Some historical and global examples of tax resistance → Italy → Northern League in 2010–14 → Matteo Salvini

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

  • Irish protesters are continuing their campaign to block the installation of water meters, including recently at the Ardmore Estate neighborhood in Cork.
  • While home-brewing is legal in the United States, home distilling is not. Distillation of drinkable alcohol is highly regulated (and taxed). But nonetheless, home distilling has become a popular hobby, and the federales have been largely looking the other way and not harassing hobbyist-level distillers (as opposed to commercial moonshiners). That sadly appears to be changing.
  • The Other Eye, a Catalan journal, recently published Carles Valentí’s essay on tax resistance, which is another example of the Spanish tax resistance movement expanding beyond war tax resistance to a broader critique of corrupt, wasteful, and harmful government spending.
  • Italy’s “Northern League” likes to talk about tax resistance a whole bunch, but I don’t see as much evidence of them moving from talk to action as I’d like. The latest example of this big talk comes from party Secretary Matteo Salvini, who called for a tax strike to begin on . We shall see.

I’d previously noted that Italy’s Northern League had threatened to launch a tax strike in November. It’s been difficult for me to learn details, largely because of the language barrier, and I’ve been a little skeptical since the Northern League has a history of big talk about tax resistance and I haven’t seen much come of it in the past.

That said, in the latest episode party leader Matteo Salvini announced that the strike would begin on and would include businesses of resisters making their sales off the books and sympathetic customers cooperating by frequenting such businesses and paying in cash.