The NWTRCC newsletter is on-line, and has a lot of information about ’s strategy conference, among other things.
NWTRCC has also rereleased their “Peace Tax Return” that protesters can send in along with their tax returns if they want to let the IRS know why they’re upset.
NWTRCC has added a new pamphlet to its “Practical” series: Healthy, “Wealthy,” and Wise: Aging and War Tax Resistance:
You can order a copy for $1.50 from NWTRCC.
I wrote up some of my impressions of of ’s NWTRCC meeting in Las Vegas.
I took notes on-and-off through and I’ll write up those things I remember that might be of interest.
I was at the meeting in part to present a first draft of a new edition of NWTRCC’s “Practical War Tax Resistance” pamphlet #5 on low-income / simple-living as a war tax resistance technique. On night we distributed a few copies of this draft and over the course of I had a chance to sit down with a number of people and listen to their suggestions for improvement. (If you would like to review the document, send me email and I’ll send you a copy of the draft.) I’m aiming to have a final draft ready in , and with any luck we’ll have our new edition back from the press .
Despite the growing anti-war sentiment in the country, there has been no evidence of a corresponding groundswell of interest in war tax resistance. For the most part, people reported that their local groups were treading water in terms of membership and outreach. There was more resignation than frustration expressed on this point, as most of us have become used to being, as we’d characterize it anyway, well ahead of the curve on this. Many people also expressed that they often hear about lone-wolf tax resisters who for whatever reason never feel the need to align themselves with tax resistance organizations, so that the actual number of tax resisters is hard to gauge.
, NWTRCC started conducting a survey, informally, often at rallies, protests, and other activist events, to get a feel for what makes people choose or avoid tax resistance, and to do some concept testing of a possible large-scale one-year tax resistance campaign.
Of the few hundred people who have responded to the survey thus far, 47% are not doing any tax resistance now, and of that group, 61% would “consider participating in a one-year commitment to refuse a portion of your federal income taxes and redirect your taxes to a humanitarian cause if thousands joined you publicly” on a particular date.
All this sounds pretty good, and we plan to continue the survey , but even if we find a potential for this sort of tax resistance avalanche, NWTRCC alone doesn’t really have the resources to organize and launch it. My hope is that we can package these persuasive survey results along with offers of our own specialized expertise and sell the idea of such a campaign to one of the larger national anti-war groups who could launch a campaign like this in a heartbeat if they cared to. My own feeling is that this sort of thing is exactly the sort of sustained nationwide civil disobedience campaign the peace movement has been looking for; they just don’t know it yet.
Phone tax resistance has been a useful way of getting potential resisters to take the first step. It’s pretty easy to do, and the risks are very low, and so many tax resisters have gotten their feet wet in this way. However the proliferation of phone companies and phone plans, and the recent abolition of the phone tax on long-distance, have muddied the waters a bit. There’s a pretty good chance that the excise tax on local service is on the way to the trash heap as well, so NWTRCC has begun to deemphasize phone tax resistance and the Hang Up On War campaign. We’re still looking for the next “gateway” resistance tactic — any ideas?
Briefly mentioned was Daniel Jenkins’s court appeal in which he is asserting a right to conscientious objection to military taxation under the 1st Amendment and 9th Amendment to the Constitution and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The case strikes me as a long shot, but Jenkins seems to be putting a lot of good work into it, and his research into conscientious objection in early American law is interesting.
Some folks are trying to improve NWTRCC’s multimedia educational and persuasive offerings. This is a good thing (our local tax resistance group still uses a slide show made during the Reagan administration, complete with a tape recording that goes “beep” when you’re supposed to flip to the next slide). Alas, I was in a different workshop when this was being discussed, so I didn’t learn as much about this as I could have, but the project also includes a video contest — anyone can enter by producing a short video on the topic of war tax resistance — with cash prizes for the winning entries. I’ll post more details on The Picket Line when the contest officially launches .
NWTRCC’s produced a new flyer on W-4 resistance (adjusting the withholding allowances on your W-4 form so that your employer sends less of your paycheck to the IRS) that may be helpful to folks who would like to resist their income tax but who find themselves with nothing but a refund to resist when April 15th comes around.
A preliminary fact sheet was distributed that covers the implications for war tax resisters who are participating in student financial aid programs, or whose children are. It’s not ready for publication just yet, but looks like it will be a useful resource when the time comes.
We also got to read Larry Rosenwald’s report back from the International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns which was held in Woltersdorf, Germany . He was struck by the differences between the tax resistance movement in the United States and its counterparts in the rest of the world (Europe in particular).
