Some historical and global examples of tax resistance → Cyprus → social insurance tax resistance, 2014 → Michael Paraskevas

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

• Michael Paraskevas, an activist lawyer from Cyprus, has stopped paying his social security tax and is calling on other citizens to do the same. He is protesting the plunder of the social insurance fund to pay off financial speculators in the wake of the economic crisis. “It is unacceptable for people get no pension, or a reduced pension, simply because some people speculate,” he wrote, in a letter to the government announcing his resistance.
• At War Tax Talk, Ruth Benn profiles Robin Harper, who has been a war tax resister since 1958.
• There are some interesting artifacts from the poll tax rebellion of the waning years of the Thatcher era over at the Anarchist Federation website, including scans of magazines and pamphlets from far-left participants in that struggle.
• Some business leaders in Apatzingán, a city in the Tierra Caliente region of Michoacán, finding that the government is giving them no protection from the Knights Templar Cartel, have decided that there’s no point in paying taxes any longer.

It’s time for another ’round the world tax resistance round-up:

Austria

Gerhard Höller’s tax resistance in protest against government spending priorities (see ♇ 24 March 2014) seems to have struck a nerve.

• Ralf Hillebrand and Angelika Wienerroither debate the wisdom of Höller’s stand.
• Another article quotes some other businesspeople who support Höller’s action, and says that Höller plans to set up some sort of web platform to organize a broader tax strike.
• I think the web platform in question is 1414: Der Steuer Streik.

Greece

Whether from inability or unwillingness to pay, some 2.6 million Greeks are behind on their income taxes — and that’s out of a population of about 11 million, which includes children.

Cyprus

Attorney Michael Paraskeva has started refusing to pay his social security contributions in protest against the government’s decision to raid the social security fund to satisfy government debts. He hopes his stand will help build a civil disobedience movement. One supporter explained: “I have not paid social security since 2011. I am a victim, not a perpetrator, of the economic crisis and I’m being made to pay for those who brought it about.”

Ireland

Anti-austerity demonstrators occupied a tax office in Dublin, shutting it down for a period of time during property tax paying season.

The Republic of Venice?

Venetian separatists voted last month to begin the process of seceding from Italy.

The milder voices among them have started collecting commitments from taxpayers to begin refusing to pay taxes to Italy once a critical threshold of commitments has been signed. Once that threshold is reached, they will begin resisting taxes in earnest, in the hopes that their numbers will protect them from government retaliation at that point.

The less patient wing, which includes the delegates who were elected to launch the new Republic, have, as one of their first acts, enacted a “decree of total tax exemption,” freeing Venetians from their tax obligations until the tax collecting institutions of the new Republic are up and running. Gianluca Busato, one of the drivers behind the initiative, has gone so far as to say that “The payment of taxes to foreign governments [e.g. Italy’s], as well as immoral, it’s illegal.”

Meanwhile, a bit south of Venice, in Ferrara, businesswoman Alessandra Marazzi raised a bit of a stir by launching a tax strike recently. She got an outpouring of support from other small business owners who say that they have to choose between taxes and solvency, and that the government takes far more than it gives in return.