Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
Germany →
Weimar Germany and the Ruhrkampf, 1919–33
I’ve lately been skimming a translation of Ernst von Salomon’s Fragebogen.
Von Salomon was a right-wing German terrorist before it was hip.
He joined the Freikorps after World War Ⅰ, joined the conspiracy to assassinate German Foreign Minister Walter Rathenau, and was considered a heroic figure by the emerging Nazi movement (though von Salomon claimed the admiration was not mutual).
The title of his book, Fragebogen or “questionnaire,” refers to the denazification questionnaires the United States occupying forces used to try to separate Nazis and regime collaborators from mere Good Germans.
And the book takes the form of a sardonic response to the questionnaire.
I picked it up because I was curious as to what von Salomon had to say about the American demands that Germans defend themselves and their responses to the Nazi regime.
But I won’t get into that today.
He spends a few pages talking about a tax resistance campaign in Germany between the wars, which I didn’t expect, and so I’ll post some excerpts from that.
At this point (this would have been ), Germany was in serious economic doldrums, which were commonly blamed on the reparations payments demanded by the victors of World War Ⅰ.
“Fact is,” said Claus Heim, “…for years the peasant has been paying all sorts of taxes and hearing about how everything’s been done for him and all he sees is the way he gets poorer and poorer.
Fact is the taxes are the only contacts between us peasants and the authorities.
Fact is we just can’t meet them all out of current income, and we’ve got to pay by selling stock.
But we don’t want to pay by selling stock.
It’s nonsense, and it affects everybody.
Who wants to kill his best milch cow?”
The conclusion Claus drew from these simple facts were equally simple.
Every peasant, every single farmer, should do what any man and any peasant has the right to do, he should try to save his farm.
He should refuse to surrender his stock and should support his neighbours — without fuss or organization — to do the same.
To discuss this proposal a meeting attended by sixty thousand peasant proprietors was held at Rendsburg, a small town in the middle of the province.
And to keep the fires burning, von Salomon and others published a newspaper.
“I yet finally had no choice but to agree with Claus Heim’s pronouncement,” von Salomon writes.
“The answer was a tax strike.”
The effect was overwhelming.
Judging by its joyous reception it was an idea that appealed directly to the German heart.
And it was plain that the administrative machine of the German Weimar Republic would have to gird up its loins and be prepared to react, with all the power at its disposal, against the first manifestations resulting from so reprehensible a challenge.
This happened at Beidenfleth, a little, scattered village in the Wilstermarsch.
There lived two peasants, by name Kock and Kühl, who owed taxes to the extent of approximately three hundred and five hundred marks respectively.
They had never before been in arrears in their tax payments, but now they simply did not have the money.
A distraining order was issued against them.
They hurried to see the head of the local administration as well as the finance office, and asked for a delay of execution.
But it seemed that “an example had to be made.”
Five days later the bailiff appeared at their farms, accompanied by two unemployed men to act as his assistants and drovers.
They planned to take one distrained heifer from each of the two peasants.
The peasants did not attempt to stop them.
But they blew the fire horn, and on the road they lit a fire of straw, the age-old sign that help is needed.
Peasants ran from all sides towards the smoke.
Such was the Beidenfleth riot: breach of the peace, concealment of distrained property, resistance to authority.
Writs were issued against fifty-seven peasant.
But some two or three hundred more had come to the fire and were not among the accused.
Nor was I — I had not been at Beidehfleth — though I believed all the same that I too had lit a fire of straw.…
…Peasants came forward who had not been present at the fire but who had heard the fire horn.
They had set off: they had, however, had too far to go.
They now announced themselves guilty of attempted breach of the peace; Helm and Hamkens struck their breasts and proclaimed themselves guilty of incitement.
And soon a fever seemed to grip the countryside.
From far and wide the peasants poured into Itzehoe, where the case was to be tried, with wild cries of self-accusation.
The public prosecutor could not walk down the streets without being at once mobbed by powerful, earnest men begging him to lift the heavy weight of guilt from their shoulders and to restore their inner peace of mind by issuing a writ against them.
The Beidenfleth Heifer Case developed into a regular popular festival.
Maidenly hands strung garlands about the necks of those enviable peasants who had achieved the honour of receiving a writ.…
…[T]he two principal accused were sentenced to eight, and twenty-three others to six months’ imprisonment.
It must not be imagined that Kürbis [the Oberpräsident of Schleswig-Holstein] had instigated this case simply out of spite.
In the interval between the lighting of the straw fire at Beidenfleth and the trial much had happened which would make any state feel it time an example was made.
Everywhere bailiff’s orders were being disobeyed.
Heifers were repeatedly shying away from fires.
Compulsory sales could not be held: when the young peasants of the riding club appeared at the scene of the auction on their horses and with music, nobody seemed willing to make a bid.
The carters refused, even with police protection, to carry off the distrained cattle, for they knew that if they did they would never again be able to do business with the peasants.
One day three peasants even appeared in the slaughter yards at Hamburg and announced that unless the distrained cattle disappeared at once from the yard’s stalls the gentlemen in charge of the slaughterhouse could find somewhere else to buy their beasts in the future — they wouldn’t be getting any more from Schleswig-Holstein.
In brief, on the flatlands something new had come into existence, a weapon of our civilisation that had previously been the monopoly of the workers, the employers and the officials — solidarity.
A peasant solidarity was there, which nobody had ever dreamed could exist, and which was a far more decisive weapon than that of the workers or the employers or the officials, for it was pointed at the basic requirements of the nation.
Furthermore, those others could only use their solidarity for bargaining purposes and that only at a certain cost to themselves.
But if it were to come to an out-and-out fight the peasants could live longer on their farms than could the towns deprived of agricultural produce.
And it was in the towns that the authorities lived and ruled.…
Where were the Nazis during this uprising?
The way von Salomon tells it, they were in the midst of an image makeover — trying to transition from being a terrorist group bent on revolution to being a political party aiming to win power at the ballot box.
So they weren’t in a position to ally themselves with the peasant uprising (which was growing violent), and saw it as unwelcome competition with their own organizing efforts.
The following excerpt, from the edition of Catholic World, concerns a tax resistance campaign in occupied Germany.
Violent disorders have marked the month in Germany.
These have sprung from two sources — internal economic discontent and outbursts of national dissatisfaction over recent events in Upper Silesia.
A movement for a general refusal to pay taxes, originating in Württemberg, spread rapidly to other towns, principally Stuttgart, which was without gas, electricity and water for several days.
The strike began in the Daimler motor works in Württemberg, where the workers refused to allow the deduction of the legal tax of ten per cent from their weekly wages, because of dissatisfaction with the Württemberg government of Centrists and Democrats, who are charged with endeavoring to institute the old capitalist regime.
Regardless of this purely Socialist argument, the masses of the people throughout Germany protest that they have good ground for refusing the ten per cent deduction to a Government which makes no effort to seize excessive and often fraudulent war and revolution profits, does not punish men compromised by the Kapp rebellion, and which shows neither power nor ability to right various injustices.
The discontent of the people is finding expression in disastrous strikes and lockouts.
In the Siegerland mines near Cologne, and also in Essen, the tax refusal has been the cause of violent disorder, and several mine and factory officials have been severely wounded.
Despite these disorders, however, there is strong opposition, even among Socialists, toward any alliance with the Bolsheviki.
Recently in Berlin the Federal Congress of Independent Socialists heard the report of its delegation to the Communist Congress at Moscow, which was to the effect that Bolshevism was impossible in Germany, and that even in Russia this form of government, if government it could be called, has no future.
The visiting delegation seems to have been thoroughly disillusioned by its view of actual conditions under Bolshevik rule, and its members delivered violent speeches of denunciation of Sovietism, which one speaker declared to be more militaristic and oppressive than the despotism of the Tsar.
Refuse to Pay Moderate Levy on Big Profits and Defy German Government.
When the German Nationalist Deputies in the Reichstag voted against the Government’s new taxation measures on in a vain effort to keep Chancellor Wirth’s program from becoming a law they faithfully reflected the anti-tax sentiments of the big agrarians, who, according to items found in the German press, are determined to resort to sabotage of all the tax laws in order to foil the Government’s attempts to get a material part of its reparation expenses from the Junkers who have profited immensely by the rise in the cost of living which is oppressing the industrial workers of the republic.
…
“…They have all filed protests and demanded that they be relieved from paying the tax until the protests are settled.
That means a delay of at least three years in collecting the taxes, and it is said that the Provincial Treasury is inclined to grant this request.
“The big agrarians declared that they would do the same thing with all the tax laws.
In Berlin the people might decree what pleased them, they (the agrarians) would not pay the taxes or subscribe to the compulsory loans.
They want to sabotage the whole taxation system that they hate, and consequently they want to make so much work for the Treasury officers that the latter don’t know which way to turn.…”
After World War Ⅰ, Germany was forced to make reparations payments to the
victorious powers. Germany failed to keep up with the demanded payments, and
so in , troops from France and Belgium
occupied the Ruhr district of Germany.
Germans responded with a campaign of mass nonviolent resistance. Tax
resistance was among the tactics.
