Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
Nicaragua →
in 2018–19
Some tax resistance news of note:
I’m seeing some signs of organized tax resistance as part of the ongoing protests in Nicaragua, which are aimed at the unpopular policies and the general repressiveness of the Sandinista government:
Attorney Julio Francisco Báez has produced a video for Nicaraguans who want to participate in tax resistance.
When we talk about civil disobedience in the Mercado Oriental, we are talking about not paying city taxes, not paying Conmema [vendor fees], not paying trash, not paying any tax that has anything to do with government entities.
First, as disobedience, and second, because it is prioritizing the salaries of the workers.
Of course [we fear reprisals].
We know that this dictatorial government always takes reprisals against anyone who rises up.
The merchants are afraid.
I am afraid.
It’s normal, but in this moment we have to put aside any fear of economic loss.
Student protest leaders called for tax resistance and boycotts of businesses owned by the ruling family as part of a nonviolent resistance campaign.
Alex Tabarrok has an amusing post demonstrating the sort of magical thinking that progressives sometimes have about taxes and government spending.
Some people every year get it into their heads that it would be a good idea to donate money to the U.S. government to help it pay down the national debt.
That debt stands at something like $21,000,000,000,000, so those donations, though they amount to millions of dollars a year (go figure), only pay down something like 0.00001% of this amount.
People may be wising up, though.
These voluntary contributions seem to be sharply down this year.
There’s an interesting trend suddenly emerging in which consumer brands are trying to get a public relations boost by taking action against the government or stepping in to replace it.
In these cases: Country Time Lemonade offering to provide free legal assistance to children who are fined or otherwise harassed by The Man for setting up lemonade stands, and Domino’s Pizza filling potholes that have gone unfilled by the ostensibly responsible governments.
Under the Jacob Zuma regime in South Africa, the tax agency became so corrupt and unwilling to confront tax evasion by political elites, that a country with high “tax morale” (relative willingness by citizens to pay taxes voluntarily) has now become one in which “more and more South Africans have simply stopped paying their taxes…
In the eyes of many experts, the government’s — and the country’s — ability to right itself is at stake.”
Breizh-Info reports on the craze of destroying traffic ticket issuing bots in France.
While the Bonnets Rouges of Brittany probably deserve some credit for getting the ball rolling on this, the acts have spread to other regions of France.
And “with rare exceptions,” says the reporter, “the culprits are never found or denounced.”
A peace activist convicted for his role in a demonstration against the Navy base being constructed on Jeju Island has refused to pay his fine, opting to serve 46 days in prison instead.
In the face of the massacre by the Ortega-Murillo government of the
Nicaraguan people, from the University Alliance for Democracy and Justice
we call on the private sector and to Nicaraguan society in general, to
strengthen their actions of tax resistance and to stand firm in the face
of state violence, declaring a general strike for 48 hours or until the
Ortega-Murillo government complies with the following conditions:
Stop the cruel paramilitary repression in Masaya and other
territories besieged by the National Guard and Sandinista Youth shock
troops.
Send invitations to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human
Rights, the European Union, and the Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights, to establish permanent missions of these organizations
in our country.
The call is to use every civic mechanism we have at our disposal to curb
these criminal acts of the Ortega-Murillo government.
We cannot live normal lives while they massacre our brothers!
A
survey of thousands of smokers in California showed that more than a
third of them had used legal methods to get around the state’s prohibitive
excise tax on tobacco, and nearly one in five had used illegal techniques.
And that survey was taken before a $2-per-pack hike in the tax
rate took effect. “About a third of cigarettes in California are estimated
to be from out-of-state (and thus tax-avoiding) sources.”
One of the features of the big tax law that Republicans passed last year
was one that caps the tax deduction for state and local taxes. This has
the effect of raising taxes on wealthier people from high-tax states.
These tend to be the Democrat-leaning, wealthier, coastal states, and so
this has been seen as partially a partisan poke at the Democrat’s donor
base and a thumb-in-the-eye at blue states in general — increasing the
amount they’re subsidizing their red cousins. But blue state lawmakers are
getting creative and trying to deny the U.S. Treasury this extra tax money.
Some of these workarounds would even have the effect of allowing people to
deduct more than before.
