How you can resist funding the government → a survey of tactics of historical tax resistance campaigns → reach out to potential resisters at the time and place of payment → Tax Day actions → 2017

“Tax Day” is coming up — the deadline for people to file their federal income tax returns in the United States.

NWTRCC is compiling a list of Tax Day Actions that war tax resisters are putting on or participating in.

Other groups are planning protests that attempt to revive the issue of Trump’s taxes — whether or not he pays them, and whether people ought to be able to see his tax returns. Many of these are being organized (or hijacked) by that disreputable species of astroturf organization that tries to redirect dissent and outrage into support for the Democratic Party, but they could be a good opportunity to do outreach to people with an eagerness to be active.

Lots of tax resistance news sliding by my browser in recent days as the federal income tax filing deadline approaches in the U.S.:

• A syndicated feature about American tax resisters — featuring Rod Nippert, Jay Sordean, Ruth Benn, Peter Smith, Cindy Sheehan, Ann Barron, and Joseph Olejak — appeared in newsweeklies around the country this week, including the Colorado Springs Independent, Salt Lake City Weekly, Athens, Georgia Flagpole, and Baltimore City Paper
• The author of that piece, Mary Finn, was interviewed on Democracy in Crisis.
• The Independent also ran a second article — The new tax resistance? — about a Baltimore woman named Kesh, who has stopped paying her taxes:

  This year she isn’t paying because she began thinking more about where her tax money goes and she feels like she can’t keep paying the government. “It’s not going to anything that I can see personally that is going to benefit me,” Kesh, who asked that only her first name be used, says. “But me paying it is definitely going to hit me. Not having that money that needs to go towards other things that I have to pay — that affects me immediately. That’s a loss for me.”

  The inauguration of President Donald Trump only worsened her feeling about the situation. First, because she has her doubts about whether Trump has bothered to pay his fair share of taxes, and second, because his administration seems to be waging a war against people like her. “I’m all the groups that are hated. I’ve decided to come to earth in this body and be black, be a woman, gay, so you know, I get hit on every side of it,” she says. “I was a teenaged mother, I’m a single mom — I’m all the things [Trump and Republicans] hate.”

  Living in Baltimore, where Freddie Gray died in police custody in April 2015 and where just last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions tried to hamper police reform, taxes funding the police are an issue for her as well. (Police are primarily funded through local and state governments, but Kesh isn’t paying state taxes either.)

  “I know that my tax money is going to the police and I can walk down the street and get shot,” she says. “I can get shot by my own money and get killed by my own money and there’s no one that’s gonna do shit about it. So basically I’m giving you money to kill me and people that look like me.”

  Unlike long-time tax resisters, Kesh is new to this. She doesn’t know where it will lead her yet — hence her decision not to use her name. The Internal Revenue Service may target her, but not paying feels right.

  “I’m basically saying, ‘Fuck you.’ ” she says. “I’m keeping my money.”

• There are lots of war tax resistance-related actions going on around the country in the tax-filing season this year.
• The Alaska Dispatch looks back at the Alaska photo [that] did for the IRS what that passenger video did for United Airlines. (In this case, IRS agents who broke the windows of a car to drag out the passengers so they could seize it in 1979. This was photographed, and the outrage led to IRS policy changes on using violence during collection.)
• The Satyagraha Foundation for Nonviolence Studies is continuing its series on tax resistance with A Call for Tax Resistance — “a joint appeal from leading nonviolent activists and organizations, urging US taxpayers to nonviolently express their opposition to the policies of the Trump administration by refusing to pay a symbolic amount of their US federal income tax, and instead donate that amount to a deserving charity or institution.”
• War tax resisters’ letters-to-the-editor and op-eds are starting to appear, too, including ones from:
  • Daniel Sicken, and
  • Sue Barnhart

As “Tax Day” has come and gone in the United States, we’ve had more than our usual share of tax resistance news:

• Long-time war tax resister Larry Bassett sent a letter to the IRS concerning his unusually large tax refusal this year. Excerpt:

  I am resisting the $128,005 I owe in federal income tax for 2016 because nearly 50% of anything I do pay will go for war or preparation for war. I cannot in good conscience pay for war. I have donated more than that amount to meet human needs internationally and nationally and locally.

