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.
- Rampant corruption in South Africa’s government has caused many people to stop paying taxes in exasperation. The latest report from the South African Revenue Service reports a record tax revenue gap, with only 75% of the expected tax returns having been filed. “We have seen a slippage in compliance… we will be looking specifically at those people who have stopped paying because they are unhappy with government,” said the agency’s head of revenue research Randall Carolissen.
- 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?
