History of tax resistance
Encyclopedia
Tax resistance
has probably existed as long as those in a position of power have imposed taxes, and most examples have probably been lost to history. In addition, many historical rebellions, civil wars, and other uprisings have been prompted by resentment against taxation or had tax refusal as a component, without being primarily examples of tax resistance. Various historic events originated as tax revolts, such as the Magna Carta
, the American Revolution
and the French Revolution
. This page describes briefly some notable historical examples of tax resistance.
s in Judaea
resisted the poll tax instituted by the Roman Empire
. Jesus
was accused of promoting tax resistance prior to his torture and execution (“We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Cæsar, saying that he himself is Christ a King” — Luke
23:2). After the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD, Jews, particularly those exiled to Egypt, refused to pay the still-extant “temple tax” to Rome (which it was using to maintain pagan temples); Rome responded by destroying Jewish temples.
, encouraged by the local clergy, rioted, destroying tax-collecting paraphernalia and threatening the assessor. The government responded harshly, with punishments including torture and crucifixion, though Queen Fredegund
later was said to have repented and rescinded the tax.
movement, Christian clergy resisted the exaction of taxes against church property by warlords.
rebelled against the Danegeld
being collected by King Harthacnut, and killed two of his tax collectors. Harthacnut responded by burning Worcester to the ground.
′s ride, Godiva continuously pleaded with Leofric
to reduce taxes on the people of Coventry
. Leofric, doubting the strength of her commitment to the cause, said that he would do so if Godiva were to ride naked on a horse through the town. She called his bluff,she rode in the buff and that was enough.
tried to tax residents of Constantinople
in order to come up with money to pay protection money to Henry VI
, the people of Constantinople refused to pay, and Alexios was reduced to trying to collect the sum by stripping the ornaments from old tombs.
issued the clericis laicos
, which prohibited secular governments from taxing churches without the permission of the Pope, and prohibited church officials from paying such taxes. Archbishop Robert Winchelsey
used this as the basis for his refusal to pay taxes to Edward I of England
, and urged the clergy under his direction to do likewise.
, “pillaging and burning their houses.” In August 1351, citizens of Rouen
rioted, “destroying ‘the counters, boxes, and other objects necessary to make and operate’ collection of” a new tax instituted by John II
. In 1355, Geoffroy of Harcourt urged residents of Rouen to refuse to pay the hearth tax and allied with Charles the Bad against John II′s taxes.
led a peasant uprising of tens of thousands in a tax revolt that conquered London, beheaded the archbishop, and exacted radical concessions from Richard II
before being defeated.
was in part a tax resistance movement that encouraged its followers to stop paying tithes to the Catholic Church and taxes. In France, a tithe-payer strike spread from 1529–1560 among both Catholics and Protestants.
in 1520 refused to pay any taxes because of their belief that Charles I
was sending the tax money to the Netherlands. They were joined by other towns, which eventually formed the Revolt of the Comuneros.
of 1524–5 was in part a tax resistance campaign. The rebels vowed to set their own tithes, and:
for his war with France.
s refused to pay taxes for war or capital punishment
. One wrote:
Another wrote:
rebelled against the gabelle
, or salt tax, in 1542. “[A]rmed rebels thwarted the tax-collecting efforts of two successive visitations of royal commissioners sent out to enforce the [gabelle] edicts.” A second revolt centered in Guyenne
in 1548 was more organized, widespread, and violent; and was violently suppressed. Also in August 1548, there were violent revolts against the gabelle in Bordeaux in which tax collectors were killed and their homes burnt. The French central government sent in thousands of troops who terrorized the occupants, imposed martial law, and enforced humiliating terms; however “Amazingly, in the long run, the rebellion did achieve its aim. Unnerved by the riots, Henri II decided not to enforce the salt tax.”
via Mary of Hungary
.
and other parts of Dauphiné
, anti-tax leagues formed, which grew into a powerful rebellion that was crushed in the wake of the ambush and murder of many of the rebel leaders by vigilantes during the Carnival
of 1580.
or “farthing war” the residents of Basel, Switzerland refused to pay a tax destined for the bishop.
s, and rents... and resistance to tax collectors and their agents.” A second rebellion in Vivarais at the same time also centered on refusal to pay the taille.
, resisted the imposition of a new sales tax by Henry IV
in 1597. The King at first stubbornly enforced the tax by force, but eventually decided the expense and fuss was not worth the income and rescinded the tax.
were typically inspired by taxes or the action of tax collectors, and included tax resistance strategies, including “The Great Flight” — a sort of mass emigration by peasants from their land to avoid taxes.
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
.
From the summer of 1646 through 1648, the city of London
refused to pay taxes to the New Model Army
which was occupying the city.
, France in 1624 and again on multiple occasions in 1663, mobs attacked Inns where French tax farmers were staying, threatening to torch the building and kill those inside.
The success of anti-tax rebellions in Saintonge
and Angoumis led to other rebellions in France, including some in which excise officers were lynched.
A second “Croquants′ Revolt” in 1636–7 (with some outbreaks as early as 1628) concerned the taxes being raised to support France′s entry into the Thirty Years' War
and included the lynching of tax officials, a tax strike, and a major battle at which over 2,000 people were killed. The major rebellion was defeated, but outbreaks of mass tax resistance continued as late as 1658.
From 1638–45, the residents of Pardiac refused to pay their taxes, rose up to free the officials who had been imprisoned for failure to remit the tax money, repulsed government troops sent to enforce the tax laws, and massacred a tax official and his bodyguard.
In 1639–43, the revolt of the va-nu-pieds
in Normandy included a tax strike and attacks on the homes of tax farmers. In 1643 there were attacks on tax collectors in multiple regions of France. The Fronde
of 1646–53 was also marked by anti-tax riots.
The revolt of the papier timbré
in 1675 was centered on a new stamp tax, and included destruction of tax offices and attacks on tax- and tithe-collectors.
resisted being taxed by Dutch colonialists to pay for improvements to Fort Amsterdam
.
and of Naples
revolted in 1647 and destroyed the tax offices and the homes of tax farmers.
met with some of the other “principal inhabitants” of Ipswich in New England
, and decided that a new tax that had been imposed by governor Edmund Andros
, without consulting the colony’s General Assembly, was illegitimate and “that it was not the town’s duty any way to assist that ill method of raising money.” A town meeting the next day that Andros had called for in order to select tax commissioners instead issued a declaration against the tax. A number of those at the town meeting were then arrested, hauled to a jail in another town, and then put on trial before a jury hand-picked by the prosecution and a judge who referred to the defendants as “criminals” over the course of the trial.
Fines and court costs followed, and, at first, the Andros tyranny was triumphant. But Wise and company had the last laugh. On 18 April 1689, in the wake of the Glorious Revolution
in the home country, a “Declaration of the Gentlemen, Merchants, and Inhabitants of Boston” was issued, which proclaimed the assault on the rights of dissenting English colonists to be part of the same plot of “the great Scarlet Whore” to crush Englishmen under the thumb of the papists (that is, James II of England
) again.
Then followed a revolution. Andros and Judge Dudley, who had tried the case against Wise and the rest, were overthrown and imprisoned (legend has it Andros was caught trying to escape disguised as a woman).
’s attempts to introduce an excise tax bill led to widespread, heated protest, including mobs that invaded the House of Commons. Walpole was forced to withdraw his proposal.
John Woolman
led many Quakers to question and refuse the payment of taxes to pay for the French and Indian War
. In 1755, Woolman addressed the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting with his concern, saying in part:
A group of several like-minded Quakers, including John Woolman, John Churchman, and Anthony Benezet
then sent a letter to other meetings, which read in part:
from around 1767 to 1771 presaged the American Revolution. It began with organized groups of rural North Carolinans refusing to pay inflated taxes to corrupt authorities, and eventually built to an armed rebellion (which was crushed).
, including the Boston Tea Party
action, the Gaspée Affair
, “spinning bees” in which revolutionary-minded women would make untaxed domestic cloth (prefiguring Gandhi’s homespun cloth campaign), and a boycott of other taxed goods.
After the revolution was underway, taxes instituted by the American patriot side were also widely resisted. One 1781 tax in Connecticut, for example, was designed to raise £288,233 but raised only £40,000 due to unwillingness to pay. Some Quaker meetings recommended that their members not pay taxes to the revolutionary governments, and other Quakers refused to use Continental currency which the revolutionary governments were using for seigniorage
.
John Payne, an Englishman who was opposed to the war to suppress the colonial rebellion, went so far as to board up the windows of his home and put his coach out of commission to avoid the taxes on those items, and he rode miles out of his way to avoid toll gates.
Paul Cuffe
and his brother resisted the state tax of Massachusetts. Cuffe 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 American
s in Massachusetts were given full citizenship rights, including the right to vote.
in Colombia began with bands of armed protesters confronting tax commissioners and state monopoly shops.
and its aftermath, customs houses were burned by mobs, tax rolls were destroyed, and excise collectors were made to renounce their jobs and then were run out of town (or in some cases killed). Popular tax resistance was directed both against the toppling monarchy and against the governments that would try to replace it.