In Europe, the movement is focused more on using the law and the courts (national and international) to legalize some form of conscientious objection to military taxation, and less focused on civil disobedience and forms of extralegal conscientious objection. They find it confusing that in the United States there’s both a Peace Tax Fund campaign and an organized war tax resistance movement.
If you’re working for a paycheck, the first step in resisting the income tax is to figure out how to stop your employer from withholding it in the first place.
To that end, NWTRCC has just released a flyer on how to control your federal income tax withholding by filing a W-4 form: While You Work… Stop Paying For War.
NWTRCC’s newsletter is out, also. It includes reports from the national conference in Vegas and from the international conference in Germany, some stories from people who have been trying to pay their taxes directly to particular government agencies rather than into the U.S. Treasury via the IRS, and a timeline of one family’s battle with the IRS over a faulty “frivolous filing” penalty.
NWTRCC has produced a “Don’t Pay for War in Iraq!” pledge that it’s asking people to sign on to:
The war in Iraq has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, many more maimed and psychologically injured, and devastated Iraqi society.
Our own society is also being devastated by the direction of federal tax dollars to the war. Our infrastructure is falling apart and real human needs, such as education and health care, are not met.
The majority of people oppose this war, and yet the death and destruction will continue so long as the U.S. military remains in Iraq. Billions more dollars will be spent making us less safe.
To stop this madness we, the people, must stop paying for war. We cannot wait for others to stop it for us.
We refuse to pay for the war.
We call on others to join us by refusing to pay some or all of their federal income taxes and redirecting the money toward healing the wounds of war and meeting real human needs.
I wonder how many of the people who are calling on Congress to cut off funding for the war will be willing to do it themselves.
NWTRCC’s newsletter is out. Among the news to be found therein:
Those of you with a copy of that war tax resister’s bible, War Tax Resistance: A Guide to Withholding Your Support from the Military, will be interested to know that NWTRCC has published a supplement that brings the guide up-to-date, including important updates on such topics as:
The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee have put together a new study kit, designed for educators, on Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience and those who have taken it to heart.
History doesn’t have to be, well, old. With this study kit, students will see how Thoreau’s actions and writings have inspired countless people around the world for more than 160 years, including individuals who today are refusing taxes and risking jail to protest war.
Contents
- On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau (A.J. Muste Institute Pamphlet Series)
- Death & Taxes DVD, a 30-min. award-winning video about war tax resisters carrying on Thoreau’s tradition in the United States today (produced by National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee)
- Study Guide questions challenging students to consider if Thoreau’s actions and words are still relevant
- Historic Civil Disobedience Actions — A select list of 60 actions (and practitioners) since the time of Thoreau, with resources for further study
Those of you who own copies of the book War Tax Resistance, put out by the War Resisters League in 2003, will want to download a copy of the 2011 supplement that brings the information in the guide up-to-date.
Half a million copies of a radical tabloid called ¡Rebelaos! (“Revolt!”) have hit the streets across Spain. It advocates resisting the forces that would surrender the governing and looting of Spain to foreign bankers by creating bottom-up, autonomous government outside of the existing establishment structure. The Spanish state has abandoned the Constitution, they say, so why don’t we abandon them?
Prominent among their proposals is mass tax resistance (my translation):
Tax resistance as a strategy of rebellion
As has been explained earlier, civil disobedience is a fundamental tool for raising popular empowerment on the path to autonomy.
While the progressive privatization of everything public continues, while the economic crisis is blamed for the lack of resources, while public money is pilfered in the interests of those in high places, the real public projects on which we are working on the ground often suffer from the lack of those necessary resources. To reverse this situation, it is necessary to derive a significant amount of those resources by direct means and through tax resistance.
Therefore, with this publication, we call for the initiation and expansion of a tax resistance campaign aimed at the Spanish state and its institutions, with follow-up actions to demonstrate that we will not pay their debts because they do not recognize this constitution. Tax resistance serves to nourish our autonomous assemblies, and from these, gives absolute priority to the participatory financing of those resources that we consider truly public.
Tax resistance in your tax return, step by step
This is a proposal for people who are filing a tax return in 2012, and we want to extend this for successive years.
To declare yourself as a tax resister presumes filing a tax return, and it is no use to say you don’t: if you work for someone else, your company still pays your taxes directly to the state. At this point, you have the option of declaring yourself a tax resister because of all of the budget items with which you do not agree, and to reclaim your taxes by means of a tax return.