The owners of the German coal mines and foundries in the Ruhr are determined
not to pay the 10 per cent. export tax imposed on coal by the
French as from . The owners will
refuse to export an ounce of coal or coke. They will dump the supplies in the
yards, and are prepared for a long seige. The proposal is to eventually make
a mercantile sortie which will shatter the export trade of other nations.
The resistance was still going on at least as late as
:
Paris, . — The French Minister for Public Works
(M. Le Trocquer)
reported to the French Cabinet
optimistically upon the situation in the Ruhr. He declared that German
resistance was lessening and that railroad position was constantly improving.
The “Daily Telegraph’s” correspondent at Dusseldorf reports that there is
some evidence of a weakening of the German passive resistance. The coal
owners, at one or two points, are paying the coal-tax, enabling coal to enter
unoccupied Germany.
The Dusseldorf correspondent of The Daily Telegraph states:— There is some
evidence that the passive resistance in the Ruhr is weakening. As an
instance, he says that the coalowners at one or two points are paying the
coal tax, which is enabling them to send coal to ports of Germany which are
not occupied by the French and Belgians. The greatest difficulty in the Ruhr
is the paucity of bank notes. Numerous firms and municipalities there, he
affirms, are demanding authority from Berlin to print their own notes in
order to pay their workmen’s wages.
The organized passive resistance campaign in the Ruhr had many components, and
broad participation. It is a real-life example of nonviolent resistance as a
national defense strategy — the leaders of the nonviolent resistance campaign
were the leaders of the German government. (Not a particularly good
example, necessarily, as they didn’t have any experience in this style of
defense, any plans or practiced procedures, or any trained leaders — they were
more or less making it up as they went along.)
One of the ways the German government supported the campaign was by funding
the strikers itself, to the tune of 715 million marks. Alas, it did this by
printing off more currency, which helped fuel
the
hyperinflation of 1923.
People will be less reluctant to take risks in a tax resistance campaign if
they know other people are willing to share those risks. One way of providing
this sort of reassurance is for resisters to join together in a mutual
insurance plan, so that if the government takes legal action against a
resister, or retaliates against them in some other way, they won’t have to
bear these consequences alone.
Today I’ll review some examples of how a variety of tax resistance campaigns
have created mutual insurance plans to protect resisters.
War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund
The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund
reimburses American war tax resisters who have penalties & interest
seized by the
IRS.
The fund is operated by a team of resisters and sympathizers, and has hundreds
of subscribers:
In a core group of 83 people across the
country decided we could easily share $463.14 in penalties and interest
incurred by a few military tax resisters who appealed to the war tax
resistance community for help. The more people we could recruit to shoulder
the penalties and interest of resisters, the lighter the burden for everyone.
With the modest help we could provide, conscientious resisters were able to
keep on keeping on.
The penalty fund had the added benefit of making us all tax resisters, not
just those who withheld all or a portion of their income taxes. The base list
of supporters has been as high as 800 people sharing the weight. In nearly
every appeal, at least 200 people respond, usually more. In all we’ve paid
out about $250,000 to help resisters stay in the struggle.
Resisters who have had money seized by the
IRS
send the fund documentation showing how much of the seizure was the result
of interest and penalties, and then the fund sends out an appeal to its
members to help reimburse the cost:
We divide the total amount for all resisters by the number of active names on
the membership list to arrive at a “share.” We then send out an appeal to
both actives and inactive members. Each contributor pays all of a share or
whatever amount she can afford. Some pay more than a share. If we collect 75
percent of the total we ask for, each resister gets 75 percent of the amount
they requested. We cannot promise that we will collect the total amount
requested; usually, however, we can reimburse between 50% and 80% of each
appeal.
I have personal experience with this mutual insurance plan. In
the
IRS
seized some bank accounts of mine to recover taxes I had refused to pay. This
included $813 in interest and penalties. I applied to the War Tax Resisters
Penalty Fund, which sent me a check for $649 from the amount the subscribers
to the fund pledged.
Irish Land League
When the
National
Land League launched a rent strike targeting English absentee landlords in
Ireland in , it made sure resisters knew
it would have their backs if the landlords tried to evict them. The leaders
of the League issued a rent strike manifesto from Kilmainham Jail that
declared:
If you only act together in the spirit to which within the last two years
you have countless times pledged your vows, they can no more evict a whole
nation than they can imprison them.
The funds of the National Land League will be poured out unstintingly for the
support of all who may endure eviction in the course of the struggle. Our
exiled brothers in America may be relied upon to contribute if necessary as
many millions of money as they have contributed thousands to starve out
landlordism and bring English tyranny to its knees.
One of the ways this played out was for evicted tenants to be temporarily
put up, along with their livestock if any, on the property of unevicted
tenants and sympathetic landowners, in what came to be called “Land League
Villages.” Each family was given a small monthly allowance from the Land
League.
Dublin Water Charge Strike
In , the resistance campaign against the
water charge in Dublin initiated a mutual insurance fund. One of the campaign
leaders recalls:
Obviously the council/government tactic was to try to individualise their
intimidation. By summonsing individuals to court maybe they could bypass the
mass participation that the protests against disconnections had seen. The
campaign immediately took a decision that when any individual was summonsed
to court, we would turn up and contest every case — and that we would turn up
in force. It was at this time that we made a decision which would prove
crucial to the success of the campaign. We decided to initiate a membership
of the campaign at £2 per household. This money would go into a warchest to
pay legal fees so that no individual would be left facing a legal bill. The
idea that the individuals being taken to court were representing all of us
was paramount. Within weeks 2,500 households had paid the £2 membership fee,
and within 12 months there were over 10,000 paid-up households making the
campaign without doubt the biggest to have existed in decades.
Breton Association
When Charles Ⅹ of France attempted to bypass the legislature and enact his own
taxes in , French liberals in the Breton
Association organized tax resistance and created a fund to defray the costs of
any tax resisters who were prosecuted. By the terms of the Association’s
manifesto:
We declare… [t]o subscribe individually for ten francs… This subscription
will form a common stock or fund for all Brittany, destined to indemnify the
subscribers for any expense they may be put to by their refusal to pay any
illegal contributions imposed upon the public…
And this is how the fund was to be administered:
[Elected procurators are to] receive the subscriptions, to afford indemnities
conformably to the [section quoted above], at the request of any subscriber
prosecuted for the payment of illegal contributions; to sue in his name…
for justice against the exactors by all possible means allowed by law…
War of the Regulation
The Regulator movement, a tax resistance rebellion in pre-American Revolution
North Carolina, had an oath that members took that committed each of them to
come to the aid of any others who might be arrested or whose property was
being seized for nonpayment:
I will, with the aid of other sufficient help, go and take, if in my power,
from said officer, and return to the party from whom taken; and in case any
one concerned should be imprisoned, or under arrest, or otherwise confined,
or if his estate, or any part thereof, by reason or means of joining this
company of Regulators, for refusing to comply with the extortionate demands
of unlawful tax gatherers, that I will immediately exert my best endeavors to
raise as many of said subscribers as will be force sufficient, and, if in my
power, I will set the said person at liberty…
The oath also created a mutual insurance pledge:
I do further promise and swear that if, in case this, our scheme, should be
broken or otherwise fail, and should any of our company be put to expense or
under any confinement, that I will bear an equal share in paying and making
up said loss to the sufferer.
Reformed Israel of Yahweh
Members of the small Christian group called the Reformed Israel of Yahweh
were, like its founder, conscientious objectors to military taxation. When
some of the members of the group were convicted on tax evasion charges, the
Reformed Israel of Yahweh organization paid their fines.
Pacific Yearly Meeting
A committee of the collection of American Quaker congregations known as the
Pacific Yearly Meeting administers something it calls “the Fund for Concerns:”
Its purpose is to assist members and attenders of Monthly Meetings to follow
individual leadings arising from peace, social order, or spiritual concerns.
… Up to $100 per fiscal year per person will be available to help with the
interest and penalty expenses of war tax resisters who are members or regular
attenders of a Monthly Meeting. The Monthly Meeting must indicate approval
and provide matching funds.
New York Yearly Meeting
During the Vietnam War, the New York Yearly Meeting advocated war tax
resistance and “promised financial help through special committees if [Quaker
resisters] changed jobs or refused to pay taxes in protest against the war.”
Papuan Courier
In 1919, Papua, which had been a territory occupied and run by the German
Empire until World War Ⅰ when Australia took over, began to agitate against
taxation without representation, and many people refused to pay.
The Papuan Courier, which was sympathetic to the
tax resisters,
…as evidence of its bona fides on the question, has decided, to form a fund
for the defence of any resident who may by victimised, persecuted, or
prosecuted for failure to pay the tax, and to that end we open the list with
a contribution of Five Guineas.
Tithe War
In , Irish Catholics rebelled
against paying government-mandated tithes to the Anglican church. In this
case, the Catholic church itself provided some insurance to the resisters.
The Anglican archbishop Richard Whately complained:
Every possible legal evasion has been resorted to to prevent the incumbent
from obtaining his due. A parish purse has been raised to meet law expenses
for this purpose, and the result has been that in most instances nothing
whatever, in others a very small proportion of the arrears, has been
recovered. … [One Anglican clergyman] instituted a tithe-suit which was
decided in his favour; but, instead of receiving the amount, he was met by an
appeal to the High Court of Delegates, and is informed that a continued
resistance to the utmost extremity of the law is to be supported by a parish
purse.
