Do we use our limited resources of time and money primarily to advance
the idea of war tax resistance and a legal peace tax fund for
conscientious objectors? Or do we use those resources to speak to the
larger policy framework and ethos? To put it crassly, do we advocate for
special accommodations for the few? Or do we confront the system that
says peace can be built through war and military force?
Jesus taught us to love not just our neighbours but also our enemies.
He showed us by his life and example how to resist evil not with
violence but with loving, persistent, firm, active non-violence. It was
this revolutionary patience on behalf of the poor and oppressed that,
humanly speaking, led to him being arrested, tried, tortured and
executed by the powers that be. The acts of witness that resulted in the
fines I have refused to pay were a form of conscientious objection.
Refusing to pay them is a continuation of that objection. It is a
privilege to be able to follow on the path that led Jesus to the way of
the cross and resurrection.
Italy
While everyone was busy watching the kerfluffle in Crimea, the people of Venice voted to restore the Venetian Republic and secede from Italy.
Italy itself is disregarding the vote and claiming that Venice has no authority
to secede. So the movement is moving on to stronger measures. They are taking
ideas from other separatist movements: The referendum itself was inspired by a
similar effort in Scotland, and they plan now to redirect their federal taxes
to the local government, which is a technique they picked up from the Catalan
nationalists.
Christiaan Elderhorst writes about the recent imprisonment of Toine Manders for his work counseling tax avoidance:
Toine Manders works at the Haags Juristen College (Hague Lawyers Board) and
specializes in tax avoidance. Manders refers to tax avoidance as a moral
duty. Tax revenue is used by the state to pay for war, prisons, the
militarization of the police force and the regulatory agencies which
constantly privilege big business. This moral duty is connected the Haags
Juristen College’s former business practice which was to help individuals
avoid the military draft. Avoiding the draft and avoiding taxes are both ways
by which personal contribution to state oppression and war is reduced.
Calling this a moral duty is not a far-fetched idea.
“Something has to happen at the grassroots, so that those on top notice how
much discontent there already is among the population,” says Höller. He was
actually a completely apolitical man, he stressed, but the scandals and the
squandering of tax money — “from Eurofighters to the Hypo bailout” — had
gotten on his last nerve. “Enough is enough.”
When I last visited the site with the article covering Höller’s case, it had a
reader poll attached to it that asked people to give their opinion of tax
resistance as a protest tactic:
Venezuela
I’m hearing a lot of buzz in the twitterverse about tax resistance as a
possible component of the ongoing demonstrations in Venezuela, but I haven’t
found much more solid information yet. Here’s an example:
“Don’t Pay Income Tax in Civil Disobedience. Tax Resistance! It is legitimate
and legal as enshrined in article 350 of our Constitution [‘The people of
Venezuela, true to their republican tradition and their struggle for
independence, peace and freedom, shall disown any regime, legislation or
authority that violates democratic values, principles and guarantees or
encroaches upon human rights.’]. Right now the Castro-communist regime is
transgressing the democratic values, principles, and guarantees and is
undermining the human rights of all Venezuelans. Don’t finance the regime!”
“These particularly impact on poor people,” he told the court. “We live in a
country where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.”
He claimed there were 20,000 people in Nottingham in council tax arrears.
“I refuse to pay in solidarity with and in support of the victims of
austerity measures. I encourage everyone in court, including the magistrates,
don’t pay up.”
Magistrates explained to Longhurst, who arrived with a large group of
supporters, that he was likely to go to prison if he refused to pay. Justices
even urged him to consult with a duty solicitor. But he confidently said he
he had spoken with a lawyer and he did not think there was any need for him
to see another one.
Another account adds that “[a]s he was led down to the cells by prison guards he was applauded by his supporters and one could be heard shouting: ‘It’s absolutely disgraceful.’ ”
One of his supporters, who did not want to be named, said afterwards: “It is
a travesty that he has been jailed. It is disgusting, he is an elderly man
who was trying to make a stand, he was trying to make the area a better place
and this is why he is now behind bars. He has worked and paid council tax,
but as all of us do, he got sick of it, he was braver than everyone because
he stood up for what he thought was right.”