Links have been piling up in my bookmarks as I spent
poring through
back issues of The Mennonite.
International Tax Resistance News
A new law in Samoa requires previously untaxed church
ministers to pay income tax. Many, including those from the country’s
largest church,
are refusing to pay.
The United States government has begun
denying passports to people with large tax debts.
If you’re one of the 362,000 or so Americans who owe more than $51,000 and
you haven’t entered into an installment payment plan (I’m one of those),
you will likely soon find that you cannot successfully apply for or renew
your passport. While the government also has the legal authority to revoke
existing passports from such people, it is not yet exercising that
power.
Guerrilla electricians in Greece continue to
reestablish electric power
to households who have had their power cut off for inability or
unwillingness to pay the state utility monopoly’s bills which have been
inflated to support the state’s austerity budget policies.
Veterans of the successful campaign to abolish the
“écotaxe” in Brittany held
a celebratory picnic
on the anniversary of the destruction of one of the highway portals that
would have enforced the hated tax. In part the picnic was meant to show
solidarity with those who had been convicted of criminal charges for the
parts they played in destroying such portals, and in part it was meant as a
show of strength to let the government know they would not tolerate any
attempts to reestablish the tax.
The increasing use of traffic-ticket-issuing cameras worldwide as a
government revenue booster has led to a rash of direct action by the victim
population. This usually takes the form of destroying, disabling, or
blocking the cameras. Here are several recent examples:
Launched on as another variety of civic struggle against the dictatorship, the proposal to carry the thesis of civil disobedience to the extreme of applying a “tax strike” is still in force, but has not yet switched on, except in the Mercado Oriental.
On that date, the Academy of Sciences, and the Academy of Legal and Political Sciences, called for “civil disobedience as a national imperative to be put into operation immediately,” inviting employers, workers, students, and taxpayers to immediately suspend the payment of taxes to DGI, DGA, and city hall, in particular “withholding of Income Tax from salaries.”
Although the call for tax resistance enters the popular imagination as a civil form — and for that reason a legitimate one — of resisting the regime of Daniel Ortega, neither businesses nor individuals have responded with determination to the proposal, from fear or from caution.
Caution as demonstrated by the sources consulted for this article, who requested anonymity as they explained that people, business-owners and managers in particular, are afraid that the tax administration will fine them or, worse yet, temporarily take over operation of their companies or shutter their business.
Not all of the sanctions are catastrophic.
There are cases in which the fine applied is equivalent to 2.5% of the amount not paid in the case of the monthly advance payment of the business income tax, or 5% in the case of the value-added tax or of income tax withheld from the salaries of employees.
“Technically, it’s an invalid appropriation of withholdings, and can be criminally sanctioned,” in addition to being shut down, fined, or temporarily put under government management, explained a source with extensive experience in tax matters.
That said, this source sees a variety of reasons to doubt that they would decide to take such extreme measures, beginning with “as far as I know, they have never applied them to anyone.”
Another is that to close a business means sending its workers into unemployment, which implies that they will not receive taxes from the business or from those consumers.
But beyond believing in the mercy that any of these reasons implicitly assumes, the source points out fact that is easier to accept:
“If the resolution is massive, the tax administration simply does not have the capacity to audit and penalize everyone at once.”
Larger Companies Have More Fear
If it is decided to penalize only some in order to set a precedent that strikes fear into the others, surely one of the larger ones will be chosen, which not only has more ability to defend itself in the courts, but also to negotiate, precisely because of its size.
Another source asserts that “although it may seem obvious, the businesses that take the least risk are the most powerful ones, for the simple reason that they are not big taxpayers but big tax collectors.
“The DGI, does not want to be bothered with them, because if they weaken them, this affects tax revenues, principally value-added tax withholding.”
When the big companies that could take such measures don’t apply them, despite their intrinsic power, they are demonstrating “the cowardly face of big capital.
If they would decide, the blow to DGI would be immense,” s/he says.
Róger Arteaga, former director general of Revenue, agrees, saying that “big capital has not wanted to go all-in.
It is true that it gave its approval to the strike, but did so with fear and only temporarily.”
There is at least one group that risks more in a tax strike: import and export companies, which require clearances that can only be obtained once they have paid the corresponding taxes.
