Some historical and global examples of tax resistance → South Africa → First Boer War, 1880

An act of tax resistance by a man named Bezhuidenot, or Bezeidenhout, or Bezuidenhout, or Bezuidenhoudt, or something like that (makes Googling that much more fun), was the spark that set off the First Boer War (or Transvaal War).

Thomas Fortescue Carter, in his A Narrative of The Boer War (1883) describes it this way:

In November [1880] the Volksstem, the avowed organ of the discontented party, published at Pretoria, remarked that there was no reason why, at the forthcoming mass meeting of the Boers in January, the question of union with the Cape Colony should not be discussed, since it was no good sending delegates to England any more to obtain the reversal of the act of annexation. It was against the editor of this journal that the Pretorian Government commenced a criminal action for inserting a notice given by a number of Boers that they refused to pay taxes to the Government, because the country was being illegally robbed.
We now come to the actual outbreak of rebellion…

The details I give of the Bezhuidenot affair were related to me personally by the Landdrost of Potchefstrom under the British Government, and by the Landdrost appointed by the Boers as soon as they seized the town, and who was, previous to the outbreak, Bezhuidenot’s advocate when he was brought before the court. Bezhuidenot was no doubt one of the Boers who only wanted a little provocation to pick a quarrel and bring matters to a crisis. He with two other Boers in the middle of the year voluntarily suffered a week’s imprisonment rather than pay a fine of £5 imposed for obtaining gunpowder without having a permit. The sacrifice these men made of their liberty on that occasion was in some measure rewarded, as on coming out of jail they harangued the bystanders, and were presented with twenty sovereigns.…
…He was sued by the Government for £27, 5s., or for nearly £14 more than was owing by him; and it must be borne in mind this was not the only case in which the Treasury officials at Pretoria made demands which were illegal. Over and over again people summoned for taxes supposed to be due, produced their receipts when the matter came into court, and proved that they owed nothing. Only a few weeks prior to the Potchefstrom incident, the goods of a citizen of Pretoria were attacked, without any previous process of law, for taxes set down at £80. Afterwards £20 was ascertained to be the amount owing. Numberless instances of mismanagement such as these — mistakes, if you like to call them so, but always mistakes on the right side, i.e. against the taxpayer — caused the Boers to think that the Government was intent on squeezing money out of them.
Mr. Goetz, the Landdrost of Potchefstrom, informed me that when Bezhuidenot appeared before him to answer the claim made by the Government for £27, 5s., he declared his willingness to pay £14 out of that amount, on condition that the Landdrost would give a receipt, in which it was stipulated that the £14 should be handed over to the South African Republic if it was restored to govern the Transvaal in the following month of January. This the Landdrost would not consent to do, until he had communicated with the Government at Pretoria, and the case was adjourned for that purpose. When it came on for hearing again, the magistrate accepted Bezhuidenot’s tender of £14, and ordered him to pay the “costs,” which curiously enough amounted to £13, 5s., thus bringing the sum up to £27, 5s., or the total of the original claim. Goetz says that he was instructed by the Government to give costs against Bezhuidenot. On what principle of law or justice a man who has been dragged into court to prove that he has been overcharged should have to pay the costs of rectifying an error of the other side, it is difficult to imagine. Bezhuidenot, acting on his attorney’s, Van Eck’s, advice, refused to pay the costs. The Landdrost thereupon attacked a wagon belonging to Bezhuidenot, and announced that it would be sold at 11 A.M. on the 11^th November. In the Potchefstrom district there were Messrs. Piet Cronje, Koetze, and Basson, who had been sued for arrears of taxes alleged to be due to the Government, but they had refused to pay them.
On the morning of the day announced for the sale of Bezhuidenot’s wagon, these Boers, with about a hundred of their sympathizers, came into the town armed, and in front of the Landdrost’s office a harangue was delivered by some of the foremen or leaders respecting the judgment given against Bezhuidenot. The crowd then proceeded to the public square, and waited quietly till the time appointed for the sale. When the sheriff got on Bezhuidenot’s wagon and began to read out the conditions of sale, Cronje immediately rushed to the wagon, pulled him off, and kicked him, saying, “Away with you, you Government officials; we don’t acknowledge you.” The Boers assembled then dragged the wagon to the centre of the square, where they guarded it until a span of oxen was brought, and then the wagon was driven off in triumph. The sheriff having no force at his disposal to resist the seizure, had to stand by and watch the proceedings.

