Why it is your duty to stop supporting the government → how tax resistance fits the bill → isn’t some government worth paying for?

What sort of tax resister are you, anyway?: There are many ways to resist taxes, and many reasons to. Tax resisters use different strategies, have different objectives, and have different reasons why we take our stands. I resist my federal income tax by keeping my income low and using legitimate deductions and credits that reduce the tax to zero, and I resist federal excise and self-employment taxes in other ways. I do these things to reduce my complicity in the actions of the government.
Is what you’re doing legal?: All of us illegally evade taxes to some extent — not because everybody is trying to get away with something, but because most of us are unaware of just how much is taxable and how much fuss we’re technically obligated to comply with. On the other hand, even dedicated tax resisters find it difficult to avoid paying any taxes. There’s a big gray area in the middle between absolute compliance and absolute evasion. When I started resisting, my strategy was to do so above-board and legally, so although I was in the gray area along with everyone else, I actually did things more by-the-book than before. It’s been part of my experiment to show that even if you want to follow the rules you don’t have to pay federal income tax if it would compromise your values. In 2006, I started resisting federal self-employment tax as well — by simply not paying it, which isn’t legal. So I currently use a combination of legal and non-legal methods to resist paying taxes.
What do you mean “everybody evades taxes”? I pay all my taxes!: Do you pay “use tax” on things you bought out of state and therefore didn’t pay sales tax on at home (if you’re in a sales tax state, like most of us)? I didn’t even know this tax existed until I started tax resistance and did some research. This is one example of a tax that people are technically obligated to document, report, and pay, but that in practice people evade out of ignorance or frustration at the paperwork.
Have you considered earning money in the underground economy and never declaring it to the IRS?: I’ve given this some thought. I think if you can get away with earning undeclared income, it makes sense to do so. On the other hand, you can resist taxes even if you want to do everything above-board and by-the-book. If the right opportunity in the underground economy comes along, I might take it. I may decide not to discuss it on this blog, though, because that could be used against me by the powers-that-be. As of the time I’m writing this, I have not earned any significant amount of undeclared income and I still pursue federal income tax resistance through legal means. This might change.
Don’t you know that you don’t have to pay income tax because wages aren’t really income and the sixteenth amendment wasn’t legally ratified by Ohio and anyway it doesn’t apply to people living in states but only those who live on federal land, and all you have to do is declare yourself a sovereign citizen and buy this book?: I often get advice like this, but I see a fatal flaw: The IRS and the courts are the ones who get to decide what the rules of the game are and when they can seize your property or throw you in prison, and they don’t read the same book you’re reading. They’ve decided that arguments like these won’t fly. However, even completely silly tax arguments can “work” just because it’s so much trouble for the IRS to unravel them. Unless there’s plenty of money involved or it’s a high-profile case, it isn’t worth their time. So although these legal theories have about as much to recommend them as Nigerian Scam emails and pyramid schemes, I’m glad some people have taken this on as a hobby. I think I’ll pass, though.
Do you think you’re going to enjoy a life of abject poverty?: Who said anything about abject poverty? I just want to live under the tax line. I can earn $50,000 a year, and then, by doing things like putting some in tax-deferred retirement accounts and some in a Health Savings Account, keep about $23,750 to live on. Thanks to perfectly legal, above-board, IRS-approved deductions and exemptions, I won’t have to pay any income tax on any of that. In 2021, the median per capita income in the United States was $37,522. Other stats I’ve seen suggest that something like 91–92% of the world’s population earns less in a year than I get to spend after putting away 35–40% of my income for retirement. About 500 million people living on the planet with me right now are trying to get by on less than 2% of that. I’m filthy rich! And I’m not paying taxes! It’s the American Dream! I won’t have to sell my body for top ramen money any time soon. I’ll be fine.
Wait a minute: You can pull in $50K without paying income tax? Legally? How does that work?: You can read my (free, on-line) how-to guide for some details. It’s a little-known fact that paying no federal income tax is very common in the United States. According to The Tax Policy Center, about 40% of households in the U.S. were expected to pay no federal income tax at all for tax year 2022.
But you won’t really have $50K to spend — a lot of it is tied up in this and that, right?: Yes, to some extent. For instance, one way to make $50K income tax free is to put some of it into tax-deferred retirement accounts, some into a Health Savings Account, donate some to charity, and spend some on college tuition. But it’s still your money that you get to spend, and there are worse ways to spend your money. And because you’re not paying taxes, that $50K is a real $50K: forty thousand full dollars, not after-tax dollars. Before I embarked on tax resistance, each dollar I earned was reduced 17½¢ by federal income tax withholding. By eliminating that tax, I gave myself a raise by increasing the value of every dollar I earned and thereby increasing my take-home pay for every hour I worked.
But not everybody could get those deductions, you know.: True — different people have different deductions they can take and different financial obligations they must meet. I don’t have a car, or children, or a chronic disease, or a mortgage, or student loan debt. I’ve got more flexibility in my finances that allows me to consider a step like this.
How did you find out about the deductions and credits you use, and how do you know they’re legit?: I mostly learned about the credits and deductions that I use by reading IRS documents like Publication 17 — the agency’s how-to guide for individual income tax filers. To delve further into the fine print, I looked to other IRS documents.
If I want to do tax resistance, do I have to choose between poverty and persecution?: There are also the paths of prevarication and paperwork! Seriously, though, in the field marked off by those four “P”s there’s a lot of territory. Some tax resisters are persecuted by the government, and some deliberately provoke this sort of confrontation as part of their protest. And some resisters do adopt a voluntary simplicity lifestyle that seems impoverished to some people. But many resisters are neither persecuted nor impoverished. There are many tactics, and many ways to go about using them.
You may be avoiding federal income tax, but you still owe self employment tax, and pay California sales tax (and maybe the state income tax), various excise taxes, tariffs (indirectly anyway), etc. What about that?: There’s that gray area again. I wonder what I’d have to do to avoid paying (or owing) any taxes at all. I’d probably have to avoid money altogether, since some is lost to tax just about every time it changes hands. I couldn’t get vaccinated, since there’s an excise tax on vaccines. I couldn’t eat food that had been shipped using taxed fuel. I couldn’t drink booze that hadn’t been home-brewed or bootlegged. I couldn’t leave the country and return legally, since there is a high fee to purchase a passport. I’d have to avoid using any products that were subject to an import tariff — or maybe any products whose manufacturers or sellers made a taxable profit or who paid their employees taxable salaries. Sounds pretty tough. I think I’ll stick with moral impurity for now and put off sainthood for another day. That said, where there’s room for improvement I’m eager for suggestions. I have home-brewed beer to avoid the excise tax on alcohol, and these days I avoid booze entirely. I don’t own a car so I pay little excise tax on gasoline directly. As for the self-employment tax, I decided in 2006 to just stop paying it (non-legally). So far that’s worked out fine.
If you think the government is so bad, why don’t you just leave the country?: If you are asking whether I’ve considered moving to another country as a way to live on less money, avoid support of the U.S. government, get out from under the thumb of Uncle Sam, spend my suddenly large bank of free time by seeing a bit more of the world, and so forth — I have considered this and am considering it. If what you’re asking is “If you hate the government so much, why don’t you leave its country” then the answer is different: I don’t believe this country belongs to the government. I don’t believe that by opposing the government, I become less invested in the place where I was born, where I grew up, and where I live. In short, I think that it’s the government that’s the problem, and that if push comes to shove it’s the government that should leave the country, not the people.
Do you just want to “not support” the government, or actually to resist it in some fashion?: I think many protesters with their signs and chants and their #hashtags are fooling themselves if they think they oppose the government — their actions and their rhetoric don’t take a nickel from the bottom line of their actual support. I think a compelling case for the need to resist the government can be made. Now, finally, I have earned the right to weigh that case. Once I stop supporting the government, I can decide whether to wash my hands of it or whether to go further and actively oppose it.
Don’t you know that many brave people have fought and died so that you would have the right to espouse the tripe that is your opinion?: I’ll try to hold up my end of the bargain.
How can you reconcile withholding financial support for our federal government and continuing to benefit from services supplied by that same government?: I see what you’re getting at, but I think this is a sham argument. Let’s say Al Capone sets up shop in your neighborhood and offers you the standard mob protection racket deal: “We’ll make sure your home doesn’t burn down and your kneecaps don’t get broken if you pay us $50 every week — it’s great insurance.” You grumble but pay, resenting it all the while. Now imagine Al Capone uses some of the money you and your neighbors have been coughing up to add a new wing to the hospital, or to throw a party for returning war veterans, or to buy a truck for the volunteer fire department? Should you stop resenting being shaken-down every week? Should you start being glad you’re being extorted? Should you feel guilty if you can weasel out of paying? How much of your money does Al Capone have to spend on philanthropy before it becomes okay that he’s extorting it from you?
Taxes are the way everybody chips in to fund things of mutual benefit, like national parks and the social safety net. By refusing to pay taxes aren’t you shirking your duty to help out?: When I hear this argument, I imagine a favorite charity: maybe Amnesty International, or Habitat for Humanity, or Doctors Without Borders… something like that. What if I learned that my favorite charity spends half of the donations I send to them on a campaign of murder, brutality, and torture? Would I continue to send them checks to support the good things they do with the other half of my money, or would I find another charity to support? Nothing about tax resistance prevents you from contributing your time and money to beneficial projects. It just means you intend to do so in a way that doesn’t also contribute to the harmful projects of the government.
Speaking of charity, why don’t you just continue to earn as much money as you used to, and then donate enough to charity that your taxable income drops below the tax line?: It’s a common misconception that people can get under the income tax line by donating a sufficient amount to charity. I’ve run the numbers, and it’s not that simple. The first problem is that the deduction for charitable donations is an itemized deduction, so you have to donate enough to get your itemized deductions as high as your standard deduction before you reduce your taxes. (As of 2025 there is a $1,000 above-the-line tax deduction for charitable contributions that you can take even if you don’t itemize, so this can help a little bit.) The second problem is that your deduction is typically limited to some percentage of your adjusted gross income. The third problem is that you take your itemized deductions after you calculate your adjusted gross income, so you can’t reduce your AGI that way and therefore can’t use this method to qualify for tax credits that require a low AGI (like the retirement savings tax credit I rely on).