Addio-Pizzo Movement
In , a number of individuals and businesses
opposed to paying mafia protection money began to use a number of techniques
to interrupt the payments and to support those resisters whom the mafia was
threatening with reprisals. The mayor of Palermo, Diego Cammarata, pledged
€50,000 to assist merchants who had been victims of extortion.
Peacemakers
The group “Peacemakers,” which launched the modern American war tax resistance
movement , had a mutual
insurance component from the beginning:
Peacemakers at the Ohio cell… established the Peacemaker Sharing Fund, a
mutual aid plan designed to insure aid to dependents of imprisoned
Peacemakers and to help finance group projects. During the Vietnam war, the
sharing fund became the main vehicle for donations to meet the needs of war
resisters’ families.
Penalty Sharing Community
The Iowa Peace Network maintains a mailing list of persons who have made a
commitment to the Penalty Sharing Community
to share in the penalties assessed to individuals and families who have
chosen to resist war taxes or have participated in civil disobedience or
non-violent direct action. When a request for assistance is received, a
mailing is sent out which explains the resister’s situation and the amount of
money needed. For example, if the resister was assessed a $300.00 penalty,
each of the persons in the Community would pay an equal portion of the
$300.00. Thus if there were 200 people in the Community, each would pay
$1.50. The Iowa Peace Network will also add into the amount requested its
costs for printing and mailing. Such costs have proven to be minimal.
Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters
Members of the Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters redirected their federal taxes
into an “alternative fund” that served partially as an escrow account, and
partially as a way of redirecting some of the money to charitable
organizations. Part of the fund was reserved to help defray any legal costs
incurred by members in the course of their resistance.
“New Rush” Resisters
White miners at the “New Rush” in Kimberly, South Africa, voted in
to form “a Defence League and Protection
Association… not to assail the Government, but to protect individuals if
assailed unrighteously by the Government.” The pledge of the association said
in part:
I shall to the utmost of my power, with purse and person, protect any and
every officer and member of the League against coercion or consequences of
what nature soever arising out of the action necessitated by this pledge.
The pledge had a clause that made it binding when it would be signed by 400
men, whereupon:
The Government will be defied if they dare to touch a single claim for
non-payment of license. The diamond buyers will refuse to pay further license
and will be defended from harm.
Ruhrkampf
When the Ruhr region of Germany began resisting reparation payments to the
victorious nations of World War Ⅰ, France and Belgium occupied the region
to take the payments by force. Germans responded with a campaign of mass
nonviolent resistance, including tax resistance, and were backed up by their
own government.
One of the ways the German government supported the campaign was by paying
the strikers itself, to the tune of 715 million marks. It did this in part by
printing off more currency, which helped fuel the hyperinflation of
(itself a sort of resistance strategy that
made it difficult or impractical to account for reparations payments).
Louisiana Anti-Reconstructionists
During the “Reconstruction” period after the American Civil War, white
supremacists in Louisiana refused their allegiance to a federally-backed,
mixed-race state government, and demonstrated this through tax resistance.
Several attorneys issued a statement offering to “engage themselves, without
compensation, and as a matter of public service, to defend professionally all
[tax resisters].” A mass-meeting issued a tax resistance pledge, and resolved:
That a committee of five be appointed to draw up a plan by which the citizens
may co-operate, to employ counsel and mutually assist each other in their
refusal to pay taxes.
Satyagraha in South Africa
Gopal Krishna Gokhale, an officer in the Indian National Congress fighting
for the independence of India, pledged £2,000 a month to support Indian
satyagrahis in South Africa who were engaged in tax resistance and other
tactics under Gandhi’s direction.
There are many ways to support tax resisters when they are targeted by the
police or courts, including:
Today I’ll finish off this series by mentioning some other examples of ways
sympathizers, supporters, and organized campaigns have responded to the arrest,
trial, or imprisonment of tax resisters.
Mass action in response to arrests
When elderly pensioner Sylvia Hardy was imprisoned for refusing to
continue to pay her ever-rising council tax, supporters started a daily
vigil outside Exeter Cathedral to bring attention to her plight. “Judging
from the passers-by,” one said, “most people are fully aware of what’s
happened to her and we’ve had a lot of sympathy and interest.”
When Australian miners refused to pay a license tax in
, they resolved that if any one of them
were arrested: “it should be reported to the [tax resistance] committee by
the nearest observer; they would immediately call a monster meeting, and
the whole of the people would deliver themselves into custody.”
In , Australian miners were at it again,
this time resisting the income tax. They voted on a resolution that said,
in part, that upon “any member being sent to prison for refusing to pay,
that all unionists be called on immediately to stop work, and refuse to
recommence until such member is released, or the garnished money is
refunded.”
In Beidenfleth, Germany, between the World Wars, farmers were unable to
keep up with their tax payments, and decided to strike rather than see
themselves further impoverished. When fifty-seven were indicted for
interfering with a tax seizure, hundreds of others who either had been
involved with that action (or who wished they could have been), demanded
to be tried alongside them:
[A] fever seemed to grip the countryside. From far and wide the peasants
poured into Itzehoe, where the case was to be tried, with wild cries of
self-accusation. The public prosecutor could not walk down the streets
without being at once mobbed by powerful, earnest men begging him to
lift the heavy weight of guilt from their shoulders and to restore their
inner peace of mind by issuing a writ against them.
Honor prisoners
While people were desperately trying to get themselves indicted for tax
resistance in Beidenfleth, those who succeeded were honored:
The Beidenfleth Heifer Case developed into a regular popular festival.
Maidenly hands strung garlands about the necks of those enviable
peasants who had achieved the honour of receiving a writ.
I’ve mentioned before the badges awarded by the Women’s Tax Resistance
League to those who had gone to prison in the course of the campaign, and
how those so awarded were given the place of honor at campaign events
(see The Picket
Line for ).
It was also common for the League to throw luncheons or other such events
to honor imprisoned resisters upon their release.
The annuity tax resisters in Edinburgh, Scotland, honored one imprisoned
resister with “a piece of plate for his conduct on this occasion.” Another
time, they passed the hat for contributions, which, when the money was
given to resister Thomas Russell, he said: “We shall give it to the
Annuity Tax League, to enable them to carry out their operations in the
abolishment of the tax.”
A plaque on the Cass County, Missouri courthouse building honors the five
county judges who were imprisoned for contempt for refusing to order the
county to collect taxes to pay off fraudulent railroad bonds
.
Formal shows of support
When John Brown Smith, a lone Christian anarchist tax resister who was
imprisoned for tax resistance for about a year
, a convention of
“Liberalists” in Boston passed a resolution in support of Smith’s stand,
saying: “That in suffering eight months’ imprisonment in the orthodox
Republican hell of Northampton, rather than pay his taxes, John Brown Smith
has shown discerning wisdom and invincible courage, which place him high
among the world’s benefactors, and disclose a practical way to vanquish
sanguinary forces without shedding innocent or vicious blood.”
One of the Cass County judges who went to jail for refusing to obey a
higher court order to impose taxes on the county to pay for fraudulent
railroad bonds, was elected to the state legislature by the citizens of
the county while he was in prison.
When war tax resister Zerah C. Whipple was in jail for his stand, the
Connecticut State Peace Society passed a series of resolutions in support.
For example: “Resolved: That it is a great, previous, and sanctifying
privilege of us all, to feel that in his bonds we are bound with him, and
to pour our heart’s holiest sympathies into his cup of trial.”
The Women’s Tax Resistance League and allied organizations would pass
resolutions in support of imprisoned resisters, send telegrams of
congratulation to resisters who were being jailed for the cause, and hold
meetings to especially commemorate and support their stand.
Petition the government for leniency
When a number of young Quaker men were imprisoned for failure to pay a
militia exemption tax in , David Cooper
followed them to jail, and met with the officers who were holding them
captive. He wrote:
I had much conversation with them; they appeared very moderate, but were
very earnest for me to pay the fine, and not suffer our sons to be
committed to prison. I told them they were aware that our religious
principles forbade it; the young men were in their possession, and I had
no desire to persuade them to deviate from what they believed their duty
as officers required; but only wished them to use their power in a
manner that would afford peace hereafter. It was a matter of conscience;
they ought therefore to be very tender, and not use rigor. If they were
committed I saw no end. They could never pay the fines without wounding
their own minds, nor could their friends do it for them. They appeared
friendly, and the young men being under the Sheriff’s care, he directed
them to go home, and meet him at Woodbury at an appointed day. He
afterwards sent them word they need give themselves no further trouble
till he called for them. So the matter rested.
The Women’s Tax Resistance League would write letters of inquiry to
government officials whenever one of them was imprisoned. For instance,
when Kate Harvey was jailed, Charlotte Despard wrote to her representative
in Parliament to point out the discrepancy between her cruel sentence and
the wrist-slaps given to men for similar offenses. “I cannot believe,
sir,” she wrote, “that you will permit this injustice to be done. … Mrs.