Another account, in Justin Huntly McCarthy’s England Under Gladstone, 1880–1884 (1884), reads:

The Boer hour had come. As in most insurrections, the immediate cause of the rising was slight enough. A Boer named Bezhuidenot was summoned by the landdrost of Potchefstrom to pay a claim made by the Treasury officials at Pretoria. Bezhuidenot resisted the claim, which certainly appears to have been illegal. Curiously enough, Bezhuidenot was the son of a Bezuidenot who sixty years before was shot for resisting the law in Cape Colony, and was the cause then of a Boer rising. The son was destined to be the herald of a new insurrection. The landdrost attached a waggon of Bezhuidenot’s, and announced that it would be sold to meet the claim. On November 11 the waggon was brought into the open square of Potchefstrom, and the sheriff was about the begin the sale, when a number of armed Boers pulled him off and carried the waggon away in triumph. They were unopposed, as there was no force in the town to resist them. The incident, trifling in itself, of Bezuidenot’s cart was the match which fired the long-prepared train. Sir Owen Lanyon sent some troops to Potchefstrom; a wholly unsuccessful attempt was made to arrest the ringleaders of the Bezhuidenot affair; it was obvious that a collision was close at hand. While the English authorities were delaying, uncertain how to act, the Boers were doing their best to expedite the crisis. On Monday, December 13, 1880, almost exactly a month after the affair of Bezhuidenot’s waggon, a mass meeting of Boers at Heidelberg proclaimed the Transvaal once again a republic, established a triumvirate Government, and prepared to defend their republic in arms.

Louis Creswicke, in his South Africa and the Transvaal War (1900) gives another version:

Big things have often small beginnings, and the Boer rebellion, that has brought so many complications in its train, commenced with a very small incident. A certain Bezeidenhout, having refused to pay his taxes, had, by order, some of his goods seized and put up to auction. This was the signal for the malcontents to attack the auctioneer and rescue the goods. So great became the uproar and confusion, the women aiding and abetting the men in their disobedience of the law, that military assistance was summoned.

Blanche St. John (Moschzisker) Bellairs, in her The Transvaal War, 1880–1881 (1885) claims that “But for the Bezuidenhout affair, hostilities might have been avoided:”

But although a dangerous, dogged resolution, displaying the common tenacity, or famous fault of the Dutch, had no doubt been previously formed by the majority of the Boers — in some way, by force all others failing, to obtain redress of their grievances — it may yet be reasonably doubted if there would ever have been occasion for them to have resorted to open hostilities, had not the Bezuidenhout incident, — an attempt to levy taxes which were, in amount, if not illegal, certainly inequitable, — been most unnecessarily forced into prominence by the maladroit action of the local government, who thus suddenly fanned into a flame the smouldering discontent of the country, and so infuriated the people that not only did they rise en masse, but, worst of all, escaped from the ordinary control of their leaders, who were even threatened with death if they did not head the movement, and assist the former in obtaining by arms what they conceived to be their rights.
There has been no intention on the part of the disaffected Boers to take any active steps in that direction until the assembly of the people, which had been called for the 8^th January 1881. The attempted arrest of Bezuidenhout by a body of constables specially raised for the purpose — there being no police forthcoming in the Transvaal for such duty — followed by the despatch of a military force to Potchefstroom in November, — in the belief that its presence would alone suffice to exercise such a moral restraint as would cause the arbitrary decisions of the Government to be respected, — occasioned the immediate assembly of several hundred armed men to guard Bezuidenhout from arrest, and the advancement of the date originally fixed for the mass meeting by a month. Had nothing occurred to have obliged the leaders to call an earlier meeting, the Boers would have assembled on the 8^th January in a much les excitable spirit, more amenable to control, and, as before, disposed to leave the direction of their cause in the hands of their leading men.

She later gives more details about how the “Bezuidenhout affair” played out:

It was during the early part of the month of November that the proceedings taken by the Government in the Bezuidenhout affair — which had been going on for some weeks — culminated in a crisis and rising of the people. As we have already remarked, the case arose out of an attempt to enforce the payment of taxes which were, in amount, if not illegal, certainly inequitable. The case was, however, but the last of many previous wrongful attempts at official exaction.
In the account which Mr Hudson, the Colonial Secretary, gives of his interview with Mr Kruger and the Boer Committee — which took place at Kaulfontein, near Potchefstroom, on the 29^th November… Mr Cronjé, who subsequently commanded the Boers at the siege of Potchefstroom, is mentioned as expressing his desire to state “all the circumstances which have led to the present difficulties,” and as proceeding as follows:—
“Mr Bezuidenhout was served with a tax notice to pay £27, 5s. He appeared at the office of the Landdrost of Potchefstroom, and told him he was willing to pay £14, which was all that could legally be demanded. The Landdrost refused to receive it, but said Bezuidenhout must pay £27, 5s.; but he declined to do so. He was then summoned for £27, 5s., and appeared, presenting his last receipts, and tendered again £14. The Landdrost answered as before. Bezuidenhout flatly refused to pay. Subsequently judgment was given for £14, with £8 costs, and the waggon was attached for the £14. If this matter is looked into, it will be seen how illegally the Government has acted.”
…To make Mr Cronjé’s statement still clearer, it should further be mentioned that Mr Bezuidenhout was possessed of certain half or portions of farms, which were assessed at the full or same rate of tax as levied on full farms, — reckoned at 6000 acres each. The law — probably through an omission, or because the division of fars was not at the moment foreseen — only specified one rate for farms, meaning the recognised farms of 6000 acres each. For half farms, at half rates only, Mr Bezuidenhout’s tender of £14 in payment of all taxes due by him was correct, and should have been accepted.
From the fact of the Landdrost having finally revised his decision, and given judgment for £14, it would seem that the Government had tardily recognised their error to that extent. But, not satisfied with having put Mr Bezuidenhout to great unnecessary trouble, as well as expense, in employing an attorney to resist a wrongful claim, he was mulcted in costs — for proving he was right.
As Mr Bezuidenhout refused payment, a waggon belonging to him was attached in execution, and steps taken to sell the same in front of the Landdrost’s office at Potchefstroom on the 11^th November. The sale was interrupted by an assembly of about one hundred Boers, who forcibly took the waggon away.^*

^* In his letter of the 14^th November, calling upon Colonel Bellairs to despatch troops to Potchefstroom in aid of the civil power, Sir Owen Lanyon gives a different version of the cause of Bezuidenhout’s non-payment of taxes. He says — “This waggon had been taken under authority of the Court for non-payment of taxes, Bezuidenhout having refused to pay the same, not because he was unable to do so, but on the grounds that he would not recognise her Majesty’s Government.” No mention is made of the real facts of the case.…

A while back, I started looking for examples of ways tax resisters have organized mutual aid pacts to help diffuse the effects of government retaliation. In the course of doing the research, though, I started collecting examples instead of a larger variety of collective projects resisters and their sympathizers have used in support of tax resistance.

Here are some of the examples I found:

Tax resister “insurance”
For instance, the Breton Association in 19^th century France, which organized to “form a common stock or fund… to indemnify the subscribers for any expense they may be put to by their refusal to pay any illegal contributions imposed upon the public.”
Another example was the Association of Real Estate Taxpayers in 1930s Chicago, which formed a cooperative legal fund to fight an offensive legal battle against the tax.
American war tax resisters today can use the War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund to defray penalties and interest seized by the IRS. The fund is raised as-needed by asking subscribers to contribute an equal amount.
The oath of the Regulator tax resistance movement in the North Carolina colony bound its signers to “bear an equal share in paying and making up [the] loss” if “any of our company be put to expense or under any confinement.”
Communes, collectives, and co-housing projects.
Some tax resisters have formed mutual support communities. Whiteway Colony was founded to try to live up to Tolstoyan ideals. The members of the Bijou and Agape communities live below a taxable income so as to avoid paying taxes.
Supporting resisters as an employer
Some members of the Restored Israel of Yahweh ran a construction business and agreed not to withhold federal taxes from the wages of those employees who were fellow-members and who were resisting taxes.
Vivien Kellems refused to withhold taxes from her employees’ wages, saying: “They are all free American citizens, thoroughly capable of performing all of the duties and responsibilities of citizenship for themselves. And so, from this day, I am not collecting nor paying their income taxes for them.”
Charles Kanjama recently urged Kenyans to begin a tax resistance campaign, and said that to foil pay-as-you-earn withholding, “participating employers and employees can enter into a voluntary contract to convert monthly employment into quarterly or half-yearly employment, thus effectively delaying tax liability for several months.”
Disrupting auctions of seized property
Earlier this year I recounted a dramatic and successful example of the American group “Peacemakers” blocking the sale of Ernest & Marion Bromley’s seized home.
British nonconformists and women’s suffrage activists a century ago also used this tactic. Auctions became rallies, with speeches and banners and crowds that could number in the thousands. Supporters would pack the auction house and refuse to leave their seats. On some occasions, violence broke out. In some cases, auctioneers refused to handle goods that had been seized for tax refusal.
Simply boycotting the auctions and refusing to buy seized goods is one way communities offer support. It was part of the Quaker “Discipline” to refuse to buy seized goods. When Valentine Byler’s horse was seized for non-payment of the social security tax, “no Amish came to bid on the horses and, due to a lack of bidders, they went for a good price, with the harnesses ‘thrown in’ by the auctioneer.”
Pay cash so as not to leave a paper trail
Jessica Ramer and a Claire Files contributor brought this idea up. If you pay in cash whenever you can, you give the recipient the opportunity to decide whether or not to declare the income.

