Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
France →
constitutionalists, 1829
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.
Fifteen regional organizations were formed specifically to engage in tax resistance.
The following descriptions come from two publications written shortly after the tax resistance campaign:
Apprehending… that the Ministers intended to violate the Charter, — that a part of the scheme would be an arbitrary change of the constitution of the Chamber of Deputies, and that the taxes must of course be voted by such an unconstitutional legislature or else levied by royal ordinance without any pretense of regard for the forms of the Charter, — the people immediately saw that the taxes afforded a point of legal and peaceful resistance to the government of the most advantageous description.
It was plainly impossible for the Ministers to proceed with the affairs of the Kingdom without pecuniary resources, either in imposts or loans; and the latter could never be obtained unless with a prospect of repayment by means of the former, or some mode of permanently binding the nation to their reimbursement.
If the constitutional representatives of the people were deprived of their proper influence in the government, as regularly exercised in the grant of supplies, the people themselves had the power to redress the wrong by refusing to pay any tax unlawfully imposed on their estates.
The idea was deemed a happy one for the liberal and national party, as it was a dangerous one for the Ministers; — and a plan was immediately arranged, and put in operation, for the accomplishment of the desired object, which, from being first adopted by the landholders of the old province of Bretagne, became known by the name of the Breton Subscription or Association.
This Association had a two-fold object.
They proposed, in the first place, to refuse to pay any illegal tax, and in the second place to raise by contribution a common fund for indemnifying any subscriber, whose property or person might suffer by reason of his refusal.
The scheme appears to have been a perfect one, as the means of peaceable resistance to any arbitrary acts of the Government.
If generally subscribed, the prospectus would have the effect of combining the whole Nation in a lawful confederacy to sustain the Charter in spite of the physical force which might be wielded by the King.
For if a subscriber refused to pay his tax, the Government could but order a distraint on his property, and it was easy to foresee that this would not benefit the Treasury.
The whole of the classes industrielles, the great capitalists and landholders, the possessors of the moveable riches of the country, were in general ardent friends of the liberal cause.
If they enrolled themselves as parties to the Subscription, a distraint would avail nothing, because there would be nobody to buy the property distrained: and in such a state of things, with all the wealth and feeling of the Nation on one side, and nothing but a taxgatherer’s warrant on the other, M. de Polignac would be greatly puzzled, even if aided by all the alchymy of the baron Rothschild and his brothers, to transmute into good current louisd’ors that all important portion of the annual budget of one thousand millions of francs, which consists in direct taxes.
Six Parisian newspapers that printed the Association’s manifesto were prosecuted by the crown.
The members subscribed each ten francs.
In the event of any tax being imposed without the consent of the Chambers, or with the consent of a Chamber of Deputies created by any illegal alteration of the existing law, payment of the tax was to be refused, and the money subscribed was to be employed in defending and indemnifying the persons who should so refuse, and to prosecute all who might be concerned in the imposing, or the levying of such illegal taxes.
The document, containing the resolutions adopted by the association, after appearing in the journals of Brittany, was reprinted in the liberal journals of Paris.
They were immediately seized by the police.
[T]he editors were imprisoned for a month, and fined in 500 francs.
The court stated the grounds on which it proceeded in finding the publication libelous to be:— “Because the Breton Association is founded on the supposition that the impost might be illegally established, either without the concurrence of the Chambers, or with the concurrence of a Chamber of Deputies formed on an electoral system, not returned agreeably to the constitutional forms; — Because such a supposition cannot be realized without a violation of the fundamental laws of the state; — Because the editors of the Journal du Commerce, and the Courier Française, by publishing the prospectus of this association, and accompanying this publication with apologetical reflections, in which the pretended danger is represented as imminent, have not used the legal right of discussion and censure of the acts of the ministers, but have excited to the hatred and contempt of the government of the king.”
This decision excited great surprise and dissatisfaction among the Parisians; and certainly, of the two courts, the provincial tribunal of Rouen [which acquitted] would seem to have been guided by the sounder principles.
Confessedly the remedy proposed was proposed only to meet a contingent evil; if that evil should arrive, the remedy confessedly was a legal and a proper one.
The association could cease to be a chimera only to become a laudable and constitutional union.
The ministers lost by gaining a conviction.
They were placed in the ridiculous position of being unable, or being afraid, to attack the thing itself, while they were virulent against the mere description of what the thing was.
The associations spread over the greater part of the kingdom; they embraced more than half the Chamber of Deputies, and a very considerable number of peers.
The Breton Association’s subscription read as follows:
We, the inhabitants, of both sexes, in the five departments of the ancient province of Brittany, under the jurisdiction and protection of the royal court of Rennes, bound by our own oaths, and those of the heads of our families, to fidelity to the king and attachment to the charter, having considered that a handful of political madmen have conceived the audacious design of attacking the very basis of our constitutional rights conferred by the charter; having considered also that, if Brittany has found, in the enjoyment of these rights, the compensation of those that were secured to her by her union to France, her national character and her honour equally induce her to imitate the generous conduct of her ancestors, by resisting the usurpations and arbitrary caprices of ministerial authority; having considered finally that any armed resistance would be the most dreadful calamity; that it would be unjust and without motive as long as legal resistance can be had recourse to; and that the most certain means of rendering preferable a recourse to judicial authority is to ensure to the victims a mutual and paternal link with their fellow-citizens:— We declare, connected as we are by ties of honour and legal right —
To subscribe individually for ten francs, and also the underwritten, whose names are inscribed on the electoral lists of , for the 10th of the contributions attributed to them on the aforesaid lists; and we oblige ourselves to pay the same money on presentation of the drafts of Procurators-general, in case they should be named conformably to the third article of the present declaration.
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, either without the free, regular, and constitutional assent of the king, and the chambers established by the charter and the present laws, or even with the assent of the chambers created by any electoral system contrary to the same constitutional regulations.
In case of any illegal change in the mode of elections, or any illegal establishment of the taxes, two proxies of each district will assemble at Pontivy, and as soon as they are twenty in number, they will, have power to elect amongst the subscribers three procurators-general and an under-procurator in each of the five departments.
The duty of the general procurators will be to receive the subscriptions, to afford indemnities conformably to the second article, at the request of any subscriber, prosecuted for the payment of illegal contributions; to sue in his name through the sub-procurator of his department for justice against the exactors by all possible means allowed by law; and to become the accusers of all those who are accomplices or abettors of the establishment of illegal taxes.
The subscribers named and proxies of this district to assemble with the proxies of the other districts, and to deposit the present subscription in the bands of the general procurators.
At FSK’s Guide to Reality the proprietor engages with my post from about the economic irrationality of taxpayer compliance.
“What is really needed,” says FSK, “is an agorist IRS insurance program.
