Tax resistance
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tax resistance is the refusal to willingly pay a tax because of opposition to the institution that is imposing the tax, or to some of that institution’s policies.
One common variety of tax resistance, for instance, has come from pacifists or members of religious groups such as the Quakers who conscientiously object to funding violent government activities. Tax resistance has also been used as a variety of protest, and as a technique of nonviolent resistance movements such as India’s campaign for independence led by Mahatma Gandhi.
Tax resisters are distinct from tax protesters who deny that the legal obligation to pay taxes exists or applies. Tax resisters typically recognize that the law commands them to pay taxes but they still choose to resist taxation.
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[edit] History of tax resistance
[edit] Motives
Tax resisters typically have one or more of the following motives:
- conscientious objection to what the tax money would be spent on
- unwillingness to pay an illegitimate or unfair tax
- protest against the taxing institution or the particular tax
- an attempt to use nonviolent political force to weaken or overthrow the taxing institution
For example, pacifist war tax resisters are typically motivated by an unwillingness to be complicit in government spending on war and preparations for war (#1). Tax resisters for women’s suffrage were unwilling to pay a tax to a government that did not allow them the rights of representation (#2). When American Amish refused to pay the social security tax, they were protesting against the imposition on them of that particular tax (#3). When the first Russian duma issued the Vyborg Manifesto, they hoped to use tax resistance to wrest concessions from the Czar (#4).
These motives are not mutually exclusive; a resister or a resistance movement may have motives that fit in more than one of the above categories.
[edit] Methods
There are many methods of tax resistance. In the anti-war tax resistance movement 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 then 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.”[1]
Groups like the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund (United States), Peace Tax Seven (United Kingdom), Netzwerk-Friedenssteuer (Germany), and Conscience and Peace Tax International are working to legalize a form of conscientious objection to military taxation which would enable conscientious objectors to designate their taxes to be spent only on non-military budget items.[2] They see this as a legalized form of war tax redirection.
[edit] Refusing specific taxes
Some resisters refuse to willingly pay 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 tax resisters resist the telephone federal excise tax. The tax was initiated to pay for the Spanish-American War and has frequently been raised or extended by the government during times of war. This made it an attractive symbolic target as a “war tax”. Such refusal is relatively safe: because this tax is typically small, resistance very rarely triggers significant government retaliation. Phone companies will cooperate with such resisters by removing the excise tax from their phone bills and reporting their resistance to the government.[3]
[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 openly declaring the refusal 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 $17.76/17.76% (symbolic of the revolutionary year 1776) or $10.40/10.4% (in tribute to Form 1040, which is 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.
[edit] Tax evasion
A resister may lower the tax demanded 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] Reducing expenditure and income
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 or freegan lifestyle; and so forth.
These methods differ from tax evasion in that they stay within the tax laws, and 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.
[edit] Notable tax resisters
[edit] Quotations
| “ | Withholding payment of taxes is one of the quickest methods of overthrowing a government. | ” |
| “ | 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. | ” |
| “ | 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… | ” |
| “ | 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. | ” |
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ Smith, Gar "An Interview with Julia Butterfly Hill: Part 1" The Edge 26 May 2005[1]
- ^ “The Mission of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund”[2]; Peace Tax Seven; Netzwerk-Friedenssteuer; Conscience and Peace Tax International
- ^ “Not paying phone tax becomes war protest” San Francisco Chronicle 4 December 2005
[edit] External links
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Look up tax resister in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
- Tea (Taxed Enough Already) Party National grass-roots effort to let everyone know you are Taxed Enough Already.
- What is War Tax Resistance? from the American advocacy group NWTRCC
- History of War Tax Resistance by Peace Tax Seven (U.S./UK focus)
- Resistance to Civil Government by Henry David Thoreau
- Silence and Courage: Income Taxes, War and Mennonites 1940-1993
- The Tax Resistance League — tax resistance in the women's suffrage movement
- The Theory, Practice & Influence of Thoreau's Civil Disobedience by Lawrence Rosenwald