This is a manageable option for people who want or need to continue participating in the formal economy, and therefore cannot afford fines or anything of that sort. This is a proposal inspired by war tax resistance, which for years has successfully operated in Spain, acting in this way towards the 6% of the tax statement that corresponds to military spending. In this case, we would increase the percentage by adding other items that we also consider unjust.
You can choose these items according to your own criteria, or you can join in the proposed tax resistance campaign launched by Derecho de Rebelión (Right of Rebellion), which will be 25% of your taxes, a total of €363 billion (which was the 2011 budget and is valid for 2012 as long as no others are approved).
Steps to follow:
- On tax day, it is advisable not to accept the draft tax return that is sent to you by the tax office, because there may be an error in the data, probably in your favor.
- It is often not desirable to refrain from filing if you have not earned above the tax line. Even if you do not reach the minimum, it is important that you do the calculations, because very likely you will have a refund (they have to return money to you). Only if you are below the minimum and have not paid anything accordingly does it pay off not to file.
- The tax return must be done by hand or with the PADRE program. [“PADRE” is an acronym that stands for, in English, something like “tax filing assistance software,” but as a word literally means “father” — ♇] Box 752 is where to put whatever tax resistance percentage you will. When you go to pay, that percentage will be deducted; when you get your refund, that percentage is the amount you will be refunded.
- On completing the return, it is necessary to deposit the amount of tax resisted in the account of the collective or assembly of your choice. This must be through a nonprofit entity (cooperative, association, or foundation).
- Then you just fill out a tax resistance card directed to the Treasury Department, which you attach to the return along with proof of your deposit to the group you chose. You can download this form from www.derechoderebelion.net or go to the links on tax resistance listed on the site, some of them linked to fiscal disobedience offices.
- Finally, it is important that the tax resistance action does not remain an individual act between you and the Treasury, so provide the information about your resistance to the fiscal disobedience office nearest you. It is very important to know the number of people that have done it, and that is why we encourage you to fill out the tax resistance census form, which you will find on the same web site.
Ways to avoid the value-added tax
There are a variety of ways open to a person, a company, or a cooperative, to stop paying the value-added tax (VAT) to the state, and to dedicate the payment to an autonomous project. Some of these are:
- If you are tapped to pay the VAT, declare a smaller amount than would apply, and with that finance an assembly or project of your choosing. To justify the lower payment, you must collect various invoices in your name. These invoices can do for you in various ways without compromising the legal cover of your action.
- If you know that your company is going out of business, instead of paying the state, you can begin to redirect these quantities (or part of them that you choose) to the assemblies in your area or to an autonomous project that inspires you.
- If you want to continue in business and you need a way to continue this process perpetually, a solution may be to open and close your business every three or four years. In this way, when the Treasury is after you to collect the VAT, the company would be insolvent and you would have created another.
- If you are a member of a non-profit cooperative or entity that declares VAT, you can ask for an invoice for your personal expenses with the taxpayer identification number of this entity, and give those invoices in order to have them deducted from your taxes and to not have to pay VAT.
- If after joining all the invoices of your autonomous cooperative together you are left owing, you can invoice the cooperative to which you dedicate your volunteer time with your personal taxpayer identification number. Simply after receiving the money, donate it back to the same cooperative.
Total tax resistance in order to declare bankruptcy
This technique consists of stopping all payment on the income tax, the value-added tax, and/or all of those for which you can, as a preliminary step to declaring bankrupcty. Since tax refusal is only a criminal offense starting at €120,000 per year, there is much margin for refusal without criminal liability, and in order to exit the system by supporting a comprehensive and massive process of social autonomy.
In addition, by means of your personal action you can support other companies and cooperatives that are not insolvent, generating invoices for them to add to their accounts. Remembering always that such invoices must be real and deposited in a bank account. Above all, we caution that your sense of responsibility and the destiny of the money are the key on which is based the ethics of any action of this type.
From tax resistance to fiscal autonomy
Some of the methods we provide on this page are similar to the disreputable methods that some people use for self-interested and other dubious reasons. If these methods also form part of our proposals it is because the construction of autonomy will require a lot of resources. This process should be based on the ability to work and the generosity of many people, but needs to rely on these resources to make it possible.
By fiscal autonomy we mean all the pathways of redistribution that will make the tax system support initiatives that will really benefit people. That is to say that the portion that each person is responsible of providing for the common good must be destined for new public services that really place the basic needs of people higher on the scale of priorities. Therefore it becomes a priority, and all but essential, to generate dynamics of ever more massive civil disobedience against the pilfering of our resources on the part of the state, and to reclaim them for popular self-government.