That way, you can be reimbursed for fines, penalties, and even jail time if you get busted for tax evasion.”
Something like the War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund but more inclusive both in what sort of resisters may apply and which sorts of penalties they can seek reimbursement for.
, I mentioned the Breton Association in France, which “proposed, in the first place, to refuse to pay any illegal tax, and in the second place to raise by contribution a common fund for indemnifying any subscriber, whose property or person might suffer by reason of his refusal.”
The members subscribed each ten francs.
In the event of any tax being imposed without the consent of the Chambers, or with the consent of a Chamber of Deputies created by any illegal alteration of the existing law, payment of the tax was to be refused, and the money subscribed was to be employed in defending and indemnifying the persons who should so refuse, and to prosecute all who might be concerned in the imposing, or the levying of such illegal taxes.
This was considered so dangerous that the government prosecuted newspapers who dared to print the Breton Association’s manifesto.
A while back, I started looking for examples of ways tax resisters have organized mutual aid pacts to help diffuse the effects of government retaliation.
In the course of doing the research, though, I started collecting examples instead of a larger variety of collective projects resisters and their sympathizers have used in support of tax resistance.
Here are some of the examples I found:
Tax resister “insurance”
For instance, the Breton Association in
France, which organized to “form a common stock or fund… to indemnify the
subscribers for any expense they may be put to by their refusal to pay any
illegal contributions imposed upon the public.”
Another example was the Association
of Real Estate Taxpayers in
Chicago, which formed a cooperative legal fund to fight an offensive legal
battle against the tax.
American war tax resisters today can use the War Tax Resisters Penalty
Fund to defray penalties and interest seized by the
IRS.
The fund is raised as-needed by asking subscribers to contribute an equal
amount.
The oath of the Regulator tax resistance movement in the North Carolina
colony bound its signers to “bear an equal share in paying and making up
[the] loss” if “any of our company be put to expense or under any
confinement.”
Communes, collectives, and co-housing projects.
Some tax resisters have formed mutual support communities.
Whiteway Colony
was founded to try to live up to Tolstoyan ideals. The members of the
Bijou and
Agape communities live below a taxable
income so as to avoid paying taxes.
Supporting resisters as an employer
Some members of the Restored Israel of
Yahweh ran a construction business and agreed not to withhold federal
taxes from the wages of those employees who were fellow-members and who were
resisting taxes.
Vivien Kellems refused to withhold
taxes from her employees’ wages, saying: “They are all free American
citizens, thoroughly capable of performing all of the duties and
responsibilities of citizenship for themselves. And so, from this day, I am
not collecting nor paying their income taxes for them.”
Charles Kanjama recently urged Kenyans
to begin a tax resistance campaign, and said that to foil pay-as-you-earn
withholding, “participating employers and employees can enter into a
voluntary contract to convert monthly employment into quarterly or
half-yearly employment, thus effectively delaying tax liability for several
months.”
British nonconformists and women’s suffrage activists a century ago also
used this tactic. Auctions became rallies, with speeches and banners and
crowds that could number in the thousands. Supporters would pack the auction
house and refuse to leave their seats. On some occasions, violence broke
out. In some cases, auctioneers refused to handle goods that had been seized
for tax refusal.
Simply boycotting the auctions and refusing to buy seized goods is one way
communities offer support. It was part of the Quaker “Discipline” to refuse
to buy seized goods. When Valentine Byler’s horse was seized for non-payment
of the social security tax, “no Amish came to bid on the horses and, due to
a lack of bidders, they went for a good price, with the harnesses ‘thrown
in’ by the auctioneer.”
Pay cash so as not to leave a paper trail
Jessica Ramer and a
Claire
Files contributor brought this idea up. If you pay in cash
whenever you can, you give the recipient the opportunity to decide whether
or not to declare the income.
Cash tips are easy to under-report. I asked about that recently and was
told that most people pay with credit card/debit card and that the
government now uses a percentage method for tips. They look at the charged
meals, look at the number of total meals served, and then look at the
charged tips to figure out how much cash tips you received.
(100 meals served. 50 paid with card, tipping 15%. the government
calculates 15% from 100 meals even if cash tips are only 10%)
You can help out by tipping more when paying with cash or better yet, when
you pay with card, put 1% tip on it and put the rest out as cash. I even
leave a note for the server saying “this is your money, don’t
tell your boss, or the government. share it with the buss boy if that is
the policy.” This will help lower the average tip figures, but
still give the nice server what they have earned.
Use barter to avoid taxable/seizable transactions
Karl Hess found people willing to barter with him as he was dodging
IRS
seizures:
The other day I welded up a fish-smoking rack for a family in Washington,
D.C. It will earn me a year’s supply
of smoked fish. At about the same time, I helped a friend dig a foundation.
He’ll help me lay the concrete blocks for a workshop. Part of my pay for a
lecture at a New England college was the use of the school’s welding shop,
to make some metal sculptures. Three such sculptures have paid my
attorney’s fees in maintaining the tax resistance which is the reason
barter has become such an integral part of my life.
Manufacture and sell goods as alternatives to taxed products
Before the American Revolution, colonists who opposed Britain’s economic
control boycotted British products and began to produce homespun cloth,
alternatives to tea, and so forth. Gandhi’s independence campaign in India
made the wearing and production of homespun cloth central to the opposition,
and the Salt March was focused on the illegal production of untaxed,
non-foreign-monopoly salt.
An example today is home-brewed beer (which beats the excise tax on
alcoholic beverages).
Buycotts and boycotts that favor resisting businesses
One report from World War Ⅰ-era America noted that this was a technique used
by those who opposed the “Liberty Bonds”:
Efforts to prevent banks from handling the bonds have centered chiefly in
Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Missouri and
Oklahoma. The President of a Wisconsin bank has advised the Treasury that
his depositors, mostly Germans, or of German parentage, have withdrawn
many thousands of dollars from his bank because he aided the First Liberty
Loan.
These depositors, he added, had taken their accounts to two rival banks on
the understanding that those banks would not aid the second Liberty Loan.
The two banks, he reported, were not aiding the loan in any way.
Many banks have felt the pressure of German influence in this propaganda,
reports indicate. So pronounced was the movement that the States of
Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and Montana recently decided that they
would withdraw State funds from any bank which did not support the loan.
Social boycotts / shunning / noncooperation with tax collectors
Adolf Hausrath writes of 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.
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.
Harassment of tax collectors was a signature action of the Whiskey
Rebellion. An early published resolution of the rebels read 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.