Harvey is one whose time, service and money are given to the rescue of
little destitute children, and to the help of those not so fortunately
placed as herself. While such injustices as these are permitted by the
authorities, can you wonder that women are in revolt?” League member Marie
Lawson started what she called a “snowball” protest — a sort of chain
letter that sympathizers were supposed to send to their friends that
included a postcard-sized petition they could send to various government
figures.
When American war tax resister Maurice McCracken was imprisoned, supporters
sent a telegram to President Eisenbower, asking him to release the
prisoner (they got a vague, noncommittal reply).
Somewhat related to this is that when the American Revolution broke out,
one item on the agenda of the revolutionaries from North Carolina was the
legal rehabilitation of the tax rebels who had been convicted at the end
of the Regulator movement of
.
One way tax resisters can foil the plans of the tax collectors is to send up the alarm when they’re on the way.
Here are some examples:
In rural Germany between the wars, a tax strike broke out, and when tax collectors came to distrain cattle from the resisters:
they blew the fire horn, and on the road they lit a fire of straw, the age-old sign that help is needed.
Peasants ran from all sides towards the smoke.
“Horning” was a legal term of art describing the process under which tax debtors could be imprisoned for defying the King (because it was normally prohibited at the time to imprison someone merely for being a debtor in default).
During the Edinburgh Annuity Tax resistance, one victim of this process declared “Horning! horning!
— by the powers! if they bring a horning against me, I’ll bring a horning against them.”:
When the King’s messenger-at-arms, as tipstaves are called in Scotland, brought his horning to the Cowgate, the Irishman, previously provided with a tremendous bullock’s horn, blew a blast “so loud and dread,” that it might have brought down the Castle wall; and a faction mustered as quickly as if it had sounded in the suburbs of Kilkenny.
The messenger-at-arms took leave as rapidly as possible, and without making the charge of horning at this time.
Poujadist tax rebels in France in
used this tactic: “Some priests ring church bells to warn of the arrival of the revenuers,” according to a Life magazine article on the movement.
A Montreal Gazette reporter said of Poujade’s Union for the Defence of Shopkeepers and Craftsmen:
The loudspeaker is its symbol and it all started in earnest one bright morning 18 months ago when a loudspeaker mounted on a truck brought awful tidings to the pleasant little town of St. Cere near Toulouse in south-west France.
“Attention,” it blared.
“Attention.
The tax inspector is in town.”
There was a rumbling sound as the steel curtains with which French shops are shuttered at night were rolled down all over St. Cere.
…
The tax inspector rapped on steel curtain after steel curtain, demanding to be let in to see the books.
Nowhere did he get an answer.
When they found that even the bistros were locked, the hapless inspector and his guards gave up their mission and beat a humble retreat from St. Cere.
The triumph of St. Cere lit the fires of rebellion in the hearts of tax-ridden shopkeepers all over France.
Poujade was suddenly a national figure and he lost no time in organizing his Union to spread the message of the loudspeakers and the steel curtains.
More recently, in Greece, when tax official Nikos Maitos took a team of inspectors to the island of Naxos to hunt for tax evaders, “a local radio station broadcast his license plate number to warn residents.”
During the Bardoli satyagraha, tax collectors and other government enforcers were tracked by the resisters, who warned villagers when they were on the way.
Resister Govardhandas Chokhavala said, “We have provided our volunteers with drums and conches, and the moment they sight a Government servant, the drum or the conch gives the alarm.
That is work which is after the heart of these youngsters.”
Some other notes from The Story of Bardoli read:
[E]very village had its volunteers ready with their bugles or drums which Were pressed into aid as soon as they caught sight of the Talati and Patel out on their japti [attachment] depredations
The youngsters on duty announced [the Collector’s] arrival by a hearty beating of their drums. and all the doors were closed.
[T]he other [new legal] notification which was over the signature of the District Superintendent of Police prohibited the beating of drums, playing music, or blowing conches or horns on or near public roads or public places or Government buildings.
Some of them had to post themselves at and keep a strict watch over the various approaches to the village, and no sooner was a japti party sighted or the whank of a car heard, than they were to be on their alert, and the warning of the fact to be given to the village people.
Some of them had always like sleuth hounds to be on the trail of the Government officials.
Their business was to scent their plans and warn the village people against their machinations.
Some boys were arrested, tried, and imprisoned for nothing more than keeping a watchful eye on a government building from across the street.
Tax resisters in Alwar, India in used this system: “The paths are blocked by huge boulders and at intervals along the hills remote from the towns are watchers with giant tom-toms which are heard for five miles, giving warning of the approach of troops or the revenue collectors.”
The horn became the symbol of the Rebeccaite uprising in Wales, because of incidents like this one:
The constables then went towards Talog; but when on their way there they heard the sound of a horn, and immediately between two and three hundred persons assembled together, with their faces blackened, some dressed in women’s caps, and others with their coats turned so as to be completely disguised — armed with scythes, crowbars and all manner of destructive weapons which they could lay their hands on.
After cheering the constables, they defied them to do their duty.
The latter had no alternative but to return to town without executing their warrants.
The women were seen running in all directions to alarm their neighbours; and some hundreds were concealed behind the hedges, intending to appear if their services were required.
The entire district seemed to be aroused, and awaiting the arrival of the constables, who were going to levy on the goods of John Harris of Talog Mill for the amount of the fine and costs imposed upon him by the magistrates.
There could not have been less than two hundred persons assembled to resist the execution of process, and vast numbers were flocking from all quarters, in response to the blowing of a horn, the signal of the Rebeccaites to repair thither.
Various mounted messengers were scouring the country and sounding the trumpet of alarm.
A sign declares a neighborhood a “poll tax free zone” and warns bailiffs away from entering.
During the poll tax rebellion in Thatcher’s Britain, resisters tracked and shadowed bailiffs, and declared certain areas to be bailiff “no-go” zones, with watchouts established to raise the alarm if any approached.
They first modeled this approach on tactics used in South African townships during the anti-apartheid resistance there, and then improvised from there:
Throughout Britain, city-wide bailiff busting groups were formed.
Activists in Edinburgh formed a group called “Scum-busters” which was equipped with CB radios, and squadrons of cars.
Telephone trees were organised; bailiff companies were monitored; their car registration numbers were taken and distributed to activists in all the local areas.
Camden, in London, followed their example in :
We have organised a rota so that we know who and when people are available to do whatever shift.
We have organised a “knock up system” giving people different responsibilities for knocking up each part of the estate when the bailiffs are spotted.
Telephone trees have also been established.
We have approached a couple of mini-cab firms who have agreed to be bailiff spotters.…
Tax resistance movements have often coordinated with labor strikes or business shut-downs as a way of further restricting government resources, demonstrating solidarity, and freeing up the time of resisters to engage in more campaign-oriented activities.
In some cases, these strikes are themselves a form of tax resistance — reducing the income or sales tax base by simply reducing the amount of income earned or sales made.
Here are several examples:
Labor strikes
In Germany, in , “A movement for a general refusal to pay taxes, originating in Württemberg, spread rapidly to other towns, principally Stuttgart, which was without gas, electricity and water for several days.
The strike began in the Daimler motor works in Württemberg, where the workers refused to allow the deduction of the legal tax of ten per cent from their weekly wages…”
A tax strike in aimed at the Hugo Chavez regime in Venezuela was accompanied by a multi-week labor strike that “bled the Chavez’s government’s economic lifeline, costing it millions of dollars a day.”
Prisoner slave laborers in the American state of Georgia went on strike in , refusing to work for the profit of the prison system.
In Savannah, Georgia, in , the city tried to impose a $10 tax on “stevedores and other laborers on the wharves,” which they refused to pay.
The city then locked them out of the wharves.
This, of course, seriously interfered with the shipping interests of the city, and the Council, finding that the laborers were not at all disposed to yield, and that meanwhile the “strike” was damaging the business community to the amount of thousands of dollars, and was driving all the vessels from this to other ports, met and reduced the tax to $3.
This, however, only tended to increase the feelings of the laborers, who had resolved not to pay any tax whatever, deeming it unjust, unconstitutional and oppressive to tax unskilled labor, and they determined that none of their number should work, whether they paid the tax or not.
During the recent Household Tax agitation in Ireland, the Civil and Public Service Union threatened to strike if the government tried to deduct the tax from the paychecks of resisting union members.
Ship stokers in France went on strike when the government tried to tax their incidental benefits like meals as income in .
The standoff kept the largest French trans-Atlantic ship stranded in port until the stokers’ employer agreed to pay the extra tax on their behalf.
In Birmingham, Alabama, in :
The plant of… [a] Paint company at North Birmingham, employing 200 men, closed down because a deputy tax collector served garnishment on five employees for the non-payment of poll tax.
Many of the men quit work causing the plant to shut down.
… The men persist in their refusal because they claim the tax is an unjust one and not constitutional.
The citizens all side with the strikers.
Hartals and business strikes
“Bushel Bob” Williams’ produce stand
When Argentina tried to increase taxes in the midst of a drought in , farmers there went on strike for a week and set up highway roadblocks.
American farmer Bob Williams, disgusted at the U.S. military budget, decided in to henceforth donate all of his produce to charity rather than sell it for taxable income.
For a week in , a strike spread amongst the vendors in Tehran’s bazaar until hardly any were open for business.
They were protesting a new VAT that would have applied to them.