“If one of these business doesn’t make its monthly statement, or makes it but doesn’t pay, it falls into insolvency, and can neither import nor export.
The only importers who could afford that ‘luxury’ would be those that have sufficient product already on hand, especially at times like these, when there is little movement of inventory,” explained one of our sources.
Small- and medium-sized businesses — both fixed-quota and general regime — can stop paying taxes as long as the situation does not normalize, and while this makes them vulnerable to penalties, it is not likely that this will occur, especially, again, if a critical mass applies this measure of fiscal chastisement.
How long can the government last without taxes?
Our sources note that before making tax payments, the employer must guarantee the salary of its employees, and that the decision not to pay taxes is “protected by the higher legal concept, legally enshrined in the national legislation, as the Act of God and the Force Majeure.
Nobody is obligated to do the impossible, and the reason for this impossibility lies outside the control of the employer or employee.”
Citizens, on their part, could put pressure on big and medium-sized business, offering to act together if the Treasury moves against them.
“In this context, big capital must play a consistent role, acting firmly in the face of a Treasury that has granted them such special privileges.
It would be their most authentic repentance for the eleven years of tax advantages they have taken in the shadow of power.
That stain should be washed out right away,” they say.
As an expert, Arteaga proposes “that the businesses do not charge value-added tax, and the citizens not pay it.
Income tax also.
There are penalties, but the penalties and decisions of this government must be ignored, as they have no legitimacy.
How long can the government last without taxes?” he asked.
“Tax resistance aims to respond to Ortega’s claim that he will stay on through : we must find a solution, and one of these is for the private sector finally to decide on civil disobedience of a monetary and tax nature,” he explained.
Pedro Muñoz Fonseca, president of the executive committee of Costa Rica’s Social Christian Unity Party, urged Nicaraguans to use tax resistance against their government:
Social Media Tax Protest in Uganda
The government of Uganda has imposed a 5¢-per-day tax on using social media and
other services. This was designed as both a revenue measure and a way of
reducing what Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni calls lugambo
(“fake news”). Amnesty International has been among those to see through the
government’s rhetoric and cast the tax as
“a
clear attempt to undermine the right to freedom of expression.”
Robert Kyagulanyi, a Member of Parliament better known by his musician
stage name Bobi Wine, whose election is in part credited to his success on
social media, has been at the forefront of protests against the tax.
He was arrested, along with
three reporters when a march protesting the tax was attacked by police
with tear gas and rubber projectiles, but they managed to escape.
Ugandan protest marchers wearing shirts featuring a smart phone screen that
reads “This Tax Must Go”
War Tax Resistance Around the World
ABC reports on war tax resisters in Valencia — “the new refuseniks”.
War tax resisters there typically refuse to pay some percentage of their taxes, often basing this on the percentage of the federal budget that is spent on the military and similar items, and redirect this money to more worthy charities.
They declare this deduction on their tax forms in such a way that the tax agency typically does not treat it as illegal tax evasion but as an error or mistake.
The Global Day of Action on Military Spending Final Report has been released.
It gives a summary of the various events that took place around the world, including several by war tax resisters and groups promoting war tax resistance.
There’s a new NWTRCC newsletter out, with content including:
Ideas & Actions concerning weapons-free investing, responding to arguments against war tax resistance, a fast for nuclear disarmament, and more
You can now listen to audio excerpts from the upcoming documentary The Pacifist, about war tax resister Larry Bassett, on Spotify.
Erica Leigh pores through back issues of Conscience, the newsletter of the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign, an American war tax redirection group that slightly predates the founding of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.
Raymond Hunthausen has died.
As Catholic archbishop of Seattle, he took a remarkably strong stand on nuclear weapons — famously calling the Trident nuclear submarine program being developed nearby “the Auschwitz of Puget Sound” — and began practicing war tax resistance in response.
This earned him enemies in Washington and in the Catholic hierarchy. Here are some of the obits and remembrances:
A biography of Hunthausen, A Disarming Spirit, will be released soon.
David McReynolds has died.
He was a long-time War Resisters League and Socialist Party activist and was also on the staff of the Committee for Nonviolent Action which helped to spearhead war tax resistance as a tactic during the campaigns opposing the American war in Vietnam.
He was among the signers of the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” in and of a similar public pledge .