Tax collectors were tarred-and-feathered in America, both before and after
the revolution — the violent expulsion of tax collectors was a frequent
technique of the Whiskey rebels. Tax collectors have been the targets of
violent reprisal at many times and in many places. Because of this,
governments have often had to pay high salaries — or, frequently,
percentages of the take — to convince collectors to take on the job, which
only increases the resentment of those being collected from.
During the French Revolution and its aftermath, customs houses were burned
by mobs, tax rolls were destroyed, excise collectors were made to renounce
their jobs and then were run out of town — or in some cases killed.
The first Boer War was triggered when an armed group of Boers seized a
wagon that was being auctioned after it was distrained for resisted taxes.
The Whiskey rebels threatened to destroy the stills of those distillers
who complied in paying the excise tax.
Boycotts / social boycotts of non-resisters
If a tax resisting movement is large enough, it may be able to dissuade
people from paying taxes through boycotts or social boycotts of people
who are tax compliant. In Massachusetts, a group enforced a boycott of
taxed British imports by declaring that
…we further promise and engage, that we will not purchase any goods
of any persons who, preferring their own interest to that of the public,
shall import merchandise from Great Britain, until a general importation
takes place; or of any trader who purchases his goods of such importer:
and that we will hold no intercourse, or connection, or correspondence,
with any person who shall purchase goods of such importer, or retailer;
and we will hold him dishonored, an enemy to the liberties of his country,
and infamous, who shall break this agreement.
Maintain solidarity in the face of divide-and-conquer tactics
In
Germany, the government attempted to break a tax resistance movement by
offering to moderate its enforcement efforts against people who could show
that they had limited means. Karl Marx, who was promoting the resistance at
the time, saw this as a divide-and-conquer tactic:
The intention of the Ministry is only too clear. It wants to divide the
democrats; it wants to make the peasants and workers count themselves as
non-payers owing to lack of means to pay, in order to split them from
those not paying out of regard for legality, and thereby deprive the latter
of the support of the former. But this plan will fail; the people realizes
that it is responsible for solidarity in the refusal to pay taxes, just as
previously it was responsible for solidarity in payment of them.
Keep a record of the “sufferings” of resisters
The Quakers responded to persecution by keeping careful records of
individuals who had suffered thereby. In the archives of Quaker meetings,
you can find lists of people who had resisted militia taxes or tithes for
establishment church ministers, and what property was distrained by which
tax collector.
Sign petitions and public advertisements, engage in public protests
When the American Amish were trying to resist compulsory enrollment in the
social security system, 14,000 of them signed a petition to Congress.
During the Vietnam War, public advertisements were taken out by tax
resisters. In , for instance,
448 writers and editors put a full-page ad in the New
York Post declaring their intention to refuse to pay taxes for the
Vietnam War. The signatories included James Baldwin, Noam Chomsky, Philip K.
Dick, Betty Friedan, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Goodman, Paul Krassner, Norman
Mailer, Henry Miller, Tillie Olsen, Grace Paley, Thomas Pynchon, Susan
Sontag, Benjamin Spock, Gloria Steinem, Norman Thomas, Hunter S. Thompson,
Kurt Vonnegut, and Howard Zinn.
Protests, rallies, pickets, and the like have been a part of many
large-scale tax resistance campaigns.
Hold resisters’ property as an informal trustee
Some resisters who are vulnerable to property seizure find sympathetic
friends who are willing to hold the resisters’ property in their
names as a way of foiling seizure. Some war tax resister
alternative funds function
partially as “warehouse banks” that hold deposits of war tax resisters.
When a frustrated tax collector seized Ammon Hennacy’s protest signs
as he was picketing the
IRS
office — claiming that he planned to auction them off to pay Hennacy’s tax
debt — a friend of Hennacy helped him make new signs, each one marked “this
sign is the personal property of Joseph Craigmyle.”
Keep in contact with resisters and express support
After the press reported that Valentine Byler’s horse had been seized by the
IRS
as he was plowing his field, he got letters of support from all across
the country.
Form groups for mutual support & coordinated decision-making
Here there are too many examples to list.
Give financial aid to evicted rent strikers
When the Irish Land League launched its rent strike, it claimed that
“The funds will be poured out unstintedly to all who may endure
eviction in the course of the struggle. Our exiled brothers in America may
be relied on to contribute, if necessary, as many millions in money as they
have thousands, to starve out the landlords and bring the English tenantry
to its knees.”
Comfort and aid imprisoned resisters
The trick to supporting imprisoned tax resisters is to respect their real
needs and desires. When “someone interfered,” as Thoreau put
it, and paid his taxes in order to spring him from his night in jail, they
thought wrongly that they were doing Thoreau a favor, “for they
thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall.”
Juanita Nelson tells of the support she received in jail, where she had
been taken in her bathrobe from her home. Her supporters took the time to
learn how to support her in a way that was appropriate to her resistance:
Two fellow pacifists, one of them also a tax refuser, had been permitted
to come to me, since I would not go to them. I asked them what was
uppermost in my mind, what they’d do about getting properly dressed?
They said that this was something I would have to settle for myself. I
sensed that they thought it the better part of wisdom and modesty for me
to be dressed for my appearance in court. They were more concerned about
the public relations aspect of getting across the witness than I was. They
were also genuinely concerned, I knew, about making their actions truly
nonviolent, cognizant of the other person’s feelings, attitudes and
readiness. I was shaken enough to concede that I would like to have my
clothes at hand, in case I decided I would feel more at ease in them. The
older visitor, a dignified man with white hair, agreed to go for the
clothes in a taxicab.
They left, and on their heels came another visitor. She had been told that
in permitting her to come up, the officials were treating me with more
courtesy than I was according them. It was her assessment that the chief
deputy was hopeful that someone would be able to hammer some sense into me
and was willing to make concessions in that hope. But he had misjudged
the reliance he might place in her — she was not as critical as the
men. She did not know what she would do, but she thought she might wish to
have the strength and the audacity to carry through in the vein in which I
had started.
And she said. “You know, you look like a female Gandhi in that robe.
You look, well, dignified.”
That was my first encouragement. Everyone else had tended to make me feel
like a fool of the first water, had confirmed fears I already had on that
score. My respect and admiration for Gandhi, though not uncritical, was
deep. And if I in any way resembled him in appearance I was prepared to
try to emulate a more becoming state of mind. I reminded myself, too, that
I had on considerably more than the loincloth in which Gandhi was able to
greet kings and statesmen with ease. I need not be unduly perturbed about
wearing a robe into the presence of his honor.
Support the families of imprisoned resisters
When Gandhi was preparing the groundwork for a tax refusal campaign in
India, he noted that the Indian National Congress “should undertake
to feed the wives and families of those who may be imprisoned.”
