Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
Australia →
Queensland in 1927
In Greece the government has gone heavily into debt by trying to finance a
government of benevolent largesse and poorly-enforced taxation. Y’know… like
certain other governments you know. Now that the bill has come due and the
creditors have more or less put the government into receivership, they’re
trying to squeeze revenue out of the austerity- and recession-strapped
citizenry as quietly as possible — for instance by hiking fees on everything
the government provides, or by taking fees like road tolls that used to go to
the government and instead selling the rights to collect them to private
tax-farmers.
This didn’t go over as smoothly as planned, and a “We Won’t Pay” movement has
been battling the new fees with a variety of tactics — including occupying and
incapacitating toll booths, reestablishing electricity hookups to families who
have been cut off for failure to pay the new rates, turning in their vehicle
licenses rather than pay the increased license fees, and so forth.
Some clever person once said: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often
rhymes.” And with that, I’d like to spend some time today on the successful
tax strike targeting an agricultural water use tax in Queensland, Australia in
1927.
In 1926, the “loan mongering, money-wasting,” Queensland government, as one editorial put it, which had gone into debt to the mother country, began “inflicting taxation to meet the interest on all these devouring borrowings.”
Among the new taxes was one snuck in to the Water Act of 1926.
At the time, nobody seemed to notice that there was a tax involved — “there was no mention of a tax; nor was there anything to foreshadow such a tax” — but the Act empowered a commissioner to charge a fee to farmers who, under the terms of the act, were forced to register any wells or water pumps they used.
When the commissioner announced the fee schedule, it became clear that this was not just going to be a nominal paperwork-processing cost, but a revenue-raising tax on irrigation.
The farmers decided not to put up with it.
Among their grievances and arguments were these:
The farmers had suffered enough recently from increased taxes, as well as
blight, drought, and increased railway freights.
Because the price of commodities like cane sugar is fixed from year to
year (I’m not sure if this refers to an explicit government-set price, or
just the nature of competing with untaxed farmers who did not require
irrigation) farmers could not pass on the cost of the tax to the
consumer.
The tax unfairly further disadvantaged those farmers who did not have a
source of running water (or sufficient rainfall) on their property.
The government had a policy of encouraging farmers to try to convert
formerly unsuitable lands to agriculture, but now it seems to be
penalizing the ones that succeeded.
Farmers’ improvements on their lands, like their wells and pumping
stations, were made with their own capital or by borrowing, without help
from the government, so the government has no right to tax them. This
contrasts with urban water users, who can rely on a government-subsidized
water infrastructure.
The tax was based on pump capacity, not on the actual availability of
water, which meant that some farmers would be taxed on water they never
used.
This is even worse for farmers who lease their land from the government,
as they get taxed for making improvements to property that they do not
even own.
Farmers in Queensland were organized in groups called “Local Producers’
Associations,” which were the means by which they organized and spread their
tax strike. The first
LPA
to take on the tax was from Kalapa, and it came out swinging, passing the
following resolution in :
Other
LPAs
and other groups of farmers followed suit:
In Ayr, in
“the biggest
meeting of farmers ever held in the Burdekin district” at which
“Ninety per cent of the farmers of the district were present,” according
to a news account, the group decided that if the Government did not
respond satisfactorily to their protest, “the farmers should refuse to
take out a [water] license… All present pledged themselves to refuse to
take out a license.”
The Richmond branch of the Graziers Association of Central and Northern
Queensland then carried a motion
“that all
payment of water taxes be suspended” until the graziers as a whole
could be consulted.
Members of the Livingstone Shire council went on record supporting tax
resistance:
“I’ll fill my
well in and remove my machinery before I’ll pay the tax,” said one.
“I’m not going to register or take any action, and they can put me in gaol
if they like,” said another. “If they try to put us all in gaol it will
have to be a pretty big one to hold us. I think all the settlers should
hold out.”
One must congratulate these Burdekin growers for their determination to refuse
to pay the tax should the Irrigation Commissioner persist in his charges.
Whilst the writer is always opposed to direct action it must be remembered
that the circumstances of the present case are exceptional, and the growers at
the very limit of their patience and tolerance, are driven to it.
Never since that historical occasion when the cargo of tea was tossed
overboard in Boston Harbor, has there been a more successful rebellion
against an unpopular government impost, than that which has fairly bluffed
the McCormack Government, into abolishing the obnoxious Water Tax. And it was
such a surprise too; since David slew Goliath, and Oliver Twist knocked out
Noah Claypole, never have we seen an obnoxious giant, and a political giant
at that, so completely overthrown.