David Paul Irish has died.
He was active with the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Peace Brigades International, and Witness for Peace.
He was an advocate for war tax resistance in the Society of Friends, drafting a minute in favor of of war tax resistance that the Twin Cities and Minneapolis Meetings approved in .
Today, some of the international tax resistance news that’s been collecting in my bookmarks in recent weeks:
Nicaragua
The tumult in Nicaragua continues.
The University Alliance for Democracy and Justice has called on businesses to join a prolonged tax strike and a short general strike, aimed at forcing the resignation of President Ortega.
The statement from the group accused the organized business sector of being “accomplices” and “complicit” with the Ortega regime because of their inaction thus far.
Tips for economically punishing the Daniel Ortega regime
Tips for practicing autonomous tax resistance
To win freedom by nonviolent means is not easy work.
The force holding the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship together is money and with our taxes we are fueling that repressive force that treats us as though we were inferior beings, with hatred and contempt.
The police do not protect us, they attack us, and incredibly we pay them to do it.
No more!
As citizens we can reduce our monetary contributions to this regime by making a tax boycott.
Here is a list of tax resistance methods that we can practice in our daily lives:
Limit your purchases to tax-exempt items
Domestic fruits and vegetables, unpackaged rice and sugar, domestic vegetable oil, eggs, bread, milk, and cheese.
Domestic meat and cuts of meat other than loins or steaks.
Personal hygiene and household products produced in Nicaragua.
Do not ask for a bill for your purchase.
If it’s a “vandal” business, they will be free not to report the tax on your purchase.
[Vice President Rosario Murillo has called anti-regime protesters “vandals.”]
Buy from the informal sector.
Small businesses, stretches of the marketplace, groceries and businesses under the fixed-fee system.
You can ask the business-owner which tax system they fall under if you have any doubt.
Reduce purchases made with credit or debit cards.
The government keeps 1.5% of every purchase made with a card.
Reduce your spending on entertainment activities and on the consumption of alcohol.
If you do consume alcohol, try to do so in places that do not issue invoices.
In general such places are where the drinks are less expensive.
If you are going to eat out, try to do so in traditional places, not in the chain restaurants.
Buy only what you need.
The regime urges “normalcy” in order to encourage consumption.
These methods will be effective if enough people join in for a considerable time.
In addition, they will help you to save, which is welcome in these times of crisis.
You will demonstrate our solidarity with the suffering of political prisoners and with the families of the victims who keep crying out for justice to a system that has no intention of giving it to them.
Share this notice
#SOSNicaragua
Elsewhere
Robert McGee has published another in his series of studies of attitudes across cultures about the ethics of tax evasion. The latest probes
Chinese business students — those studying in the United States and in China.
TheNewspaper.com continues to do great work in tracking down examples of people disabling traffic-ticket-generating speed- and red-light-cameras, including, recently:
Examples from France and Italy of paint, tape, boxes, fire, gunshots, power saws, and wire-clippers being put to good use.
Examples from France, Italy, and Russia of bags, taped posters, fire, power-drills, battering, spray paint, toppling, blocking, and disemboweling as techniques for disabling the cameras.
When the Kenyan government slapped a 16% tax on petroleum products, petroleum transporters launched a strike, leading to fuel shortages in Nairobi.
“Kenya’s energy regulator has revoked the license of the Kenya Independent Petroleum Distributors Association for allegedly leading the fuel boycott,” a news report says, “equating their action to economic sabotage.”
Attorney Carlos Muriete has called on residents of La Rioja, Argentina to stop paying property and vehicle taxes to protest inadequate municipal services.
“The city is wrecked, there are craters that cars fall into and serious accidents can occur, it is dirty, full of rats, sewage is running in the streets, there is no control of the dogs and the health of the people is in danger,” he said.
War Tax Resistance
Some war tax resisters are very public with their resistance, and consider protest and confrontation with the powers that be to be crucial parts of how they make their stand.
Others are more private and understated, refusing to pay but not making a lot of hullabaloo about it. On the NWTRCC blog, Erica Leigh examines public vs. quiet resistance.
War tax resister Larry Bassett looks at “the power of war tax resistance in 2018” — trying to measure the effects of his own resistance and that of the war tax resistance movement.