Study the law, give legal support
When Elizabeth Cady Stanton was contemplating a tax resistance campaign for
women’s suffrage in the United States, she noted, “One thing is
certain, this course will necessarily involve a good deal of litigation,
and we shall need lawyers of our own sex whose intellects, sharpened by
their interests, shall be quick to discover the loopholes of retreat.”
Combine redirected taxes for dramatic charity giveaways
Larry Rosenwald wrote, of this technique, “To sit on the Grants and
Loans Committee of New England War Tax Resistance, and to dispense the
interest on refused taxes to a youth group in Chelsea, a video for cable
television on United States involvement in Central America, and a
people’s garden in Roxbury is to be reminded of the ideal community,
however blurred and fragmented, that war tax resistance is done on behalf
of, in the hope of helping to make it clear and whole.”
Can you think of any I’ve missed?
In the Southern Literary Messenger published some “Notes and Anecdotes, Political and Miscellaneous — .
— Drawn from the Portfolio of an Officer of the Empire — and translated from the French for the Messenger, by a gentleman in Paris.”
Included was this anecdote concerning tax resistance in the French Revolution of :
The Refusal to Pay Taxes — A Precedent.
The associations for the refusal of taxes, followed quickly after the formation of the Polignac ministry.
Facts have since proved that France was not deceived in its anticipations, and that it wisely comprehended the hostility to its institutions to be expected from such men as Messrs. de Polignac, Bourmont, and Labourdonnaie; nor was the government, on its side, long in understanding the full power of the means of resistance then seized for the first time by the people.
The refusal to pay taxes, is in fact the last reason of the people, and by a much juster title than the cannon is that of kings.
Orders were given to all the attorneys general and king’s attorneys, to prosecute with the greatest rigor every journal that registered the acts of association for the refusal of taxes, and invited their readers to subscribe to them.
Among the newspapers thus prosecuted, was a provincial journal, La Sentinelle des Deux-Sèvres.
This journal, which was conducted with courage and talent, had published a letter on the subject of the refusal of taxes, by M. Mauquin, who had been simultaneously nominated as deputy by the department des Deux-Sèvres, and by that of la Côte d’Or.
This journal was prosecuted for the publication of the letter.
M. Mauquin hastened to offer the support of his fine talents to a journal which was involved in difficulties on his account; and notwithstanding the excessive cold of the winter of , proceeded to Niort to defend, before the court which was to try the offence, a cause which he regarded as a personal one.
The threat to refuse the payment of taxes in the event of a violation of the charter, said the prosecutor, was a gratuitous outrage to the government, which the most odious hostility could alone believe capable of for getting its oaths and betraying its duties.
The right of the citizens to refuse, in any state of things, the payment of taxes, and thus to deprive the government of all means of action, and to deliver the country up to anarchy, was questioned.
The answer of the counsel for the defence was simple.
Whether with justice or not, said they, we distrust you: if we are deceived, if you respect the charter, our association will fall of itself, and the taxes, freely voted by a legally constituted Chamber, will be paid as they have heretofore been.
M. Mauquin had to defend before the tribunal of Niort, an offence which had already been tried before nearly every tribunal of France.
He had to prove that the constitutional government, which was already but a fiction, would become a mere chimera, if the Chambers were not permitted to refuse the subsidies which they are called upon to vote, and if, without a regular vote of the regularly constituted Chambers, the citizens could be forced to pay a tax, which, according to the true spirit of the law, should be freely agreed.
Opposed to so lucid and powerful a speaker as M. Mauquin, the duty of the public prosecutor became one of no little difficulty.
He could only effect a partial escape from the embarrassment of his situation — shut in between simple propositions — by vague declamation against revolutionary factions, evil passions, the fury of parties, &c. &c. From amplication to amplication, the king’s attorney for Niort had at length come to sustain the proposition, that the refusal of taxes, supposing it to be in any case a right, was not of so exorbitant a character, that it would be a crime even to dream of exercising it: he added, that at no period, not even during the worst of our political storms, had the payment of taxes ever been questioned.
At this point M. Mauquin wished him to arrive.
This was the proposition which he expected to hear him sustain.
Rising immediately in reply, he drew a paper from his port-folio, and read before the tribunal sitting in judgment in the name of Charles Ⅹ, an authentic declaration addressed to Louis ⅩⅥ, when king, by his brother the Count d’Artois, (afterwards Charles Ⅹ,) by the Prince of Condé, the Duke of Bourbon, and the Duke d’Enghien.
These princes announced to the king by this declaration, respectfully, but formally, their determination to refuse the payment of all taxes, in the event of the constituent assembly’s attempting any infringement of the rights and prerogatives of the nobility.
But one prince of the royal family had refused to sign this paper; this person was Monsieur, Count of Provence, afterwards Louis ⅩⅧ.
No one had even dreamt of asking the signatures of the princes of the Orleans branch.
The effect on the tribunal, produced by reading this piece, was magical.
The king’s attorney was put down, and the journal, after some forms had been gone through, was acquitted, amidst the applauses of the whole audience.
On this date in 1829, in response to Charles Ⅹ’s attempt to govern autocratically and in the face of the opposition of France’s elected legislature, the Journal des Débats editorialized as follows:
The Charter now has an authority against which all the efforts of despotism will fail.
The people will pay a billion to the law; they will not pay two million to the ordinances of a minister.
Were illegal taxes to be demanded, a Hampden would arise.
Hampden! a name that reminds us still of disorder and war.
Woe to France! woe to the king.
The author of that sideways call to tax resistance (with its shout-out to famous English tax resister John Hampden) was then prosecuted by the crown.
He was convicted, but then won acquittal on appeal.
Tax resistance was not an idle threat, as groups like the Breton Association (a.k.a. League of Breton Resistance) and “Help Yourself and Heaven Will Help You” were forming to coordinate resistance to taxes.
By the following year, the king had decided to double-down on his autocratic policies, but the country responded by getting further out of control.
The press began simply disregarding censorship and declaring the monarchy to have lost the authority to rule, and by mid-year, insurrectionists were building barricades in the streets of Paris, and Charles was forced to abandon the throne and flee to England.
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.
Today I’ll continue our look at the violent side of tax resistance campaigns by giving some examples of attacks on police and soldiers when they attempt to enforce tax laws or to take reprisals against resisters.
, a crowd of people on the Greek island of Hydra attacked local police after they detained a restauranteur for tax evasion:
[T]he inspectors wanted to transport the restaurant owner to Athens, an hour’s ride away by fast boat.
They were set upon by a local crowd, which also attacked the boat’s crew.
The police, along with the restaurant owner, had to retreat to the island’s police station, which was besieged until riot police arrived .
Locals cut off the station’s electricity and water supplies.
a police bus on fire in Zhili, China
In , protesters in China “overturned police cars and blocked roads over plans to more strictly enforce payment of taxes.”