The clamor of those to be levied on, commencing double forte, multiplied, as
time went on, into one unappeasable roar of refusal, which about put the
broadcasting companies out of business. … “What has made ’em go off the
handle?” members of the Government alarmedly asked. “They have stood the
State Land Tax and Super Tax, the State Income Tax and Super Tax, the
Totalisator Fraction Tax, the Machinery Tax, the Hospital Tax, the Unemployed
Tax, the Additional Tax for unemployment, the Increased Cheque Tax, and the
Motor Vehicle Tax, and others, like lambs, and still supported the Government
with old time fervor… yet, when the water tax was announced they went mad and
announced in loud voices that they would cheerfully test the Government’s
hospitality in penal establishments, before they would pay the tax.” Such a
volte face. The one-time timid, consenting taxpayers became roaring
combatants, challenging the Government to go on with the tax. And the
Government has thrown in the towel.…
…Undoubtedly those originally marked out as Water Tax victims have scored. Of
course, “He who fights and runs away, will live to fight another day.” But
the author of that proverb forgets to mention the loss of morale, signified
by such a retreat. The moment a prize fighter’s knees begin to sag in the
ring, his opponent considers victory assured. All cockfighters know, the
instant a bird gives ground, and shows the least sign of weakness, the main
is practically settled. Queensland taxpayers, having so successfully
stampeded the Government, will adopt the same tactics in opposition to any
further taxation…
That a further protest be entered against the incidence of the hospital tax,
and request that same be collected on an income tax basis. Failing this, that
we refuse to pay further tax until the Act is amended as requested.
The preexisting organizational and communications infrastructure of the
Queensland farmers was key to rapidly organizing a tax strike and to
maintaining solidarity. And that, in turn, was key to their quick victory.
The story of the birth of Jesus, as given in the gospels, begins with his pregnant mother and her husband on the move to Bethlehem in order to enroll in the census that Caesar Augustus had launched as part of his plan “that all the world should be taxed.”
A government doesn’t launch a census just because it’s curious, but usually, as with Augustus, as the prelude to a tax.
It’s the government’s way of “casing the joint” before the big heist.
And so some tax resistance campaigns have started by resisting a census.
Today I’ll review some examples.
Poll Tax resistance in Thatcher’s Britain
Refusal to register was one of the ways people resisted Thatcher’s Poll Tax.
And the government’s difficulties in tracking people as they moved from place to place, and from one council’s jurisdiction to another, made enforcement difficult.
Resisters also successfully refused to provide information about their employment that could be used to seize taxes from their paychecks.
According to one account:
[T]he councils still had one insurmountable headache.
They had to find out where people worked.
This was a real nightmare because other than asking the people concerned, they had no real way of getting the information they needed.
When a liability order was granted by the court, non-payers were sent a form which requested details of employment.
Failure to fill it out carried a fine of £100 and £400 if the non-payer provided false information.
But this didn’t act as a deterrent either, because, if people couldn’t pay the Poll Tax itself (and the court costs which were added), then it made little difference if the council added another £100. A survey carried out by the Audit Commission in showed that, nationally, only 15% of people who received the form actually sent it back.
Like electoral registration, it was widely ignored even though this was a criminal offence.
Household Tax resistance in Ireland today
The Household Tax resistance movement in Ireland is defined by refusal by households to register to pay the tax.
This is not a charge to fund your local community, it is a tax to fund private speculators, bondholders and the bailout.
Our incomes and services are being decimated to pay this private debt.
Now people have a chance to register their opposition by not registering for this tax.
By not registering, we can make this a referendum on the bailouts for the rich and the cuts for us.
When the registration deadline hit at , only about half of Irish households had registered.
Ruth Coppinger of the Campaign Against Household and Water Taxes declared victory:
This is more than was achieved by Poll Tax non-payment which started off at 15% in the first year, , and which only reached 45% boycott in the year of its abolition.
Episcopalians in Scotland
The official church of Scotland had a habit through the centuries of taxing everyone in Scotland for the support of that church, whether they were members or not.
This tended to annoy those who belonged to other churches.
And this annoyance became especially loud whenever the “official” church got swapped from one denomination to another.
When the Presbyterians replaced the Episcopalians in the official chair in , one way the Episcopalians resisted was by refusing to pay the tax and refusing to participate in a church-run census.