(As found on Facebook and at Citizen Truth.)
A flash from the past in the Lewis Center, Ohio, ThisWeek Community News gives us a glimpse of a war tax resistance tactic used in the United States during World War Ⅰ.
The government had put a war tax on rail travel, but apparently the tax only applied on tickets above a certain threshold value.
So some travelers split tickets, buying tickets from point A to point B and then point B to point C to avoid paying the war tax that would have applied on a ticket from point A to point C.
Tax Resistance Internationally
Nicaragua’s Blue & White National Unity group has called for a consumer strike and energy strike.
The consumer strike is meant to last three days and aims particularly at those consumer goods like fuel, alcoholic beverages, sodas, and tobacco that are most taxed.
People are also encouraged to not use any utility power from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., indefinitely.
The group seeks the release of 400 political prisoners.
The Zimbabwe Congress for Trade Union went ahead with an anti-tax demonstration, which the government had banned under the pretense that public gatherings would contribute to a cholera outbreak.
The government of Zimbabwe is trying to impose a 2% tax on all electronic funds transfers and is attempting to force citizens who hold their savings in foreign currency to convert that money into the notoriously hyperinflating Zimbabwean currency.
Police raided the headquarters of the group and arrested 35 of its leaders in advance of the protests.
A report on
migrants from Central America reminds us that fleeing ruinous and
immoral taxation is among the motives causing people to flee. The case
of Guillermo, who as a Central American teenager became the head of his
family, is one example:
Criminal organizations targeted and killed Guillermo’s cousin. The
relative had failed to pay a gang’s “war tax” — money the gang extorts
from people through threats of violence.
They then turned their attention to Guillermo for payment.
In , he was kidnapped and beaten by two
uniformed police officers carrying out the gang’s orders. Their message
was clear: Pay the war tax or face the murder and rape of his siblings.
He realized that as long as they stayed in the region, they would never
be free from gang violence — or the gangs’ attempts to pull them into a
life of crime.
Instead, he fled with his siblings on a 1,500-mile journey to the United
States where he crossed the border, legally, as an asylum-seeker. But here
he faces the threats of yet more criminal government gangs, this time in
Trump’s ICE,
the farcical court system set up to deny refuge in asylum cases, and the
for-profit prison systems that exploit and abuse immigrant detainees.
Drivers’ war on speed cameras and other traffic-ticket-generating robots
continues:
The economy has been chugging along pretty well for a while now, the job
market is tight, and individual income tax receipts are up in the United
States. So why has the budget deficit jumped up 17%?
Two reasons, mainly: the recently passed tax law has led to a sharp
reduction in receipts from corporate income tax, and Congress has been
spending up a storm. Also, interest on the national debt continues to balloon, rising 24% just .
Some links from here and there:
Logan Marie Glitterbomb, at the Center for a Stateless Society, advocates a campaign of gradually transitioning to cryptocurrency as a way of facilitating war tax resistance.
Such a campaign would “allow for us to take direct action against the war machine, by refusing to fund it.
The campaign encourages people to move at least $1 of fiat per day into their choice of cryptocurrency.
The goal is to aid individuals in a gradual transition away from fiat and into using crypto as their primary currency without asking people to dive in all at once.”
The Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy, a movement opposing the Ortega regime in Nicaragua, is trying to gather support for a civil disobedience campaign that would feature tax resistance as a key tactic: “Tax resistance to withhold economic oxygen from the regime for repression.”
The “Blue and White National Unity” group has signed on to the call.
They hope to pressure the regime to release political prisoners and to fulfill agreements it made in negotiations during previous strikes.
The Ortega regime released 100 political prisoners to try to lure the opposition back to the negotiating table (not including tax resistance leader Irlanda Jerez, who has been tortured in prison, and is still being held).
The IRS is redesigning its W-4 form.
This is the form that employees fill out when they start a new job, or when they want to change how much tax is withheld from their paychecks.
The new form, though still in the drafting process, looks like it’s going to be much more complicated.
This may also, alas, complicate the process for people wanting to get started with tax resistance by reducing the amount withheld from their paychecks.
I thought this was interesting: I’d heard that the IRS could step in and claim top priority in a bankruptcy — pushing other creditors aside as it helps itself to what’s left of your assets.
