How you can resist funding the government → the tax resistance movement → conferences & gatherings → Fall 2016 New England Regional Gathering of War Tax Resisters and Supporters

A new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter is out, with content including:

• A look back at 45 years of grants from war tax resistance “alternative funds”.
• Jason Rawn on the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign and its relation to NWTRCC’s “Divest from the Pentagon, Invest in People” campaign.
• Erica Weiland asks whether police brutality, mass incarceration, and institutionalized racism are another “war” worth resisting.
• Highlights from a Q&A session on legal issues surrounding war tax resistance led by NWTRCC’s legal advisor Peter Goldberger.
• A call for a volunteer to be NWTRCC’s representative at the World Congress on Military and Social Spending in Berlin later this year.
• Announcements about the upcoming New England Gathering of War Tax Resisters and Supporters and of Campaign Nonviolence’s Action Week, along with commentary on tax day actions and the recent Shut Down Creech camp.
• Ruth Benn reflects on the recent NWTRCC national gathering.
• A profile of war tax resister Margaret Weitzmann.

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

• The New England Gathering of War Tax Resisters is going to be held from October 14^th to 16^th in Hardwick, Massachusetts. Details will be posted to the NWTRCC website eventually.
• The Tax Policy Center takes a closer look at those Americans who successfully pay zero income and payroll tax (about 27% of us, they estimate).
• NWTRCC is hiring a field organizer / outreach consultant. If you think you might be interested, you can find the details here.
• Hundreds of separatists in Trieste have stopped paying taxes to the Italian government.
• Erica Weiland, at the NWTRCC blog, examines the sorry set of presidential candidates we’re being asked to choose from and wonders if there’s any reason for a war tax resister to vote.
• Germán Treuz, the curate of Alcira Gigena, Argentina, caused a ruckus when he refused to pay a road toll recently, complaining that the road had not been properly maintained for years and was in poor condition. His act “had a large impact on society because he is a very well-known person,” said the mayor, and other people have come forward saying that they, too, refuse to pay for such a shoddy road. Treuz later told a radio audience: “The tollgate can be raised easily, so I say to the people: don’t pay these thieves.”
• A college student has created a chatbot legal advisor to help people fight parking and traffic tickets in select cities. So far it has successfully overturned $4 million in parking tickets.
• The IRS continues to get spanked for its former policy of stealing money from people it alleged were “structuring” bank deposits — that is, making many deposits of small amounts over time in order to avoid the reporting requirements of large deposits. In one recent development, the agency was forced to return $29,500 from a Maryland dairy farmer. The Institute for Justice did much of the work involved in forcing the IRS to return the money in this and other cases and to change its policies.
• U.C. Irvine law professor Omri Marian expects bitcoins to be the next “super tax havens.” He says:

  From a tax-evasion point of view, they are particularly attractive. Cryptocurrencies possess the two most important characteristics of a traditional tax haven. First, because there is no jurisdiction in which they operate (they are “held” in cyberspace accounts known as online “wallets”), they are not subject to taxation at source. Second, cryptocurrency accounts are anonymous. Users can start as many online “wallets” as they want to buy or mine Bitcoins and trade them without ever providing any identifying information.

  Significantly, Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) offer one additional major advantage to tax-evaders that traditional tax havens do not: the operation of Bitcoin is not dependent on the existence of financial intermediaries such as banks. Bitcoin is exchangeable peer-to-peer by definition. Bitcoin thus seems immune to the developing international anti-evasion regime [in which] financial institutions [are] the emerging agents of tax collection… Thus, cryptocurrencies have the potential to become super tax havens.

  Bitcoin transactions are not anonymous by default. Indeed, there is a permanent record of every bitcoin transaction that is fully available to law enforcement. If you want to use bitcoin anonymously you have to take careful steps to do so.
• Here’s another example of someone paying taxes with a huge quantity of low-denomination money as a protest.
• There’s a bit of interesting background in this IRS research paper about the process the agency goes through when it detects that someone has failed to file a tax return.