William Maitland, in his History of Edinburgh, fretted over difficulties in estimating the population at this period of time, noting:
[T]he greatest Defect is owing to the Episcopalian Inhabitants, who, being of a different Communion from the established Church, are not subject to the Controul and Examination of its Ministers; wherefore, many of them refuse to give Accounts either of the Names or Numbers of Persons in their Families.
Queensland water tax strike
In Queensland, Australia, in , the government tried to sneak in a tax on farmers who used wells or water pumps to irrigate their lands.
The farmers rebelled.
Since the “tax” took the form of a stiff fee accompanying the mandatory registration of such wells or water pumps, it was natural that the tax resistance included mass refusal to register.
Local Producers’ Associations across Queensland gathered and voted to refuse registration.
A month after the tax went into effect, facing mass refusal, the government backed down and rescinded the tax… though without eliminating the requirement to register wells and water pumps.
Some Associations continued to counsel their members to refuse to register even after the tax resistance victory.
A Mr. Roome of the Woodmillar LPA put it this way:
A lot of farmers were under the impression that because of registration fee had been withdrawn, everything in the garden was lovely.
But the regulations were still there, and farmers who were under that impression would receive a rude awakening.
Only formal registration had to be made, but they would find that if they furnished the particulars asked for they would give the Government an opportunity to later on impose the charges.
The danger was still there, whereas if they refused to register the onus was on the Government to get the particulars, and prove that the farmers put down wells or sunk dams, etc. Once they gave the information they were at the mercy of the Government.
… The excuse by the Government was that they wanted to get a survey of the water facilities which was absolutely ridiculous.
The whole thing was a farce, and an excuse to impose a tax.
The only way was to refuse to register, which he hoped would be done by members of all branches, and also refuse to pay the tax.
A motion that the members of the Association refuse to register was passed.
Zakāt resistance in Malaysia
When the Malaysian government assumed control of the traditional Islamic religious tithe called the zakāt, made it mandatory, and fixed its rate based on the acreage and yields of farmers, this also meant that the government had to do a census of agricultural land and monitor the crop yields.
This led to widespread, varied, mostly quiet, but strikingly effective resistance.
James C. Scott, who studied the resistance, writes of one technique:
Some cultivators, particularly small-holders and tenants, simply refuse to register their cultivated acreage with the tithe agent.
Resistance to a pre-tax census in Fiji
A poll tax on indentured workers from India was initiated in Fiji in .
The Indians had no political representation on the island, were banned from the schools, and could only emigrate on a single ship voyage offered once per year: they were essentially considered disposable migrant labor.
The workers thought the tax, which amounted to the pay of 12 days labor, was a sort of bait-and-switch on the contracts that had brought them to Fiji, and vowed to resist.
As one account put it:
A start will be made in to register all those liable to pay the residential tax, and prison will be the fate of him who does not comply with the law.
Leading Indians in every district declare that they will willingly go to gaol before they register their names, and a general passive resistance is highly possible, with all its attendant strikes and bitter feeling.
a badge worn by members of the Women’s Tax Resistance League
The British women’s suffrage movement
The women’s suffrage movement in the United Kingdom, more so than anywhere else, used tax resistance in its struggle.
“No taxation without representation,” was the cry.
Suffragists also resisted government attempts to get information from them, both because these attempts were part of the effort to tax them, and because the laws that governed such information-gathering were passed by a male-exclusive government.
In , Winifred Patch wrote:
I have recently received a paper from the Inland Revenue Office headed “Duties on Land Values.
Notice to Furnish Information,” asking for the names and addresses of any persons to whom I pay rent or for whom I may collect rents, a penalty not exceeding £50 being incurred if this information is willfully withheld.
… As I am denied the rights of citizenship I absolutely decline to facilitate in any way the carrying out of the provisions of Mr. Lloyd George’s Finance Bill, and am returning my paper with this written across it.
I am hoping, through the Women’s Tax Resistance League, of which I am a member, to obtain expert information which will enable me to make it impossible for the Government to exact the £50 penalty, and will leave them with no alternative but to imprison me in default.
Will other women join me in making this protest?
I feel that there must be many like myself who would gladly risk imprisonment for the cause, but who, for various reasons, find it very difficult, if not impossible, to take part in the more active protests which have hitherto brought women into conflict with the law.
I cannot help hoping that we have here another vantage ground from which to attack a Government which refuses us justice.
Teresa Billington-Greig took up Patch’s suggestion and rallied the troops:
The famous forms on which the owners and lease-holders of the country have to prepare the necessary statistics for the levying of the new [land] tax have been issued now in practically all parts of England, and they will be issued in Scotland within a few days.
Already these forms have been returned unfilled up, and with a curt comment as to the status of the women applied to, by some of our members in England.
They will be so returned by many Suffragists across the border.
Neither information nor money will be forthcoming in response to the Inland Revene Department’s demands.
As far as possible this piece of Government business will be impeded first by the determined refusal of information, and, second, by the withholding of the money claimed in taxes.
Such refusal to yield to tyranny is always desirable.
But at the present moment it carries an additional value in that it can be employed to improve the chances of the Conciliation Women’s Suffrage Bill.
From now until the fate of the Bill is decided, every woman to whom any Government application for information or for taxes is made should not only refuse to comply because of the unrepresented condition of her sex, but should add a rider to the effect that she will gladly supply information and provide the money claimed if the Women’s Suffrage Bill at present before Parliament becomes law this Session.
Margarete Wynne Nevinson put it this way:
Here I have one of Mr. Lloyd George’s wonderful forms, with its numerous questions, to answer which intelligently I should require, apparently, the training of a lawyer and surveyor, and a fund of universal knowledge which I do not possess.
I am asked to answer those questions, but am not considered fit to vote for a member of Parliament.
This Form is addressed to me because I have a little freehold property, but it starts off with “Sir.”
I am sending it back, pointing our that I must be addressed as “Madam,” and not “Sir,” and that as I have not vote, I do not see what this matter has to do with me.
If you think of it, it is rather an insult to all women property holders to be addressed as “Sir,” and not by their proper title of courtesy.
The State seems to take for granted that there can be no free women or women freeholders in the country, but that all the land must be owned by men.
, Charlotte Despard announced that this strategy of non-cooperation would be extended to the census proper.
One news account said:
The census would cost a great deal of money, said Mrs. Despard, and involve an enormous amount of labor.
So far as they were concerned, this census should not be taken.
“We shall prove,” said Mrs. Despard, “whether there is a people, or whether there can be a people without the women.
We shall call upon women householders and women lodgers all over the country to refuse absolutely all information when the census takers come round.”
Women, she went on, had been proud to belong to the nation, but they had been denied their citizenship.
Was it not logical, therefore, that they should say, “Very well; citizens we are not, and we shall not register ourselves as citizens?”
That was logical, as a protest should be, and it would be effective.
Speaking of the preparations for the census, Mrs. Despard asserted that the officials were trying to get cheap labor: little girls from the schools at six and seven shillings a week.
Mrs. Despard added that the members were going to obstruct other Government business and make other protests, and they would stop the census boycott only when they had the promise of the Prime Minister that a Woman’s Suffrage Bill would be introduced this session.
A very frequently-used tactic of tax resistance campaigns is to take public oaths or sign public pledges of resistance.
This signals to potential resisters that they will not be alone, and is a show of defiance to the authorities.
I’ve collected dozens of examples, which I’ll summarize here:
When Gandhi launched his first satyagraha-based campaign in South Africa in , a member of the meeting asked everyone present to take a solemn oath of opposition.
Gandhi remarked:
There is no one in this meeting who can be classed as an infant or as wanting in understanding.
You are all well advanced in age and have seen the world; many of you are delegates and have discharged responsibilities in a greater or lesser measure.
No one present, therefore, can ever hope to excuse himself by saying that he did not know what he was about when he took the oath.
I know that pledges and vows are, and should be, taken on rare occasions.
A man who takes a vow every now and then is sure to stumble.
But if I can imagine a crisis in the history of the Indian community of South Africa when it would be in the fitness of things to take pledges, that crisis is surely now.
… Resolutions of this nature cannot be passed by a majority vote.
Only those who take a pledge can be bound by it.
This pledge must not be taken with a view to produce an effect on outsiders.
No one should trouble to consider what impression it might have upon the local Government, the Imperial Government, or the Government of India.
Every one must only search his own heart, and if the inner voice assures him that he has the requisite strength to carry him through, then only should he pledge himself and then only would his pledge bear fruit.
His entire speech, which reflects on vows and the responsibility of vow makers, is worth reading in this context.
In , “98 per cent of the merchants at Stuttgart and… 60 out of 60 merchants at DeWitt,” Arkansas, signed pledges to refuse to collect a new sales tax from their customers or to pay it to the government.