Apparently this was a nonviolent resistance tactic that bazaar merchants used successfully before the Iranian revolution, but this was the first time they’d done it since.
20,000 lawyers in Delhi went on strike in , “paralyzing the lower courts,” when India tried to extend its sales tax to cover legal services.
In in Benares, the British imperial government tried to impose a house tax.
The residents responded with a hartal, or general strike: “the shops were closed, every kind of occupation was abandoned… a solemn engagement was taken by all the inhabitants to carry on no manner of work or business until the tax was repealed.
Everything was at a stand: the dead bodies were cast unceremoniously into the river, because there were none to perform the obsequial rites; and the very thieves refrained from the exercise of their vocation…”
Hartals and strikes, sometimes of specific industries and other times general strikes, were also frequently used in the later Indian independence movement led by Gandhi, sometimes in coordination with tax resistance campaigns such as the salt raids.
During the Bardoli satyagraha, for example, shopkeepers frequently shut down their operations whenever officials came to town, and hartals sometimes broke out spontaneously on other occasions.
Gandhi also led a strike of Indian miners in South Africa in that was directed against a poll tax on Indian immigrants, a strike in which hundreds were arrested, and which eventually drew in strikers from “harbour, corporation, and railway employees, as well as the drivers, cooks, waiters, and messengers.”
That campaign was successful at forcing the government to rescind the tax.
A Parisian cafe owner holds down the fort during a one-day business strike during the Poujadist campaign.
When the tax inspector called at St. Cere during the Poujadist tax strikes:
“The tax inspector rapped on steel curtain after steel curtain, demanding to be let in to see the books.
Nowhere did he get an answer.
When they found that even the bistros were locked, the hapless inspector and his guards gave up their mission and beat a humble retreat…”
During the first intifada in Palestine, the Unified National Command responded to a crackdown on the tax strikers of Beit Sahour by calling “an unprecedented five day in six general strike,” while “[s]torekeepers in the town launched a commercial strike that lasted three months…”
The Israeli practice of seizing equipment, supplies, and goods from businesses that refused to remit taxes also had the effect of putting those businesses into a state of strike whether or not that was their intention.
In , in support of Palestinian doctors who were refusing to pay an Israeli income tax, shopkeepers in Gaza City launched multiple two-day strikes.
In , Greek kiosk owners held a one-day strike to protest an increase in tobacco taxes.
In the Dutch West Indies in , “[m]erchants, as a token of their approval of [a] doctor’s refusal to pay the tax,” (the government was attempting to auction off his goods that day) “closed their places of business during the afternoon.”
In the waning days of the rule of the Gyanendra monarchy in Nepal in , people stopped paying taxes and utility bills, and accompanied this with a general strike.
In , cashew traders in Guinea Bissau went on strike:
“We cashew exporters have decided to boycott the current marketing season to protest the payment of a 50 CFA franc ($0.11) per kilogram export tax,” said the head of the exporter’s association.
In sympathy with the tax protests in Turkey in , there were often business strikes:
…all shops and businesses [in Kastamonu] remained closed during the day…
…merchants [in Erzurum] closed their shops in solidarity… shops were closed again…
Erzurum’s example of closing shops… [was followed] at Hasankale…
In the Ruhr, during the French/Belgian occupation of , businesses shut down rather than pay reparation taxes:
The owners of the German coal mines and foundries in the Ruhr are determined not to pay the 10 per cent. export tax imposed on coal by the French…
The owners will refuse to export an ounce of coal or coke.
They will dump the supplies in the yards, and are prepared for a long seige.
This was accompanied by a large-scale labor strike, which the German government supported by directly financially supporting the individual strikers.
Consumer strikes
In Cairo in , a boatload of cruise ship passengers refused to disembark because of a landing tax they would be forced to pay.
This so upset the tourist-dependent shopkeepers that they rioted and forced the tax officials to waive the tax.
In Melbourne, Australia, in “[b]etween 500 and 600 young men refused to pay the amusement tax at the Stadium last night to witness a boxing match between Edwards and Palmer.
They were patrons of the lower-priced seats.
The manager of the Stadium argued with the spokesmen for the crowd for some time, but neither side would yield, and the result was that the attendance was much smaller than usual.”
In the U.S., school districts often get government funding based on how many students are attending on certain “count days.”
One parent decided to use this as leverage, saying she would keep her children home from school on count days, and thereby deprive the district of money, to protest against poor district policies.
(I’ll cover consumer strikes of government-monopoly products in another episode of this series.)
Tax resistance movements have often coordinated with labor strikes or business shut-downs as a way of further restricting government resources, demonstrating solidarity, and freeing up the time of resisters to engage in more campaign-oriented activities.
In some cases, these strikes are themselves a form of tax resistance — reducing the income or sales tax base by simply reducing the amount of income earned or sales made.
Here are several examples:
Labor strikes
In Germany, in , “A movement for a general refusal to pay taxes, originating in Württemberg, spread rapidly to other towns, principally Stuttgart, which was without gas, electricity and water for several days.
The strike began in the Daimler motor works in Württemberg, where the workers refused to allow the deduction of the legal tax of ten per cent from their weekly wages…”
A tax strike in aimed at the Hugo Chavez regime in Venezuela was accompanied by a multi-week labor strike that “bled the Chavez’s government’s economic lifeline, costing it millions of dollars a day.”
Prisoner slave laborers in the American state of Georgia went on strike in , refusing to work for the profit of the prison system.
In Savannah, Georgia, in , the city tried to impose a $10 tax on “stevedores and other laborers on the wharves,” which they refused to pay.
The city then locked them out of the wharves.
This, of course, seriously interfered with the shipping interests of the city, and the Council, finding that the laborers were not at all disposed to yield, and that meanwhile the “strike” was damaging the business community to the amount of thousands of dollars, and was driving all the vessels from this to other ports, met and reduced the tax to $3.
This, however, only tended to increase the feelings of the laborers, who had resolved not to pay any tax whatever, deeming it unjust, unconstitutional and oppressive to tax unskilled labor, and they determined that none of their number should work, whether they paid the tax or not.
During the recent Household Tax agitation in Ireland, the Civil and Public Service Union threatened to strike if the government tried to deduct the tax from the paychecks of resisting union members.
Ship stokers in France went on strike when the government tried to tax their incidental benefits like meals as income in .
The standoff kept the largest French trans-Atlantic ship stranded in port until the stokers’ employer agreed to pay the extra tax on their behalf.
In Birmingham, Alabama, in :
The plant of… [a] Paint company at North Birmingham, employing 200 men, closed down because a deputy tax collector served garnishment on five employees for the non-payment of poll tax.
Many of the men quit work causing the plant to shut down.
… The men persist in their refusal because they claim the tax is an unjust one and not constitutional.
The citizens all side with the strikers.
Hartals and business strikes
“Bushel Bob” Williams’ produce stand
When Argentina tried to increase taxes in the midst of a drought in , farmers there went on strike for a week and set up highway roadblocks.
American farmer Bob Williams, disgusted at the U.S. military budget, decided in to henceforth donate all of his produce to charity rather than sell it for taxable income.
For a week in , a strike spread amongst the vendors in Tehran’s bazaar until hardly any were open for business.
They were protesting a new VAT that would have applied to them.
Apparently this was a nonviolent resistance tactic that bazaar merchants used successfully before the Iranian revolution, but this was the first time they’d done it since.
20,000 lawyers in Delhi went on strike in , “paralyzing the lower courts,” when India tried to extend its sales tax to cover legal services.
In in Benares, the British imperial government tried to impose a house tax.
The residents responded with a hartal, or general strike: “the shops were closed, every kind of occupation was abandoned… a solemn engagement was taken by all the inhabitants to carry on no manner of work or business until the tax was repealed.
Everything was at a stand: the dead bodies were cast unceremoniously into the river, because there were none to perform the obsequial rites; and the very thieves refrained from the exercise of their vocation…”
Hartals and strikes, sometimes of specific industries and other times general strikes, were also frequently used in the later Indian independence movement led by Gandhi, sometimes in coordination with tax resistance campaigns such as the salt raids.
During the Bardoli satyagraha, for example, shopkeepers frequently shut down their operations whenever officials came to town, and hartals sometimes broke out spontaneously on other occasions.
Gandhi also led a strike of Indian miners in South Africa in that was directed against a poll tax on Indian immigrants, a strike in which hundreds were arrested, and which eventually drew in strikers from “harbour, corporation, and railway employees, as well as the drivers, cooks, waiters, and messengers.”
That campaign was successful at forcing the government to rescind the tax.
A Parisian cafe owner holds down the fort during a one-day business strike during the Poujadist campaign.
When the tax inspector called at St. Cere during the Poujadist tax strikes:
“The tax inspector rapped on steel curtain after steel curtain, demanding to be let in to see the books.
Nowhere did he get an answer.
When they found that even the bistros were locked, the hapless inspector and his guards gave up their mission and beat a humble retreat…”
During the first intifada in Palestine, the Unified National Command responded to a crackdown on the tax strikers of Beit Sahour by calling “an unprecedented five day in six general strike,” while “[s]torekeepers in the town launched a commercial strike that lasted three months…”
The Israeli practice of seizing equipment, supplies, and goods from businesses that refused to remit taxes also had the effect of putting those businesses into a state of strike whether or not that was their intention.
In , in support of Palestinian doctors who were refusing to pay an Israeli income tax, shopkeepers in Gaza City launched multiple two-day strikes.
In , Greek kiosk owners held a one-day strike to protest an increase in tobacco taxes.
In the Dutch West Indies in , “[m]erchants, as a token of their approval of [a] doctor’s refusal to pay the tax,” (the government was attempting to auction off his goods that day) “closed their places of business during the afternoon.”
In the waning days of the rule of the Gyanendra monarchy in Nepal in , people stopped paying taxes and utility bills, and accompanied this with a general strike.
In , cashew traders in Guinea Bissau went on strike:
“We cashew exporters have decided to boycott the current marketing season to protest the payment of a 50 CFA franc ($0.11) per kilogram export tax,” said the head of the exporter’s association.
In sympathy with the tax protests in Turkey in , there were often business strikes:
…all shops and businesses [in Kastamonu] remained closed during the day…
…merchants [in Erzurum] closed their shops in solidarity… shops were closed again…
Erzurum’s example of closing shops… [was followed] at Hasankale…
In the Ruhr, during the French/Belgian occupation of , businesses shut down rather than pay reparation taxes:
The owners of the German coal mines and foundries in the Ruhr are determined not to pay the 10 per cent. export tax imposed on coal by the French…
The owners will refuse to export an ounce of coal or coke.
They will dump the supplies in the yards, and are prepared for a long seige.
This was accompanied by a large-scale labor strike, which the German government supported by directly financially supporting the individual strikers.
Consumer strikes
In Cairo in , a boatload of cruise ship passengers refused to disembark because of a landing tax they would be forced to pay.
This so upset the tourist-dependent shopkeepers that they rioted and forced the tax officials to waive the tax.
In Melbourne, Australia, in “[b]etween 500 and 600 young men refused to pay the amusement tax at the Stadium last night to witness a boxing match between Edwards and Palmer.
They were patrons of the lower-priced seats.
The manager of the Stadium argued with the spokesmen for the crowd for some time, but neither side would yield, and the result was that the attendance was much smaller than usual.”
In the U.S., school districts often get government funding based on how many students are attending on certain “count days.”
One parent decided to use this as leverage, saying she would keep her children home from school on count days, and thereby deprive the district of money, to protest against poor district policies.
(I’ll cover consumer strikes of government-monopoly products in another episode of this series.)
an early tax form, from when paperwork was fired in clay
Tax agencies live by bureaucracy and paperwork.
Many of the earliest examples of writing in the worlds’ museums are tax records.
But some mischievous tax resisters have discovered that this is a vulnerability that can be targeted.
For example, , a video blogger going by the name “StormCloudsGathering” considered the idea of “filling out thousands of random tax returns with nonexistent names and numbers… so suddenly they get flooded with a bunch of returns that don’t make sense…”:
What’s even more brilliant about [this] option is that even non-U.S. citizens — people living in other countries — could participate.
You could send in hundreds of tax returns even if you’re an Indonesian.
You know: Americans can live in Indonesia, and they’re required to file taxes… there’s no way for them to be sure, just because it’s coming from Indonesia, that it’s not a valid tax return.
They would have to do the investigation, and that costs resources.
He recommends filing in the name of particular, offensive, multinational corporations, but I think the average person would have a difficult time filing a sufficiently complex return to serve as a convincing decoy in such a case.
Another option would be to file corporate returns for nonexistent corporations, or individual returns for phantom (or dead) people.
War tax resister Ed Hedemann has already made plans for what he calls “zombie war tax resistance” — filling in years of tax returns ahead of time and putting them in pre-stamped envelopes so that his survivors can continue to file (but, of course, refuse to pay!) after he’s gone.
“Why give the government a break from having to deal with your resistance when you die?”
he asks.
Hedemann also makes a point of periodically filing Freedom of Information Act requests for any information the IRS and other government agencies have been collecting about his activities — hundreds of pages — and he’s put together a guide for other tax resisters to follow in making their own requests.
Currently in the U.S. there is an epidemic of tax fraud in which the fraudsters file for phony tax refunds in the names (and taxpayer identification numbers) of other, real people.
This often causes the tax collection bureaucracy to swing into action against the victims of the identity theft, which is both a waste of resources and a way of further alienating the population from the government and its tax bureaucracy — potentially a model that a tax resistance campaign could benefit from.
The IRS has made a big shift in recent years from processing paper income tax returns, filled out by hand, to electronic filing.
This is more efficient for the agency, as it no longer has to hire as many people to laboriously transcribe the numbers from paper returns into its computer databases.
The agency estimated that it cost about 35¢ on average for the agency to process an electronically-filed return, compared to an average of $2.87 for a paper return.
This suggests that one way to make a minor dent in the agency’s budget and efficiency is simply to file paper returns rather than file electronically (this is still a legal option for individual filers, even those who go to professional tax preparers).
But if this became a strategy of a mass-campaign it could even cripple the tax collecting bureaucracy.
George Jakabcin, IRS assistant deputy associate chief information officer for systems integration, said in that the agency “would be in a world of hurt” if even half of the people who had switched to electronic filing at that time decided to switch back.
“We no longer have the capability to process the additional 43 million returns manually.
We no longer have the facilities, we don’t have the IT infrastructure in place to support them, we don’t have the people, and some would argue that we are beginning to lose the expertise.”
The IRS has tried to crack down on people who send them paperwork just to waste their time.
They have come up with something called the “frivolous filing penalty” and can use this to ding you $5,000 each time you file any sort of paperwork with them that takes a position they consider to be “frivolous.”
They can do this immediately and on the whim of whichever bureaucrat is handling your forms, without going to court, and you are only allowed to appeal your fine before a judge if you pay it first!
War tax resister Karl Meyer wasn’t about to let the IRS think it could intimidate him with such tactics.
So in , when the “Cabbage Patch Kids” dolls (each one slightly different) had become ubiquitous, he invented when he called “cabbage patch resistance” — filing a different, blatantly “frivolous” tax return every day.
He was assessed $140,000 in penalties in alone (though the penalty was only $500 back then).
The IRS never collected the money though.
The best it could manage was to seize and sell his car, for a little over $1,000.
“Constitutionalist” and “sovereign citizen”-style tax protest groups in the U.S. are fond of harassing tax officials and other government employees with lawsuits, liens, bogus quasi-official court filings, and so forth.
In one example, Eddie Kahn’s “Guiding Light of God Ministries,” filed some 2,000 misconduct complaints against IRS agents.
A newspaper article about a subsequent legal case against the group noted that:
Some agents have said that their supervisors ordered them to back off from audits or collection efforts in the face of [such] threats, just to avoid investigations by the Treasury inspector general for tax administration.
Some paperwork tricks are more like “hacking” in that they treat the IRS as a system that processes input and produces output, and note that certain examples of pathological input can result in output unanticipated by the system designers.
For example, the IRS gave out $20 million dollars in the filing season when people figured out that if they substantially overpaid a tax return with a bad check, the IRS would cut them a hefty refund check before they noticed they’d been had.
Here are some more examples of paperwork hacks being used against the tax collecting bureaucracy:
South Carolina’s state government recently passed a law that required all organizations that “directly or indirectly advocate, advise, teach or practice the duty or necessity of controlling, seizing, or overthrowing the government of the United States, the state of South Carolina, or any political division thereof,” to register their activities with the South Carolina Secretary of State and pay a five-dollar filing fee.
A member of the Alliance of the Libertarian Left (which probably qualifies, at least in its more ambitious moments) decided to register, but with a twist:
When belligerence and inhumanity prevail, the peaceful and the humane must find honor in being categorized as the enemies of the prevailing order.
Please keep me updated as to the status of our registration.
I look forward to hearing back from you as to our official recognition as enemies of your state and its government.
… P.S. I am told that there is a processing fee in the amount of $5.00 for the registration of a subversive organization.
Our organization is in fact so dastardly that we have refused to remit the fee.
Prussian farmers in used the bureaucracy against itself.
A New York Times report noted:
[T]he big agrarians… are determined to resort to sabotage of all the tax laws…
[A correspondent in East Prussia says] “They have all filed protests and demanded that they be relieved from paying the tax until the protests are settled.
That means a delay of at least three years in collecting the taxes, and it is said that the Provincial Treasury is inclined to grant this request.
The big agrarians declared that they would do the same thing with all the tax laws.
In Berlin the people might decree what pleased them, they (the agrarians) would not pay the taxes or subscribe to the compulsory loans.
They want to sabotage the whole taxation system that they hate, and consequently they want to make so much work for the Treasury officers that the latter don’t know which way to turn.”
During the Beit Sahour tax strike against the Israeli occupation, Elias Rishmawi worked to get a suit challenging the legality of the tax accepted by Israel’s court system.
He remembers: “I had never had an illusion that the Israeli supreme court would give any justice to Palestinians.
… [T]he appeal formed the legal coverage by which I and others were able to continue resisting from one side not paying taxes, since there is a case in court and they cannot force me pay until the case is solved they cannot take any actions against us since we have this case, and we kept challenging the system through different means.… This was impossible to achieve without the legal coverage of the supreme court.
