Some recent tax resistance news of note:
- Jane Rogers & Alex Pension from Extinction Rebellion’s “Money Rebellion” tax resistance campaign in the U.K. and José “Cuti” Cutillas from Spain’s Antimilitarista Tortuga war tax resistance movement spoke at the recent NWTRCC national gathering about how tax resistance plays out in their work:
- A coalition of student unions in Myanmar released a statement asking international companies to withhold taxes from the military junta that seized control of the country .
- The “Build Back Better Act” as currently proposed includes among its many provisions $498 million for the Department of Justice specifically to prosecute tax evasion, and $80 billion for the IRS (both figures are spread out over ten years). Both Democrats and Republicans have reason to exaggerate the practical effect of this. Democrats will insist that this new funding will mean the government can finally pursue fat cat tax evaders, close the tax gap, and result in lots of new tax revenue that will pay for the rest of the spending in the bill. Republicans will paint a picture of vast swarms of jack-booted thugs running rampant over innocent families and small businesses across the land. The purportedly nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analyzed the bill and said that according to their calculations, the new IRS funding would lead to less than a third of the increased revenue that the Democrats were trumpeting. As a result, the bill as a whole will put the government yet further in the red. I have seen no signs that the IRS bank-account-monitoring proposal will sneak its way back into the bill, despite some Democrats’ hopes.
- The human war against the traffic ticket robot hordes continues. In the U.K., Darrell Meekcom, terminally ill and in a hurry to check items off his bucket list, dropped trou’ and mooned a speed camera. Half a dozen furious police officers were dispatched to his home to drag him away with the brutality typical of the breed. Famed graffiti artist Banksy (perhaps) hurried to the scene to immortalize the event in style. Meanwhile spray paint and fire disabled speed cameras in France and the U.K., in Germany someone just walked off with a camera and disassembled it at home while a few more were torched in France, and others were disabled by a variety of means in Germany, France, and Italy.