Also in , in Verdun (then a suburb of Montreal), 164 shopkeepers, including the mayor, signed a pledge to refuse to collect or pay a Montreal city sales tax.
, merchants in Gadsen, Alabama followed suit: gathering and voting unanimously to refuse to collect or pay a sales tax.
In Ghana, in , the Akuashongs met and “swore not to… pay any tax, even if the government should fight with them, and to make war with any party breaking the agreement.”
In several French newspapers printed the text of a pledge in which French liberals vowed to resist any taxes that the monarchy instituted without going through constitutional channels.
The newspapers were themselves prosecuted for this.
However, in court, they pointed out that the King himself, before he took the throne, had signed a tax resistance pledge of his own, along with three other members of the nobility, as a protest against republican infringements on their privileges.
In Castine, Maine, in , the pledge took the form of a vote: the town voted 125 to 65 at a specially-convened town meeting, to refuse to collect a school funding tax in defiance of a superior court order to do so.
In , some 5,000 businessmen in Belfast vowed to “keep back payment of all taxes which they can control, so long as any attempt to put into operation the provisions of the Home Rule Bill is persevered in.”
In the Women’s Tax Resistance League, members signed “pledge cards” that indicated which taxes they would be resisting if the government persisted in denying women the vote.
The Reform Act agitation really hit its stride in when a huge rally, 150,000 people strong, vowed as a group to stop paying taxes until the Act’s passage.
One account of the meeting read:
He declared before God, that, if all constitutional modes of obtaining the success of the reform measure failed, he should and would, be the first man to refuse the payment of taxes, except by a levy upon his goods [tremendous cheering, which lasted some minutes].
I now call upon all who hear me, and who are prepared to join me in this step, to hold up your hands [an immense forest of hands was immediately elevated, accompanied by vehement cheering].
I now call upon you who are not prepared to adopt this course, to hold up your hands and signify your dissent [not a single hand appearing, loud shouts and cheers were repeated].
In South Africa’s “New Rush” in , a number of miners signed a pledge reading, in part, “I promise on my honour and in presence of the people that I shall not from this day forward — until released from this obligation by the officers of the League — pay any taxes or impositions whatsoever to the Government, id est, for the support and maintenance of the Government of this territory; and that I shall buy from, sell to, or deal with only such men as have also taken this pledge or obligation; and that I shall to the utmost of my power, with purse and person, protect any and every officer and member of the League against coercion or consequences of what nature soever arising out of the action necessitated by this pledge.
At least 1,000 taxpayers in Elmira, New York, signed a declaration in saying that “The undersigned taxpayers… believing the county, city, and school tax rates as levied are too high, hereby refuse to pay until the budget has been thoroughly examined by the committee of the Taxpayers’ league.
We also refuse to pay penalties until such revision has been made and a lower tax adopted.”
500 taxpayers in Cadillac, Michigan, signed a petition in in which they vowed to refuse to pay taxes for two years unless the local government cut its budget by 20%.
In , 36 New Jersey residents signed their name to a petition to the home country in which they declared that they would refuse to pay any further taxes so long as a Roman Catholic was in charge of tax assessment.
At a “monster meeting” at Castlemaine in Australia in , a group of miners unanimously adopted a resolution to refuse to take out licenses.
Taxpayers in Zeehan, Tasmania, met in an open-air meeting in and passed a resolution stating that they “hereby express our solemn determination to passively resist the payment of the unjust income tax imposed by the late Government.”
A Queensland, Australia stealth tax on rural irrigation improvements, was resisted by the farmers there in , who, organized in groups called “Local Producers’ Associations,” passed motions vowing to resist.
For example, the Association in Rockhampton “unanimously decided that all members pledge themselves to offer passive resistance to the operation of the Act by refusing to make the required applications or to furnish any returns, or to make any payments as demanded by the Act.
Further, it was decided to invite all other LPAs and kindred bodies to adopt a similar attitude.”
, about twenty households near Paddock Wood, England, “signed a declaration to withhold [tax] payments” to protest the lack of government action against vagabonds camping in their neighborhood.
When the Russian Duma-in-exile issued the Vyborg manifesto in , calling on Russians to refuse to pay taxes to the Czarist autocracy, a number of villages responded by voting whether or not to heed the call and then taking the results of the vote as a pledge they were bound to abide by.
