How you can resist funding the government → about the IRS and U.S. tax law/policy → how is tax law/policy/administration changing? → legislation → Child Tax Credit boost, 2021

Recent tax resistance news of interest:

• The human rebellion against the traffic ticket robots continues to rage. Here is a collection of recent reports:
  • In Italy, one speed camera was felled and another bombed, while in France one was burned, another blinded with spray paint, and a third attacked with an explosive.
  • A bomb destroyed another Italian speed camera, another was uprooted, another cut in half, while in England a camera was disemboweled, and in Germany two were smashed to bits.
  • Two speed cameras were burned in Belgium, two in Germany were blinded with duct tape, one in Italy was disabled for the third time, while in France two were burned and another one blinded by spray paint (that one “for the twenty-first time in three years”).
  • In Canada a speed camera was knocked over, in France one was burned and two blinded by spray paint, and in Guadeloupe, one was burned and another shot.
  • In France, two cameras were toppled and torched, and another blinded with paint (“less than 24 hours after being installed”), while in Italy five speed cameras were knocked out of service.
  • In Italy, an artist converted a speed camera into a sculpture, in Germany a single suspect is thought to be behind a dozen speed camera attacks, in Saudi Arabia a camera was burned, while in France more cameras were dragged down and torched or blinded with paint.
  • In France, one camera was destroyed 48 hours after it was installed, while another was chopped down at the trunk. Another camera was torched in Belgium.
• Now that Democrats have more power in Washington, will the long decline of the IRS budget slow or reverse? Could be. Increasing collections could give the new administration more money to work with. Unionized government employees are usually reliable Democratic voters. It’s become the fashion to run more social programs out of the IRS via tax incentives (e.g. Obamacare). The Democratic base is peeved about wealthy people and companies not paying their “fair share.” All of this suggests the new administration has motives to increase the agency budget. And the Wall Street Journal says there are already plans in the works to slip an IRS budget boost into a bill that boosts the per-child tax credit. On the other hand, the Democratic majority in Congress is razor-thin, and making the IRS bigger and more powerful isn’t all that popular among the marginal voters. Let’s wait and see.

Some recent links of interest:

• In recent years, something in the neighborhood of 40–45% of American households have not owed any federal income tax. This is due to a combination of factors including progressive tax rates and tax deductions & credits that shield a certain amount of income from tax. Although fabulously wealthy people who do not pay income tax are certainly a thing, most of this group of “lucky duckies” come from the bottom half of the income scale. In 2020, with its pandemic-related economic disruption and the stimulus payments that took the form of refundable tax credits, the numbers jumped: the Tax Policy Center estimates that 61% of U.S. households paid no federal income tax last year.
• Under a newish law the U.S. government will be issuing advance “Child Tax Credits” to qualifying families with children as checks periodically throughout the year. These checks take the place of the refundable tax credit that such families would have used to offset their federal taxes at annual tax filing time in past years. Interestingly, the IRS has directed its enforcement personnel to avoid seizing money from bank accounts in which these Child Tax Credits have been direct-deposited and to refund any inadvertently seized Child Tax Credits.
• “Council Tax Strike” is a subproject of the Extinction Rebellion movement in the U.K. They claim: “There are people all over the U.K. withholding their council tax and demanding action on the things that matter to them.”
• The human war on traffic-ticket-issuing robot cameras continues, with the drones smashed and spray painted over in Italy and France, blocked bodily in Britain and set on fire in France, blown to bits in Germany and disabled in various ways in France, cut down in France and destroyed in the Netherlands, foamed in France, torched in Guadeloupe, and toppled in Italy in recent weeks.
• The National Catholic Reporter looks back on the nuclear disarmament activism of Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen: “ ‘I think the teaching of Jesus tells us to render to a nuclear-armed Caesar what that Caesar deserves — tax resistance. And to begin to render to God alone that complete trust which we now give, through our tax dollars, to a demonic form of power,’ he said in his ‘Faith and Disarmament’ speech. ‘Some would call what I am urging “civil disobedience.” I prefer to see it as obedience to God.’ ”
• TaxNotes reminds us that Thoreau’s arrest for tax resistance wasn’t even legally authorized and so it’s something of a lucky fluke that Thoreau spent the night in jail that led to his influential essay.