Some notes from here and there:

• The 31^st annual New England Regional Gathering of War Tax Resisters and Their Supporters will be held from October 14–16 in Ware, Massachusetts. A focus this year will be how to better coordinate with other activist groups and concerns:

  While movement folks talk about the intersectionality of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, war, climate change, and economic exploitation, too often we do not go beyond the rhetoric. We are inviting people involved in resisting these serious problems to make time to engage in dialog with those involved in other issues and movements. We need to explore how we can work together.

• There have been some interesting posts on the NWTRCC blog in recent weeks:
  • Tax Collection Phone Call Cons — international grifter call centers are siphoning money from gullible Americans by impersonating the IRS. War tax resisters may be particularly vulnerable as an angry call from the IRS is almost expected. Here’s what you need to know to keep from getting scammed.
  • Understanding common IRS collection letters — the IRS doesn’t tend to call you. They prefer to send you letters. Here’s a field guide to some of the variety of letters war tax resisters tend to see.
  • Join NWTRCC at the SOAW border convergence! — NWTRCC will be among the groups represented at a protest of U.S. border militarization and its treatment of new immigrants, migrant workers, and refugees in October.
  • Reasons to Celebrate — NWTRCC coordinator Ruth Benn celebrates another year of refused taxes sliding off of the statute-of-limitations 10-year limit and forever out of the IRS’s reach.
  • Ammon Hennacy and other early modern war tax resisters — Erica Weiland discusses some of the personalities and actions of the war tax resistance movement that began to coalesce in the United States around the end of World War Ⅱ, as found in Ammon Hennacy’s writings.
• The Wealthy Accountant lists 10 ways to legally stop paying taxes — basically a list of varieties of income that are not taxed. You may find this useful food for thought.
• The Keene, New Hampshire government has thrown all sorts of resources into trying to get a restraining order against the “Robin Hoods” who follow their parking enforcement officers around time, feeding the meters ahead of them and preventing them from writing lucrative tickets. So far, no luck, but they’re making one more desperate appeal to the state supreme court.
• “A tenant said he was refusing to pay rent arrears or council tax until Cornwall Housing repairs his home. Ryan Shilson said there were cracks in the walls, the windows leaked and that on one occasion wood worm caused so much damage to roof joists that he fell through the ceiling.”
• The tactic of paying your taxes in wagonloads of pennies or other small-denomination money, as a way of protesting and of obstructing the tax bureaucracy, is usually the one-off protest of a single fed-up person. But lately in Illinois, it’s become an organized and ongoing tactic:
  • New anti-tax group forms from dollar-bill property tax protest — “Frustrated homeowner Dan Aylward, whose gesture made national headlines, and several other high-profile local tax fighters banded together to form Illinois Tax Revolution, which has scheduled several local protests…”
  • Residents have to stick around if they pay property taxes in dollar bills — “Treasurer Glenda Miller announced a policy requiring people who pay their tax installments in large sums of cash to be physically present while the money is being counted. Miller said in a news release that the policy is for the protection of both the taxpayer and her staff.… ‘The five hours that it took for my staff to count the cash prevented her from continuing her regular office duties,’ Miller said.”
  • Tax protest group rallies, pays McHenry County property taxes in $1 bills — “Because Illinois has more units of government than any other state — property tax bills easily can have 10 or more bodies on them — attending all or most of their meetings to ask for tax relief is a huge undertaking for a taxpayer.”
  • Tax Protest Group Holds Demonstration at McHenry County Treasurer’s Office — “At least three McHenry County property owners packed thousands of singles into suitcases and briefcases and hauled them to the treasurer’s office in order to pay their property taxes.”
• Google Translate is only giving me a hint of what’s going on here but it included what sounds like an hours-long sit-in to block a tollgate, followed by arrests, in India.