Residents of Hong Kong, worried by China’s recent moves to stamp out the remnants of democratic political power there, have for been engaging in large-scale “Occupy”-style protests.
You may have heard this in the news under the names “Occupy Central” or the “umbrella movement.”
multiple HK$68.90 tax payment checks being sent as a protest by an “umbrella movement” activist
The occupy-style street protest phase of this movement is coming to a close, or at least a pause, whether from dwindling momentum, diminishing returns, or a ramping up of authoritarian repression. So now the movement is switching tactics.
On , a coalition of groups launched a “non-cooperation movement” featuring forms of tax resistance.
The two tax resistance tactics being proposed are modest and largely symbolic in nature.
Residents of government-run housing are being asked to delay their rent payments as long as possible (公屋延遲交租 — Gung Uk Yinchi Jou), without actually risking eviction.
Taxpayers are being asked to pay in a way that causes inconvenience for the state — by dividing up their tax payments into a number of individually-submitted, small amounts (分拆支票交稅 — Faanchaak Jipiu Gaau Seui) of HK$6.89, $68.90, or $689.
These amounts are meant to be symbolic of the 689 members of the 1,200-member election committee who elected anti-democratic, Beijing-leaning Leung Chun-ying as Hong Kong’s chief executive.
the non-cooperation movement has designed a set of rubber stamps to help people fill out multiple, small, symbolic tax payment checks and to decorate them with protest messages
Franklen K.S. Choi says the coalition behind the new movement is still developing its tactics. Choi promoted the idea of tax resistance this way:
“Taxpayers’ money should not be used to feed a violent government.”
They hope the tactics they have adopted thus far, which are not illegal, will encourage people to join the campaign who might otherwise be too timid to challenge the government.
They also hope to put pressure on the government both by delaying payment and by increasing the administrative costs of tax and rent processing.
There have also been hopes expressed that this protest might become something like a popular referendum on the Leung administration.
If you read Chinese or are patient with the current state of automated translation, you can follow some of the deliberations and pronouncements of the movement at their Facebook page or at inmediahk.net, or you can search for “良心抗稅運動” or “Leungsam Kongseui Wandung” (Conscientious Tax Resistance Movement).
Evan Reeves with his 5,574 checks
This is the first time someone from a foreign tax resistance movement has
reached out to me for advice, so I’m finding this to be particularly exciting.
They definitely seem to have a hunger for historical precedents (e.g. the tax
resistance examples of
Thoreau, the
anti-Poll Tax movement in the
U.K., and the
women’s suffrage movement).
I’ll keep my eyes on this movement as it develops, as best as I can through the language barrier anyway, and will post updates here as I learn more.
Some international tax resistance news briefs:
The Socialist Worker covers the anti-water charge movement in Ireland.
Included in a sidebar is a link to this video in which Nicky Coules explains how people can uninstall and bypass a water tax meter installed at their homes:
Tax resistance, or the act of consciously not paying tax, would enable
residents from all walks of life to directly throw a wrench into the gears
without having to risk life and limb.
Symbolically, tax resisters would be sending a loud and clear message to
the administration that it does not have the mandate to govern. And since
tax records are properly kept, this form of civil disobedience would also
produce an indisputable number of participants and, by extension, act as a
de facto referendum.
Tax resistance also satisfies the Occupy movement’s principle of
non-violence. No participants can escape the legal ramifications of their
action, either, avoiding the problem of “free riders”.
Some might argue that tax resistance would hurt innocent citizens such as
those who rely on government assistance and social services. My response
is that pro-democracy activists can perhaps learn from Julia “Butterfly”
Hill, an American activist, who took US$150,000 of tax money and donated
it to civic organisations to help various causes. To paraphrase Hill, the
act of tax resistance is not refusing to pay tax, but paying the money
where it belongs because the government has failed to do so.
I am self-employed, and first and foremost a single mom of a beautiful
baby girl, and I declare openly that I am unable to pay, with my income,
all of the taxes that the state demands from me. I appeal to the principle
of necessity and to the capacity to pay in proportion to income,
respectively, as established by articles 54 of the criminal code and 53
of the Italian Constitution to justify my categorical refusal to continue
to contribute, by means of taxes, to the expenses for the maintenance of
the privileges of the political class that governs us: the real villain
of this economic crisis.
She explains: “This is not a new idea. To pay to able to work, to pay to be
able to survive, this is called extortion. This is called mafia. This is
called usury.… I’d rather die fighting than suffocate in silence.”
The third war tax resistance podcast, sponsored by the War Tax Talk blog, features war tax resisters Shirley Whiteside, Juanita Nelson, Randy Kehler, Betty Winkler, and Beth Seberger sharing the fruits of their experience.
“Tax evasion” has a bad reputation because governments have successfully convinced people that paying taxes is of public benefit, and that those who dodge their share reap these benefits while pushing the burden off on others.
