Tax resistance

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A tax resister resists or refuses payment of a tax because of opposition to the institution collecting the tax. Often tax resistance comes from pacifists, conscientious objectors or members of religious groups, such as the Quakers, who choose not to fund violent government activities. It has also been a technique used by nonviolent resistance movements, such as India's campaign for independence led by Mahatma Gandhi.

Unlike tax protesters (who deny that the legal obligation to pay taxes exists or applies), tax resisters typically recognize that the law obliges them to pay taxes but still choose to resist taxation.

Contents

[edit] History of tax resistance

Tax resistance has probably existed as long as those in a position of power have imposed taxes. Some notable historical examples of tax resistance are:

  • In the first century A.D., Jewish Zealots in Judaea resisted the poll tax instituted by the Roman empire. Jesus was accused of promoting tax resistance prior to his execution.[1]
  • In 1627, John Hampden was imprisoned for his opposition to the loan Charles I authorised without parliamentary sanction, and he also refused to pay ship money to the Royal Navy. The attempts to imprison resisters like Hampden led to the English Civil War.[2]
  • Rebellious American colonists used various methods of tax resistance to resist the British in the years leading up to the American Revolution.
  • In 1780, African-American Paul Cuffee and his brother resisted the state tax of Massachusetts. Paul wrote to the state legislature: “While we are not allowed the privilege of free men of the state having no vote or influence in the election with those that tax us. Yet many of our color, as is well known, have cheerfully entered the field of battle in the defense of the common cause.” (In 1783 free, taxpaying African-Americans in Massachusetts were given full citizenship rights, including the right to vote.)
  • The British women’s suffrage movement used tax resistance in their struggle, and explicitly saw themselves in a tradition of tax resistance that included John Hampden. According to one source, “tax resistance proved to be the longest-lived form of militancy, and the most difficult to prosecute.”[5]
  • In 1905 a coalition of anti-government groups in Petrograd issued a manifesto calling for mass tax resistance and other economic non-cooperation against Russia’s czarist government.[6]
  • Mahatma Gandhi’s independence campaign in India used a variety of tax resistance strategies, including attacking the British taxed monopolies on salt and textiles by advocating the illegal production of salt outside of the monopoly system and the home-based spinning of cloth. In 1930 this tax resistance culminated in Gandhi’s famous 240 mile Salt March to Dandi to make sea salt in contravention of British law.
  • In 1948, a Chicago conference on “More Disciplined and Revolutionary Pacifist Activity” attracted more than 300 people, and resulted in the formation of the group Peacemakers and its “Tax Refusal Committee.” This is considered to be the birth of the modern organized war tax resistance movement in the United States.
  • In 1968, in the UK case of Cheney v. Conn, an individual objected to paying tax that, in part, would be used to procure nuclear arms in unlawful contravention, he contended, of the Geneva Convention. His claim was dismissed by the court, the judge ruling that "What the [taxation] statute itself enacts cannot be unlawful, because what the statute says and provides is itself the law, and the highest form of law that is known to this country."
  • Beginning in 1972 United States Congressman Ronald Dellums introduced legislation that would allow taxpayers to claim a conscientious objector status and designate their taxes for non-military spending only; this legislation is still periodically introduced in the United States Congress and has a number of sponsors, and the legislatures of other countries are also considering similar legislation. Many war tax resisters support this, but others feel that such a law would not actually address the essential dilemma that leads them to resist taxation.
  • In 1988, the Arab Palestinian town of Beit Sahour engaged in a large-scale campaign of resisting the taxes being collected by Israel.[8]
  • In the United States, some gay people have adopted a form of tax resistance to protest the government’s lack of legal recognition of same-sex marriage.[9]
  • In the United Kingdom, senior citizens in opposition to steep increases in council tax, claiming that increases of as much as 30% are not affordable to those living on a pension, refused to pay the tax in full or in part (some paying the previous year's amount plus an inflationary rise). One of these, Sylvia Hardy of Exeter, was jailed for seven days.

[edit] Motives

Tax resisters are typically motivated by disagreement with the policies of the government or institution that is collecting the tax.

For some, this may include opposing that government or institution entirely, and not just specific policies (for instance, Gandhi’s opposition to British Imperial rule). Anarchists who resist taxes oppose anybody or any institution that demands tribute. Christian anarchists in the pacifist tradition resist taxes from any government that funds a violent civil defence force or military.

Some radical democrats suggest that a right to deny tax payments is in the spirit of democracy, giving people a veto right and forcing government spending to be done with the consent of the governed.

What a tax resister hopes to accomplish may be personal or political or some combination of the two:

  • Some tax resisters want to “wash their hands” of complicity in immoral government policies by not contributing to funding them.
  • Some resist taxes as a form of protest that communicates the strength of their opposition through an act of civil disobedience.
  • Some see tax resistance as a form of nonviolent political force – cutting off funds from the government as part of a campaign to force concessions from that government or to cause it to relinquish control.

[edit] Methods

There are many methods of tax resistance. In war tax resistance circles in the United States it is sometimes remarked that there are as many ways to practice tax resistance as there are resisters.

