
Some tabs that I have flipped through in recent days:
American anti-abortion tax resister Michael Bowman recently triumphed in court, in a way that should be encouraging to other conscientious tax resisters.
(See ♇ for more background on Bowman’s resistance.)
When the federal government began seizing money from Bowman’s bank account, he stopped depositing his paychecks, instead cashing them immediately.
The government argued that this amounted to illegal evasion:
“Defendant’s altered bank behavior removed his income from the reach of taxing authorities and allowed him to avoid payment of assessed taxes.”
But the court agreed with Bowman’s lawyer that Bowman had every right to cash his checks rather than deposit them, and that as long as he did so in an ordinary lawful manner, this did not amount to illegal tax evasion.
“Not everything that makes collection efforts more difficult qualifies as evasion,” the judge said.
Bowman still faces charges relating to his refusal to file tax returns.
American anti-abortion tax resister Michael Bowman has won another court victory.
Prosecutors had tried to charge him with felony tax evasion, but a judge ruled that Bowman had been up-front about his resistance, not trying to conceal income or deceive the government and so the felony charge was not appropriate.
Bowman is making legal arguments based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision.
Those arguments have not yet been addressed by the court, but are similar to those being entertained by those war tax resisters who hope to legalize a form of conscientious objection to military taxation.
“Maybe it’s time for California’s taxpayers to go on strike,”
says Jon Coupal in an op-ed in the Orange County
Register. Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers
Association (Howard Jarvis is known for his promotion of the “Proposition
13” legal tax revolt in California in the 1970s). He believes California
taxpayers should be concerned at the power public sector labor unions have
to get ever more tax money without accountability. He seems to be raising
the specter of a tax strike only rhetorically, alas: “I’m curious as to
what would happen if, in reaction to the teachers’ strikes in
L.A., Oakland and
Sacramento, taxpayers decided to go on strike?”
TheNewspaper.com continues to do remarkable work
chronicling the global phenomenon of fed-up drivers attacking and disabling
the robot radar cameras that automatically generate traffic tickets.
The Pacifist, a documentary about war tax resister Larry Bassett, has now been released and is viewable on Amazon’s streaming service.
Peter J. Reilly looks at the latest report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration and concludes that complying with the tax law has become a sucker’s game.
He notes for example the hundreds of thousands of cases where gig economy workers received 1099-K forms indicating they had earned income, but filed no corresponding schedule C forms reporting that income — and how few examples of this obvious discrepancy the IRS bothered to follow up on.
He sees the same pattern in cases where one ex-spouse declares an alimony deduction but the other does not declare the alimony as income.
And even in the case of crazy “show me the law” tax refusers, the IRS seems to lack the resources or the willpower to pursue them.
At National Review, Daniel J. Pilla tries to dig past the initial hype about anti-abortion tax resister Michael Bowman’s recent court victories to discern what that really adds up to from a legal point of view and what implications this has for other conscientious objectors to tax-funded activities.
There’s a new National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee newsletter
out, with content that includes:
Joining an “Extinction Rebellion” protest — Ruth Benn says that while XR is “a little too focused on its own brand” there may be some common ground to be found with the climate emergency protesters and the war tax resistance movement.
American anti-abortion tax resister Michael E. Bowman is back in the news. Among the latest details are that Bowman was first targeted by the IRS because of his involvement in a tax protest scheme cooked up by Joseph Saladino. He is trying a Religious Freedom Restoration Act defense (which is also a long-shot contemplated by some U.S. war tax resisters), and is also putting forward the theory that because he got away with not filing returns for eighteen years, he therefore had a reasonable belief that what he was doing was lawful. Bowman has had some success in court in the past, with a judge ruling that his actions of cashing his paychecks rather than depositing them (so as to avoid IRS levies) did not constitute criminal evasion.
The IRS seems to be getting more aggressive about trying to get passports revoked from people who have large tax debts. Under the law, if a taxpayer owes more than $52,000 and isn’t doing anything about it, the agency is supposed to inform the State Department. The State Department is then required to not issue or renew a passport to the scofflaw, and may also revoke their existing passport. The IRS is trying to convince State to put that “may” to use. The agency says it plans to send out Letter 6152 (“Notice of Intent to Request U.S. Department of State Revoke Your Passport”) to some tax delinquents, after which it will lobby the State Department to take stronger action (of this advice State can still, as far as I can tell, take it or leave it).
YouTuber Alexis Buschmann has started to offer spoken-word interpretations of some of NWTRCC’s introductory war tax resistance material on her video blog. This could be a useful resource for people who prefer to get their information in the podcast/audiobook style rather than through text. Here’s a sample:
American anti-abortion tax resister Michael Bowman continues his streak of courtroom luck. This time, a hung jury foiled the government’s attempt to convict him of misdemeanor charges of failure to file. (In an earlier victory, the court threw out an additional charge of felony tax evasion.) The government may decide to refile the misdemeanor charges and try again. “They put me on the stand,” said Bowman, “they know what kind of witness I am. And round two, they haven’t seen anything yet; I’ve learned.”
Bowman’s attorney tried at one point to advance the argument that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act requires the government to accommodate Bowman’s sincere religious objection to paying for abortion with his taxes. Although the courts have rejected such arguments in the past with reference to war tax resisters, the Supreme Court’s subsequent Hobby Lobby ruling seemed to possibly open the door to reconsidering this. The trial court disagreed.
I’ve covered the case of anti-abortion tax resister Michael Bowman a few times before.
He managed to get a hung jury in his previous trial, but then the judge decided he’d prefer a conviction and so refused to allow Bowman to present key parts of his defense during the retrial.
That strikes me as a significant thumb on the scales of justice, but such is how things go in the United States these days.
In any case, at his retrial without benefit of a jury Bowman was convicted and was recently sentenced to probation and $138,026 in restitution.
He says also that the court case has financially ruined him.
He plans to appeal.
War tax resister Alan Barnett has died.
Barnett organized a phone tax resistance group in California during the Vietnam War that included hundreds of resisters.
Spray paint seems to be the tool of choice in the latest human attacks on traffic ticket robots.
People blinded the cameras with paint in the United States, Germany, and France, while other methods were used elsewhere in France.