, peasants who had been expecting their taxes to be eliminated in the wake of the rebel victory fled their villages rather than pay the enduring taxes.
attempted to impose a house tax in Bengal
, 200,000 residents of Benares shut their shops, left their homes, assembled en masse in the countryside, and petitioned the occupation government to lift the tax. This massing occurred in December 1810–January 1811. The Raj at first made a show of force, but eventually rescinded the tax.
attempted to bypass the legislature and enact its own taxes in 1829, French liberals in the Breton Association organized tax resistance and created a fund to defray the costs of any tax resisters who were prosecuted. Six Parisian newspapers who printed the Association’s manifesto were prosecuted by the crown. Fifteen regional organizations, including Refus de l’impôt, Aide-toi, le ciel t'aidera
, and Association parisienne, were formed specifically to engage in tax resistance.
and Thomas Jonathan Wooler
and groups such as the National Union of the Working Classes and National Political Union advocated and practiced tax resistance.
, as it came to be called, had both a nonviolent, passive-resistance wing, led by James Warren Doyle
, and a violent one, in which bands of paramilitary secret societies enforced the strike and attacked tax collectors and collaborators. The campaign was eventually successful in eliminating the tithe system, although the government essentially converted what had been tithes on the tenants into rent due through the landlords.
and its allies who forced the crown
and the House of Lords
to capitulate over the Reform Act of 1832
. In the spring of 1832, residents of Carmarthen, Wales, met and vowed to stop paying taxes if the Reform Act were not passed, and some stopped paying taxes in the wake of the collapse of Lord Grey
’s government.
were a protest against the high tolls which had to be paid on the local turnpike roads in Wales, and included destruction of tollhouses and harassment of toll collectors.
, was briefly jailed in 1846 for refusing to pay taxes in protest against the Fugitive Slave Act
and the Mexican–American War
. In his essay on civil disobedience
, he wrote:
Thoreau was following in the footsteps of his fellow New England transcendentalists
Amos Bronson Alcott
and Charles Lane
who had also been arrested for conscientious refusal to pay the poll tax.
rebels destroyed tax records and assessments and many people stopped paying taxes.
, the royal and military aristocracy prohibited the first popularly-elected parliament from assembling, and that parliament responded by declaring the government out-of-business:
Karl Marx
, via his newspaper, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
, published this decree, adding: “From today, therefore, taxes are abolished! It is high treason to pay taxes. Refusal to pay taxes is the primary duty of the citizen!” Marx was later prosecuted for promoting tax resistance, but was acquitted after arguing that it was not illegal to promote tax resistance against an illegal government.
, leader of the radical democratic party in the Prussian national assembly, and others of similar views, were convicted for encouraging citizens to stop paying taxes to the autocratic government.
Similarly, in 1864 the delegate Johann Jacoby
served six months behind bars for a speech calling for tax refusal, delivered in the presence of the King, an early manifestation of opposition to the rule of Otto von Bismarck
.
and the subsequent war of independence led by Lajos Kossuth
, Hungarians adopted a strategy of passive resistance, including boycotting of Austrian goods and refusing Austrian taxes, while the dissolved Diet (parliament) and various agricultural, trade and educational associations continued to meet informally. The symbol of this strategy was Ferenc Deák
, following his refusal to take public office under the Austrians and apparent semi-retirement in the 1850s. After Emperor Franz-Joseph issued his October Diploma in 1860, granting increased autonomy to various parts of the Austrian empire, the Hungarian county councils and Diet were reconvoked. However, the conflict with Austria continued — including renewed tax resistance — with Deák playing a more active role until the Diet’s demands were conceded in 1867.,
refused to pay the taxes levied by their provincial zemstvo
after their exemption of taxes was revoked by the Russian reforms of the 1860s.
, the losing candidate, John McEnery
, formed a shadow government
and declared himself the truly elected governor. As part of this, he issued declarations saying that those people collecting taxes for the actually-seated government were acting illegally and illegitimately and that citizens of Louisiana should resist these taxes.
McEnery’s shadow government, representing a white-supremacist
Democratic party
opposed to the Republican
black and carpetbagger
government, maintained its parallel governance until mid-1873, and then folded under pressure from the United States federal government.
broke out when the British occupation government seized a wagon from Piet Bezuidenhoudt who had refused to pay a tax. When the government attempted to auction off the wagon to raise the tax money, supporters of Bezuidenhoudt seized it, and met government representatives who came after them with armed force.
issued a manifesto calling on Irish tenants to refuse to pay rent to their absentee English landlords.
in the Dakota territory of the United States seized already-collected taxes from a sheriff and announced that they would fight to the last man (there were roughly 4,000) against further attempts to tax them.
refused to pay a dog tax in 1891 and prepared instead to submit to arrest and trial.
used (or threatened) tax resistance in order to fight against home rule
.
refused to pay taxes to the state of Montana in the late 1890s, and the state seized all of the sheep on the reservation in retaliation.
, and also against tax rates that discriminated against Barcelona in favor of Madrid.
began resisting the part of their taxes that paid for sectarian schools. Over 170 would eventually be jailed for their tax refusal.
issued a manifesto calling for mass tax resistance and other economic non-cooperation against Russia’s czarist government. It read, in part, “There is only one way out: to overthrow the government, to deprive it of its last strength. It is necessary to cut the government off from the last source of its existence: financial revenue.”
In 1906, when the Czar dissolved the First Duma
, its members fled to Finland where they issued the Vyborg Manifesto
which called upon the people of Russia to refuse to pay their taxes until representative government was restored.
. An inspector from the Natal Mounted Police killed one Zulu tax protester, and was in turn slain along with another of his party.
exiles in Canada refused to pay school taxes on their lands, saying that, as they always refused to have their children educated, lest they learn evil things, they would not pay money for school purposes. They removed their property from the district so as to evade seizure.
, there was widespread and successful refusal to pay the sultan’s poll tax.
movement, in particular the Women’s Tax Resistance League
, 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.”
Tax resistance among the American women’s suffrage
movement was less organized, but also practiced. Julia & Abby Smith, Annie Shaw
, Lucy Stone
, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
were among those who practiced and advocated tax resistance as a protest against “taxation without representation.”
Tax resistance also played a role in the women’s suffrage movements of Bermuda and France.
in 1916 in which the Salt Tax Bureau at Ba Maoqui was torched and the bureau’s director was killed.
was ostensibly voluntary, those who chose not to buy them were subject to strong pressure including mob violence. For example, John Schrag was beaten, arrested, and prosecuted and he and his property were smeared with yellow paint by a mob for having refused to buy war bonds. One witness said:
and Papua in the years around 1920.
organized tax resistance against home rule
in Northern Ireland in 1921.
supported tax resistance.
’s occupation of the American Samoa
.
, businesses were conducting a strike against municipal taxes there.
Residents of Samoa refused to pay taxes to the New Zealand occupation government in 1928.
used a variety of tax resistance strategies, including attacking the British taxed monopolies
on salt
and textile
s 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 miles (386.2 km) Salt March to Dandi
to harvest sea salt in contravention of British law. Other tax resistance campaigns persisted after this period, including resistance to the Damodar Canal tax in 1937–9.
in the early 1930s, Americans throughout the United States formed thousands of taxpayers’ leagues to protest high property taxes. In some cases, these groups illegally withheld taxes through tax strikes and other forms of resistance. The largest tax strike was in Chicago
and led by the Association of Real Estate Taxpayers. At its height, the Association had more than thirty-thousand dues-paying members.
A second, similar but smaller property tax payer’s revolt hit Chicago in 1977.
, the quasi-fascist “Blue Shirts” declared a tax strike. One striker was killed during a protest designed to disrupt an auction of cattle seized from a tax striker.
, the Christian anarchist
and pacifist Ammon Hennacy
refused to register for the American draft and announced that he would not pay his income tax
es. He also tried to reduce his tax liability by adopting a life of simple living
and barter
ing. He wrote:
s,” 150 Palestinians called for a general strike and tax strike to protest the British occupation.
Between 1939 and 1948, there was widespread resistance by Jews in Palestine
against the income tax imposed by the British occupation, which included bomb attacks against tax offices, and many Jews instead voluntarily paid taxes to Jewish organizations. A few years after Israel
gained its independence, its government became the target of widespread tax evasion and resistance, including a major tax strike in 1954.
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.
From 1951 to 1954, a group of “Texas Housewives” refused to pay social security taxes on the wages of their domestic help, and took their resistance all the way to the Supreme Court (where they lost their case).
began resisting taxes in France. The resisters used a variety of tactics, including strikes, harassment of tax collectors, disruption of government auctions, and running for office (several Poujadists were elected to the Chamber of Deputies).
stopped paying federal income tax in 1956 to protest what he felt was unconstitutional federal spending. He hoped to become a test case, but the Supreme Court declined to hear his case.
allowed the Amish
to be exempt from the Social Security
tax, following a persistent resistance campaign from some Amish who regarded insurance programs as mistrustful of God
and therefore against their religious teachings. See and (this exemption also covers Medicare
taxes).
in unlawful contravention, he contended, of the Geneva Conventions
. 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.”
