Some historical and global examples of tax resistance → Britain / U.K. (see also: Ireland, Scotland, Wales) → Council Tax Rebels, 2003– → Paul Nicolson

Today, a roundup of links from here and there:

American War Tax Resisters

• Ruth Benn reports on war tax resister presence at the protests surrounding the United Nations review of the Nuclear Weapons Non-Proliferation Treaty.
• Here are some photos from NWTRCC’s national gathering in Milwaukee earlier this month. Erica Weiland wrote up a recap of the gathering.
• On the radio program A Prairie Home Companion, host Garrison Keillor gave a nod to war tax resistance in the course of a segment telling the story of the history of the Mennonites and another comic dramatization of a whimsical tax resister. Check out the “Garrison Keillor talks about the history of Mennonites” and “Catchup” segments in the archives.

IRS Woes

• The Treasury Department’s inspector-general issued a report stating that over a recent ten-year period, 1580 IRS employees “were found to have willfully evaded taxes.” Most (75%) were not fired, and some later received promotions, raises, and bonuses.
• The number of people who renounced their U.S. citizenship is aiming toward another record high this year. The first quarter of the year saw 1,335 people tell Sam “you’re not my uncle” — a new record.

Tax Resistance Campaigns Around the World

• Spanish war tax resisters have produced a stylish video to promote their cause: No Pagamos (We Aren’t Paying):

• Police brutality, discrimination, and mistreatment towards Israel’s Ethopian Jewish minority has led to protests, clashes, and to Shlomo Molla, one of the few Ethiopian-Israelis to have been in the Israeli parliament, calling for tax resistance, refusal to serve in the army, and other forms of civil disobedience.
• Paul Nicolson, a retired Anglican vicar, took his local council government to court, saying the £125 in fees it had added to the council tax that he had refused to pay in protest were excessive. He won his case.
• Payroll tax arrears are up 19% over the last fiscal year in Hong Kong and some are blaming the conscientious tax resistance movement (良心抗稅運動) that was launched as part of the pro-democracy “umbrella movement” there.
• Forty villages in Guragon, India have decided not to pay a new “house tax” the (Haryana) state government is trying to impose on them.
• The Chamber of Commerce and Industry in the northern Indian state of Jammu announced a policy of “total non-cooperation” including tax resistance in order to pressure the state government to meet its demands.

Some tabs that have opened in my browser in recent days:

• Some relatives of victims of last year’s terrorist attack in Paris are refusing to pay the victims’ tax arrears, saying the money is doing more to promote terrorism than to protect them, and specifically that it is insulting to tax the victims to pay for the legal defense of the perpetrators.
• Activists in the North Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo are using tax resistance to pressure the government to provide better security.
• Haringey retiree Paul Nicolson has been refusing to pay his council tax in protest against austerity measures that made Britain’s most poor subject to this tax for the first time.

  By refusing to pay, Nicolson says he wanted to get “on the receiving end of the enforcement procedure in solidarity with the poorest residents of Haringey”. “Threats of eviction are being shelled out by computers all the time,” he says. “Food, clothes, fuel, transport and other necessities are all competing with council tax and rent for the £73 benefit — there is a massive competition which simply can’t work. People might give up food to pay the taxes because of the threat of court or eviction.”

• The Greek-style protest of storming toll gates and waving the drivers through appears to have spread to Toulouse.
• Die Presse looks at the dismal state (for the State) of tax collection in Greece.