To advance this process, you can sign up with the form at http://derechoderebelion.net/adhesiones-de-lasasambleas, which aims to enlist the assemblies that are committed to fiscal autonomy.
When you’re trying to expand the ranks of tax resisters in your campaign, you need good educational tools. People are often reluctant to resist either because they aren’t sure how to go about it, or because they only have a vague idea of the likely consequences (and so are likely to exaggerate their frightfulness).
When NWTRCC conducted a survey of non-resisting anti-war activists , the most popular answer to the question “Which resources would help you decide to participate [in a tax resistance campaign]?” was: “clear idea of likely consequences” and the two top responses to the question about “the most important reason you have not done war tax resistance” were “fear legal consequences” and “need more information.”
People like to stick with the familiar, and if you ask them to take a jump into the unknown, they will imagine the worst as a way to justify their reticence. If you can be clear, thorough, and credible in demonstrating how to resist and what the consequences are likely to be, you can eliminate the biggest obstacle to the growth of your campaign.
This is easier said than done, however. It can be difficult to be clear and thorough if you are going up against a tax agency that is arbitrary or that changes its rules suddenly, and it can take time to establish credibility.
Today I’ll give a few examples of how tax resistance campaigns have dispelled ignorance about tax resistance.
Members of the Women’s Tax Resistance League regularly gave lectures on their tactic of choice at suffragist meetings, and thereby recruited new resisters.Many married women, including leading actresses, doctors, titled women, business women, and various others having property, businesses, investments, &c., or being in receipt of salaries, have succeeded in demonstrating their non-taxability, and thereby involved the Revenue in a total loss of the tax illegally charged on them.
a flier used to educate people about their rights concerning property seizures by bailiffs
[T]he first task of Anti-Poll Tax Unions was to inform people about what the bailiffs could and couldn’t do.
In Scotland, people were advised not to tell the sheriffs where they worked, not to tell them which banks they used, and not, under any circumstances, to let them into their houses.
They were also told to inform the local group as soon as the sheriffs threatened anything.
The Anti-Poll Tax Unions advised people to move possessions to local friends’ houses before the date of the poinding and offered to help with the moving.
People were told to leave their cars well away from their homes.
They were informed that a wrongful poinding could be appealed against and, in many cases, this was done successfully.
People were also told how to avoid bailiff action by signing away their possessions to people who lived outside of the area or, preferably, to their children.
There are now young children who technically own all of their parents’ possessions.
Some local law centres went onto the offensive against the bailiffs, providing information to the public, which totally undermined their actions.
One morning in , the bailiffs delivered over 4,000 intimidation notices to people throughout Bristol.
By 7:30 a.m. the law centre had heard about this and contacted all local radio stations.
By 8:00 p.m. the news bulletins which went out every fifteen minutes, reported:
Today bailiffs have delivered notices for payment to over 4,000 people in Bristol.
A spokesperson from the law centre said that they were illegal and should be ignored.
So most people ignored them.
A campaign like this could not be carried on without a publicity department. The peasants could not be asked to subscribe to daily papers or even to the weekly Navajivan, and outside papers could at best give an outside view of the campaign. A publicity office was therefore opened with Sjt. Jugatram Dave at its head. With an artist’s pen and with a knowledge of the whole taluka [district] at his fingertips, he took to this work like a duck to water. The arrangement was to issue a daily news bulletin and publish Sjt. Vallabhbhai’s speeches in pamphlet form and to distribute them free to the agriculturists all over the taluka: For four or five days cyclostyled [mimeograph-like] copies were issued, but arrangement was soon made to get them printed daily at Surat, and a start was made with 5,000 copies. The arrangement answered most admirably, the villagers waiting anxiously for the patrikas every morning and devouring the contents with avidity. All the Gujarati and almost all the English dailies of Bombay reproduced them verbatim, and as the movement gathered force, every important town and village in Gujarat began to get copies of the bulletin with the result that over and above ten thousand copies distributed in Bardoli, four thousand copies were subscribed to by places outside.
Some news of interest to war tax resisters in particular:
There’s a new NWTRCC newsletter out, with content including:
In other war tax resistance news:
Erica Weiland, at the War Tax Talk blog, has a post up about propagandizing for war tax resistance using “memes” — pithy messages, often accompanied by pictures or graphics, that are easy to share on social media. She gives several examples and invites her readers to download and share them as appropriate.
Here are a few additions from The Picket Line — a hodge-podge of graphics that I’ve used in various contexts in the past — that you might find worth adding to your memetic arsenal:
