Miscellaneous tax resisters →
individual anarchist or libertarian tax resisters →
J. Tony Serra
J. Tony Serra is an attorney with a soft spot for the anti-establishment types.
If you’re a Native American who shot a cop, a Symbionese Liberation Army trooper wanted for planting bombs under police cars and shooting up a bank, a Black Panther on trial for murder or just a dope smoker — Serra wants to be on your side.
He also brags: “I haven’t paid taxes for 40 years — my whole career!”
Three times — in , , and earlier — he’s been convicted for resisting taxes.
“I stopped paying taxes during the Vietnam War,” Serra says.
“I didn’t want my money paying for war.”
You won’t find much mention of him in war tax resistance circles, in spite of his stand and his radical cred — I’m not sure why.
He’s nowhere to be found on the list of Convicted War Tax Resisters at Ed Hedemann & Ruth Benn’s site, for instance, although he is one of the few war tax resisters to have done time for his action.
the Los Angeles Times put together a good article about Serra, his causes, and his many pro bono defenders: Always a Man of His Convictions.
Imprisoned tax resister J. Tony Serra sent a letter from prison to California Lawyer Magazine.
It touches on his experiences as a war tax resister, but mostly shares his observations of how prison life has deteriorated since he last did significant prison time thirty years ago.
A profile of J. Tony Serra, the radical defense lawyer and long-time tax resister who is “one of two war tax resisters to have been jailed for ‘willful failure to pay’ federal income taxes.”
A report from Bill Ramsey on his attempt to get the anti-war group United for Peace and Justice to add a one-time war tax resistance campaign to its upcoming nonviolent direct action plans.
Ramsey reports: “I rarely had to explain why we think the time is ripe for a one-time act of war tax refusal.
Instead, I was repeatedly asked, ‘Where do we sign up?’ ”
You can learn more about Ramsey’s one-time war tax resistance campaign proposal at http://www.nwtrcc.org/campaign_proposal_revised.htm: “On , thousands of war opponents publicly refuse to pay a portion of their federal income taxes in order to withhold funds for the war in Iraq and redirect those funds to reconstruction in Iraq and in communities destroyed by Katrina.”
The campaign needs volunteers to get things ready before the roll-out.
I’ve signed up to help, but the more the merrier!
Your Picket Line international tax resistance
round-up:
Neue Rheinische Zeitung covers Germany’s Netzwerk
Friedenssteuer, or “peace tax network.” This includes resisters
like Dorothee Sölle, and like Brigitte Janus, who refuses to pay her taxes
and instead submits to seizure. The article also briefly mentions the
recent international conference in Norway. Sölle is quoted as saying of
the war tax resistance movement: “Success cannot be our only criterion.
There are things you must do so that you remain human.” (Or something
like that. The quote is in German, which I do not understand.)
The right-wing, decentralist Liberal Democratic Movement of Carabobo, Venezuela is hinting at a tax resistance campaign.
Upset at deteriorating public safety and infrastructure, and alleging that local taxes are being siphoned off to wasteful federal spending and a bloated local bureaucracy, Enio Daza, autonomism director of the Carabobo branch of the party, suggested that locals organize their own, independent tax office, and pay their taxes there where they could exercise local control over the spending.
A similar movement is brewing in Sicily, where a group of residents angered at government neglect of the sewer system, public lighting, the water supply, and waste collection, has proposed a tax strike.
West Coast Cannabis profiles tax resister J. Tony Serra, who is also active in the cannabis legalization cause.
He is skeptical of an upcoming California ballot initiative to legalize-and-tax marijuana.
“Once it is legalized the greedy corporations will get their hands in it and it creates this corporate moral disability.
Some large dispensaries already practice acts of corporate moral disability.
I want it to stay with the mammas and the pappas.
The small and unique places. I want the government out of my closet.
It should be free, man. I am never for more taxes. I am a tax resister.”
The crew from Northern California War Tax Resistance has been hard at work planning for the upcoming national gathering of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, which will be held from in Berkeley and Oakland. (You can find detailed information and a registration form at the NWTRCC website.)
’s program at the Berkeley Friends Church starts in the evening, with the registration table open at , dinner at , and introductions and orientation starting at .
At there will be a panel on innovations in social justice networking featuring Maritza Schäfer (who specializes in helping activist groups form their outreach strategies, and whom I know from her work with the Abundance League) and Mira Luna, an innovator of alternative local economic models such as the Bay Area Community Exchange.
On we move to the United Methodist Church on the shore of Lake Merritt in Oakland.
Breakfast starts at , and the program at .
At you’ll have a choice of workshops:
Outreach strategies and social justice networking
Techniques of simple living/low-income tax resistance
Confrontational war tax resistance
In the early afternoon we’ll have informal small-group discussions as we take sack lunches outside for a walk around the lake or a picnic in the park.
Then, from we’ll hold our War Tax Resistance 101 and 202 classes.
The 101 is intended for newbies and people curious about war tax resistance, and attendees will get an overview of the various methods of tax resistance and how to choose a method that fits your goals and your lifestyle.
There will be two 202 sessions for experienced resisters to talk shop about the latest developments, current challenges, and emerging techniques in resistance — one for the low-income/simple-living set, and another for the refuse-to-pay or refuse-to-file set.
After this will be a set of afternoon seminars.
You have the choice of attending a presentation by Michael Eisenscher on the New Priorities Network or attending two of the following shorter seminars (which will be repeating back-to-back):
After Dinner our evening program begins, featuring a granting ceremony in which our local alternative fund — The People’s Life Fund — gives grants of redirected tax dollars to deserving local groups, entertainment by musician Francisco Herrera and YouthSpeaks, and a talk from radical lawyer and two-time prisoner of war tax resistance J. Tony Serra.
we move back to Berkeley and have the business meeting of the coordinating committee of NWTRCC (that means anyone who considers themselves part of the group and cares to show up) at Berkeley CoHousing.
If you can make it out to this, it’s worth it.
You’ll meet people who have been resisting for decades and who use a variety of methods.
It’s a great way to learn more about resisting taxes and about the variety of approaches to conscientious activism.
It was e.e. cummings, I used to love this when I was an early teenager about a conscientious objector [“i sing of Olaf glad and big”].
There was one line, “there is some shit I will not eat,” that reverberated in my social conscience since probably age 12.
There comes a point when there is something out there that we have to reject ultimately, and we have to throw ourselves on the wheel to stop it — even if the wheel devours us.
The boycott of taxes is so strong, so potentially powerful, that I guess I am urging other people to go forward without fear.
We are right.
War is wrong.
We are approaching the totalitarian state.
Take from them their finances, and we take their strength.
Eliminate the nexus between corporate wealth and industry and politics.
In this era there is so much to protest against, and tax is a very salient part of that.
A note about “frivolous filing” notices.
The IRS has gotten in the habit of responding to taxpayer protests with $5,000 frivolous filing penalties — even if the protests accompany a tax return that has been filled out correctly and legally.
What’s worse is that by the IRS’s rules, in order to appeal such a fine, you have to first pay it.
Peace activists have a resource of financial support when they accrue penalties for resisting taxes, participating in civil disobedience or in nonviolent direct action.
Through the PSC, the cost of a person’s or family’s penalty can be defrayed by almost 100%.
This is possible because a community of almost one hundred people have come together and committed to help each other with their fines.
A video of Tony Serra’s keynote at the NWTRCC national gathering last Spring is now on-line:
Some war tax resistance links that have crossed my browser in recent days:
Almost daily for the past four decades, Jeff Dietrich has been in jail or
feeding upwards of 1,000 people at the Catholic Worker Kitchen at 6th Street
and Gladys Avenue in downtown Los Angeles.
At night, whether in jail or at home at the Catholic Worker hospitality
house in Boyle Heights, Dietrich writes about protests and the poor for the
Catholic Worker Agitator. The monthly newspaper’s
subscription is $1/year and not tax deductible because the Los Angeles
Catholic Worker is not a 501(c)3 non profit.
The IRS
has long since given up threatening to jail Dietrich for failing to pay
taxes. Dietrich never pleads innocent nor asks for mercy during sentencing
after being arrested for civil disobedience.
He knows that he will sleep peacefully in jail and his prosecutor, judge and
jury won’t.
Elaine M. Gibson has joined the ranks of war tax resisters. Gibson withheld 7.8% of her annual income tax and sent it instead to the Conscience Canada Peace Tax Trust Fund. “The organization says it will hold the money in trust and will return it any time it is requested. It uses interest from the Peace Tax Trust Fund for operating expenses.”
Some news of interest to tax resisters in the U.S.:
The on-again/off-again boondoggle of the federal government contracting out to private debt collection agencies to pursue people behind on their taxes is apparently back on again.
By including the program in a new transportation bill, its proponents could use the income they hope to see from the program to offset other spending.
It would probably be more efficient for the government just to hire more IRS agents to go after the money, but there are few things a Republican Congress would be less likely to do than give the IRS more money to increase the ranks of the National Treasury Employees Union.
My guess is that these private debt collectors are going to have a hell of a time.
Since the last time this sort of plan was floated, a massive, years-long, ongoing, coast-to-coast scam has been in progress in which callers impersonating tax collectors have been getting victims to pony up money.
News reports follow in the wake of the heists, all saying that if someone calls you up about a supposed tax debt, it’s a scam.
The private agencies are gonna have a hell of a time distinguishing themselves from the scammers.
If the program is like the last one (and I haven’t seen the details yet, so I’m not sure), the agencies will be able to keep 25% of what they collect for themselves.
It’s small consolation, but some consolation, to know that at least some of the money won’t be going directly to the government.
In more troubling news, another part of the same Transportation bill would revoke passports from people who are behind on their taxes by more than $50,000.
I’ll probably hit the $50k mark in a couple of years, so I take this very personally.
The bill hasn’t become law just yet.
They’re still ironing out the differences between the House and Senate versions.
But both houses’ versions had both of these proposals, so they seem likely to survive (though it’s not unheard of for parts of legislation that are passed by each house to wind up on the cutting room floor regardless, whatever you may have heard on Schoolhouse Rock).
Obama is expected to sign the bill into law either way.
When the final bill is passed and signed I’ll take another look and investigate what the process of passport denial/revocation might actually look like in practice.
And I’ll of course post something here if my own passport gets yanked.
I may even accept that as a challenge and see if I can row a boat to Cuba or wade across the Rio Grande.
