reports and media mentions of war tax resistance are coming in from across the country:
- Members of the War Resisters League carried a War Tax Boycott banner through midtown Manhattan.
- Peace activists in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, held a penny poll outside the Federal Building.
- Tax resister Jon Klein is profiled in Richmond, Virginia’s Style Weekly.
- Ruth Benn of NWTRCC was interviewed on Rob Lorei’s Radioactivity show. (Benn’s interview starts at 9:27)
- Paul Guggenheimer’s Dakota Midday radio show talked to a Tea Party promoter and to Lincoln Rice of NWTRCC about their Tax Day plans.
- Jesse Watson and Lew McGregor greeted last-minute filers in Rockland, Maine to let people know that there are alternatives to paying for war.
- Don Timmerman tells readers of the Superior [Wisconsin] Telegram why he and his wife resist their taxes.
- NWTRCC is publishing reports on local Tax Day actions as they come in.
And in other news:
- David Boaz of Cato @ Liberty calls for a campaign to unite the anti-tax and anti-war movements under a single “Stop the War, Stop the Spending” banner.
- Al Giordano looks at the “Tea Party” protests and compares them to Wally Nelson’s war tax resistance protests he used to cover as a reporter every April 15th.
- Kathy Belge at Kathy’s Lesbian Life Blog writes about tax resistance for gay and lesbian couples.
- Brad Spangler of the Center for a Stateless Society gives the anarchist perspective on Tax Day with his audio op-ed “Taxation is Theft”.
- Christopher Beam, Slate’s “Explainer,” explains what happens if you don’t file your taxes:
Probably nothing. If you’re self-employed without any major assets or loans, the odds of getting busted are extremely low. In fact, an estimated 7 million Americans fail to file their taxes every year, and in 2008 the IRS examined only 158,000 such cases. That comes out to a roughly 2 percent chance of getting caught. Even if the IRS does audit you, the agency probably won’t press charges. Instead, they’ll just file a tax return for you and charge you a fee for the trouble.
- When Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner took the reins at the IRS despite having neglected to pay $34,000 in his own taxes, a lot of people were miffed at the hypocrisy.
But none had more cause than IRS employees themselves, who are saddled with strict, zero-tolerance policies against tax evasion that can cost them their jobs.
And:
IRS employees have reported that taxpayers are occasionally citing the Geithner case when they are asked to pay their tax bills. “It’s making the compliance conversation harder,” [Colleen] Kelley [of the National Treasury Employees Union] said.
- “An ABC News investigation has uncovered case after case of checks being stolen, manipulated and cashed by [IRS] contract employees responsible for processing them, resulting in delayed payments and heavily disrupted lives.”
- A Charles Adams speech about “Tax Resistance, Then and Now” was featured on The Lew Rockwell Show.
- Thomas L. Knapp reads the tea leaves and finds some hopeful signs over at the Center for a Stateless Society.
- Christofer, from Chicago’s Kairos community, reflects on his tax resistance and what it means.
- Conservative columnist Ross Douthat shares his impressions of the Tea Party phenomenon and compares it to the anti-war protests in the Dubya years. He concludes: “here we are in the sixth year of the Iraq War, and all those anti-war protests, their excesses and stupidities notwithstanding, look a lot more prescient in hindsight than they did (to me, at least) when they were going on. So if you’re inclined to sneer and giggle at the Tea Parties, keep in mind that just because a group of protesters looks ragged, resentful, and naive, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re wrong to be alarmed.”
- Finally, Joe the Plumber appears to be following the Paris Hilton model of celebrity descent. The latest station on his trainwreck has him urging people to call a 1‒900 number to “vote” to abolish the IRS and replace it with the “fair tax” (a national sales tax) thus endorsing two scams for the credulous at once.