Cash tips are easy to under-report. I asked about that recently and was told that most people pay with credit card/debit card and that the government now uses a percentage method for tips. They look at the charged meals, look at the number of total meals served, and then look at the charged tips to figure out how much cash tips you received.
(100 meals served. 50 paid with card, tipping 15%. the government calculates 15% from 100 meals even if cash tips are only 10%)
You can help out by tipping more when paying with cash or better yet, when you pay with card, put 1% tip on it and put the rest out as cash. I even leave a note for the server saying “this is your money, don’t tell your boss, or the government. share it with the buss boy if that is the policy.” This will help lower the average tip figures, but still give the nice server what they have earned.
Use barter to avoid taxable/seizable transactions
Karl Hess found people willing to barter with him as he was dodging IRS seizures:

The other day I welded up a fish-smoking rack for a family in Washington, D.C. It will earn me a year’s supply of smoked fish. At about the same time, I helped a friend dig a foundation. He’ll help me lay the concrete blocks for a workshop. Part of my pay for a lecture at a New England college was the use of the school’s welding shop, to make some metal sculptures. Three such sculptures have paid my attorney’s fees in maintaining the tax resistance which is the reason barter has become such an integral part of my life.
Manufacture and sell goods as alternatives to taxed products
Before the American Revolution, colonists who opposed Britain’s economic control boycotted British products and began to produce homespun cloth, alternatives to tea, and so forth. Gandhi’s independence campaign in India made the wearing and production of homespun cloth central to the opposition, and the Salt March was focused on the illegal production of untaxed, non-foreign-monopoly salt.
An example today is home-brewed beer (which beats the excise tax on alcoholic beverages).
Buycotts and boycotts that favor resisting businesses
One report from World War Ⅰ-era America noted that this was a technique used by those who opposed the “Liberty Bonds”:

Efforts to prevent banks from handling the bonds have centered chiefly in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Missouri and Oklahoma. The President of a Wisconsin bank has advised the Treasury that his depositors, mostly Germans, or of German parentage, have withdrawn many thousands of dollars from his bank because he aided the First Liberty Loan.
These depositors, he added, had taken their accounts to two rival banks on the understanding that those banks would not aid the second Liberty Loan. The two banks, he reported, were not aiding the loan in any way.
Many banks have felt the pressure of German influence in this propaganda, reports indicate. So pronounced was the movement that the States of Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and Montana recently decided that they would withdraw State funds from any bank which did not support the loan.
Social boycotts / shunning / noncooperation with tax collectors
- Adolf Hausrath writes of Roman-occupied Judaea,
  The people knew how to torment these officials of the Roman customs with the petty cruelty which ordinary people develop with irreconcilable persistency, whenever they believe this persistency to be due to their moral indignation. In consequence of the theocratic scruples about the duty of paying taxes, the tax-gatherers were declared to be unclean and half Gentile.… among the Jews the words “tax-gatherers and sinners,” “tax-gatherers and Gentiles,” “tax-gatherers and harlots,” “tax-gatherers, murderers and robbers,” and similar insulting combinations, were not only ready on the tongue and familiar, but were accepted as theocratically identical in meaning. Thrust out from all social intercourse, the tax-gatherers became more and more the pariahs of the Jewish world. With holy horror did the Pharisee sweep past the lost son of Israel who had sold himself to the Gentile for the vilest purpose, and avoid the places which his sinful breath contaminated. Their testimony was not accepted by Jewish tribunals. It was forbidden to sit at table with them or eat of their bread. But their money-chests especially were the summary of all uncleanness and the chief object of pious horror, since their contents consisted of none but unlawful receipts, and every single coin betokened a breach of some theocratic regulation. To exchange their money or receive alms from them might easily put a whole house in the condition of being unclean, and necessitate many purifications. From these relations of the tax-officials to the rest of the population, it can be readily understood that only the refuse of Judaism undertook the office.
- A social boycott of tax collectors was practiced in the years before the American revolution. John Adams wrote:
  At Philadelphia, the Heart-and-Hand Fire Company has expelled Mr. Hughes, the stamp man for that colony. The freemen of Talbot county, in Maryland, have erected a gibbet before the door of the court-house, twenty feet high, and have hanged on it the effigies of a stamp informer in chains, in terrorem till the Stamp Act shall be repealed; and have resolved, unanimously, to hold in utter contempt and abhorrence every stamp officer, and every favorer of the Stamp Act, and to “have no communication with any such person, not even to speak to him, unless to upbraid him with his baseness.” So triumphant is the spirit of liberty everywhere.
- Harassment of tax collectors was a signature action of the Whiskey Rebellion. An early published resolution of the rebels read in part:
  [W]hereas some men may be found amongst us, so far lost to every sense of virtue and feeling for the distresses of this country, as to accept offices for the collection of the duty:
  Resolved, therefore, That in future we will consider such persons as unworthy of our friendship; have no intercourse or dealings with them; withdraw from them every assistance, and withhold all the comforts of life which depend upon those duties that as men and fellow citizens we owe to each other; and upon all occasions treat them with that contempt they deserve; and that it be, and it is hereby most earnestly recommended to the people at large to follow the same line of conduct towards them.
Violently resist tax collectors, disrupt trials/auctions, intimidate collaborators
Tax collectors were tarred-and-feathered in America, both before and after the revolution — the violent expulsion of tax collectors was a frequent technique of the Whiskey rebels. Tax collectors have been the targets of violent reprisal at many times and in many places. Because of this, governments have often had to pay high salaries — or, frequently, percentages of the take — to convince collectors to take on the job, which only increases the resentment of those being collected from.
During the French Revolution and its aftermath, customs houses were burned by mobs, tax rolls were destroyed, excise collectors were made to renounce their jobs and then were run out of town — or in some cases killed.
The first Boer War was triggered when an armed group of Boers seized a wagon that was being auctioned after it was distrained for resisted taxes.
The Whiskey rebels threatened to destroy the stills of those distillers who complied in paying the excise tax.
Boycotts / social boycotts of non-resisters
If a tax resisting movement is large enough, it may be able to dissuade people from paying taxes through boycotts or social boycotts of people who are tax compliant. In Massachusetts, a group enforced a boycott of taxed British imports by declaring that

…we further promise and engage, that we will not purchase any goods of any persons who, preferring their own interest to that of the public, shall import merchandise from Great Britain, until a general importation takes place; or of any trader who purchases his goods of such importer: and that we will hold no intercourse, or connection, or correspondence, with any person who shall purchase goods of such importer, or retailer; and we will hold him dishonored, an enemy to the liberties of his country, and infamous, who shall break this agreement.
Maintain solidarity in the face of divide-and-conquer tactics
In mid-19^th century Germany, the government attempted to break a tax resistance movement by offering to moderate its enforcement efforts against people who could show that they had limited means. Karl Marx, who was promoting the resistance at the time, saw this as a divide-and-conquer tactic:

The intention of the Ministry is only too clear. It wants to divide the democrats; it wants to make the peasants and workers count themselves as non-payers owing to lack of means to pay, in order to split them from those not paying out of regard for legality, and thereby deprive the latter of the support of the former. But this plan will fail; the people realizes that it is responsible for solidarity in the refusal to pay taxes, just as previously it was responsible for solidarity in payment of them.
Keep a record of the “sufferings” of resisters
The Quakers responded to persecution by keeping careful records of individuals who had suffered thereby. In the archives of Quaker meetings, you can find lists of people who had resisted militia taxes or tithes for establishment church ministers, and what property was distrained by which tax collector.
Sign petitions and public advertisements, engage in public protests
When the American Amish were trying to resist compulsory enrollment in the social security system, 14,000 of them signed a petition to Congress.
During the Vietnam War, public advertisements were taken out by tax resisters. In early 1968, for instance, 448 writers and editors put a full-page ad in the New York Post declaring their intention to refuse to pay taxes for the Vietnam War. The signatories included James Baldwin, Noam Chomsky, Philip K. Dick, Betty Friedan, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Goodman, Paul Krassner, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Tillie Olsen, Grace Paley, Thomas Pynchon, Susan Sontag, Benjamin Spock, Gloria Steinem, Norman Thomas, Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut, and Howard Zinn.
This year’s 2008 War Tax Boycott, Don’t Buy Bush’s War, and Pledge for Peace campaigns also have a public-signing component.
Protests, rallies, pickets, and the like have been a part of many large-scale tax resistance campaigns.
Hold resisters’ property as an informal trustee
Some resisters who are vulnerable to property seizure find sympathetic friends who are willing to hold the resisters’ property in their names as a way of foiling seizure. Some war tax resister alternative funds function partially as “warehouse banks” that hold deposits of war tax resisters.
When a frustrated tax collector seized Ammon Hennacy’s protest signs as he was picketing the IRS office — claiming that he planned to auction them off to pay Hennacy’s tax debt — a friend of Hennacy helped him make new signs, each one marked “this sign is the personal property of Joseph Craigmyle.”
Keep in contact with resisters and express support
After the press reported that Valentine Byler’s horse had been seized by the IRS as he was plowing his field, he got letters of support from all across the country.
Form groups for mutual support & coordinated decision-making
Here there are too many examples to list.
Give financial aid to evicted rent strikers
When the Irish Land League launched its rent strike, it claimed that “The funds will be poured out unstintedly to all who may endure eviction in the course of the struggle. Our exiled brothers in America may be relied on to contribute, if necessary, as many millions in money as they have thousands, to starve out the landlords and bring the English tenantry to its knees.”
Comfort and aid imprisoned resisters
The trick to supporting imprisoned tax resisters is to respect their real needs and desires. When “someone interfered,” as Thoreau put it, and paid his taxes in order to spring him from his night in jail, they thought wrongly that they were doing Thoreau a favor, “for they thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall.”
Juanita Nelson tells of the support she received in jail, where she had been taken in her bathrobe from her home. Her supporters took the time to learn how to support her in a way that was appropriate to her resistance:
Two fellow pacifists, one of them also a tax refuser, had been permitted to come to me, since I would not go to them. I asked them what was uppermost in my mind, what they’d do about getting properly dressed? They said that this was something I would have to settle for myself. I sensed that they thought it the better part of wisdom and modesty for me to be dressed for my appearance in court. They were more concerned about the public relations aspect of getting across the witness than I was. They were also genuinely concerned, I knew, about making their actions truly nonviolent, cognizant of the other person’s feelings, attitudes and readiness. I was shaken enough to concede that I would like to have my clothes at hand, in case I decided I would feel more at ease in them. The older visitor, a dignified man with white hair, agreed to go for the clothes in a taxicab.
They left, and on their heels came another visitor. She had been told that in permitting her to come up, the officials were treating me with more courtesy than I was according them. It was her assessment that the chief deputy was hopeful that someone would be able to hammer some sense into me and was willing to make concessions in that hope. But he had misjudged the reliance he might place in her — she was not as critical as the men. She did not know what she would do, but she thought she might wish to have the strength and the audacity to carry through in the vein in which I had started.
And she said. “You know, you look like a female Gandhi in that robe. You look, well, dignified.”
That was my first encouragement. Everyone else had tended to make me feel like a fool of the first water, had confirmed fears I already had on that score. My respect and admiration for Gandhi, though not uncritical, was deep. And if I in any way resembled him in appearance I was prepared to try to emulate a more becoming state of mind. I reminded myself, too, that I had on considerably more than the loincloth in which Gandhi was able to greet kings and statesmen with ease. I need not be unduly perturbed about wearing a robe into the presence of his honor.
Support the families of imprisoned resisters
When Gandhi was preparing the groundwork for a tax refusal campaign in India, he noted that the Indian National Congress “should undertake to feed the wives and families of those who may be imprisoned.”
Study the law, give legal support
When Elizabeth Cady Stanton was contemplating a tax resistance campaign for women’s suffrage in the United States, she noted, “One thing is certain, this course will necessarily involve a good deal of litigation, and we shall need lawyers of our own sex whose intellects, sharpened by their interests, shall be quick to discover the loopholes of retreat.”
Combine redirected taxes for dramatic charity giveaways
Larry Rosenwald wrote, of this technique, “To sit on the Grants and Loans Committee of New England War Tax Resistance, and to dispense the interest on refused taxes to a youth group in Chelsea, a video for cable television on United States involvement in Central America, and a people’s garden in Roxbury is to be reminded of the ideal community, however blurred and fragmented, that war tax resistance is done on behalf of, in the hope of helping to make it clear and whole.”

Can you think of any I’ve missed?