But what I didn’t realize is that this apparently only applies to the tax part of your tax debt: not to any interest & penalties the IRS has applied.
For those, the agency has to get in line like everyone else.
Activismo Digital Nicaragüense posted the following (translation mine):
Of the different methods included in the Civil Disobedience that keeps the nonviolent insurrection against the Sandinista dictatorship going, tax resistance can be categorized as the variety with the most definite impact of all.
Its solid and continued application can strike at the resources of misrule, so as to make it topple.
What is Tax Resistance?
Also known as Fiscal Disobedience, Tax Resistance basically consists of refusing to pay taxes, or some specific tax, with the goal of demonstrating to the State our repudiation of its conduct, the misuse of the taxes they are given, or simply to prevent them from continuing to swell the funds that are destined for acts of repression, corruption, or diversion of funds.
Has Tax Resistance been applied at other times?
The political history of different nations shows us clear examples of how Tax Resistance on the part of the sovereign (the people, the citizens) contributed to the overthrow of tyrants or, also, to accomplish the total independence of a nation.
A great demonstration of its effectiveness was given in the U.S. in , in the middle of the revolutionary war the well-known “Tea Party” took place, which consisted of a group of American colonists throwing into the sea a shipment of tea from Britain as a form of protest against the increase of tariffs that would raise the prices of this oft-consumed product.
The incident infuriated the British parliament so much that it closed Boston harbor; the citizens continued the heroic deeds, reducing their purchase and consumption of tea in America, which weakened the British finances, a factor that led to their defeat and to the independence of the U.S.
Another great and more recent example was the “crisis of 125” (named after executive order #125/2008), which happened in Kirchnerist Argentina in .
When the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner decided to apply a mobile withholding system to the export of the principal Argentine agricultural commodities (soy, peanuts, corn), the various furious agricultural producers called a 129-day halt to production, as a form of protest, given that their income would be highly affected by the hikes in export taxes that they wanted to impose.
From not selling their produce, to blockading the principal highways in productive zones, their acts bore fruit in the failure of the decree, the resignation of economic minister Guillermo Moreno, and the subsequent collapse of the Kirchnerist era.
And there are other examples in other countries, such as the Ukraine during the 93 days of rebellion against the regime of Viktor Yanukovych, which included non-payment of taxes and non-consumption of high-cost taxed goods — or in the independence of India when Mahatma Gandhi included this in its various forms of civic and peaceful protest.
All of these examples speak clearly to how overwhelming determined and sustained Tax Resistance is for weakening and even defeating a tyranny, but how can it be applied in Nicaragua?
Let us see…
Tax Resistance in Nicaragua: the lethal weapon not yet fired
Many of us in the Blue & White insist that the Alianza Cívica and, more specifically, the private sector launch a general strike in order to twist the arm of the Sandinista dictatorship.
But what if instead of screaming at the wall, we begin to destroy it piece by piece by ourselves?
Have we stopped spending on unnecessary things, going to bars, discos, movies, restaurants, etc. for “destressing” or “mental health”?
Have we even concerned ourselves with investigating which on products we pay Value Added Tax or Selective Sales tax in order to stop consuming them or substitute other items not so taxed?
Just as we avidly criticize “unproductive” forms of protests like wearing black, pico rojo, or tossing blue & white confetti, with the same energy we must commit ourselves to maintaining civic resistance, and all make up our minds to begin “starting yesterday” massive Tax Resistance, and in this way see how Ortega/Murillo and their entourage gradually crumble.
Nicaraguan Tax Resistance: Step by Step
Effectively applying Tax Resistance in Nicaragua is simple, but — as with any insurrection — requires from us self-motivated effort and tenacity.
Step 1, Austerity and Investigation:
Whether alone, as a family, or with your group of troublemaker friends, agree to stop consuming specific products and to drastically diminish your trips to places of public consumption.
To begin, you can download on the web the list of products that are targeted by value-added and sales taxes, and thereby know which to stop consuming or which ones to substitute (remember that all products that do not appear on the list are not covered by the specified tax).
Step 2, Budget:
Once you have specified the products that you will stop consuming or will substitute, create your budget either for the week, biweekly, or monthly; make sure it is balanced, and prioritize savings over consumption.