Every once in a while the government loosens some of these restrictions. For instance, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina they allowed people to make tax-deductible hurricane-related donations up to 100% of their AGI. The ceiling on charitable deductions was also removed in the wake of the CoViD-19 epidemic in 2020. These opportunities are difficult to predict, however, and only help with the second of the three problems.
Is this site going to end up just being some shady excuse to beg money from people?: No.
Do you really think you’re going to change the government’s policies this way?: No, I don’t. Some people resist taxes as a protest directed at people in power or as a tactic to try to force concessions from the government. But the reason I resist is to stop my personal support of the government — to wash my hands of it. I had a selfish desire to live my life according to my principles, and not a grander agenda of regime change or reform. Which isn’t to say that I don’t want change, just that this path wasn’t chosen with that goal in mind. That said, I like to think that by writing about what I’m doing I might encourage other people to try tax resistance. What if 10% of people who are of the opinion that the government is run by a bunch of psychopaths actually withdrew their support? Well, I don’t know what would happen, but I think it would mean more than if they all tweeted about how angry it makes them feel or they decided to vote for some politician or they paraded around in the streets again. Tax resistance is a good exclamation point at the end of my convictions — a way of saying “and not only that, but I mean it!”
Is there an RSS / XML feed for this site?: Yes: https://sniggle.net/TPL/rss1.xml is the RSS 1.0 feed and https://sniggle.net/TPL/atom10.xml is the Atom 1.0 feed.
Why are acronyms and abbreviations, like IRS, underlined in Picket Line RSS feeds?: I use the HTML element <abbr> to mark an abbreviation. I usually include the full or spelled-out versions of abbreviations in the “title” attribute of the tag. Some web browsers note the presence of such tags by underlining the enclosed text, and if you hover the mouse pointer over such an underlined abbreviation, a little pop-up window will display the contents of that “title” attribute. You may not find this particularly useful, but people with impaired vision who use audible screen readers to read web pages might appreciate hearing “US” pronounced differently depending on whether it’s a capitalized version of the word “us” or an abbreviation for “United States,” for instance. This may also help search engines and other automated tools to analyze the pages on this site more usefully.
Is there a topic index to this site that I can use to find information on a particular subject?: Yes, and it’s unique to the blog-world as far as I know: Take a look at the outline page. It’s organized not in alphabetical order, but in clusters of topics that kind of mirror one way the content on this site might be grouped.
Who is this Ishmael Gradsdovic?: He’s my imaginary friend. That’s more substantial than a nom de plume but less scary than a psychotic break with reality. He tells some interesting stories, like the one about his baseball-theorizing college friends, or the time his free will disappeared, or his photojournalist stint in the opening days of the Afghanistan War. He has a telepathic, clairvoyant tapeworm who interviewed Mahatma Gandhi, Aristotle, and Epictetus. Sometimes he writes letters to the editor.