Because then, I and the others, would have been considered as inciters and then might be imprisoned for ten years.
That’s why we needed that coverage.”
An early form of resistance to Thatcher’s Poll Tax was called the “send it back” campaign.
The idea was that people would register for the tax, as required, but would accompany their registration with questions that would require further manual processing by the individual councils that were processing the tax:
Government regulations state: “…if for any reason you consider that you are not a ‘responsible person’ please let me know and return the form to me without completing it.”
Stop It wants people to take up this offer by writing to ask if they should be the “responsible person” and suggests they ask who will have access to the information supplied and why the authorities require exact dates of birth.
The implementation of the tax was dependent on an accurate register and the protest campaign could make the register “wildly inaccurate,”… Labour MP Brian Wilson, chairman of [the anti-poll tax campaign called] Stop It, said: “It is a campaign of obstruction within the law that does not lead people to incur the substantial penalties that are built into the legislation.”
The aim was to have the legislation amended or abandoned.
For this and other reasons, the councils were inundated with paperwork, for which they were unprepared.
“Councils sat under a mountain of paper.
Everything they did seemed to create more work,” wrote campaign historian Danny Burns.
He quotes from the Poll Tax Legal Group:
The paper-work involved with administering the charge is enormous — and likely to get worse.
Backlogs switch from one area of activity to another.
Indeed, local authorities cannot really do anything without generating more paper-work.
Kate Harvey, a tax resister for women’ suffrage in 1913, once wrote: “I have just received the first demand note for this year’s taxes.
I have torn it up, put it in the envelope in which it came, and re-posted it to the Tax Collector.
I suppose it is now reposing in his rubbish basket.”
The Association of Real Estate Taxpayers in Chicago during the Great Depression led tens of thousands of property owners to demand reassessments of their property, which effectively swamped the Board of Review and allowed the property owners to legally delay tax payment.
Social boycott can also be a potent tactic to use against tax collectors or collaborators with the tax collection process.
Here are some examples:
Adolf Hausrath writes about how social boycott was used to discourage tax collectors in Roman-occupied Judaea:
The people knew how to torment these officials of the Roman customs with the petty cruelty which ordinary people develop with irreconcilable persistency, whenever they believe this persistency to be due to their moral indignation.
In consequence of the theocratic scruples about the duty of paying taxes, the tax-gatherers were declared to be unclean and half Gentile.… among the Jews the words “tax-gatherersand sinners,”“tax-gatherers and Gentiles,”“tax-gatherers and harlots,” “tax-gatherers, murderers and robbers,” and similar insulting combinations, were not only ready on the tongue and familiar, but were accepted as theocratically identical in meaning.
Thrust out from all social intercourse, the tax-gatherers became more and more the pariahs of the Jewish world.
With holy horror did the Pharisee sweep past the lost son of Israel who had sold himself to the Gentile for the vilest purpose, and avoid the places which his sinful breath contaminated.
Their testimony was not accepted by Jewish tribunals.
It was forbidden to sit at table with them or eat of their bread.
But their money-chests especially were the summary of all uncleanness and the chief object of pious horror, since their contents consisted of none but unlawful receipts, and every single coin betokened a breach of some theocratic regulation.
To exchange their money or receive alms from them might easily put a whole house in the condition of being unclean, and necessitate many purifications.
From these relations of the tax-officials to the rest of the population, it can be readily understood that only the refuse of Judaism undertook the office.
The current Greek “won’t pay” movement included a joint statement from several outraged groups that called for a social boycott of legislators who went along with the tax-and-austerity plans: “do not talk to them, do not listen, do not socialize, do not invite, do not serve them, do not put gasoline in their cars…”
A social boycott of tax collectors was practiced in the years before the American revolution.
John Adams wrote:
At Philadelphia, the Heart-and-Hand Fire Company has expelled Mr. Hughes, the stamp man for that colony.
The freemen of Talbot county, in Maryland, have erected a gibbet before the door of the court-house, twenty feet high, and have hanged on it the effigies of a stamp informer in chains, in terrorem till the Stamp Act shall be repealed; and have resolved, unanimously, to hold in utter contempt and abhorrence every stamp officer, and every favorer of the Stamp Act, and to “have no communication with any such person, not even to speak to him, unless to upbraid him with his baseness.”
So triumphant is the spirit of liberty everywhere.
Sam Adams led those opposed to the tea tax to declare “That whoever shall directly or indirectly countenance this attempt [to send and collect duties on East India Company tea to America], or in any wise aid or abet in unloading, receiving, or vending the tea sent or to be sent out by the East India Company while it remains subject to the payment of a duty here is an enemy to America.” and to decide “that a committee be immediately chosen to wait on those gentlemen, who it is reported are appointed by the East India Company to receive and sell said tea, and to request them from a regard to their own characters and the peace and good order of this town and province immediately to resign their appointment.”
During the Whiskey Rebellion, the rebels passed a social boycott resolution that said in part:
…[W]hereas some men may be found amongst us, so far lost to every sense of virtue and feeling for the distresses of this country, as to accept offices for the collection of the duty:
Resolved, therefore, That in future we will consider such persons as unworthy of our friendship; have no intercourse or dealings with them; withdraw from them every assistance, and withhold all the comforts of life which depend upon those duties that as men and fellow citizens we owe to each other; and upon all occasions treat them with that contempt they deserve; and that it be, and it is hereby most earnestly recommended to the people at large to follow the same line of conduct towards them.
Islanders living off the coast of Galway County in Ireland refused to appoint tax collectors from among their number, and “where collectors are available on the mainland owners of boats have refused to facilitate their passage to the islands,” according to a newspaper account.
“On a few occasions the Civic Guards have persuaded the owners to lend their service and their boats, or their boats alone, for the guards to cross.
In such cases the guards have met with anything but a cordial reception.”
During the Dublin water charge strike:
Through contacts in the trade union movement we were able to discover the names of all the water inspectors and imagine their surprise the night before disconnections were due to begin when each of them received a hand-delivered letter appealing to them as trade union members not to cut people’s water off.
They decided not to respond positively to our polite request so the next morning when they left home under the cover of darkness, they each discovered a car-load of activists sitting outside their homes ready to follow them wherever they might go to try to do their dirty work.
One of them didn’t like it so much that after driving around and being followed for an hour he went to the local copshop to complain about being intimidated.
During the Bardoli satyagraha, tax collectors and collaborators were vigorously shunned.
Here are some excerpts from Mahadev Desai’s The Story of Bardoli:
There were meetings in talukas contiguous to Bardoli… calling upon people in their respective parts not to cooperate with the authorities engaged in putting down the Satyagraha… by helping in the attachment of property by engaging as labourers or sending carts on hire…
…the police proceeded to hire a taxi.
The driver, whose car had been engaged by the Satyagrahis, refused to break his engagement and place his bus at the disposal of the Collector.
His licence was demanded, it was not with him, but he showed his brass badge, which he was asked to surrender.
Another taxidriver whose car had been engaged by [campaign commander] Sjt. Vallabhbhai was deprived of his licence too.
Kadod… was trying to go one better than other villages by resolving to cut off supplies of provision, etc. to the attachment officer posted in the village.
Sjt. Vallabhbhai in a long and moving speech expounded the principles of Satyagraha, and told them that their resolution was not in keeping with principles and must be canceled: “In a struggle based essentially on truth and nonviolence we must not do anything in resentment or anger.
It is a sign of weakness.
…do not refuse them the ordinary amenities of life.
They must get whatever they want at market rates.”
It would appear, that three carts were commandeered. for removing the kit and luggage belonging to the Deputy Collector from the Bardoli thana [district] to Valod.
The man to whom the carts belonged came to realise his mistake and went to the thana in company with Sjt. Ravishankar to call back his men.
One of the cartmen, as soon as he saw his master, said, they were not at all willing to go but they were helpless.
Sjt. Ravishankar pleaded with the Mamlatdar that if the men were not willing they should not be forced.
He was ordered to leave the thana which he did; and the cartman leaving the cart followed him.
The other cartmen also ultimately left leaving the carts in the thana compound.
Moderate reformist K.M. Munshi wrote to the government after visiting Bardoli:
Your japti officer has to travel miles before he can get a shave.
Your officer’s car which got stuck would have remained in the mud but for Mr. Vallabhbhai, officially styled “agitator living on Bardoli.”
Garda to whom lands worth thousands have been sold for a nominal amount does not get even a scavenger for his house.
The Collector gets no conveyance on the railway station unless one is given by Mr. Vallabhbhai’s sanction.
The threat of social boycott also played out at other points in the Indian independence struggle, with one account noting for instance that “the native police, fearing social boycott if they pressed their own kinsmen too hard, in some cases sat idly by and watched proceedings,” during the Dharasana salt raid.
When the salt march reached the sea near Danmi, where Gandhi planned to harvest sea salt in violation of the taxed monopoly:
The police and labourers [who had been hired by the government to try to destroy all the natural salt deposits in the area] are boycotted by the villagers in the neighbourhood and have to journey to a village ten miles away to procure food.
During the Edinburgh Annuity Tax resistance, social boycott was practiced against tax enforcers:
Of late months, no auctioneer would venture to the Cross to roup for stipend.