Remember to include everything, from food to transportation and going out (at most once a month).
Step 3, Persistence:
Always remember that this is not a race of speed, but of endurance; whoever gets bored or gives up, loses.
Maintaining Tax Resistance should become an unstoppable habit in your life; it is not something to apply for a couple of months and then take a “break” you must maintain it always, as in the saying “Tax Resistance never stalls, until the dictator falls.”
Do not be discouraged; your motivation is to see your Nicaragua free.
Step 4, Feedback:
Every month make a thorough study of your finances.
Check how effective your budget was and look back at previous months to validate how much you have been saving and make any adjustments you need to make in order to make sure that the amounts remain sustainable.
Step 5, Education and Outreach:
Your patriotic acts should be a dignified example for other Blue & Whites.
Once you verify that Tax Resistance is productive in your day-to-day life, do not hesitate to share your experience with your loved ones, friends, or fellow-employees.
Also, share the results you have obtained in your social media networks, in order to show that the effort is worth it and to motivate others to rouse themselves and to continue striking at all possible points against the dictatorship.
There are no more excuses.
We must stop complaining and start assuming our role in this ongoing revolution.
Our barricades are to refuse frivolous spending, and our blockades are to be in front of the bars and discos and deciding not to enter.
Let’s not put our hope in others, but let’s construct our own.
God bless the steadfast fighters! God bless Nicaragua!
Some links from here and there:
Rutgers International Institute for Peace has begun releasing a Digital Library of Nonviolent Resistance with items from their archives. Among these is Organizing Tax Resistance, co-written by a team from Nonviolence International and Karen Marysdaughter from NWTRCC.
The Delta Amacuro (Venezuela) state Chamber of Commerce has launched a tax strike to protest what they say are extralegal and “confiscatory” municipal taxes.
The Nkafu branch of La Société Civile has signed on to the latest tax resistance campaign in the east Congo to protest the government’s inability or unwillingness to provide security in the region.
In other news, the group ADNic is promoting a Nicaraguan tax resistance / consumer strike campaign with a series of graphics. Here are some examples (translations mine):
Tax resistance: Education and Outreach. Step 5: Take an active role in tax resistance and keep in mind that Ortega uses your taxes to kill. #ConsumerStrike #SOSNicaragua
Tax Resistance. This Is Their Profit. Rum: 36%, Beers: 42%, Liquors: 37%, Grain alcohol: 42%, Cigarettes: 309%, Tobacco: 43%. By reducing your consumption you strike a direct blow against the regime. Taxes are their lifeblood! #ConsumerStrike, National Unity
Some recent links of note:
The IRS has announced that not only will it issue stimulus payments and Paycheck Protection Program loans to people and businesses even if those people or businesses are behind on their taxes, but also that the agency will not levy bank accounts into which those payments are deposited — for 24 weeks in the case of PPP loans, or 8 weeks in the case of stimulus payments.
Current IRS policy says that agents should contact taxpayers before issuing a levy to ask whether the account in question recently received such a payment.
If so, they are supposed to refrain from levying until the proper number of weeks have passed.
If the IRS tries to levy a bank account in which you have recently deposited such a check, you can protest this and the IRS is supposed to release the levy.
In either case, this should give you plenty of time to empty out the account so that a future levy attempt will fail.
I fear that waiting out the ten year statute of limitations on collections is becoming a reasonable strategy and that many “taxpayers” have caught on and that the IRS, when it comes to collection, is to a significant degree bluffing.
My overall takeaway from the [recent Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration] report is that the IRS has a lot of outstanding receivables that it does nothing about.
That made me want to look more closely at the numbers.
Working with the spreadsheets is a little frustrating.
They don’t answer all the questions I would like answered, but it does give a pretty clear idea that the IRS is something of a shadow of its former self.
At , the balance of assessed tax, penalties and interest (ATPI) was $114.2 billion spread among 10.4 million accounts.
In that year IRS filed 1,096,376 notices of federal tax lien and requested 3,606,818 levies on third party.
IRS wrote off $14.6 billion that had expired due to the ten year statute.
At ATPI was $125.8 billion spread among 11.2 million accounts.
There were 543,604 liens and 782,735 levies.
$34.2 billion expired due to the ten year statute.
It is important to remember that when we are talking about collections, we are talking about tax that has already been assessed.
This has nothing to do with people who have not filed or who underreported income and have not gotten caught.
That is an entirely different kettle of fish.
Through my decades of tax practice, the notion of flat out not paying assessed tax was not something that was in my bag of tricks.
It has slowly dawned on me that this is a thing.
A tax strike by restaurants and bars in Italy has begun.
The strike is being organized by Movimento Imprese Ospitalità, which is a project of the tourist industry branch of the General Confederation of Italian Industry.
It is protesting continued tax collection at a time of collapsing business during the Covid pandemic.
I’ve seen a few more articles that give some additional details about the latest tax strike in South Kivu:
The campaigns have been organized and led by what are vaguely referred to as “la société civile” (civil society).
This refers to some sort of preexisting groups, but I don’t really understand what they are.
They seem to be non-governmental organizations that sometimes behave as parallel governments or service providers, other times as sorts of citizens’ unions or chambers of commerce.
Guillermo Incer Medina, in Confidencial, evaluates the tactics used by the protesters in Nicaragua who have been struggling with the Ortega regime.
He concludes that the best high-impact, low-risk action would be tax resistance from a small number of large-scale taxpayers.
Excerpt:
In Nicaragua, 94% of the total tax collection comes from large taxpayers (a large taxpayer is a company that has large volumes of transactions and, therefore, that collects taxes such as VAT, IR — and others– in large amounts.
Examples of these could be supermarket chains, large importers, large commercial establishments, or large agro-industrial consortia).
In our country, the sectors with the largest taxpayers are industry, commerce, finance, transportation, and services.
In these sectors, large taxpayers collect more than 90% of the total taxes of their respective sector (which is to say that of every 100 córdobas that is collected from taxes in each sector, 90 córdobas are contributed by large taxpayers and only 10 córdobas by mid-sized and small ones).
Furthermore, in areas such as liquors, beers, soft drinks, and fuel, the large taxpayers collect 100% of the total taxes.
Why is this important?
Because the dictatorship needs taxes to maintain its repressive apparatus and its patronage politics.
If you take the oxygen out of their horror machine and purchase of consciences, you take away their room for maneuver.
“Let’s do a consumer strike!” said COSEP and AMCHAM representatives every time we demanded a national strike.
This is a mistake for two reasons: 1) for a consumer strike to have a real and not symbolic effect, requires that millions of unorganized Nicaraguans, including pro-government people, decide to deprive themselves of consuming goods that are difficult for them to obtain due to the precarious living conditions in which we live, 2) it is useless for us to stop consuming (not paying VAT) if companies still pay the State taxes such as IR and others (one must keep in mind that those who directly “deliver” taxes to the State are not we the consumers, but they are the collectors — the companies).
What can one do then?
The action that could have the greatest impact at the lowest cost and in the shortest term is tax resistance from the large taxpayers, which is nothing more than the large companies stopping payment of taxes to the dictatorship for a period long enough to oblige them to make concessions for his departure.
“They are going to close us down!”, the big businesses say immediately.
But it is not likely that the government will close large companies due to how this would look to foreign investment, and due to the political cost of sending thousands of people into the streets.
Furthermore, if they close large companies, this would in practice have the same effect as tax resistance, since they would stop receiving their taxes.
“We are exposing thousands to unemployment!”, they also say… more jobs are being jeopardized by letting this political and humanitarian crisis drag on and by the coming interruption of CAFTA and ADA, if the dictatorship continues to do what it wants and stays five more years.
“It’s too risky!”
It is more risky to put your body on the line in a march or a roadblock, or to go on a hunger strike in a church and get shot, cut off your services, and imprison those who want to help you.
There is no large, medium, or small company that is worth more than a human life.
Tax resistance is more feasible than other actions of high-risk and low-impact (such as a chain of express pickets or coordinated sit-ins) because it does not require the coordination of thousands of unorganized people.
To promote tax resistance, it is enough that a few of the largest companies, which are already organized in chambers, agree, stand firm, and coordinate among themselves.
Gig workers in Serbia used to be more or less income-tax free, apparently.
Not any more. A new law not only makes them liable for income tax, but requires them to cough up taxes for the last five years.
Marchers in Belgrade protested the new tax law.