In another mob of tax protesters in China destroyed ten police vehicles including an armored car.
There were battles between police and protesters during the Poll Tax rebellion in the Thatcher years.
In Bristol, the crowd charged the police and rescued arrested demonstrators.
“One police officer was kicked unconscious when he tried to make an arrest.
Six more were dragged out of their van.”
In London, “As the police baton-charged the crowd… they were resisted by a hail of bricks, bottles, and stones.”
Police brutality turned a peaceful demonstration into a riot in Trafalgar Square.
“Mounted riot police baton-charged the crowd.
The crowd, angered by this violent provocation, retaliated by throwing sticks, banner poles, bottles — anything they could find.
Young people, armed only with placards, fought hand to hand with police.
… As the missiles began to rain down the police retreated:
…Pedestrian isles were being torn up and real serious lumps of concrete being thrown at the romper-suited police.
I found myself with rock in hand.
The first I threw was aimed at a group of police.
I watched it bounce off a shield.
My second rock was more specifically aimed at their front line.
Again, it was well-deflected.
I saw a rock strike a policeman’s visor and he didn’t even blink.
The police were shielding themselves from the missiles raining down, but they were vulnerable to rocks aimed at their legs and midriffs.
The police were taking a battering.
Every now and then a policeman would crumple to his knees and the crowd would roar.”
More than 100 police officers would be treated for injuries sustained during the riot.
A spokesman for the police said, “I have never seen such sustained and savage violence used directly against the police.”
During the Poujadist tax rebellion in France in , “unabashed Poujade vigilantes went right on chasing tax collectors down the roads, mobbing police and defying troops assigned to escort them.”
At the tail end of the Dharsana Salt Raid, some Indian nationalist sympathizers, disregarding Gandhi’s guidelines and “abandoning, it was said, all pretenses at non-violence, stoned guards and police.
Five police and three excisemen were injured by the pebbles.
Six police who went to the rescue of some hardly pressed excisemen were themselves surrounded by the mob and obliged to retire.”
In Spain in , when guardsmen tried to disperse protesters angry at the arrest of a tax resisting cattleman, the crowd fought back — “two persons were killed and five wounded.
Among the latter is a Sergeant of the Civil Guard.”
After the Russian duma-in-exile issued a tax resistance manifesto, the government said that if people refused to pay taxes, it would send in troops who would show no mercy.
“Without waiting for soldiers to put the threat of the government into execustion the peasants have inaugurated a campaign of guerrilla warfare against the troops already in the province.
… Within the last few days a number of military sentinels have been shot down in ambush or attacked by the peasants.”
In , the military were called in to Guerrero, Mexico, to put down a tax rebellion.
Instead, the rebels defeated the troops and took General Ranjel prisoner.
“Half-breeds” (people of mixed European immigrant and Native American parentage) in the Dakota Territory refused to pay taxes in .
When the Sheriff tried to collect, “the half-breeds assembled from all directions, and pressing about the Sheriff and his one man they forced him to surrender his well-earned pittance of taxes … and say they will resist to the last man.
Sheriff Flynn has been notified that he will be shot on sight if he again makes a similar attempt.”
“When a deputy sheriff went to make seizures” against Irish settlers in Canada who were resisting taxes in , “the residents threatened to string him to the nearest tree.
Finally, they compelled him to eat the writs he had, and then gave him a limited time to get out of the township.”
A sheriff trying to enforce the “foreign miners tax” in California “in attempting to compel the foreigners to yield, was killed by them, and one or two of his posse wounded.”
The Rebecca Rioters in Wales targeted the constables who tried to stop or investigate the riots, or to conduct tax seizures:
Two or three hundred Rebeccaites met at a Pontyberem village, and while there “made some special constables promise not to serve, and took away their staves.”
“They then attacked the house of the blacksmith, who had previously said he would face fifteen of the best Rebecca boys, and who also had been sworn in as a special constable; according to his own statements he was a man devoid of fear.
The smith — fearless man of Vulcan — had, however, departed; but smash! went in his door and windows, and his deserted smithy was practically destroyed.”
“At the outset of these proceedings the toll-man ‘Dick’ contrived, by running over ditch and dell, to warn a parish constable, one Evan Thomas, otherwise ‘The Porthyrhyd Lion,’ of his own mishap, as well as the peril to which he thought him exposed, Evan being somewhat unpopular in the neighbourhood.
On receiving this hint, away bolted ‘Ianto,’ scampering over the ditches and fields until he found a cow-house where he lay concealed in anxious suspense the remainder of the night.
Notwithstanding the retreat of ‘Ianto,’ about seventy of the tribe visited his domicile, smashed in his windows and doors, destroyed his shelf and dresser, and all his crockery, as well as the spokes of a new cart, put a cheese on the fire, cut down some of the trees in the garden, and then simultaneously raised the cry, ‘Alas! poor Ianto!’
… Evan the constable… if found, was to have his ears cut off.”
“These riotous proceedings caused considerable excitement and alarm… The different persons in the neighbourhood who were sworn in as special constables… gave up their staves, with the determination of refusing on any future occasions to interfere with the movements of Rebecca or the protection of the toll-house.”
“John Evans and John Lewis, two Sheriff’s officers from Carmarthen, were sent… to make a distress on the goods and chattels of William Philipp… They were attacked by about twenty-five of the ’Beccas, and beaten in a dreadful manner.… John Evans was compelled to go on his knees before them, and put the distresses and authority to distrain in the fire.
He was then made to take his oath on the Bible, which one of them put in his hands, that he would never again enter the premises to make another distress.
He was compelled to make use of the following words: ‘As the Lord liveth, and my soul liveth, I will never come here to make any distress again.’
After taking the oath, he was set free, and the two bailiffs returned to town.”
William Chambers, who led a police unit that wounded and arrested some Rebeccaites, was targeted multiple times.
On one occasion, a stack of his corn was burned, on another, a stack of straw met the torch.
Later his farm and outbuildings were all engulfed in flames.
A horse of his that had been rescued from another of his farms as it burned down was later shot.
This panel from the Carrickshock memorial depicts an attack on British troops during the Irish Tithe War.
During the Tithe War in Ireland, British troops killed 18 resisters who were trying to reclaim distrained livestock.
In return, the resisters killed 18 troops in an ambush:
A number of writs against defaulters were issued by the Court of Exchequer, and intrusted to the care of process-servers, who, guarded by a strong force, proceeded on their mission with secrecy and despatch.
Bonfires along the surrounding hills, however, and shrill whistles through the dell, soon convinced them that the people were not unprepared for hostile visitors.
But the yeomanry pushed boldly on: their bayonets were sharp, their ball-cartridge inexhaustible, their hearts dauntless.
