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a survey of tactics of historical tax resistance campaigns →
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Tax Day actions →
2013
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
NWTRCC is collecting a list of protest actions that will be going on around the U.S. this year.
There’s another wave of “Tax Day” protests coming this year.
Here’s a press release from the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee about some of them:
Refusing to Pay for Cruise Missiles and Drone Strikes:
30 Years of Tax Day Antiwar Protests
On people in communities across the United States will be leafleting, marching, doing street theatre, committing civil disobedience, and picketing at post offices, IRS offices, federal buildings, among other public spaces, using materials calling attention to the harmful effects of military spending.
A list of U.S. Tax Day events with links to international actions can be found at www.nwtrcc.org/taxday2013.php.
is also the third annual Global Day of Action on Military Spending.
, during his first term, President Ronald Reagan set off a massive buildup in the U.S. armed forces that stands out on historical graphs of U.S. military budgets since World War Ⅱ.
This motivated thousands of taxpayers to resume the civil disobedience (begun during the Vietnam War) by refusing to pay taxes to buy cruise missiles and other weapons, and led to the formation of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC).
In that same year Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle, risking official censure, withheld half his income tax to protest nuclear weapons, calling on others to do the same.
The spike in military spending surpasses that of the Reagan years.
Today U.S. taxpayers are buying even more expensive weapons systems, new nuclear weapons plants, assassinations by unmanned drones, and soaring interest payments on the national debt along with burgeoning health care costs for thousands of wounded veterans.
On , an ad placed in a Massachusetts weekly began, “We refuse to pay taxes for the violence of war preparations and other military expenditures including present military involvement in other countries.
Over half of the federal income taxes are used for military expenses.”
Many of the 120 signers still refuse today and still protest on tax day, joined by newer activists who have been provoked into protesting taxes for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the endless war on terror.
Massachusetts residents Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner were signers of that ad.
Despite a house seizure and other collection efforts by the IRS, Kehler and Corner say, “With the federal government running up huge deficits by spending trillions of taxpayer dollars on weapons and war, at the expense of its own people (especially its soldiers) and the people of other countries, we invite our fellow citizens to join us in saying ‘No!’ and to begin re-directing their federal tax money to local projects that meet genuine human needs.”
The Chief Counsel of the IRS Criminal Tax Division issued something called a Search Warrant Handbook to give its Criminal Investigation personnel with guidance about when they need search warrants to do their investigations.
The Handbook stated:
[E]mails and other transmissions generally lose their reasonable expectation of privacy and thus their Fourth Amendment protection once they have been sent from an individual’s computer.
A copy of the Internal Revenue Manual issued that year also says that “the government may obtain the contents of electronic communication that has been in storage for more than 180 days” without going through the hassle of obtaining a search warrant.
Other agency memos, dating as recently as restate the position.
When the ACLU exposed these policies, there was a bit of an uproar.
The agency didn’t help matters much by issuing a non-denial denial:
Respecting taxpayer rights and taxpayer privacy are cornerstone principles for the IRS.
Our job is to administer the nation’s tax laws, and we do so in a way that follows the law and treats taxpayers with respect.
Contrary to some suggestions, the IRS does not use emails to target taxpayers.
Any suggestion to the contrary is wrong.
But the acting head of the IRS appeared before a Senate committee and seemed to indicate that the agency would back down, at least somewhat, and at least until the fuss dies down.
The IRS is also catching flak for its ineptitude in dealing with identity theft.
The USA Today editorial board concluded that “the crooks appear to be one step ahead of the IRS” as the IRS has responded to the growing problem by expanding its bureaucracy in a way that made things more complicated without making it more effective.
In one example, a study of 17 people who had filed identity theft complaints with the IRS showed that the agency had responded by opening 58 distinct and uncoordinated cases in its myriad subunits in response.
Redirection: Our “Constructive Program” — Bill Ramsey compares redirection (the common practice in war tax resistance circles of giving your due taxes to charity rather than to the government) to the “constructive program” part of Gandhi’s campaigns.
Like us! — Erica Weiland points out the various facets of NWTRCC’s social media presence.
Counseling Notes — how credit rating worries and student debt may discourage war tax resisters; suspicions of an uptick in the underground economy; lots of bad news for the IRS; and war tax resistance counselor training notes
War Tax Resistance Ideas and Actions — a recap of some of the creative outreach and protest actions of the nationwide war tax resistance community
How We Want Our Tax Dollars Used — a look at the granting decisions of a handful of war tax resistance alternative funds, which coordinate the redirection of many war tax resisters
NWTRCC News — a recap of the NWTRCC national gathering in Asheville earlier this month