[edit] Redirection

Some tax resisters refuse to pay all or a portion of the taxes due, but make an equivalent donation to charity. In this way, they demonstrate that the intent of their resistance is not selfish and that they want to use a portion of their earnings to contribute to the common good.

For instance, Julia Butterfly Hill resisted about $150,000 in federal taxes, and donated that money to after school programs, arts and cultural programs, community gardens, programs for Native Americans, alternatives to incarceration, and environmental protection programs. She said:

I actually take the money that the IRS says goes to them and I give it to the places where our taxes should be going. And in my letter to the IRS I said: “I’m not refusing to pay my taxes. I’m actually paying them but I’m paying them where they belong because you refuse to do so.”[10]

[edit] Refusing specific taxes

Some resisters resist only certain taxes, either because those taxes are especially noxious to them, or because they present a useful symbolic target, or because they are more easily resisted.

For instance, in the United States, many war tax resisters resist the federal telephone excise tax. Because this tax is typically small resistance very rarely triggers significant government retaliation. This form of resistance is popular in part because of its relative safety. Also, the phone tax was initiated to pay for the Spanish-American War and has frequently been raised or extended by the government during times of war, so it is an attractive symbolic target as a “war tax”.

[edit] Refusing to pay

The most dramatic and characteristic method of tax resistance is to refuse to pay a tax – either by quietly ignoring the tax bill or by ostentatiously declaring the intent not to pay.

Some tax resisters resist only a portion of the taxes due. For instance, some war tax resisters refuse to pay a percentage of their taxes equivalent to the military percentage of the government’s budget.

Other resisters withhold a symbolic amount – for instance, in the United States, some might hold back $17.76 (symbolic of the revolutionary year 1776) or $10.40 (in tribute to the “1040 form” used in federal income tax returns).

[edit] Paying under protest

Some taxpayers pay their taxes, but include protest letters along with their tax forms. Others pay in a protesting form – for instance, by writing their check on a toilet seat or a mock-up of a missile. Others pay in a way that creates inconvenience for the collector – for instance, by paying the entire amount in low-denomination coins.

[edit] Tax avoidance

A resister may lower the tax due by using legal tax avoidance techniques. For instance, one way to lower the tax due is by changing one’s tax status through incorporation, or establishing an offshore company, trust or foundation in a tax haven.

Other tax resisters change their lives and lifestyles so that they owe less tax. For instance; to avoid an excise tax on alcohol, a resister might home-brew beer; to avoid excise taxes on gasoline, a resister might take up bicycling; to avoid income tax, a resister might decide to take in less income and take up a simple living lifestyle; and so forth.

Some have suggested the term “tax avoision” for these methods of resisting taxes. They differ from tax avoidance in that the goal is to pay as little tax as possible rather than to keep as much post-tax income as possible, and they differ from tax evasion in that they stay within the tax laws.

[edit] Tax evasion

A resister may lower the tax due through illegal tax evasion. For instance, one way to avoid the income tax is to participate in the underground economy – earning money that is never declared to the government.

[edit] Quotations

  • “Withholding payment of taxes is one of the quickest methods of overthrowing a government.” — Mahatma Gandhi
  • “He or she who supports a State organized in the military way – whether directly or indirectly – participates in the sin. Each man old or young takes part in the sin by contributing to the maintenance of the State by paying taxes.” — Mahatma Gandhi
  • “I have heard some of my townsmen say, ‘I should like to have them order me out to help put down an insurrection of the slaves, or to march to Mexico, – see if I would go;’ and yet these very men have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished a substitute. The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war…” — Henry David Thoreau
  • “If only each King, Emperor, and President understood that his work of directing armies is not an honourable and important duty, as his flatterers persuade him it is, but a bad and shameful act of preparation for murder – and if each private individual understood that the payment of taxes wherewith to hire and equip soldiers, and, above all, army-service itself, are not matters of indifference, but are bad and shameful actions by which he not only permits but participates in murder – then this power of Emperors, Kings, and Presidents, which now arouses our indignation… would disappear of itself.” — Leo Tolstoy

[edit] Arguments against tax resistance

Many arguments can be made against the tactic of tax resistance. Most basic, of course, is from those who support the entity collecting the tax and feel that other people should as well. But even those who are sympathetic with the tax resister’s complaints may question the methods. Some common arguments against tax resistance are:

  • What if everybody only paid for the parts of government they like? Wouldn’t that create weird and awful imbalances in what the government funds? Only by ceding this appropriations power to some wise overseers can you get a rational result, but that means that you have to allow them to spend your taxes on things you might not like.
  • If you don’t pay your taxes, the government will just have to take the money from someone else, which is unfair to them.
  • If you don’t pay your taxes, you become a free rider – getting government services like police protection and so forth without paying your share of the bill.
  • Tax resistance is too passive and ineffective a way to gain political change. Currently, only about 60% of Americans pay any federal income tax at all. If the government can thrive with so many people avoiding the income tax, wouldn’t it take an unlikely number of tax resisters to have any effect either as a protest or as an actual curb on government policy?
  • Won’t the government respond to tax resisters by assessing fines, interest, and/or penalties against them? And won’t this just mean they end up with more money in the end?

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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