Suddenly an immense mass of peasantry, armed with scythes and pitchforks, poured down upon them — a terrible struggle ensured, and in a few moments eighteen police, including the commanding-officer, lay dead.
The remainder fled, marking the course of their retreat by their blood… In the mêlée, Captain Leyne, a Waterloo veteran, narrowly escaped.
A coroner’s jury pronounced “Wilful murder.”
Large Government rewards were offered, but failed to produce a single conviction.
In Issoudun, France in , a general who was sent to try to quell a tax rebellion there “entered the town only through a capitulation; the moment he reached the Hôtel-de-Ville a man of the Faubourg de Rome put his pruning-hook around his neck, exclaiming, ‘No more clerks where there is nothing to do!’ ”
During the Fries Rebellion in the early United States, “it came to the knowledge of the authorities that several of the magistrates themselves were disaffected, and others were prevented doing their duty through fear of injury.”
During the French Revolution, when the people of Peronne and Ham got wind that an order had been issued to rebuild destroyed toll-houses, they destroyed the soldiers’ barracks.
In another case: “M. de Sauzay, commandant of the ‘Royal Roussillon,’ who was bold enough to save the [tax] clerks, is menaced, and for this misdeed he barely escapes being hung himself.
When the municipal body is called upon to interpose and employ force, it replies that ‘for so small a matter, it is not worth while to compromise the lives of the citizens,’ and the regular troops sent to the Hôtel-de-Ville are ordered by the people not to go except with the butt-ends of their muskets in the air.”
Sometimes the decisive turn in a tax resistance campaign has come when the resisters have coalesced into a formal group with the authority to organize and coordinate resistance actions.
Today I’ll give some examples of this.
The Great Confederated Anti-Dray and Land Tax League of South Australia formed in the to fight taxes associated with a recently-enacted Road Act, and, once organized, the League was successful in its fight.
Organizer Jonathan Norman remarked to a meeting of the League in : “They had before them an example of what might be achieved by union.
In everything they had been victorious; the dray-tax. which from time to time was threatened to be enforced, was ultimately abandoned altogether.
The various memorials from the different hundreds, backed by the memorial of the united delegates, had caused the Government to introduce an amended Act, which promised almost everything they desired.”
When Charles Ⅹ and his ministers threatened to bypass the elected legislature and start taxing and spending on their own initiative in , French liberals declared that since such actions violated the constitution, the people were under no obligation to pay for them with their taxes.
Taxed landholders in Brittany formed the “Breton Association” to coordinate their resistance.
This Association had a two-fold object.
They proposed, in the first place, to refuse to pay any illegal tax, and in the second place to raise by contribution a common fund for indemnifying any subscriber, whose property or person might suffer by reason of his refusal.
The members subscribed each ten francs.
In the event of any tax being imposed without the consent of the Chambers, or with the consent of a Chamber of Deputies created by any illegal alteration of the existing law, payment of the tax was to be refused, and the money subscribed was to be employed in defending and indemnifying the persons who should so refuse, and to prosecute all who might be concerned in the imposing, or the levying of such illegal taxes.
The association enacted a trigger mechanism for an organized tax strike and a process for collecting and distributing a mutual insurance fund.
In this way they were able to present a credible threat to the planned royal usurpation — so much so that the newspapers that dared to print the Association’s charter were prosecuted and their editors imprisoned.
This only served to fuel the movement: “The associations spread over the greater part of the kingdom; they embraced more than half the Chamber of Deputies, and a very considerable number of peers.”
The Rebeccaites formed Farmers Unions which met in secret to discuss the same sort of grievances that, in disguise, Rebecca and her sisters would address vigilante-style, and which corresponded with each other in a regional network.
One farmer said: “This Union among us is a very excellent thing if all join.
When they elect members of Parliament they do just as they please, and we have no voice, but here we have.
There is no way of putting things to rights till we get up this Union, and then we can do as we please and think best.
If we had had this Union many years ago we should be better off than we are now!”
The Women’s Tax Resistance League formed in when about twenty women from existing suffrage groups came together in London “with the single-minded aim of starting ‘an entirely independent society quite separate from any existing suffrage society with the object of spreading the principles of tax resistance.’ ” League organizer Margaret Kineton Parkes explained that it “included Suffragists from every camp, Conservative, Liberal, Socialist, as well as non-party, and was making every effort to get a large number of influential women to refuse to pay taxes” because “[t]he isolated refusal to pay was ineffective and only caused trouble to the refuser; but a large and unexpected number would cause considerable trouble to the Government and would bring the question at issue home to them.”
Elias Rishmawi was among those who organized tax resistance in Beit Sahour during the first intifada.
He remembers how important it was to have formed a network of committees so as to distribute communication and decision-making in anticipation of Israeli military disruption by means of curfews and arrests of the resistance leadership.
Direct action-oriented pacifists in the United States came together in to form Peacemakers.
“[T]his is not an attempt to organize another pacifist membership organization, which one joins by signing a statement or paying a membership fee,” they announced.
By the group had about 2,000 members, about 150 of which were resisting taxes.
A second group, War Tax Resistance, promoted the tactic within the anti-Vietnam War activist community.
In , the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee formed to help a variety of groups that included war tax resistance as part of their work to coordinate and share resources and expertise.
During the Great Depression in the United States, taxpayers’ leagues, some of which organized property tax strikes, proliferated in the thousands.
Such groups “spring up like mushrooms,” one critic complained, “every time you go out in the morning, you find more of them.”
These leagues attacked the taxes on multiple fronts — not only organizing tax strikes but also coordinating legal suits and pressuring political figures.
A proposed sales tax boycott in Ottawa in
was boosted by the group Human Action to Limit Taxes.
“As individuals we are lost,” one resister said.
“But as a group we would have some impact.”
In the Birmingham Political Union of the Middle and Lower Classes formed.
It would play a strong role — and would advocate tax resistance — in the battle to pass the Reform Act of .
But it also began as a war tax resistance group, asking its members to sign the following oath:
That in the event of the present ministers so misconducting the affairs of the country as to make it probable we shall be involved in a Continental war [with Belgium], we will consider the propriety of checking so mischievous an event by withholding the means as far as may lay in our power, and will then consider whether or not refusing to pay direct taxes may not be advisable.
Similarly, the Catalonian “National Union” began life as a committee to direct a tax resistance action in and grew into the organizing party for an ambitious reform movement: “its demands included the entire reorganization of the vital forces of the nation: fiscal and administrative reform, the amelioration of the judicial system, the introduction of an effective system of compulsory education, the improvement of the provincial governments.”
A variety of local groups, with independent organizations, were key to the victory of the Anti-Poll Tax movement.