What human being has nerve enough to bear up against the scorn, hatred, and execration of his fellow-creatures, expressed in a cause he himself must feel just?
The cabman who brought the officers, seeing they were engaged in such a disagreeable duty, took his cab away, and they had some difficulty in procuring another…
During the government investigation of the Annuity Tax resistance campaign the following exchange took place:
Q: What was Mr. Whitten’s express reason for declining to act as auctioneer?
A: He was very much inconvenienced on that occasion, and he believed that his general business connection would suffer by undertaking these sales, and that he would lose the support of any customer who was of that party.
During the Fries Rebellion, social pressure made it difficult for the government to recruit collaborators:
[I]n every tavern [Jacob Eyerley] stopped at, the law was the subject of general conversation and denunciation, and great pains were taken to find the friends of government, in order to persuade them not to accept the office of assessor.
In consequence of this feeling there was great difficulty in finding suitable persons for these appointments.
When Thatcher’s poll tax was being introduced, the government tried to recruit convenience stores and newsstands to be tax collection points.
When the resistance got wind of this, they contacted the stores, letting them know they would be boycotted if they allowed themselves to be used in this way.
Several then refused to participate.
A threat of social boycott was used to deter potential buyers of property seized from Steuben County resisters of taxes meant to pay back purchasers of crooked railroad bonds:
The scene was upon the farm of William Atkins, where 200 of the solid yeomanry of the town had assembled to resist the sale… A Mr. Updyke, with broader hint, made these remarks: “I want to tell you folks that Mr. Atkins has paid all of his tax except this railroad tax; and we consider any man who will buy our property to help John Davis and Sam Alley as contemptible sharks.
We shall remember him for years, and will know where he lives.”
The tax collector finally rose and remarked that in view of the situation he would not attempt to proceed with the sale.
During a tax resistance campaign in the German countryside between the world wars:
The carters refused, even with police protection, to carry off the distrained cattle, for they knew that if they did they would never again be able to do business with the peasants.
One day three peasants even appeared in the slaughter yards at Hamburg and announced that unless the distrained cattle disappeared at once from the yard’s stalls the gentlemen in charge of the slaughterhouse could find somewhere else to buy their beasts in the future — they wouldn’t be getting any more from Schleswig-Holstein.
On a few occasions, tax resistance movements have broken out while the
government has been simultaneously raising taxes and raising money more
sneakily by degrading the currency. Tax resisters can take advantage of this
by paying their taxes with degraded currency, or by delaying the moment of
payment until the amount due is no longer a significant expense.
Here are a few examples:
In the aftermath of the French Revolution, the new order was slow in getting its new tax system established, and people put off payment as long as possible. When they did begin to pay, they did so with assignats, a type of currency that was issued by the revolutionary Assembly without much regard for soundness. According to one account:
During , the peasant begins to
discharge a portion of his arrears, but it is with
assignats. In , the assignats
diminish thirty-four, forty-four, and forty-five per cent. in value; in
,
forty-seven and fifty per cent.; in , fifty-four, sixty, and sixty-seven per
cent. Thus has the old credit of the State melted away in its hands;
those who have held on to their crowns gain fifty per cent, and more.
Again, the greater their delay the more their debts diminish, and
already, on the strength of this, the way to release themselves at
half-price is found.
During Reconstruction, supporters of the opposition Democratic Party in
South Carolina “pay their taxes to the State in worthless bills of the
‘Bank of the State,’ which the State is compelled by the decision of the
courts to receive in payment of taxes,” reported the
New York Times.
By the terms of the charter of this bank the faith and credit of the
State is pledged to the redemption of its bills, which for years after
the war could be bought for 5 or 10 cents on the dollar, but since the
decision of the United States Supreme Court compelling the State to
receive these bills for taxes, they have increased in value, though to
the State they were more worthless even than Confederate money, since
they cannot be used in defraying any of the expenses of the Government,
but are destroyed as fast as received.
During the Ruhrkampf between the Wars in Germany, the
government tried to resist the demanded reparation payments in part by
taking actions that degraded its currency.
Thousands of old newsreels from the British Pathé archives have been posted to YouTube.
Here are a handful that show some rare motion picture footage of tax resistance actions of the past:
The nicest way of being Arrested
“Tired of waiting — women councillors arrange by telephone with Sheriffs Officer to be taken to prison altogether at 3 o’clock!”
This was part of the Poplar Rates Rebellion of (silent):
Les obsèques des ouvriers de l’usine Krupp…
Footage of the funerals of (and commemorative parade for) of Krupp factory workers killed during the strikes of the Ruhrkampf in (silent):
Footage of Gandhi
Here’s some footage released in soon after his imprisonment for sedition.
It shows him addressing an outdoor Indian National Congress meeting (silent):
This comes from , at the time of the Salt March, and shows Gandhi addressing a crowd and large groups of people in “Gandhi caps” walking along with him (silent):
Rideaux Baissés et Portes Closes
Parisian shopkeepers and businesses shut down one afternoon in in a hartal to protest against new taxes (silent):
Footage of Irish Blue Shirts
This comes from a point in when the quasi-fascist Blue Shirt party had launched a tax strike.
One person was killed by police during an attempt to stop a tax auction of seized cattle, and this newsreel shows footage of the funeral (silent):
Tax & Taxis!
Parisian taxi drivers blockade the streets outside the Chamber of Deputies in a tax protest:
Farmers Protest
Belgian farmers drive their tractors into the provincial capital in to protest a new tax, and a pitchfork-waving, paving-stone-throwing, tire-burning riot ensues:
Footage of a large meeting with Pierre Poujade speaking
From , by which time Poujade was trying to transform his regional tax protest into a national political party (silent):
An “International News Service” dispatch from concerns some brinkmanship in Bavaria about a month before Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch.
Excerpts:
Bavaria Defiant.
Premier Von Kahr, of Bavaria, who holds the double post of prime minister and dictator, signed an order to Bavarians not to pay taxes to the Reich (the German state as considered apart from Bavaria).
Later Von Kahr sent a telegram to Berlin demanding Bavaria’s temporary exemption from federal taxation.
The Bavarian official then held up the tax defiance order pending a reply from Berlin.
News that Von Kahr had signed an order to Bavarians not to pay taxes to Berlin was not published throughout Germany, the censor fearing to aggravate a situation that is already critical.
Von Kahr had only recently been appointed to be the local dictator, and was a right-wing rival of Hitler, who would later have him murdered for his role in suppressing the Putsch.
The Ruhrkampf and the tax resistance that formed part of the campaign had reverberations as far away as the United States, at least according to an article from The Scranton Republican published on :
Ruhr Occupation Diverts Orders
American Buyers Find Many Complications Arising From French Control
They Refuse to Pay Tax
Wholesalers and Retailers Will Not Stand for Revenue Imposed by France
Many orders from United States firms which have been held up because of numerous complications arising out of the Ruhr occupation have been duplicated and filled by wholesalers or manufacturers in unoccupied Germany, according to industrialists here.
This applies chiefly to tools, cutlery, smaller machinery, spare parts, nuts and bolts, and a certain amount of dress goods materials.
Some good shipments from the Ruhr reached United States ports during the summer, but only a very small percentage of the orders which were on hand when the occupation began.
The chief obstacle of getting finished materials out of the district has been the refusal of the German wholesalers and manufacturers to pay the export tax imposed by the French and Belgians as part of their plan to collect reparations.
The Germans refused to pay this tax on their goods, contending that, in the first place, any such cooperation with the occupation authorities had been prohibited by the Berlin government, and on this account it would have been a violation of the program of passive resistance.
The textile center of Crefeld had on hand a lot of special orders for dress goods which the American importers found impossible to have duplicated in other parts of Germany, because the necessary machinery was not available.
These goods were intended for use last spring and summer and have been reposing in warehouses all these months.
Dealers say the goods will be just as serviceable and fully as fashionable next summer.
According to word received from the United States, shipments from the Ruhr to American ports, by irregular routes, perhaps, have been carried on more or less ever since the occupation began, by one way or another which no one here will take the responsibility of explaining.
These shipments have been in small lots, it has been suggested, this being deemed advisable because of the “difficulties” of getting the cargoes over the frontiers.
Just how this game has been carried on, and by whom, has never been brought to light, but several smugglers’ agents are reported to have cleared small fortunes in the transactions.
French authorities assert that one of their principal sources of income from the occupation has been the seizure of goods at the frontiers where smugglers have been endeavoring to deceive them by avoiding the prescribed routes.
In one instance, silk, valued at nearly a million dollars, and said to have been consigned to the United States, was seized in German automobiles at the frontier.
Another shipment of a carload of penknives and scissors from Solingen was confiscated, this also being destined, it was said, for American wholesalers.
An Associated Press dispatch from the Ruhrkampf, from
:
Germans Refuse to Pay Tax Due Allies
Berlin, . — The German industrial magnates in the Ruhr have decided
to refuse payment to the French and Belgians of the March coal tax, due
, and to accept all consequences
resulting from such action, according to the Berliner Tageblatt.
The new order of the Inter-Allied Rhineland Commission demanding that the tax
be paid to the French and Belgians instead [of] to the German government is
reported to have provided for penalties in case of non-compliance and
newspapers here say a number of arrests may be expected.