It’s time for another ’round the world tax resistance round-up:
Austria
Gerhard Höller’s tax resistance in protest against government spending priorities (see ♇ ) seems to have struck a nerve.
Attorney Michael Paraskeva has started refusing to pay his social security contributions in protest against the government’s decision to raid the social security fund to satisfy government debts.
He hopes his stand will help build a civil disobedience movement.
One supporter explained: “I have not paid social security .
I am a victim, not a perpetrator, of the economic crisis and I’m being made to pay for those who brought it about.”
Ireland
Anti-austerity demonstrators occupied a tax office in Dublin, shutting it down for a period of time during property tax paying season.
Meanwhile, a bit south of Venice, in Ferrara, businesswoman Alessandra Marazzi raised a bit of a stir by launching a tax strike recently.
She got an outpouring of support from other small business owners who say that they have to choose between taxes and solvency, and that the government takes far more than it gives in return.
It’s time for another international tax resistance news update:
Austria
The Hypo Alpe Adria bank bailout scandal has proven to be the last straw for some Austrian taxpayers.
I’ve mentioned before the case of tobacconist Gerhard Höller, who recently started to refuse to pay his taxes and who started a website to encourage others to join his strike.
This article introduced me to Wolfgang Reichl, who is paying his taxes into an escrow account to protest the Hypo bailout.
Small business owners in Italy are also rebelling against the taxes and fees that are pushing their businesses into bankruptcy.
Bed and breakfast owner Alessandra Marazzi laid off staff and started doing everything herself — working from six in the morning to eleven at night — and she still couldn’t keep above water.
Then she sat down with her books and discovered that fully 84% of what she was bringing in was going to pay taxes and state-monopolized utility fees.
She decided to stop paying taxes just so her business (and her family) could survive.
Her “protesta fiscale ad oltranza” (tax protest to the bitter end) movement is also gaining adherents.
Caterer Andrea Polese, for instance, stopped paying and put a sign on her door reading “I am a tax resister.”
Bar owner Mariano Pavanello posted a selfie with a sign saying “I decided to stop paying protection money to a state thief.”
Meanwhile, the planned tax strike of the Venetian secessionists continues to progress, despite the recent arrests of two dozen separatists.
Jordan
Well, I can’t make heads or tails of the dialog in this video, but apparently it shows residents of Bani Obeid explaining why they have decided to stop paying taxes to protest against governmental incompetence.
Spain
The “comprehensive disobedience” movement that began in Catalonia has a new website, that includes material in several languages (including English).
Its purpose: “to construct an international political and ideological space on the basis of the Integral Revolution.”
The newly-declared Venetian Republic issued its first decree — that Venetians are exempt from taxation until the Republic is able to set up a tax agency independent from Italy.
The government has responded with raids and arrests there as well.
Apparently the “bedroom tax” is on its way out in Scotland.
The “tax” — actually a cut in government housing subsidies for people living in homes with more bedrooms than the government considers necessary for the family size — was widely protested.
An international tax resistance news round-up:
Samantha Prime
France
A trial of several bonnets rouges on charges of highway tax portal destruction has been put off until September, and the defendants are now all out on bail.
But meanwhile, the government has won its first conviction in another case:
Samantha Prime, a 19-year-old student, was recently convicted of burning a highway radar outpost .
She was given a six-month suspended sentence along with 175 hours of community service and an as-yet-undetermined fine for damages.
Rural Catalans, who are legally organized under a quasi-municipal government called the Decentralized Municipal Entity, approved a tax resistance motion that would have people in Catalonia redirect their federal taxes to the Catalan regional government.
The federal government took them to court for this, but the court ruled that the non-binding motion of advocacy was “political speech” and was within the Entity’s authority.
El Confidencial, however, has declared the campaign a failure, claiming that fewer than 1,500 people have begun redirecting their federal taxes in this way so far, a much lower figure than the movement had hoped for at this stage.