In Danny Burns’s book on the Poll Tax Rebellion, he stresses how important it was for the success of the campaign that people formed and ran their own small-scale, neighborhood resistance groups, rather than ceding control of the movement to the various established left-wing partisan and labor-union groups who wanted to use the movement to their own ends but were also afraid to identify themselves too closely with the law-breaking resisters.
Prior to the Anti-Poll Tax campaign, many people’s only experience of politics was a traditional Labour Party or trade union meeting — the sort of meeting where the top table takes up 90% of the discussion; where the only items discussed are those decided by the executive committee; where half the meeting time is spent discussing procedural motions or the order of words in a resolution; where political factions throw rhetoric across the room in angry and unproductive exchanges.
Essentially, boring meetings which stretch long into the night.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been to these meetings just once and never returned.
To engage people in a mass campaign, the Anti-Poll Tax Unions had to challenge this culture of organisation.
They had to make people feel wanted and included and give everyone a sense that they had a role.… This immediate form of organisation also meant that people weren’t patronised by those who had political experience.
In the local groups, people didn’t need permission to act, they just had to get on the phone to their neighbours and get something going.
People stay involved in political campaigns if they can contribute in the way that they feel is most effective.
Very often this is not by sitting in boring meetings.
…most of the successful Anti-Poll Tax Unions operated on a principle of parallel development.
Rather than trying to assert majority control or spend hours reaching consensus, people were allowed to get on with what they thought was most important.
Everything could be done in the name of the Anti-Poll Tax Union, which existed to coordinate activity against the Poll Tax, not to specify its exact nature.
However, he also notes:
…it was sometimes in the places where the Anti-Poll Tax Unions were weakest that resistance was strongest.
For example, St. Pauls was almost the only area in Bristol which couldn’t sustain an Anti-Poll Tax group.
Local people didn’t feel the need to set up new groups because, as in many inner city areas, they already had strong networks of solidarity, and there was already a high level of general hostility to officials of any sort.
… By the end of , three times as many people had turned up to court to contest their cases from St. Pauls than any other area.
White supremacists in Louisiana met in
to form “The People’s Association to Resist Unconstitutional Taxation” to coordinate their resistance to state and city taxes enacted by the reconstruction government there, and to provide legal support for resisters.
Property owners of Silver Lake Assembly met in to decide how to respond to a property tax they felt was being illegally put over on them by a government with no authority to do so.
They decided to respond as a group, “and perfected an organization for the purpose,” issuing a resolution saying that they “individually and collectively will resist the payment of the so-called taxes.”
A very frequently-used tactic of tax resistance campaigns is to take public oaths or sign public pledges of resistance.
This signals to potential resisters that they will not be alone, and is a show of defiance to the authorities.
I’ve collected dozens of examples, which I’ll summarize here:
When Gandhi launched his first satyagraha-based campaign in South Africa in , a member of the meeting asked everyone present to take a solemn oath of opposition.
Gandhi remarked:
There is no one in this meeting who can be classed as an infant or as wanting in understanding.
You are all well advanced in age and have seen the world; many of you are delegates and have discharged responsibilities in a greater or lesser measure.
No one present, therefore, can ever hope to excuse himself by saying that he did not know what he was about when he took the oath.
I know that pledges and vows are, and should be, taken on rare occasions.
A man who takes a vow every now and then is sure to stumble.
But if I can imagine a crisis in the history of the Indian community of South Africa when it would be in the fitness of things to take pledges, that crisis is surely now.
… Resolutions of this nature cannot be passed by a majority vote.
Only those who take a pledge can be bound by it.
This pledge must not be taken with a view to produce an effect on outsiders.
No one should trouble to consider what impression it might have upon the local Government, the Imperial Government, or the Government of India.
Every one must only search his own heart, and if the inner voice assures him that he has the requisite strength to carry him through, then only should he pledge himself and then only would his pledge bear fruit.
His entire speech, which reflects on vows and the responsibility of vow makers, is worth reading in this context.
In , “98 per cent of the merchants at Stuttgart and… 60 out of 60 merchants at DeWitt,” Arkansas, signed pledges to refuse to collect a new sales tax from their customers or to pay it to the government.
Also in , in Verdun (then a suburb of Montreal), 164 shopkeepers, including the mayor, signed a pledge to refuse to collect or pay a Montreal city sales tax.
, merchants in Gadsen, Alabama followed suit: gathering and voting unanimously to refuse to collect or pay a sales tax.
In Ghana, in , the Akuashongs met and “swore not to… pay any tax, even if the government should fight with them, and to make war with any party breaking the agreement.”
In several French newspapers printed the text of a pledge in which French liberals vowed to resist any taxes that the monarchy instituted without going through constitutional channels.
The newspapers were themselves prosecuted for this.
However, in court, they pointed out that the King himself, before he took the throne, had signed a tax resistance pledge of his own, along with three other members of the nobility, as a protest against republican infringements on their privileges.
In Castine, Maine, in , the pledge took the form of a vote: the town voted 125 to 65 at a specially-convened town meeting, to refuse to collect a school funding tax in defiance of a superior court order to do so.
In , some 5,000 businessmen in Belfast vowed to “keep back payment of all taxes which they can control, so long as any attempt to put into operation the provisions of the Home Rule Bill is persevered in.”
In the Women’s Tax Resistance League, members signed “pledge cards” that indicated which taxes they would be resisting if the government persisted in denying women the vote.
The Reform Act agitation really hit its stride in when a huge rally, 150,000 people strong, vowed as a group to stop paying taxes until the Act’s passage.
One account of the meeting read:
He declared before God, that, if all constitutional modes of obtaining the success of the reform measure failed, he should and would, be the first man to refuse the payment of taxes, except by a levy upon his goods [tremendous cheering, which lasted some minutes].
I now call upon all who hear me, and who are prepared to join me in this step, to hold up your hands [an immense forest of hands was immediately elevated, accompanied by vehement cheering].
I now call upon you who are not prepared to adopt this course, to hold up your hands and signify your dissent [not a single hand appearing, loud shouts and cheers were repeated].
In South Africa’s “New Rush” in , a number of miners signed a pledge reading, in part, “I promise on my honour and in presence of the people that I shall not from this day forward — until released from this obligation by the officers of the League — pay any taxes or impositions whatsoever to the Government, id est, for the support and maintenance of the Government of this territory; and that I shall buy from, sell to, or deal with only such men as have also taken this pledge or obligation; and that 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.
At least 1,000 taxpayers in Elmira, New York, signed a declaration in saying that “The undersigned taxpayers… believing the county, city, and school tax rates as levied are too high, hereby refuse to pay until the budget has been thoroughly examined by the committee of the Taxpayers’ league.
We also refuse to pay penalties until such revision has been made and a lower tax adopted.”