In , 149 members of a Catholic War Veterans post vowed to refuse to pay their real estate taxes unless the government dismissed a Communist Party member from his post as an advisor to the Borough President of Manhattan.
At a meeting of the Charleston Board of Trade in South Carolina in , the white supremacist group unanimously passed a series of resolutions declaring that they considered debts incurred by the reconstruction government to be illegitimate and that they would resist the payment of taxes meant to pay them off.
At a mass meeting of white supremacists in Louisiana in , they passed a resolution vowing that “we will pay no more taxes to State or city.”
Some resisters of Thatcher’s poll tax made their resistance dramatically public by burning their “final reminder notices” at demonstrations.
This tactic has been prominent in the American war tax resistance movement.
For example:
In the American pacifist group Peacemakers released a statement, signed by 59 members, in which “the undersigned state hereby that we are not going to pay our federal taxes.”
In , some 370 people signed a public oath saying “We will refuse to pay our federal income taxes voluntarily.”
In , more than five hundred writers and editors added their names to a war tax resistance pledge that appeared as a newspaper advertisement.
The names included James Baldwin, Noam Chomsky, Philip K. Dick, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Grace Paley, Susan Sontag, Benjamin Spock, Gloria Steinem, William Styron, Hunter S. Thompson, Thomas Pynchon, Betty Friedan, and Kurt Vonnegut.
Also in , a letter was circulated largely among academics, and signed by more than a dozen professors, among others, organized as the “No Tax for War Committee” in which the signatories pledged to “withhold all or part of the taxes due” and urged the recipients to join their public pledge.
If you can convince an organization to endorse tax resistance, or to recommend it to its members, this can strengthen your campaign and bring in new resisters.
Tax resistance in the women’s suffrage movement started with individual women who saw the logic (and the rhetorical power) of the “no taxation without representation” stand.
But it was an uphill climb to get suffrage organizations to endorse the tactic.
Here are some examples from the U.S.:
Both Susan B. Anthony and E. Oakes Smith offered resolutions advocating tax resistance at the Syracuse Women’s Rights Convention in , but the records of the convention do not indicate whether these resolutions were taken up or voted on.
In the newly-formed Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage announced that while it did not plan to organize a tax resistance campaign, it “would have every sympathy with such action.”
This came in the wake of a call to tax resistance by Anna Howard Shaw, president of National American Woman Suffrage Association.
and from the United Kingdom:
In , the Women’s Freedom League, which had advocated tax resistance since , was joined by the older Women’s Social and Political Union.
“It is to be hoped,” wrote a League member in their newsletter, “that the Women’s Tax Resistance League will succeed in persuading all the other Suffrage Societies to unite on this logical policy of refusing supplies until our grievance is redressed.”
In , the Federated Council of Suffrage Societies “unanimously and enthusiastically” endorsed tax resistance and “recommended its adoption as a means of supporting their demands for a Government measure of Woman Suffrage.”
The classic example of a group adopting tax resistance is that of the Society of Friends, or Quakers.
Since the founding of the Society, it had a policy of instructing members to refuse to pay tithes to rival churches, and this soon expanded to teaching Quakers not to pay taxes for “drums, colors, or for other warlike uses” or fines assessed for refusal to participate in the military.
These policies would be codified in a book of “discipline,” and Quakers who deviated from them would be subject to a process of correction, or, if they continued to defy the policy, “disowning.”
The extent of the policy could change over time, and from meeting to meeting, and there could be heated argument about how strict a standard of tax resistance Quakers should be held to.
Miners’ lodges in western Australia met and voted to instruct the Coal and Shale Employees’ Federation to launch a tax strike in it and other employees’ unions and to back it up with a general strike if the government took action against resisters, in .
In , three American “peace” churches — representing Quakers, Brethren, and Mennonites — issued a joint statement that called for war tax resistance among the 350,000 church members there.
The United Ireland Party — known as the “Blue Shirts” — passed a tax resistance resolution at its annual conference in .
In , the Landlords Association, a group of Jewish property owners in Palestine, adopted a policy of refusing to pay taxes to the British occupation government in protest against its “White Paper” policy.
After the passage of the Education Act which gave taxpayer money to sectarian schools, the Leeds Free Church Council voted 89 to one in favor of promoting tax resistance.
The New York Automobile Club met in and decided to advise its members not to pay a new license fee that it considered to be illegal.
The Moslem League instructed its members to refuse to pay a punitive tax to the United Provinces of British India in .