But there are a lot of assumptions packaged in with that story that don’t hold up under scrutiny.
Under a more realistic set of assumptions about the nature of public spending and taxation, tax dodging is an important public service that benefits all of us by limiting the invasiveness of government.
The scam in which callers impersonating IRS agents trick people into sending them money to settle spurious tax debts continues to grow.
According to the latest news:
When the law enforcement agency that oversees the Internal Revenue Service warned in of the “largest-ever phone fraud scam targeting taxpayers,” it did not realize the 20,000 victims would be just the tip of a growing iceberg.
As of , close to 300,000 consumers have reported to the Treasury Inspector General for Taxpayer Administration, or TIGTA for short, that they’ve been contacted by callers claiming to be from the IRS.
As we head into tax season in 2015, 12,000 people are complaining to TIGTA about the IRS impersonation scam every single week.
At least $14 million have been reported to be extorted by criminals, and the actual number may be twice that high.
The tax resistance movement that’s sprouting from the Occupy Central / Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong continues to seek guidance from tax resistance campaigns around the world.
In the latest example, they look to Julia “Butterfly” Hill’s enormous war tax redirection action for inspiration.
The Italian tax resistance movement growing under the hashtag “#IoNonMiAmmazzo” now has a rap video to dramatize its campaign:
Today, an international tax resistance news round-up:
Hong Kong
The “Occupy Central” movement, which has been pushing for political liberalization in Hong Kong, is exploring the tactic of tax resistance.
Inspired by American war tax protester Evan Reeves, who paid his taxes in protest by writing 5,574 checks, each with a name of a fallen U.S. soldier written in the memo field, Raymond Kwong launched a similar protest against the Hong Kong government.
On , Kwong sent off the last of his 9,280 checks.
He used rubber-stamps, some hand-carved, to fill out each check, and hand-signed each one.
He says he felt like something out of the Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times while going through all the motions of stamping and signing each check, a process that took about 54 hours.
Between the cost of the checks, the postage, the stamps & ink, he also says he had to spend about HK$500 above and beyond the amount of the tax.
these stacks contain about half of Raymond Kwong’s 9,280 tax checks
The New Statesman looks back on the life of women’s suffrage activist Sophia Duleep Singh:
She was one of the early tax resisters, refusing to pay for licences for her dogs and carriage.
She ignored all letters demanding payment until she was issued with a fine.
Instead, she equipped her lawyer with a disquisition on female suffrage and the injustice of taxation without representation and sent him to court to read it to the judge.
Eventually bailiffs turned up at her house and seized a seven-stone diamond ring, worth far more than she owed.
But the suffragettes won the war: when the ring came up at auction, they flooded the auction house and refused to bid for it until the auctioneer was forced to lower the starting bid to £10 — at which price it was bought by a suffragette and returned to Sophia, amid rapturous applause.
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 , 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.
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.
Today I’ll try to catch up on what has been going on with the tax resistance campaign taking place in Hong Kong as part of the “umbrella movement” protests for democratic reforms.
Beijing loyalists had been pushing what they were calling a “universal suffrage” bill, but one which would only allow people to vote for candidates that had been pre-screened by a Beijing-controlled committee.
This bill failed to pass the Hong Kong legislature , which was seen as a victory for pro-democratic forces.
The tax resistance campaign has posted a series of bulletins on inmediahk.net about the campaign and its historical precedents, including:
some of the illustrations accompanying the inmediahk.net series of articles about the tax resistance campaign in Hong Kong
The movement seems to be exploring new tactics.
The last time I checked in, the tactics being discussed seemed to mostly be either underpaying tax by a symbolic amount or paying the complete amount of the tax but in a symbolic fashion (by writing a large number of checks each for a value that is a number with symbolic value for the campaign).
Overpaying the taxes by a symbolic amount so that the government cuts a refund check for that amount.
some of the refund checks received from Hong Kong Inland Revenue
Expanding the underpayment or payment-with-many-checks method to other payments to the government besides taxes, such as student loan repayments, rates at government-run housing, and utility bills.
people brought their checkbooks to an event where they could use rubber stamps to quickly make many $6.89 checks
Donating money to charity so as to reduce the amount of tax owed.
Responding to a notice of assessment with an objection (in the 1cm×18cm space provided for objections) to the effect that the unrepresentative, violent Leung Chun-ying regime has no authority to assess taxes.
fine print fills the space allowed for objections to the tax assessment
Rogge shares some of her tactics for reducing the effectiveness of
IRS
reprisals (excerpt):
The IRS has seized my car and checking account funds and has repeatedly levied my wages.
My strategy has been to work several jobs, so that if a permanent levy were placed on my wages at one work-place, I could either reduce my hours at that job or quit and still have a backup job.
When I’ve had the money, I’ve paid rent, health insurance, and food bills in advance.
