Tax resilience is a refusal to pay taxes as opposed to government taxes, or government policies, or as opposed to the tax itself. Taxability is a form of direct action and, if it violates tax regulations, is also a form of civil disobedience.
Examples of tax resistance campaigns include those advocating house rules, such as the Salt March led by Mahatma Gandhi, and those promoting women's suffrage, such as the Women's Tax Resilience League. War tax resilience is the refusal to pay some or all taxes that pay for war, and can be practiced by opponents of conscience, pacifists, or those who are protesting against certain wars.
Taxpayers are different from "tax protesters," who deny that the legal obligation to pay taxes exists or applies to them. Taxpayers may accept that some laws instruct them to pay taxes but they still choose to refuse taxes.
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Histori
The earliest and most extensive forms of taxation are the corvÃÆ'Â e and the tithe, both of which can be traced back to the beginning of civilization. Corvette is forced labor by the state against farmers who are too poor to pay taxes in other forms ( labor in ancient Egypt is a synonym for tax). The low taxes helped the Roman aristocracy increase their wealth, which is equivalent to or exceed the income of the central government. An emperor sometimes replenishes his treasury by confiscating the property of the "super rich", but in later periods, the resistance of the rich to pay taxes was one of the factors contributing to the collapse of the Empire.
Because some people believe that taxation is oppressive, the government is always struggling with tax and resistance noncompliance. Indeed, it has been suggested that tax resistance plays an important role in the collapse of some kingdoms, including Egypt, Rome, Spain and the Aztecs.
Reports of collective tax rejection include the Zealots who rejected the Roman voting tax during the 1st century, culminating in the First Jewish-Roman War. Other historic events stemming from the tax rebellion include Magna Carta, the American Revolution, and the French Revolution.
Opponents of the war tax often highlight the relationship between income tax and war. In the UK income tax was introduced in 1799, to pay for weapons and equipment in preparation for the Napoleonic wars, while the US federal government imposed their first income tax in the Revenue Act of 1861 to help pay for the American Civil War.
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Taxpayers come from diverse backgrounds with diverse ideologies and goals. For example, Henry David Thoreau and William Lloyd Garrison were inspired by the American Revolution and the hard pacifism of the Quakers. Some taxpayers refuse to pay taxes because their conscience will not allow them to fund the war, while others refuse taxes as part of a campaign to overthrow the government.
Tax opponents have become ferocious revolutionaries like John Adams and disaffected people like John Woolman; communists such as Karl Marx and capitalists such as Vivien Kellems; anti-war activist activists such as Amon Hennacy and leaders of the independence movement such as Mahatma Gandhi.
Leo Tolstoy, a Christian anarchist, urges government leaders to change their attitude towards war and citizens for taxes:
If only every King, Emperor, and President who understands that his work of directing the army is not an honorable and important task, because his persecutors persuade him, but the bad and embarrassing preparation of killing - and if every individual person understands that the tax payment to hire and equip soldiers, and, above all, military service itself, not a matter of indifference, but bad and shameful acts by which he not only permits but participates in murder - hence this power of Caesar, King, and President, we, and who caused them to be killed, will disappear by itself.
Method
As an example of the various methods of tax resilience, below are some of the legal and illegal techniques used by war tax deterrents:
Legal
Avoidance
A resister can lower their tax payments by using tax avoidance techniques.
Pay by protest
Some taxpayers pay their taxes, but include a letter of protest along with their tax forms. Others pay in protest - for example, by writing their checks on toilet seats or mock-ups of missiles. Others pay in a way that creates discomfort for collectors - for example, by paying the entire amount in low denominations. This latter method is less effective in countries where small coins are a legitimate means of payment only in limited quantities, allowing the tax authorities to legally refuse such payments; for example in England and Wales, 1p coin is a valid payment instrument in the amount of up to 20p.
Reduce your taxable income and consumption
Other taxpayers change their lifestyle so they owe less. Example; to avoid alcohol consumption tax, repellent may drink home beer; to avoid excise taxes on gasoline, a resister may be cycling; to avoid income taxes, a resister can reduce their income below the tax threshold by embracing simple life or a freegan lifestyle. For example, UK residents do not pay income tax if their income is under personal allowance. In the US, the equivalent annual tax-free income is the sum of standard deductions and personal exemptions, although many deductions and credits allow people to earn more than this and still avoid income taxes.
Opposition to war has caused some, such as Ammon Hennacy and Ellen Thomas, to be a form of tax resistance in which they reduce their income below the tax threshold by taking a simple lifestyle. These people believe that their government is engaged in immoral, unethical or destructive activities such as war, and paying taxes inevitably finances these activities.
These methods are different from tax evasion because they remain in the tax laws, and they differ from tax avoidance because the goal is to pay the least tax possible rather than retain as much post-tax revenue as possible.
Illegal
Evasion
A resister may decide to reduce their taxes paid through illegal tax evasion. For example, one way to avoid income taxes is to just work for cash on hand, thus avoiding tax deductions.
Redirection
Some taxpayers refuse to pay all or part of the tax due, but then make an equivalent donation to charity. In this way, they show that their intentions of resistance are not selfish and that they want to use some of their income to contribute to the common good.
For example, Julia Butterfly Hill rejects about $ 150,000 in federal taxes, and donates the money to after-school programs, arts and culture, community gardens, programs for Native Americans, alternatives to detention, and environmental protection programs. He says:
I really take the money the IRS has told them and I give it to the places where our taxes should go. And in my letter to the IRS I said: "I do not refuse to pay my taxes I actually pay them but I pay them where they are because you refuse to do so."
Groups such as the National Campaign for Peace Peace Fund (United States), Peace Tax Seven (UK), Netzwerk Friedenssteuer (Germany), and Conscience and International Peace work to legalize a kind of careful rejection of military taxation that would allow opponents conscience to set their taxes to spend only on non-military budget items. They see this as a legitimate form of legal tax diversion.
Reject a specific tax
Some refusers refuse to pay only certain taxes, either because the tax is very harmful to them, or because they present useful symbolic targets, or because they are more easily rejected.
For example, in the United States, many taxpayers reject federal phone taxes. The tax began to pay for the Spanish-American War and was often bred or extended by the government during wartime. This makes it an attractive symbolic target as a "war tax". Such rejection is relatively safe: since this tax is usually small, resistance rarely triggers significant government retaliation. The telephone company will work with these opponents by removing excise taxes from their phone bills and reporting their resistance to the government.
Reject to pay
The most dramatic and characteristic method of tax rejection is to refuse to pay taxes - either by quietly ignoring the tax bill or by publicly declaring a refusal to pay.
Some taxpayers only reject some of the taxes that are due. For example, some opponents of the war tax refuse to pay their tax percentage equal to the military percentage of the government budget.
Other opponents retain a symbolic amount - for example, in the United States, some may withhold $ 17.76/17.76% (symbol of the revolutionary year 1776) or $ 10.40/10.4% (in respect to Form 1040, used in federal income tax returns).
See also
- Tax options
- Taxation as theft
Further reading
- War Resisters League (2003) Tax Resistance War: A Guide To Withholding Your Support from the Military . ISBN: 978-0940862159
- Donald D. Kaufman (2006) Have a Caesar?: A Discussion of Christian Responses to War Tax Payments . ISBN 978-1597525404
- Donald D. Kaufman (2006) Tax Dilemma: Praying for Peace, Paying for War . ISBN: 978-1597528047
- David M. Gross (2008) We Will not Pay: Tax Resilience Reader . ISBN: 978-1434898258
- David M. Gross (2009) Against War and War Taxes: Quaker Arguments for Rejection of Taxes War . ISBN: 978-1448688982
- Marian Franz (2009) Persistent Voice: Marian Franz and Conscientious Objection to Military Taxation . ISBN 978-1931038591
- David M. Gross (2011) Warranty of the American Quaker War . ISBN 978-1466458208
- Huret, Romain H. (2014). American Tax Resisters . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN: 978-0-674-28137-0.
Note
External links
- Canadian Conscience
- Death and Tax - NWTRCC film about war tax overruns and motivation
- War Tax Resilience History by Peace Tax Seven (U./. focus focus)
- Resistance to the Civil Government by Henry David Thoreau
- Silence and Courage: Income Tax, War, and Mennonit 1940-1993
- The Tax Resistance League - tax resistance in the women's suffrage movement
- The Theory, Practice & amp; The Influence of Thoreau's Civil Disobedience by Lawrence Rosenwald
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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