On Tuesday I mentioned Benjamin Ricketson Tucker’s brief experiment with poll tax resistance. I’ve since tracked down a copy of a collection of Tucker’s writings — Instead of a Book, By a Man Too Busy to Write One: A Fragmentary Exposition of Philosophical Anarchism — in which he addresses and justifies both his poll tax refusal and, later, his decision to confine himself to symbolic resistance of taxes (such as paying under protest).

The first of these comes from the pages of Liberty (26 March 1887) in response to a letter-to-the-editor that asks Tucker whether by refusing to pay taxes he is wrongly violating an implicit contract that all citizens have with each other and with the State. His answer sums up the Anarchist dismissal of that old political philosophy trope that makes the State out to be the result of a contract agreed to by its subjects:

To the Editor of Liberty:
I have lately been involved in several discussions leading out of your refusal to pay your poll-tax, and I would like to get from you your reasons, so far as they are public property, for that action. It seems to me that any good object could have been better and more easily obtained by compromising with the law, except the object of propagandism, and that in attaining that object you were going beyond the right into paths where you could not bid any one follow who was trying to live square with the truth, so far as we may know it.
It seems to me that we owe our taxes to the State, whether we believe in it or not, so long as we remain within its borders, for the benefits which we willingly or unwillingly derive from it; that the only right course to be pursued is to leave any State whose laws we can no longer obey without violence to our own reason, and, if necessary, people a desert island for ourselves; for in staying in it and refusing to obey its authority, we are denying the right of others to combine on any system which they may deem right, and in trying to compel them to give up their contract, we are as far from right as they in trying to compel us to pay the taxes in which we do not believe.
I think that you neglect the grand race experience which has given us our present governments when you wage war upon them all, and that a compromise with existing circumstances is as much a part of the right as following our own reason, for the existent is the induction of the race, and so long as our individual reasons are not all concordant it is entitled to its share of consideration, and those who leave it out do, in so far, wrong.
Even granting strict individualism to be the ultimate goal of the race development, still you seem to me positively on a false path when you attempt — as your emphatic denial of all authority of existing government implies — to violently substitute the end of development for its beginning.
I think that these are my main points of objection, and hope that you will pardon my impertinence in addressing you, which did not come from any idle argumentative curiosity, but a genuine search for the truth, if it exists; and so I ventured to address you, as you by your action seem to me to accept the burden of proof in your contest with the existent.
―Frederic A.C. Perrine