There remains in the United Kingdom a significant movement of people who wish to withhold the percentage of their taxes used for war and weapons, but instead contribute them into a ring fenced pool for peace-building or peacekeeping purposes. This may be either for religious or economic reasons. See the website Peace Pays or the Peace Tax campaign “Conscience,” which produces an alternative tax return form to document the withholding of the military percentage of your taxes (approximately 12% of the total tax bill in the UK).
declaring their intention to refuse to pay taxes for the Vietnam War
. The signatories included Nelson Algren
, Bob Avakian
, James Baldwin
, Russell Banks
, Sally Belfrage
, Eric Bentley
, Bill Berkson
, Daniel Berrigan
, Philip Berrigan
, Herbert Blau
, Robert Bly
, Richard O. Boyer
, Kay Boyle
, Susan Brownmiller
, Jerome Charyn
, Noam Chomsky
, Robert Claiborne
, Peter Collier
, Fred J. Cook
, Robert Coover
, Philip Corner
, Robert Creeley
, James Crumley
, Peter Davis
, Emile de Antonio
, David Dellinger
, Barbara Deming
, Philip K. Dick
, Martin Duberman
, Robert Duncan
, Andrea Dworkin
, Garrett Eckbo
, Stanley Elkin
, Lawrence Ferlinghetti
, Leslie Fiedler
, Donald Freed
, Betty Friedan
, Eugene D. Genovese
, Mort Gerberg
, Allen Ginsberg
, Todd Gitlin
, Paul Goodman
, Daniel Greenberg, Donald Hall
, David Harris, James Leo Herlihy
, Edward S. Herman
, Jane Jacobs
, Galway Kinnell
, James Kirkwood, Jr.
, Richard Kluger
, Andrew Kopkind
, Hy Kraft
, Paul Krassner
, Saul Landau
, Sidney Lens
, John Leonard
, Denise Levertov
, Philip Levine
, Walter Lowenfels
, Staughton Lynd
, Dwight Macdonald
, Jackson Mac Low
, Norman Mailer
, William Mandel
, William Matthews
, Peter Matthiessen
, Milton Mayer
, Ed McClanahan
, David McReynolds
, David Meltzer
, Henry Miller
, Merle Miller
, Helen and Scott Nearing
, Jack Newfield
, Michael Novak
, Carl Oglesby
, Tillie Olsen
, Grace Paley
, Victor Perlo
, Frances Fox Piven
, Richard Poirier
, Jefferson Poland
, Thomas Pynchon
, Anatol Rapoport
, Anton Refregier
, Adrienne Rich
, Muriel Rukeyser
, Marshall Sahlins
, Kirkpatrick Sale
, Ed Sanders
, Richard Schechner
, Robert Scheer
, Orville Schell
, André Schiffrin
, Peter Dale Scott
, Robert Sherrill
, Irwin Silber
, Bennett J. Sims, Robert Sklar
, Susan Sontag
, Terry Southern
, Benjamin Spock
, Gloria Steinem
, Dorothy Sterling
, Donald Ogden Stewart
, William Styron
, Robert Sward
, Norman Thomas
, Hunter S. Thompson
, Judith Viorst
, Milton Viorst
, Kurt Vonnegut
, Arthur Waskow
, Lew Welch
, John Wieners
, Laird Wilcox
, Alice Wolfson
, Sol Yurick
, Gordon Zahn, and Howard Zinn
.
In 1970, five Harvard and nine M.I.T. faculty members, including Nobel
laureates Salvador E. Luria and George Wald
, announced that they would be resisting taxes in protest of the war.
In 1972, Jane Hart, wife of U.S. Senator Philip Hart
, said that she would be resisting the federal income tax. By this time, every major I.R.S. center had a staff member assigned to be the “Viet Nam Protest Coordinator.”
Also in 1972, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania decided the case of United States v. Malinowski That case involved John Paul Malinowski, an instructor in theology at St. Joseph’s College in Philadelphia and a member of the Philadelphia War Tax Resistance League protesting the use of tax money in the Vietnam War. The taxpayer had filed a false Form W-4, and admitted he knew that he was not legally entitled to claim the exemptions (that is, the allowances) he claimed on the W-4. Malinowski was convicted, and his motion for a new trial or acquittal was denied.
, José Bové
and other activists led a campaign to withhold 3% of their taxes (an amount they said was equivalent to the amount the government was spending on its base-expansion campaign) and redirect this money toward agricultural projects.
introduced legislation that would legalize a form of conscientious objection to military taxation
, allowing some taxpayers to designate their taxes for non-military spending only. Advocated by National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund
, this legislation is regularly reintroduced in the United States Congress and has a number of cosponsors. 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 problem that leads them to resist taxation.
regime in Nicaragua, the opposition organized a tax strike.
of Seattle, Washington announced that he would be refusing to pay half of his income tax in protest against the nuclear arms race
.
called on its supporters to refuse to pay taxes in protest against an Anglo-Irish settlement on the political status of Northern Ireland.
, the Palestinian resistance urged people to resist paying taxes to Israel. The people of Beit Sahour
responded to this call with an unusually organized and citywide tax strike
. As a result of the tax strike the Israeli military authorities placed the town under curfew for 45 days and seized goods belonging to citizens in raids.
Israel’s occupation military forces had the authority, independent from the rest of Israel’s government, to create and enforce taxes in occupied areas. As a result, they would impose taxes on Palestinians as collective punishment measures to discourage the intifada, for instance “the glass tax (for broken windows), the stones tax (for damage done by stones), the missile tax (for Gulf War damage), and a general intifada tax, among others”
Among those prominent in Beit Sahour’s tax resistance were Ghassan Andoni
and Elias Rishmawi. Some tax resistance continued in Beit Sahour for some years after the end of the 1989 tax strike there
reformed local taxation in Britain by replacing Domestic Rates
with a new tax known officially as the Community Charge, but more widely and disparagingly known as the 'Poll Tax'. Whereas Rates had been, at least to some extent, a progressive tax
, the Poll Tax was a regressive tax
which resulted in much larger bills for many poor families. Many people considered the new tax to be extremely unfair, and a major non-payment campaign saw up to 30% of the population of some council areas refusing to pay. Draconian enforcement measures caused civil unrest, and untimately led to the Poll Tax riots
. The new tax became a major electoral liability for the Conservative Party
, and was a significant factor in the ousting of Mrs Thatcher by her own party. Due to its unpopularity and the disastrous impact of non-payment on local authority finances, the tax was replaced by the Council Tax
in 1993.
’s major opposition political parties called for tax resistance in support of their campaign to end one-party rule.
occupied one floor of the building housing the Revenue Canada Taxation Centre in downtown Toronto, in protest of Canada’s plans to tax Native Americans who had previously been exempted from taxation as a result of treaty provisions. Many continue to resist the tax.
moved from organizing armed resistance to the Mexican government to establishing autonomous villages free from central government control, one of the things they did was to stop paying taxes to the outside governments.
, some gay people adopted a form of tax resistance to protest the government’s lack of legal recognition of same-sex marriage.
, 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.
launched a tax strike aimed at ending the Chavez regime’s control.
, 100 shopkeepers in Palermo, Italy declared publicly that they would stop paying taxes to the Sicilian Mafia. They encouraged consumers to support the resisters by buycott
ing their stores.
In 2010, residents of Villa Nueva announced a tax strike to protest against inadequate government services. Residents were also urged to refuse to pay taxes for roadwork that resisters alleged had already been paid for out of federal taxes.
apparently won the presidential election in Ivory Coast over incumbent Laurent Gbagbo
. Gbagbo disagreed and refused to leave office. Ouattara then called on the citizens of Ivory Coast to discontinue paying taxes to the Gbagbo government, which eventually was defeated.
went on strike in April, 2011 rather than pay a new export tax on cashews.
, at its 50th anniversary meeting, called on citizens to redirect their taxes from the central government to a Catalan-run fund until such time as the government concedes more autonomy to the region.
Tax resistance
Tax resistance is the refusal to pay tax because of opposition to the government that is imposing the tax or to government policy.Tax resistance is a form of civil disobedience and direct action...
has probably existed as long as those in a position of power have imposed taxes, and most examples have probably been lost to history. In addition, many historical rebellions, civil wars, and other uprisings have been prompted by resentment against taxation or had tax refusal as a component, without being primarily examples of tax resistance. Various historic events originated as tax revolts, such as the Magna Carta
Magna Carta
Magna Carta is an English charter, originally issued in the year 1215 and reissued later in the 13th century in modified versions, which included the most direct challenges to the monarch's authority to date. The charter first passed into law in 1225...
, the American Revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
and the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
. This page describes briefly some notable historical examples of tax resistance.
Jewish Zealots, 1st century A.D.
In the 1st century AD, Jewish ZealotZealotry
Zealotry was originally a political movement in 1st century Second Temple Judaism which sought to incite the people of Iudaea Province to rebel against the Roman Empire and expel it from the Holy land by force of arms, most notably during the Great Jewish Revolt...
s in Judaea
Iudaea Province
Judaea or Iudaea are terms used by historians to refer to the Roman province that extended over parts of the former regions of the Hasmonean and Herodian kingdoms of Israel...
resisted the poll tax instituted by the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
. Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
was accused of promoting tax resistance prior to his torture and execution (“We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Cæsar, saying that he himself is Christ a King” — Luke
Gospel of Luke
The Gospel According to Luke , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Luke or simply Luke, is the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels. This synoptic gospel is an account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It details his story from the events of his birth to his Ascension.The...
23:2). After the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD, Jews, particularly those exiled to Egypt, refused to pay the still-extant “temple tax” to Rome (which it was using to maintain pagan temples); Rome responded by destroying Jewish temples.
Limoges, 578
In 578 AD residents of LimogesLimoges
Limoges |Limousin]] dialect of Occitan) is a city and commune, the capital of the Haute-Vienne department and the administrative capital of the Limousin région in west-central France....
, encouraged by the local clergy, rioted, destroying tax-collecting paraphernalia and threatening the assessor. The government responded harshly, with punishments including torture and crucifixion, though Queen Fredegund
Fredegund
Fredegund was the Queen consort of Chilperic I, the Merovingian Frankish king of Soissons.All her wealth and power came to her through her association with Chilperic...
later was said to have repented and rescinded the tax.
Peace and Truce of God
In councils organized by the Peace and Truce of GodPeace and Truce of God
The Peace and Truce of God was a medieval European movement of the Catholic Church that applied spiritual sanctions in order to limit the violence of private war in feudal society. The movement constituted the first organized attempt to control civil society in medieval Europe through non-violent...
movement, Christian clergy resisted the exaction of taxes against church property by warlords.
Danegeld, 1041
In 1041, residents of WorcesterWorcester
The City of Worcester, commonly known as Worcester, , is a city and county town of Worcestershire in the West Midlands of England. Worcester is situated some southwest of Birmingham and north of Gloucester, and has an approximate population of 94,000 people. The River Severn runs through the...
rebelled against the Danegeld
Danegeld
The Danegeld was a tax raised to pay tribute to the Viking raiders to save a land from being ravaged. It was called the geld or gafol in eleventh-century sources; the term Danegeld did not appear until the early twelfth century...
being collected by King Harthacnut, and killed two of his tax collectors. Harthacnut responded by burning Worcester to the ground.
Lady Godiva′s Ride
In the legend of Lady GodivaLady Godiva
Godiva , often referred to as Lady Godiva , was an Anglo-Saxon noblewoman who, according to legend, rode naked through the streets of Coventry in order to gain a remission of the oppressive taxation imposed by her husband on his tenants...
′s ride, Godiva continuously pleaded with Leofric
Leofric, Earl of Mercia
Leofric was the Earl of Mercia and founded monasteries at Coventry and Much Wenlock. Leofric is remembered as the husband of Lady Godiva.-Life and political influence:...
to reduce taxes on the people of Coventry
Coventry
Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham, with a population of 300,848, although...
. Leofric, doubting the strength of her commitment to the cause, said that he would do so if Godiva were to ride naked on a horse through the town. She called his bluff,she rode in the buff and that was enough.
Constantinople, 1197
When Alexios III AngelosAlexios III Angelos
Alexios III Angelos was Byzantine Emperor from 1195 to 1203.- Early life:Alexios III Angelos was the second son of Andronikos Angelos and Euphrosyne Kastamonitissa. Andronicus was himself a son of Theodora Komnene, the youngest daughter of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos and Irene Doukaina. Thus...
tried to tax residents of Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
in order to come up with money to pay protection money to Henry VI
Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor
Henry VI was King of Germany from 1190 to 1197, Holy Roman Emperor from 1191 to 1197 and King of Sicily from 1194 to 1197.-Early years:Born in Nijmegen,...
, the people of Constantinople refused to pay, and Alexios was reduced to trying to collect the sum by stripping the ornaments from old tombs.
Florence, 1289
A war tax instituted by the Florentine seigniory in 1288 and increased in 1289 led to mass tax resistance that forced the government to abandon the tax.Clericis laicos, 1296
In 1296, Pope Boniface VIIIPope Boniface VIII
Pope Boniface VIII , born Benedetto Gaetani, was Pope of the Catholic Church from 1294 to 1303. Today, Boniface VIII is probably best remembered for his feuds with Dante, who placed him in the Eighth circle of Hell in his Divina Commedia, among the Simonists.- Biography :Gaetani was born in 1235 in...
issued the clericis laicos
Clericis laicos
Clericis laicos was a Papal bull issued on February 5, 1296 by Pope Boniface VIII in an attempt to prevent the secular states of Europe, in particular France and England, from appropriating church revenues without the express prior permission of the pope...
, which prohibited secular governments from taxing churches without the permission of the Pope, and prohibited church officials from paying such taxes. Archbishop Robert Winchelsey
Robert Winchelsey
Robert Winchelsey was an English Christian theologian and Archbishop of Canterbury. He studied at the universities of Paris and Oxford, and later taught at both. Influenced by Thomas Aquinas, he was a scholastic theologian...
used this as the basis for his refusal to pay taxes to Edward I of England
Edward I of England
Edward I , also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots, was King of England from 1272 to 1307. The first son of Henry III, Edward was involved early in the political intrigues of his father's reign, which included an outright rebellion by the English barons...
, and urged the clergy under his direction to do likewise.
Norman anti-tax riots, 1348–1351
In Normandy in June 1348, tax resisters attacked the tax collectors of King Philip VIPhilip VI of France
Philip VI , known as the Fortunate and of Valois, was the King of France from 1328 to his death. He was also Count of Anjou, Maine, and Valois from 1325 to 1328...
, “pillaging and burning their houses.” In August 1351, citizens of Rouen
Rouen
Rouen , in northern France on the River Seine, is the capital of the Haute-Normandie region and the historic capital city of Normandy. Once one of the largest and most prosperous cities of medieval Europe , it was the seat of the Exchequer of Normandy in the Middle Ages...
rioted, “destroying ‘the counters, boxes, and other objects necessary to make and operate’ collection of” a new tax instituted by John II
John II of France
John II , called John the Good , was the King of France from 1350 until his death. He was the second sovereign of the House of Valois and is perhaps best remembered as the king who was vanquished at the Battle of Poitiers and taken as a captive to England.The son of Philip VI and Joan the Lame,...
. In 1355, Geoffroy of Harcourt urged residents of Rouen to refuse to pay the hearth tax and allied with Charles the Bad against John II′s taxes.
Wat Tyler′s rebellion, 1381
In 1381, Wat TylerWat Tyler
Walter "Wat" Tyler was a leader of the English Peasants' Revolt of 1381.-Early life:Knowledge of Tyler's early life is very limited, and derives mostly through the records of his enemies. Historians believe he was born in Essex, but are not sure why he crossed the Thames Estuary to Kent...
led a peasant uprising of tens of thousands in a tax revolt that conquered London, beheaded the archbishop, and exacted radical concessions from Richard II
Richard II of England
Richard II was King of England, a member of the House of Plantagenet and the last of its main-line kings. He ruled from 1377 until he was deposed in 1399. Richard was a son of Edward, the Black Prince, and was born during the reign of his grandfather, Edward III...
before being defeated.
French aides uprisings, 1381
In 1381 there was widespread tax rebellion in France.
In Rouen workers in the textile trade gathered in the Old Market, chose one of their own to represent the king, and had this mock king sign acts abolishing the aides. In Paris the collectors′ threat to seize a greengrocer′s still on the Right Bank roused local residents to assemble, shout “Down with taxes!” and chase off the tax collectors.... The rebellion then spread to Caen and other towns in Normandy and to towns in Picardy, where opposition was especially virulent in Amiens. It moved through Orleans and on to Sens, finally reaching Lyons....
Bundschuh movement
The Bundschuh movementBundschuh movement
The Bundschuh movement was a loosely linked series of localized peasant rebellions in southwestern Germany. It played an important part in the German Peasants' War of the early 15th and 16th centuries. It was so called because of the peasant shoe the peasants displayed on their flag – symbolizing...
was in part a tax resistance movement that encouraged its followers to stop paying tithes to the Catholic Church and taxes. In France, a tithe-payer strike spread from 1529–1560 among both Catholics and Protestants.
Revolt of the Comuneros, 1520
Residents of SalamancaSalamanca
Salamanca is a city in western Spain, in the community of Castile and León. Because it is known for its beautiful buildings and urban environment, the Old City was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. It is the most important university city in Spain and is known for its contributions to...
in 1520 refused to pay any taxes because of their belief that Charles I
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V was ruler of the Holy Roman Empire from 1519 and, as Charles I, of the Spanish Empire from 1516 until his voluntary retirement and abdication in favor of his younger brother Ferdinand I and his son Philip II in 1556.As...
was sending the tax money to the Netherlands. They were joined by other towns, which eventually formed the Revolt of the Comuneros.
German Peasants′ War, 1524–5
The German Peasants' WarGerman Peasants' War
The German Peasants' War or Great Peasants' Revolt was a widespread popular revolt in the German-speaking areas of Central Europe, 1524–1526. At its height in the spring and summer of 1525, the conflict involved an estimated 300,000 peasants: contemporary estimates put the dead at 100,000...
of 1524–5 was in part a tax resistance campaign. The rebels vowed to set their own tithes, and:
The small tithes, whether ecclesiastical or lay, we will not pay at all, for the Lord God created cattle for the free use of man. We will not, therefore, pay farther an unseemly tithe which is of man′s invention.... Henceforth no one shall have to pay death taxes, whether small or large.
Revolt of Ghent, 1539
The Revolt of Ghent (1539) began when the city magistrates refused to pay taxes demanded by Charles VCharles V, Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V was ruler of the Holy Roman Empire from 1519 and, as Charles I, of the Spanish Empire from 1516 until his voluntary retirement and abdication in favor of his younger brother Ferdinand I and his son Philip II in 1556.As...
for his war with France.
Hutterites
In the 16th century, HutteriteHutterite
Hutterites are a communal branch of Anabaptists who, like the Amish and Mennonites, trace their roots to the Radical Reformation of the 16th century. Since the death of their founder Jakob Hutter in 1536, the beliefs of the Hutterites, especially living in a community of goods and absolute...
s refused to pay taxes for war or capital punishment
Capital punishment
Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...
. One wrote:
For war, killing, and bloodshed (where it is demanded especially for that) we give nothing, but not out of wickedness or arbitrariness, but out of the fear of God (1 Timothy 5) that we may not be partakers in strange sins.
Another wrote:
[When] the government requires of us what is contrary to our faith and conscience — as swearing oaths and paying hangman’s dues or taxes for war — then we do not obey its command.
Gabelle revolts, 1542,1548
Residents of La RochelleLa Rochelle
La Rochelle is a city in western France and a seaport on the Bay of Biscay, a part of the Atlantic Ocean. It is the capital of the Charente-Maritime department.The city is connected to the Île de Ré by a bridge completed on 19 May 1988...
rebelled against the gabelle
Gabelle
The gabelle was a very unpopular tax on salt in France before 1790. The term gabelle derives from the Italian gabella , itself from the Arabic qabala....
, or salt tax, in 1542. “[A]rmed rebels thwarted the tax-collecting efforts of two successive visitations of royal commissioners sent out to enforce the [gabelle] edicts.” A second revolt centered in Guyenne
Guyenne
Guyenne or Guienne , , ; Occitan Guiana ) is a vaguely defined historic region of south-western France. The Province of Guyenne, sometimes called the Province of Guyenne and Gascony, was a large province of pre-revolutionary France....
in 1548 was more organized, widespread, and violent; and was violently suppressed. Also in August 1548, there were violent revolts against the gabelle in Bordeaux in which tax collectors were killed and their homes burnt. The French central government sent in thousands of troops who terrorized the occupants, imposed martial law, and enforced humiliating terms; however “Amazingly, in the long run, the rebellion did achieve its aim. Unnerved by the riots, Henri II decided not to enforce the salt tax.”
Tariff resistance in Holland, 1543–9
Merchants in Holland successfully resisted a variety of export duties imposed by the Holy Roman EmpireHoly Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...
via Mary of Hungary
Mary of Hungary
Mary of Anjou was queen regnant of Hungary from 1382 until her death in 1395.-Childhood:...
.
Tax strikes in France, 1579–80
In Romans-sur-IsèreRomans-sur-Isère
Romans-sur-Isère or Romans is a commune in the Drôme department in southeastern France.-Geography:...
and other parts of Dauphiné
Dauphiné
The Dauphiné or Dauphiné Viennois is a former province in southeastern France, whose area roughly corresponded to that of the present departments of :Isère, :Drôme, and :Hautes-Alpes....
, anti-tax leagues formed, which grew into a powerful rebellion that was crushed in the wake of the ambush and murder of many of the rebel leaders by vigilantes during the Carnival
Carnival
Carnaval is a festive season which occurs immediately before Lent; the main events are usually during February. Carnaval typically involves a public celebration or parade combining some elements of a circus, mask and public street party...
of 1580.
Rappenkrieg, 1591–4
In a three-year-long tax refusal campaign called the RappenkriegRappenkrieg (Basel)
The Rappenkrieg was a conflict lasting from 1591-1594, consisting of a peasant uprising in Basel-Stadt, Switzerland.No be confused with the Rappenkrieg in Western Austria from 1612 to 1614 in the adjacent Fricktal and the Rhine, although it had similar causes.-Sources:*Andreas Ryff: Der...
or “farthing war” the residents of Basel, Switzerland refused to pay a tax destined for the bishop.
Croquants, 1593–5
Peasant rebels in southwestern France called “croquants” included “refusal to pay tithes, tailleTaille
The taille was a direct land tax on the French peasantry and non-nobles in Ancien Régime France. The tax was imposed on each household and based on how much land it held.-History:Originally only an "exceptional" tax The taille was a direct land tax on the French peasantry and non-nobles in Ancien...
s, and rents... and resistance to tax collectors and their agents.” A second rebellion in Vivarais at the same time also centered on refusal to pay the taille.
Sales tax resistance in France, 1597
A number of towns in France, notably PoitiersPoitiers
Poitiers is a city on the Clain river in west central France. It is a commune and the capital of the Vienne department and of the Poitou-Charentes region. The centre is picturesque and its streets are interesting for predominant remains of historical architecture, especially from the Romanesque...
, resisted the imposition of a new sales tax by Henry IV
Henry IV of France
Henry IV , Henri-Quatre, was King of France from 1589 to 1610 and King of Navarre from 1572 to 1610. He was the first monarch of the Bourbon branch of the Capetian dynasty in France....
in 1597. The King at first stubbornly enforced the tax by force, but eventually decided the expense and fuss was not worth the income and rescinded the tax.
Jelali revolts
The Jelali revoltsJelali Revolts
Jelali revolts , were a series of rebellions in Anatolia of irregular troops led by provincial administrations known as celalî, against the authority of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th and 17th centuries. They arose partly as an effort to attain tax privileges...
were typically inspired by taxes or the action of tax collectors, and included tax resistance strategies, including “The Great Flight” — a sort of mass emigration by peasants from their land to avoid taxes.
Bolotnikov rebellion, 1606
During the Bolotnikov rebellion, tribes in western Siberia began refusing to pay taxes to the central government.English Civil War
In 1627, John HampdenJohn Hampden
John Hampden was an English politician, the eldest son of William Hampden, of Hampden House, Great Hampden in Buckinghamshire, John Hampden (ca. 15951643) was an English politician, the eldest son of William Hampden, of Hampden House, Great Hampden in Buckinghamshire, John Hampden (ca. 15951643)...
was imprisoned for his opposition to the loan Charles I
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...
authorised without parliamentary sanction, and he also refused to pay ship money
Ship money
Ship money refers to a tax that Charles I of England tried to levy without the consent of Parliament. This tax, which was only applied to coastal towns during a time of war, was intended to offset the cost of defending that part of the coast, and could be paid in actual ships or the equivalent value...
to the Royal Navy. The attempts to imprison resisters like Hampden led to the English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
.
From the summer of 1646 through 1648, the city of London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
refused to pay taxes to the New Model Army
New Model Army
The New Model Army of England was formed in 1645 by the Parliamentarians in the English Civil War, and was disbanded in 1660 after the Restoration...
which was occupying the city.
17th Century tax rebellions in France
In PoitiersPoitiers
Poitiers is a city on the Clain river in west central France. It is a commune and the capital of the Vienne department and of the Poitou-Charentes region. The centre is picturesque and its streets are interesting for predominant remains of historical architecture, especially from the Romanesque...
, France in 1624 and again on multiple occasions in 1663, mobs attacked Inns where French tax farmers were staying, threatening to torch the building and kill those inside.
The success of anti-tax rebellions in Saintonge
Saintonge
Saintonge is a small region on the Atlantic coast of France within the département Charente-Maritime, west and south of Charente in the administrative region of Poitou-Charentes....
and Angoumis led to other rebellions in France, including some in which excise officers were lynched.
A second “Croquants′ Revolt” in 1636–7 (with some outbreaks as early as 1628) concerned the taxes being raised to support France′s entry into the Thirty Years' War
Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was fought primarily in what is now Germany, and at various points involved most countries in Europe. It was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history....
and included the lynching of tax officials, a tax strike, and a major battle at which over 2,000 people were killed. The major rebellion was defeated, but outbreaks of mass tax resistance continued as late as 1658.
From 1638–45, the residents of Pardiac refused to pay their taxes, rose up to free the officials who had been imprisoned for failure to remit the tax money, repulsed government troops sent to enforce the tax laws, and massacred a tax official and his bodyguard.
In 1639–43, the revolt of the va-nu-pieds
Revolt of the va-nu-pieds
The Revolt of the va-nu-pieds was a popular uprising in Normandy in 1639 following Louis XIII of France's decision to set up the gabelle in Cotentin in place of the privilege of the quart-bouillon.-Bibliography:...
in Normandy included a tax strike and attacks on the homes of tax farmers. In 1643 there were attacks on tax collectors in multiple regions of France. The Fronde
Fronde
The Fronde was a civil war in France, occurring in the midst of the Franco-Spanish War, which had begun in 1635. The word fronde means sling, which Parisian mobs used to smash the windows of supporters of Cardinal Mazarin....
of 1646–53 was also marked by anti-tax riots.
The revolt of the papier timbré
Revolt of the papier timbré
The Revolt of the papier timbré was an anti-fiscal revolt in the west of Ancien Régime France, during the reign of Louis XIV from April to September 1675...
in 1675 was centered on a new stamp tax, and included destruction of tax offices and attacks on tax- and tithe-collectors.
Algonquian resistance, 1637
In 1637, the AlgonquianAlgonquian peoples
The Algonquian are one of the most populous and widespread North American native language groups, with tribes originally numbering in the hundreds. Today hundreds of thousands of individuals identify with various Algonquian peoples...
resisted being taxed by Dutch colonialists to pay for improvements to Fort Amsterdam
Fort Amsterdam
For the historic fort on the island of Saint Martin, see Fort Amsterdam Fort Amsterdam was a fort on the southern tip of Manhattan that was the administrative headquarters for the Dutch and then British rule of New York from...
.
Italian tax revolts, 1647
Residents of PalermoPalermo
Palermo is a city in Southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Province of Palermo. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old...
and of Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
revolted in 1647 and destroyed the tax offices and the homes of tax farmers.
Scottish presbyterian dissent, 1678–88
In the 17th Century, as the reformation government in Scotland reintroduced a state episcopal church and brutally cracked down on dissident presbyterian groups, members of those groups resisted the taxes that were being raised to pay for this repression, and advocated mass tax resistance. (When the Scottish Presbyterians gained the upper-hand and became the establishment church of Scotland, the tables were turned, and members of dissident churches began to resist taxes paid for its support.)Resistance in New England, 1687
On 22 August 1687, John WiseJohn Wise (clergyman)
John Wise was a Congregationalist reverend and political leader in Massachusetts during the American colonial period...
met with some of the other “principal inhabitants” of Ipswich in New England
Ipswich, Massachusetts
Ipswich is a coastal town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 12,987 at the 2000 census. Home to Willowdale State Forest and Sandy Point State Reservation, Ipswich includes the southern part of Plum Island...
, and decided that a new tax that had been imposed by governor Edmund Andros
Edmund Andros
Sir Edmund Andros was an English colonial administrator in North America. Andros was known most notably for his governorship of the Dominion of New England during most of its three-year existence. He also governed at various times the provinces of New York, East and West Jersey, Virginia, and...
, without consulting the colony’s General Assembly, was illegitimate and “that it was not the town’s duty any way to assist that ill method of raising money.” A town meeting the next day that Andros had called for in order to select tax commissioners instead issued a declaration against the tax. A number of those at the town meeting were then arrested, hauled to a jail in another town, and then put on trial before a jury hand-picked by the prosecution and a judge who referred to the defendants as “criminals” over the course of the trial.
Fines and court costs followed, and, at first, the Andros tyranny was triumphant. But Wise and company had the last laugh. On 18 April 1689, in the wake of the Glorious Revolution
Glorious Revolution
The Glorious Revolution, also called the Revolution of 1688, is the overthrow of King James II of England by a union of English Parliamentarians with the Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange-Nassau...
in the home country, a “Declaration of the Gentlemen, Merchants, and Inhabitants of Boston” was issued, which proclaimed the assault on the rights of dissenting English colonists to be part of the same plot of “the great Scarlet Whore” to crush Englishmen under the thumb of the papists (that is, James II of England
James II of England
James II & VII was King of England and King of Ireland as James II and King of Scotland as James VII, from 6 February 1685. He was the last Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland...
) again.
Then followed a revolution. Andros and Judge Dudley, who had tried the case against Wise and the rest, were overthrown and imprisoned (legend has it Andros was caught trying to escape disguised as a woman).
18th century uprisings in Japan
Successful peasant uprisings in the Fukuyama fief in 1717 (and again in 1752 and 1770), in the Tsuyama fief in 1726–7, and in Iwaki Daira in 1739, focused on the oppressiveness of taxes and tax collection. Other tax revolts in Aizu in 1749, in Shinano Ueda in 1761–3, in Tenma Sodo in 1764–5, in Koyasan in 1776, in Kozuke & Musashi in 1781, and in Hokkaido in 1790, were only partially successful but also led to severe reprisals.Malt tax riots in Scotland, 1725
England had imposed a “malt tax” to pay for that government’s war against France. In 1725, the House of Commons attempted to extend that tax to cover Scotland. Enraged citizens in Glasgow drove out the military and destroyed the home of their representative in parliament. In Edinburgh, brewers went on strike, illegally. Much later, in 1806, there were malt tax riots in Llannon, Wales, in which a mob attacked 26 excise tax collectors who were searching for malt.Excise tax riots in England, 1733
Robert WalpoleRobert Walpole
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG, KB, PC , known before 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain....
’s attempts to introduce an excise tax bill led to widespread, heated protest, including mobs that invaded the House of Commons. Walpole was forced to withdraw his proposal.
“Jack-a-Lents”, 1735
In Ledbury, England, rioters dressed in women’s clothing and blackface destroyed tollbooths, a variety of resistance that would reemerge a century later in the Rebecca Riots.Porteous riots, 1736
Rioters, sympathetic to condemned smugglers who were resisting excise taxes, managed to free one, but in an attempt to free another several were killed by the Edinburgh city guard, commanded by John Porteous. Porteous was convicted of these killings, but pardoned by Queen Caroline, whereupon a lynch mob seized Porteous and hanged him.North Carolina Counties Resist, 1746
In 1746, the North Carolina colonial governor tried to rejigger the composition of the colonial Assembly, taking seats away from some counties. Those counties responded by withdrawing from the Assembly and refusing to surrender any taxes to the colonial government. Other counties, not wanting to bear the whole cost of government themselves, then responded by withholding their own taxes. This state of affairs lasted eight years.French and Indian War, 1755
In the mid-18th century, American QuakerReligious Society of Friends
The Religious Society of Friends, or Friends Church, is a Christian movement which stresses the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Members are known as Friends, or popularly as Quakers. It is made of independent organisations, which have split from one another due to doctrinal differences...
John Woolman
John Woolman
John Woolman was an American itinerant Quaker preacher who traveled throughout the American colonies and in England, advocating against cruelty to animals, economic injustices and oppression, conscription, military taxation, and particularly slavery and the slave trade.- Origins and early life...
led many Quakers to question and refuse the payment of taxes to pay for the French and Indian War
French and Indian War
The French and Indian War is the common American name for the war between Great Britain and France in North America from 1754 to 1763. In 1756, the war erupted into the world-wide conflict known as the Seven Years' War and thus came to be regarded as the North American theater of that war...
. In 1755, Woolman addressed the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting with his concern, saying in part:
Some of our members, who are officers in civil government, are, in one case or other, called upon in their respective stations to assist in things relative to the wars; but being in doubt whether to act or crave to be excused from their office, if they see their brethren united in the payment of a tax to carry on the said wars, may think their case not much different, and so might quench the tender movings of the Holy Spirit in their minds. Thus, by small degrees, we might approach so near to fighting that the distinction would be little else than the name of a peaceable people.
A group of several like-minded Quakers, including John Woolman, John Churchman, and Anthony Benezet
Anthony Benezet
Anthony Benezet, or Antoine Bénézet , was a French-born American educator and abolitionist.-Biography:Anthony Benezet was born in Saint-Quentin, France, on 31 January 1713. His family were Huguenots. Because of the persecution of Protestants after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685,...
then sent a letter to other meetings, which read in part:
[B]eing painfully apprehensive that the large sum granted by the late Act of Assembly for the king’s use is principally intended for purposes inconsistent with our peaceable testimony, we therefore think that as we cannot be concerned in wars and fightings, so neither ought we to contribute thereto by paying the tax directed by the said Act, though suffering be the consequence of our refusal, which we hope to be enabled to bear with patience.
The “Regulator” movement, 1767–1771
The Regulator movement against the corrupt colonial administration of North CarolinaNorth Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
from around 1767 to 1771 presaged the American Revolution. It began with organized groups of rural North Carolinans refusing to pay inflated taxes to corrupt authorities, and eventually built to an armed rebellion (which was crushed).
A revolt in Palermo, 1773
Most Sicilians refused to pay new taxes imposed in 1770, and ripped down notices announcing the new levies. By 1773 the resistance led to a full-fledged revolt and ushered in a period when Palermo was under the de facto rule of the maestranze (guilds).American Revolution
American colonists used various methods of tax resistance to resist the British in the years leading up to the American RevolutionAmerican Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
, including the Boston Tea Party
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was a direct action by colonists in Boston, a town in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the British government and the monopolistic East India Company that controlled all the tea imported into the colonies...
action, the Gaspée Affair
Gaspée Affair
The Gaspée Affair was a significant event in the lead-up to the American Revolution. The HMS Gaspée, a British customs schooner that had been enforcing unpopular trade regulations, ran aground in shallow water on June 9, 1772, near what is now known as Gaspee Point in the city of Warwick, Rhode...
, “spinning bees” in which revolutionary-minded women would make untaxed domestic cloth (prefiguring Gandhi’s homespun cloth campaign), and a boycott of other taxed goods.
After the revolution was underway, taxes instituted by the American patriot side were also widely resisted. One 1781 tax in Connecticut, for example, was designed to raise £288,233 but raised only £40,000 due to unwillingness to pay. Some Quaker meetings recommended that their members not pay taxes to the revolutionary governments, and other Quakers refused to use Continental currency which the revolutionary governments were using for seigniorage
Seigniorage
Seigniorage can have the following two meanings:* Seigniorage derived from specie—metal coins, is a tax, added to the total price of a coin , that a customer of the mint had to pay to the mint, and that was sent to the sovereign of the political area.* Seigniorage derived from notes is more...
.
John Payne, an Englishman who was opposed to the war to suppress the colonial rebellion, went so far as to board up the windows of his home and put his coach out of commission to avoid the taxes on those items, and he rode miles out of his way to avoid toll gates.
African American protests against taxation without representation, 1780
In 1780, African AmericanAfrican American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
Paul Cuffe
Paul Cuffe
Paul Cuffee was a Quaker businessman, Sea Captain, patriot, and abolitionist. He was of Aquinnah Wampanoag and African Ashanti descent and helped colonize Sierra Leone...
and his brother resisted the state tax of Massachusetts. Cuffe 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 American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
s in Massachusetts were given full citizenship rights, including the right to vote.
Revolt of the Comuneros, 1781
The Revolt of the ComunerosRevolt of the Comuneros (New Granada)
The Revolt of the Comuneros was an uprising by the inhabitants of the Viceroyalty of New Granada against the Spanish authorities in 1781. While underlying causes may have been economic, ideas of freedom and self-government were expressed...
in Colombia began with bands of armed protesters confronting tax commissioners and state monopoly shops.
York tax riot, 1786
In York, Pennsylvania, in 1786, Jacob Bixler’s cow was distrained after he refused to pay a tax. Sympathizers with Bixler disrupted the subsequent auction and rescued the cow.Tax resistance during the French Revolution
During the French RevolutionFrench Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
and its aftermath, customs houses were burned by mobs, tax rolls were destroyed, and excise collectors were made to renounce their jobs and then were run out of town (or in some cases killed). Popular tax resistance was directed both against the toppling monarchy and against the governments that would try to replace it.
The Whiskey Rebellion, 1791–4
There was an earlier rebellion, in 1783, against a Pennsylvania state excise tax on whiskey. In Washington County, protesters seized a fleeing tax collector, forced him to destroy his arms and paperwork, shaved his head, and paraded him through the areas he was sent to tax.White Lotus Rebellion, 1793
Members of the White Lotus Society refused to pay taxes, and their movement eventually grew into a full rebellion that lasted until 1803.Pazvantoğlu rebellion, 1794
In the wake of the Pazvantoğlu rebellionOsman Pazvantoglu
Osman Pazvantoğlu was a Bosnian Ottoman soldier, a governor of the Vidin district after 1794, and a rebel against Ottoman rule...
, peasants who had been expecting their taxes to be eliminated in the wake of the rebel victory fled their villages rather than pay the enduring taxes.
Resistance in Mexico, 1780–1807
There was widespread resistance to the pulque tax and other taxes in Zempoala and Otumba, beginning in 1780.A mass tax strike in Benares, 1810–1
When the occupation British RajBritish Raj
British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The term can also refer to the period of dominion...
attempted to impose a house tax in Bengal
Bengal
Bengal is a historical and geographical region in the northeast region of the Indian Subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. Today, it is mainly divided between the sovereign land of People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, although some regions of the previous...
, 200,000 residents of Benares shut their shops, left their homes, assembled en masse in the countryside, and petitioned the occupation government to lift the tax. This massing occurred in December 1810–January 1811. The Raj at first made a show of force, but eventually rescinded the tax.
Tumenggung Mohammad revolt, 1825
The followers of Tumenggung Mohammad in Indonesia practiced tax resistance, including rioting against tax collectors.Tax resistance against Charles X of France, 1829
When Charles X of FranceCharles X of France
Charles X was known for most of his life as the Comte d'Artois before he reigned as King of France and of Navarre from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. A younger brother to Kings Louis XVI and Louis XVIII, he supported the latter in exile and eventually succeeded him...
attempted to bypass the legislature and enact its own taxes in 1829, French liberals in the Breton Association organized tax resistance and created a fund to defray the costs of any tax resisters who were prosecuted. Six Parisian newspapers who printed the Association’s manifesto were prosecuted by the crown. Fifteen regional organizations, including Refus de l’impôt, Aide-toi, le ciel t'aidera
Aide-toi, le ciel t'aidera
Aide-toi, le ciel t'aidera was a French association led by Adolphe Thiers , French politician, who was working for more democracy under the French Restauration , and Charles X of France, king from 1824 to 1830.Literally translated, 'le ciel' means 'the sky', but 'heaven' seems a more apt...
, and Association parisienne, were formed specifically to engage in tax resistance.
Tax resistance in Georgian England
In the 1820s and 1830s, activists like William BenbowWilliam Benbow
William Benbow was a non-conformist preacher and a leader of the Great Reform Movement in Manchester, England.Benbow worked with William Cobbett on the radical newspaper The Political Register. Faced with being imprisoned for sedition he fled to the United States where he continued to work on the...
and Thomas Jonathan Wooler
Thomas Jonathan Wooler
The publisher Thomas Jonathan Wooler was active in the Radical movement of early 19th century Britain, best known for his satirical journal The Black Dwarf....
and groups such as the National Union of the Working Classes and National Political Union advocated and practiced tax resistance.
The Tithe War, 1830–8
From 1830–1838, Irish Catholics conducted a mass tax strike against the mandatory tithes payable to the Anglican official state Church of Ireland. The Tithe WarTithe War
The Tithe War was a campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience, punctuated by sporadic violent episodes, in Ireland between 1830-36 in reaction to the enforcement of Tithes on subsistence farmers and others for the upkeep of the established state church - the Church of Ireland...
, as it came to be called, had both a nonviolent, passive-resistance wing, led by James Warren Doyle
James Warren Doyle
Bishop James Doyle was a Roman Catholic Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin in Ireland, who used the signature “JKL”, an acronym from “James Kildare and Leighlin.” A campaigner for Catholic Emancipation up to 1829, he was also an educator, church organiser and the builder of Carlow cathedral.-Early...
, and a violent one, in which bands of paramilitary secret societies enforced the strike and attacked tax collectors and collaborators. The campaign was eventually successful in eliminating the tithe system, although the government essentially converted what had been tithes on the tenants into rent due through the landlords.
Resistance in Syria, 1831–54
Syrians resisted being taxed both by Egypt and later by Turkey, and refused to pay these occupation governments.Tax resistance for the Reform Act of 1832
Tax resistance was an important tool in the arsenal of the Birmingham Political UnionBirmingham Political Union
The Birmingham Political Union was a political organisation in Great Britain during the early nineteenth century. Founded by Thomas Attwood, its original purpose was to campaign in favour of extending and redistributing suffrage rights to the working class of the kind set out in the Reform Bill of...
and its allies who forced the crown
William IV of the United Kingdom
William IV was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of Hanover from 26 June 1830 until his death...
and the House of Lords
House of Lords
The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....
to capitulate over the Reform Act of 1832
Reform Act 1832
The Representation of the People Act 1832 was an Act of Parliament that introduced wide-ranging changes to the electoral system of England and Wales...
. In the spring of 1832, residents of Carmarthen, Wales, met and vowed to stop paying taxes if the Reform Act were not passed, and some stopped paying taxes in the wake of the collapse of Lord Grey
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, KG, PC , known as Viscount Howick between 1806 and 1807, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 22 November 1830 to 16 July 1834. A member of the Whig Party, he backed significant reform of the British government and was among the...
’s government.
Tax resistance in Bulgaria, 1835–7
Peasants in the western border region of Bulgaria refused to pay taxes in hopes of autonomy and assistance from the newly-autonomous Serbia.Rebecca Riots, 1839–43
The Rebecca RiotsRebecca Riots
The Rebecca Riots took place between 1839 and 1843 in South and Mid Wales. They were a series of protests undertaken by local farmers and agricultural workers in response to perceived unfair taxation. The rioters, often men dressed as women, took their actions against toll-gates, as they were...
were a protest against the high tolls which had to be paid on the local turnpike roads in Wales, and included destruction of tollhouses and harassment of toll collectors.
Mexican-American War, 1846
Perhaps the most famous American example of a tax resister, Henry David ThoreauHenry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
, was briefly jailed in 1846 for refusing to pay taxes in protest against the Fugitive Slave Act
Fugitive Slave Law of 1850
The Fugitive Slave Law or Fugitive Slave Act was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers. This was one of the most controversial acts of the 1850 compromise and heightened...
and the Mexican–American War
Mexican–American War
The Mexican–American War, also known as the First American Intervention, the Mexican War, or the U.S.–Mexican War, was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848 in the wake of the 1845 U.S...
. In his essay on civil disobedience
Civil disobedience
Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is commonly, though not always, defined as being nonviolent resistance. It is one form of civil resistance...
, he wrote:
I meet this American government, or its representative, the State government, directly, and face to face, once a year, no more, in the person of its tax-gatherer; this is the only mode in which a man situated as I am necessarily meets it; and it then says distinctly, Recognize me; and the simplest, the most effectual, and, in the present posture of affairs, the indispensablest mode of treating with it on this head, of expressing your little satisfaction with and love for it, is to deny it then.…
…If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.
Thoreau was following in the footsteps of his fellow New England transcendentalists
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian...
Amos Bronson Alcott
Amos Bronson Alcott
Amos Bronson Alcott was an American teacher, writer, philosopher, and reformer. As an educator, Alcott pioneered new ways of interacting with young students, focusing on a conversational style, and avoided traditional punishment. He hoped to perfect the human spirit and, to that end, advocated a...
and Charles Lane
Charles Lane (transcendentalist)
Charles Lane was an English-American transcendentalist, abolitionist, and early voluntaryist. Along with Amos Bronson Alcott, he was one of the main founders of Fruitlands.-Fruitlands:...
who had also been arrested for conscientious refusal to pay the poll tax.