  The News & Advance covered his story: “Lynchburg ‘war tax resister’ speaks about pacifist lifestyle”
• Olympia-area man says he won’t pay tax bill until he sees Trump’s tax return. Phil Miller is the latest example of a new phenomenon — tax resisters motivated by a specific anti-Trump agenda, rather than a more administration-agnostic policy like militarism.
• Here’s another in that genre: Americans Should Refuse to Pay Federal Income Tax if Trump Does Not Release Tax Returns (If the president doesn’t pay taxes, why should American citizens?) says Ben Cohen of The Daily Banter.
• Dozens of people have signed on to a public statement of war tax refusal. Excerpt: “Nearly half of the federal income tax is funding endless war and war preparations. In good conscience, we will not pay this war tax.”
• War Tax Resisters in Tompkins County, New York, “opted to donate federal income tax dollars or some of their tax refunds to a local organization that helps people re-enter the community from prison or jail.”
• No War, No Trump: Tax Resisters Withhold Support reports Josh Brokaw at TruthSayers.
• Tax Day Protests Highlight Refusal to Pay for War reports Popular Resistance.
• Here are some photos from a tax day war tax resistance demonstration at the IRS building in New York City, and here’s a brief video clip.
• Lindsay Koshgarian, at truthout, writes about Where Your Dollars Are Going: Why Some Antiwar Activists Are Withholding Taxes (but spends most of the article defending government spending and the taxes that fund it).
• There may be more political or conscientious tax resistance going on than meets the eye. Three authors from the U.C. San Diego Department of Economics look at the available data across the United States and conclude that “the larger the typical share of county residents who vote for the president’s party, the smaller the tax gap across a variety of tax gap measures.”
• Here are some photos and video from a tax day protest put on by Citizens for Peace in Space.
• “This Man Can Help You Escape the IRS Forever” breathlessly writes Mother Jones. The article is about a legal adviser who helps wealthy people get themselves and their assets expatriated to low-tax areas.
• NWTRCC recaps this year’s tax season at its blog.

Today’s link dump:

• My local newsweekly, the New Times, covered my tax resistance today: Snubbing Uncle Sam: Local resident touts tax resistance as protest. They also did one of those we-ask-a-man-on-the-street sidebars where they asked four people: “What is your opinion on people who don’t pay taxes as a form of protest?” and got surprisingly positive answers. I expect the typical man-on-the-street to reach for the old familiar clichés about “who will fix the roads if we don’t pay our taxes” and so forth, but three out of four people who were asked supported tax resistance.
• Steve Ballmer, ex-Microsoft CEO, has launched a new project — USA Facts — that is meant to be a thorough, non-partisan, unbiased source of information about government spending. By non-partisan they mean “credulous and non-judgmental” and by unbiased they mean “exclusively relying on government sources,” so keep that in mind. It’s naively cheery about the federal government, by design:

  We soon discovered that dealing with something as big and complex as government — with its more than 90,000 jurisdictions and 23 million employees — required an organizing framework. What better place to look than the Constitution, and, more specifically, the preamble to the Constitution? It lays out four missions: “Establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility; provide for the common defense; promote the general welfare; and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” While we don’t make judgments about policy, we all agree on the broad purposes of government as laid out in the preamble to the Constitution.

  That said, it may end up being a useful source for some information about taxes and spending.
• NWTRCC has some follow-up on this year’s tax season:
  • Tax Day Reports, 2017
  • Tax Day Resistance, Redirection, and Planning Ahead
• The Satyagraha Foundation continues its series on tax resistance by reprinting my inaugural Picket Line post.
• Susan Lee Barton shares the letter she sent along with her tax return this year in lieu of a check.
• Peter and Mary Sprunger-Froese promoted war tax resistance in the letters-to-the-editor column of the Colorado Springs Independent.
• Erica Weiland discusses the decision of whether to be a public war tax resister, or to resist in a less-conspicuous way. (Read the comments, too.)
• Majorities of Americans are bothered that corporations and wealthy people don’t pay their fair share of taxes. And 56% of Americans describe the federal tax system as unfair — the highest percentage since the question was first asked 20 years ago.
• Here’s a new item in the pay-under-protest file: Scott Dion paid his property taxes with a check that said “sexual favors” in the “Memo” field. The government has been refusing to cash it.
• A restaurant patron paid the bill with a credit card, wrote “Taxation is theft — 0” in the “Tip” field, and left cash instead, with a note reading: “This is not a tip. This is a personal gift and not subject to federal or state income taxes.”
• Congressman John Lewis has again reintroduced the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act into the U.S. Congress.