Mr. Perrine’s criticism is an entirely pertinent one, and of the sort that I like to answer, though in this instance circumstances have delayed the appearance of his letter. The gist of his position — in fact, the whole of his argument — is based on the assumption that the State is precisely the thing which the Anarchists say it is not — namely, a voluntary association of contracting individuals. Were it really such, I should have no quarrel with it, and I should admit the truth of Mr. Perrine’s remarks. For certainly such voluntary association would be entitled to enforce whatever regulations the contracting parties might agree upon within the limits of whatever territory, or divisions of territory, had been brought into the association by these parties as individual occupiers thereof, and no non-contracting party would have a right to enter or remain in this domain except upon such terms as the association might impose. But if, somewhere between these divisions of territory, had lived, prior to the formation of the association, some individual on his homestead, who for any reason, wise or foolish, had declined to join in forming the association, the contracting parties would have had no right to evict him, compel him to join, make him pay for any incidental benefits that he might derive from proximity to their association, or restrict him in the exercise of any previously-enjoyed right to prevent him from reaping these benefits. Now, voluntary association necessarily involving the right of secession, any seceding member would naturally fall back into the position and upon the rights of the individual above described, who refused to join at all. So much, then, for the attitude of the individual toward any voluntary association surrounding him, his support thereof evidently depending upon his approval or disapproval of its objects, his view of its efficiency in attaining them, and his estimate of the advantages and disadvantages involved in joining, seceding, or abstaining. But no individual today finds himself under any such circumstances. The States in the midst of which he lives cover all the ground there is, affording him no escape, and are not voluntary associations, but gigantic usurpations. There is not one of them which did not result from the agreement of a larger or smaller number of individuals, inspired sometimes no doubt by kindly, but oftener by malevolent, designs, to declare all the territory and persons within certain boundaries a nation which every one of these persons must support, and to whose will, expressed through its sovereign legislators and administrators no matter how chosen, every one of them must submit. Such an institution is sheer tyranny, and has no rights which any individual is bound to respect; on the contrary, every individual who understands his rights and values his liberties will do his best to overthrow it. I think it must now be plain to Mr. Perrine why I do not feel bound either to pay taxes or to emigrate. Whether I will pay them or not is another question — one of expediency. My object in refusing has been, as Mr. Perrine suggests, propagandism, and in the receipt of Mr. Perrine’s letter I find evidence of the adaptation of this policy to that end. Propagandism is the only motive that I can urge for isolated individual resistance to taxation. But out of propagandism by this and many other methods I expect there ultimately will develop the organization of a determined body of men and women who will effectively, though passively, resist taxation, not simply for propagandism, but to directly cripple their oppressors. This is the extent of the only “violent substitution of end for beginning” which I can plead guilty of advocating, and, if the end can “better and more easily obtained” in any other way, I should like to have it pointed out. The “grand race experience” which Mr. Perrine thinks I neglect is a very imposing phrase, on hearing which one is moved to lie down in prostrate submission; but whoever first chances to take a closer look will see that it is but one of those spooks of which Tak Tak^* tells us. Nearly all the evils with which mankind was ever afflicted were products of this “grand race experience,” and I am not aware that any were ever abolished by showing it any unnecessary reverence. We will bow to it when we must; we will “compromise with existing circumstances” when we have to; but at all other times we will follow our reason and the plumb-line.

^* “A writer for Liberty [James L. Walker] who has devoted much space to exposition of the philosophy of Egoism.”

The Oregon Peace Institute has a cable access show in Portland, and recently hosted three members of the Oregon Community for War Tax Resistance — John Grueschow, Anne Huntwork, and Pam Allee — to discuss war tax resistance:

While it’s nice to see war tax resisters getting the word out, they sadly spent much of their time asking people to support the “Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act” — a counterproductive waste of time and energy.

They bent over backwards to reassure people that they aren’t opposed to taxes in general — indeed they are in favor of taxes, but they feel these taxes should go to “life affirming” things that are “for the common good.” To this end, they redirect their own taxes — sending their checks to charities of their choosing rather than to the IRS.

This message is common in war tax resistance circles. The intention in part is to distinguish war tax resisters from tax evaders who are avoiding taxes for selfish reasons. But I think this can send another message that isn’t as helpful: They seem to be saying that it is perfectly fine for them to decide on their own which charitable activities they want to support, but that this isn’t okay for everyone else.

In other words, if the government ever decided to spend its tax receipts on things the resisters agree are “life affirming” and “for the common good” then the government would be perfectly justified in forcing everyone else to go along with it. It seems to me that once you admit that some group of people gets to decide what the “common good” is that everyone is forced to spend their money on, you’ve already lost: all that remains is a political battle over which group of people gets to do the deciding.

It strikes me as arrogant for war tax resisters to say “yes, I believe one group of people should be able to tax everyone and spend their money… but only if they decide the way I like, otherwise I’ll drop out.” It’s like saying that you’ll flip a coin to decide who does the dishes: if it comes up heads the other guy has to do it, and if it comes up tails you’ll flip it again until it comes up heads.

It would be more respectful to say: “I think I know how to spend my money in more beneficial ways than Congress does, and I believe I am right to do so, and so I will, and I’ll certainly respect your right to do likewise.”

Anyway… Here’s another video clip, of the Oregon Community for War Tax Resistance holding up “Burma Shave”-style signs for traffic on Tax Day: