How you can resist funding the government →
a survey of tactics of historical tax resistance campaigns →
reach out to potential resisters at the time and place of payment →
Tax Day actions →
2015
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
Remember that Litopia After Dark podcast I was on a few days back?
Co-host Peter Cox tried to spark some controversy by calling war tax resistance an “elitist” stand.
I wasn’t quite sure what he was going on about, but I think he was implying that it’s elitist to prioritize your own ethical limits on how you want your money spent over the government’s determination of where it thinks people’s money should be spent (particularly, perhaps, when the government has some degree of democratic legitimacy).
Erica Weiland responds at War Tax Talk to the question: “Is War Tax Resistance Elitist?” …and wonders if some people are afraid of becoming better people because they don’t want others to think of them as “holier than thou.”
Have you got any protest plans ?
If so, NWTRCC wants to know about it.
They compile a list of such actions for their annual Tax Day press release, which can help you get a little more buzz.
In a fairly repulsive bit of political theater, Congress is raking the IRS over the coals for its use of civil forfeiture to seize money from people without convicting them — or even charging them — with a crime.
What makes this repulsive is that it’s Congress that designed the civil forfeiture authorization, fully intending that it be abused in this way.
It’s entirely in their power to pass a less-unjust law, but they chose to pass a more-unjust one instead… and now they pretend to be champions of civil liberties, pontificating about how unfair the IRS is being by using the law as it was designed.
NWTRCC has begun to assemble its list of Tax Day actions for .
Find out if anything is going on in your area, or let them know if you have anything planned.
There’s been a lot of buzz around the interwebs about a celebrity news report that actors Greg Wise and Emma Thompson have pledged to stop paying taxes until the U.K. government cracks down on big-business tax evaders and enablers like HSBC.
I saw the original report this story came from, and to me it just sounded like Wise was blowing off steam in a “why I oughta!” sort of way and the reporter, perhaps for effect, took it more seriously than that.
I haven’t seen anything from the couple since the story broke and got legs either confirming or denying the supposed pledge.
But it is getting people talking about the circumstances under which it is appropriate to cut the government off.
[M]y annual voluntary forfeiture of money to my government pays for
violence around the globe, at astounding levels, and I am not able to
provide any more excuses or rationalizations that paying without protest,
that being complicit in funding war without resistance, is not
contradictory to my faith and to my conscience. Quite simply put, I can
no longer ignore the basic, yet just, wisdom and truth found in the war
tax resisters’ dictum: “If you work for peace, stop paying for war.”
As I have come to accept that I can no longer justify providing money to
my government to pay for the bombs and bullets our forces use to kill
millions abroad, or contribute to the funds that supply and resupply the
arsenals of our allies, such as Egypt, Israel and Saudi Arabia, as they
kill others and repress their own people, my choice to willfully not pay
taxes has crystallized. It has been aided, in great part, by the
testimonies of those who have practiced war tax resistance, in some
cases, for several decades, and who by their courage and dedication to
laws of love and peace have risked the authority of the federal
government to follow what is right. I am also indebted to peers like Rory
Fanning and Logan Mehl-Laturi and old friends, like
Count Leo Tolstoy, who, by
articulating their convictions, have helped not just to educate me, but
to embolden me.
This week, I am saying to the
U.S.
government: No more war with my tax dollars. I am refusing to pay the
$593 I owe in taxes, and have instead donated this money to important
community projects including a youth-led farm, an environmental justice
organization, and two community art projects.
Paula Rogge contributed a column to The Cap Times urging readers to “put tax dollars to work preventing war.” She writes: “Over the last 34 years I have filed my tax returns yearly, but redirected my federal income taxes to organizations that meet basic human needs and promote nonviolent conflict resolution.”
Two Irish legislators who were convicted of participating in a direct action against U.S. armaments passing through the Shannon airport have refused to pay their fines. One of them, Clare Daly, told reporters: “We have no intention of paying a financial contribution to a State which allows this behaviour [the arms shipments] to continue.”
Ruth Benn reflects on “The Mysterious Ways of the IRS” — the agency seems arbitrary and unpredictable at times in the ways it responds to war tax resisters.
The three activists who boldly broke through security at the Oak Ridge nuclear weapons plant in have had their sabotage convictions reversed on appeal and are no longer being imprisoned.
One article about their successful appeal concluded:
“They are still obligated to pay the government a fine of $52,953 for the break-in at Y-12.
But they took vows of poverty decades ago, don’t have bank accounts, and have neither the means nor the intention of paying it.”
The War Tax Talk blog has reprinted an op-ed debate that was published in the Sunday Republican of Springfield, Massachusetts back in .
It features Juanita Nelson dueling with a U.S. Air Force Reserve Lieutenant-Colonel over the question: “Is it ever right to refuse, on principle, to pay taxes?”