Sales tax refuseniks in Salzburg, motivated by disgust at bank bailouts, have won the applause of their neighbors, but have had a hard time making their resistance stick. The government froze Wolfgang Reichl’s bank account until he paid taxes and penalties, for instance, but he vowed to resist again.
Iago Alvarez of the Economista Cabreado blog, writing at Público.es, voices the usual uneasiness of establishment liberals with tax resistance (“tax revenue is the lifeblood of our welfare state, the funding of our schools, hospitals, roads, etc.…”) but then decides things have finally gone too far:
The Venetian separatists have started opening their own versions of “Offices of Economic Disobedience” — Uffici Pubblici sull’Obiezione Fiscale — to counsel people and businesses on how best to refuse to pay taxes to Italy in anticipation of eventually being able to pay taxes instead to an independent Venice.
…if we pay taxes that maintain the military structure, we are collaborators with the acts and effects of this structure.
We either admit this responsibility or exercise civil disobedience against the laws that are against our conscience, as in our era the Movement of Conscientious Objection to military service has done.
Some conscientious objectors to military service thought that in order to be consistent, beyond personal military refusal, they must continue in the same vein in their economic behavior with their taxes and they declared themselves war tax resisters, an action that they continue today in their struggle against the tax agency and therefore against the state, redirecting “military taxes” to social projects.
A couple bits of international tax resistance news that scrolled up my screen in recent days:
Two Kenyan legislators are threatening to lead a mass tax strike after men who identified themselves as Kenyan police offices kidnapped two men at gunpoint and “disappeared” them (the police deny that the two men are in their custody, and the two have not been heard from since the abduction).
The government of France has given up on the despised ecotaxe that was opposed by the bold direct action tactics of the bonnets rouges.
The government had put the highway tax on indefinite suspension, in the wake of the many destructions of automated toll portals and other tax-collecting machinery, mostly in Brittany.
A recent vote of the French Assembly has gone further, formally taking the tax off the books.
Sam Koplinka-Loehr, the recently-hired outreach coordinator for NWTRCC, recently held an on-line seminar on “Refusing to Pay for Oppression”, a recording of which is available on-line.
Koplinka-Loehr also testified at the People’s Tribunal on the Iraq War, and spoke about this on the Clearing the Fog show.
The “Won’t Pay” movement in Greece is still engaging guerrilla electricians to reconnect the power to families who have been cut off for being unable (or unwilling) to pay the price hikes of the state power monopoly.
Some activists who are infuriated by the incoming Trump administration have started a “Stop Trump Tax Protest” on Facebook.
Some 17,000 taxpayers in Catalonia also are paying their federal taxes to the Catalan tax agency rather than the Spanish one, in acts of civil disobedience.
There’s a tax strike underway in Beni, North Kivu to protest the failure of the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to provide security in the region.
More roadside traffic ticket generating speed cameras have been attacked in recent weeks, in South Arica and France.
Spain has moved on to using drones instead.
There’s not a lot of meat on the bones here, but Andrew Leahey connects the dots and shows how Trump’s contempt for paying his own taxes and his undermining of the prestige of government are likely to undermine “tax morale” in the United States with long-term consequences for how willing traditionally sheepish American taxpayers are to cough up their tribute.
Of the furloughed workers surveyed, more than 35% missed a rent or mortgage payment, 30% went to a food pantry, 72% experienced mental health issues, 42% wanted to make a career change and 65% were very or somewhat concerned about their finances post-shutdown.
In the open-ended response portion of the survey, an employee wrote, “We are U.S.A. citizens that have families to support.
Often we hear we deserve it, because we work for IRS.
We are doing a job that is dictated by Congress.
It is surprising how people seem to want others to hurt.
It is sort of sickening.”
Another employee described going back to work during tax season:
“With a month of catch up at my busiest season, it is so stressful.
This is the first time in 15 years I am exhausted after work and do not want to go in the mornings.
That was never the case before.”