500 taxpayers in Cadillac, Michigan, signed a petition in in which they vowed to refuse to pay taxes for two years unless the local government cut its budget by 20%.
In , 36 New Jersey residents signed their name to a petition to the home country in which they declared that they would refuse to pay any further taxes so long as a Roman Catholic was in charge of tax assessment.
At a “monster meeting” at Castlemaine in Australia in , a group of miners unanimously adopted a resolution to refuse to take out licenses.
Taxpayers in Zeehan, Tasmania, met in an open-air meeting in and passed a resolution stating that they “hereby express our solemn determination to passively resist the payment of the unjust income tax imposed by the late Government.”
A Queensland, Australia stealth tax on rural irrigation improvements, was resisted by the farmers there in , who, organized in groups called “Local Producers’ Associations,” passed motions vowing to resist.
For example, the Association in Rockhampton “unanimously decided that all members pledge themselves to offer passive resistance to the operation of the Act by refusing to make the required applications or to furnish any returns, or to make any payments as demanded by the Act.
Further, it was decided to invite all other LPAs and kindred bodies to adopt a similar attitude.”
, about twenty households near Paddock Wood, England, “signed a declaration to withhold [tax] payments” to protest the lack of government action against vagabonds camping in their neighborhood.
When the Russian Duma-in-exile issued the Vyborg manifesto in , calling on Russians to refuse to pay taxes to the Czarist autocracy, a number of villages responded by voting whether or not to heed the call and then taking the results of the vote as a pledge they were bound to abide by.
In , 149 members of a Catholic War Veterans post vowed to refuse to pay their real estate taxes unless the government dismissed a Communist Party member from his post as an advisor to the Borough President of Manhattan.
At a meeting of the Charleston Board of Trade in South Carolina in , the white supremacist group unanimously passed a series of resolutions declaring that they considered debts incurred by the reconstruction government to be illegitimate and that they would resist the payment of taxes meant to pay them off.
At a mass meeting of white supremacists in Louisiana in , they passed a resolution vowing that “we will pay no more taxes to State or city.”
Some resisters of Thatcher’s poll tax made their resistance dramatically public by burning their “final reminder notices” at demonstrations.
This tactic has been prominent in the American war tax resistance movement.
For example:
In the American pacifist group Peacemakers released a statement, signed by 59 members, in which “the undersigned state hereby that we are not going to pay our federal taxes.”
In , some 370 people signed a public oath saying “We will refuse to pay our federal income taxes voluntarily.”
In , more than five hundred writers and editors added their names to a war tax resistance pledge that appeared as a newspaper advertisement.
The names included James Baldwin, Noam Chomsky, Philip K. Dick, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Grace Paley, Susan Sontag, Benjamin Spock, Gloria Steinem, William Styron, Hunter S. Thompson, Thomas Pynchon, Betty Friedan, and Kurt Vonnegut.
Also in , a letter was circulated largely among academics, and signed by more than a dozen professors, among others, organized as the “No Tax for War Committee” in which the signatories pledged to “withhold all or part of the taxes due” and urged the recipients to join their public pledge.
This dispatch comes from the Sag-Harbor Corrector of :
“If we mistake not, Spain is, after the Emperor of Morocco, the first power that has consented thus to signify its adhesion to a bloody despotism, resting upon a palpable violation of oaths the most sacred, and of rights the most incontestable.
It is, indeed, a fine example to follow, that of the emperor of Morocco, & we only wonder the French ministry does not hasten to class itself among its imitators.”
The ministry appears as unpopular as ever, and the associations, commenced in Brittany, to guarantee the tax payer against the consequences of refusing the payment of taxes imposed in any manner contrary to the charter, were spreading over France.
Loraine and Paris have each established one — to that of Paris, three Deputies, Messrs. Dupont, (de l’Eure,) Manguin, and General Demarcay, subscribed.
In doing so, M. Dupont writes, “Long ago I had resolved to refuse the payment of any tax not laid in confirmity with the constitutional charter, and it is therefore with all my heart that I unite with other citizens who have adopted the same resolution.”
The Gazette de France, a ministerial paper, speaks of these associations as delivering France into the hands of a directing committee (comite-directeur) of liberals.
These various associations and their tax resistance campaign eventually led to the downfall of King Charles Ⅹ in .
The Spectator covered the tax resistance of the Breton Association in a couple of articles in :
Matters in France are “progressing;” whether for good or for evil, a few months will tell.
The people of Bretagne have passed certain resolutions to resist illegal taxation.
The Gazette de France, the Ministerial paper, copied them with a comment, which proved that to determine to resist what was illegal, was no better than an attempt to destroy the monarchy.
The Gazette was seized for copying the resolutions, and so were all the other journals that had done so.
The seizure is not inconsistent with law, but the exercise of the right is questionable enough, since it is notorious that the resolutions violate no law.
The absurdity of the wholesale seizure is increased by the fact, that whatever a tribunal might do with the Opposition papers, it could not possibly condemn the Gazette, insomuch as it only quoted the resolutions to condemn them.
The other papers seized were the Journal du Commerce, the Journal des Debats, the Courrier Français, and Figaro.
It is a singular part of the present disputes, that a grave argument is maintained between the Liberals and the Ministerialists, whether the King may not, if he please, impose taxes without the consent of the Chambers; and the seizure of the journals, because of the Bretagne resolutions, would almost indicate that the Cabinet incline to the latter opinion.
From the private letters from France that have reached town during the week, as well as the public journals, it would appear that the example of Brittany is spreading.
“Everywhere,” says the correspondent of the Times, “people are confederating to resist arbitrary power, and especially to refuse payment of contributions that may be illegally imposed.”
At the same time, the opinion which has been studiously propagated by the Opposition journals, that taxes were to be levied without the consent of the Chambers, and which received a kind of countenance from some indiscreet expressions of the members of the Cabinet most obnoxious to the popular party, has been met by the official organ of Government, the Moniteur, (which is more the journal of the Monarchy than of the Cabinet) by a distinct and deliberate denial.
The Moniteur says—
The Ministers could not even conceive the idea of breaking the Charter, and of substituting for the laws the government of ordinances.
If they had entertained such a wish, it would have been in vain, for the King would have reduced them to a state of impotence, by withdrawing from them the exercise of a power which he only committed to them for the sake of having the administration of affairs conducted in his name and upon their responsibility, conformably to the laws.
The Parisians treat this declaration as made upon compulsion, and in consequence of their determination to withstand the projects which the Gazette and the Quotidienne have for the last two months been sounding in the ears of the public.
The Ministry will therefore gain but small credit for a disavowal of principles and intentions which their opponents are determined to attribute to them.
This is the fate of all tardy retractations.