Sicilian revolution of independence of 1848
During the Sicilian revolution of independence of 1848Sicilian revolution of independence of 1848
The Sicilian revolution of independence of 1848 occurred in a year replete with revolutions and popular revolts. It commenced on 12 January 1848, and therefore was one of the first of the numerous revolutions to occur that year...
rebels destroyed tax records and assessments and many people stopped paying taxes.
Karl Marx prosecuted for promoting tax resistance, 1848
During the Revolutions of 1848 in the German statesRevolutions of 1848 in the German states
The Revolutions of 1848 in the German states, also called the March Revolution – part of the Revolutions of 1848 that broke out in many countries of Europe – were a series of loosely coordinated protests and rebellions in the states of the German Confederation, including the Austrian Empire...
, the royal and military aristocracy prohibited the first popularly-elected parliament from assembling, and that parliament responded by declaring the government out-of-business:
So long as the National Assembly is not at liberty to continue its sessions in Berlin, the Brandenburg cabinet has no right to dispose of government revenues and to collect taxes.
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, via his newspaper, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
Neue Rheinische Zeitung
The Neue Rheinische Zeitung - Organ der Demokratie was a German daily newspaper, published by Karl Marx in Cologne between June 1, 1848 and May 19, 1849. Its name refers to a paper earlier edited by Marx, the Rheinische Zeitung...
, published this decree, adding: “From today, therefore, taxes are abolished! It is high treason to pay taxes. Refusal to pay taxes is the primary duty of the citizen!” Marx was later prosecuted for promoting tax resistance, but was acquitted after arguing that it was not illegal to promote tax resistance against an illegal government.
Prussian democrats, 1850,1864
In 1850 Lothar BucherLothar Bucher
Lothar Bucher was a German publicist and trusted aide of German chancellor Otto von Bismarck.Bucher was born in Neustettin, Pomerania, his father being master at a gymnasium. After studying at the University of Berlin he adopted the legal profession...
, leader of the radical democratic party in the Prussian national assembly, and others of similar views, were convicted for encouraging citizens to stop paying taxes to the autocratic government.
Similarly, in 1864 the delegate Johann Jacoby
Johann Jacoby
Johann Jacoby was a Left-wing Prussian Jewish politician.- Biography :The son of a merchant, Jacoby studied medicine and in 1830 started practicing in his native city, but soon became involved in political activities in a liberal interest, which involved him in prosecutions and made him well-known...
served six months behind bars for a speech calling for tax refusal, delivered in the presence of the King, an early manifestation of opposition to the rule of Otto von Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck
Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg , simply known as Otto von Bismarck, was a Prussian-German statesman whose actions unified Germany, made it a major player in world affairs, and created a balance of power that kept Europe at peace after 1871.As Minister President of...
.
Grape-growers′s strike in Bulgaria, 1851
In response to a tax increase on grapes and vinyards, Bulgaria′s grape pickers went on strike.Mass resistance in Qingpu, 1853
In Qingpu, China, numerous uprisings and organized tax resistance took place around 1853, some led by Zhou Lichun.Ghana, 1854
Residents of the “Gold Coast” refused to pay a poll tax demanded by their British colonial occupiers in 1854, prompting a brutal crackdown by the British military.Resistance to the bedel, 1855–60
A majority of Syrian Christians refused to pay a military commutation tax, the bedel, which was mandatory for non-Muslims who were draft-exempt.Shantung resistance, 1860
In Shantung, tax resisters killed tax collectors and set up parallel government structures.Ferenc Deák and Hungarian tax resistance, 1861-67
Following military defeat by the Hungarian revolution of 1848Hungarian Revolution of 1848
The Hungarian Revolution of 1848 was one of many of the European Revolutions of 1848 and closely linked to other revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas...
and the subsequent war of independence led by Lajos Kossuth
Lajos Kossuth
Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva was a Hungarian lawyer, journalist, politician and Regent-President of Hungary in 1849. He was widely honored during his lifetime, including in the United Kingdom and the United States, as a freedom fighter and bellwether of democracy in Europe.-Family:Lajos...
, Hungarians adopted a strategy of passive resistance, including boycotting of Austrian goods and refusing Austrian taxes, while the dissolved Diet (parliament) and various agricultural, trade and educational associations continued to meet informally. The symbol of this strategy was Ferenc Deák
Ferenc Deák
Ferenc Deák de Kehida , , was a Hungarian statesman and Minister of Justice. He was known as "The Wise Man of the Nation".-Early life and law career:...
, following his refusal to take public office under the Austrians and apparent semi-retirement in the 1850s. After Emperor Franz-Joseph issued his October Diploma in 1860, granting increased autonomy to various parts of the Austrian empire, the Hungarian county councils and Diet were reconvoked. However, the conflict with Austria continued — including renewed tax resistance — with Deák playing a more active role until the Diet’s demands were conceded in 1867.,
Don Cossack resistance, 1864–1882
The Don CossacksDon Cossacks
Don Cossacks were Cossacks who settled along the middle and lower Don.- Etymology and origins :The Don Cossack Host was a frontier military organization from the end of the 16th until the early 20th century....
refused to pay the taxes levied by their provincial zemstvo
Zemstvo
Zemstvo was a form of local government that was instituted during the great liberal reforms performed in Imperial Russia by Alexander II of Russia. The idea of the zemstvo was elaborated by Nikolay Milyutin, and the first zemstvo laws were put into effect in 1864...
after their exemption of taxes was revoked by the Russian reforms of the 1860s.
Georgia dockworkers, 1867
Georgia dockworkers responded to a tax specifically targeted to them by refusing to pay, even when locked out by the government.Louisiana, 1872–9
After a disputed election for governor in reconstruction LouisianaLouisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
, the losing candidate, John McEnery
John McEnery (politician)
John McEnery was a Louisiana Democratic politician and lawyer who was considered by Democrats to be the winner of the highly contested 1872 election for Governor of Louisiana. After extended controversy over election results, the Republican candidate William Pitt Kellogg was certified...
, formed a shadow government
Shadow government
Shadow government may refer to:*An opposition government in a parliamentary system, see Shadow Cabinet*A term for plans for an emergency government that takes over in the event of a disaster, see continuity of government...
and declared himself the truly elected governor. As part of this, he issued declarations saying that those people collecting taxes for the actually-seated government were acting illegally and illegitimately and that citizens of Louisiana should resist these taxes.
McEnery’s shadow government, representing a white-supremacist
White supremacy
White supremacy is the belief, and promotion of the belief, that white people are superior to people of other racial backgrounds. The term is sometimes used specifically to describe a political ideology that advocates the social and political dominance by whites.White supremacy, as with racial...
Democratic party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
opposed to the Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
black and carpetbagger
Carpetbagger
Carpetbaggers was a pejorative term Southerners gave to Northerners who moved to the South during the Reconstruction era, between 1865 and 1877....
government, maintained its parallel governance until mid-1873, and then folded under pressure from the United States federal government.
Rubí, Catalonia, 1873
Citizens of Rubí, Catalonia refused to pay a war tax in 1873, shortly before the military commander of Catalonia was forced to flee in the face of a mutiny.South Carolina, 1877
Similarly to what happened in Louisiana, residents of South Carolina who disapproved of the Union occupation government practiced tax resistance.Calls to resist in Denmark, 1877 & 1885
In 1877 and again in 1885, the Left party in Denmark urged people to refuse to pay taxes levied by the Rightist government.Tram tax resistance in Rio, 1880
When the government of Rio increased the tramway tax and have this increase apply to every passenger, Jose Lopes da Silva Trovao and other protest organizers called on people to refuse to pay the tax.Tax resistance launches the First Boer War, 1880
The First Boer WarFirst Boer War
The First Boer War also known as the First Anglo-Boer War or the Transvaal War, was fought from 16 December 1880 until 23 March 1881-1877 annexation:...
broke out when the British occupation government seized a wagon from Piet Bezuidenhoudt who had refused to pay a tax. When the government attempted to auction off the wagon to raise the tax money, supporters of Bezuidenhoudt seized it, and met government representatives who came after them with armed force.
The Irish Land League calls for a rent strike, 1881
In 1881, the Irish National Land LeagueIrish National Land League
The Irish Land League was an Irish political organization of the late 19th century which sought to help poor tenant farmers. Its primary aim was to abolish landlordism in Ireland and enable tenant farmers to own the land they worked on...
issued a manifesto calling on Irish tenants to refuse to pay rent to their absentee English landlords.
Resistance to Repaying Fraudulent Railroad Bonds, Missouri, 1870–1908
Crooked politicians and swindlers had concocted a scheme in which the government issued bonds to pay for a railroad that never got built. Residents of the swindled areas subsequently refused to levy taxes on themselves to raise funds to pay off the bonds. The bond holders filed suit and obtained court orders that county judges institute such taxes, but the judges then went to jail for contempt rather than comply.Cincinnati Liquor Tax revolt, 1884
3,200 (out of 3,500) saloon owners refused to pay a liquor tax in Cincinnati in 1884. The tax was eventually held to be unconstitutional.Samoa, 1887
Residents of Samoa refused to pay taxes to the German colonial occupation government in 1887.“Half-Breeds” in Dakota, 1889
“Half-Breeds”Half-breed
Half-breed is an historic term used to describe anyone who is mixed Native American and white European parentage...
in the Dakota territory of the United States seized already-collected taxes from a sheriff and announced that they would fight to the last man (there were roughly 4,000) against further attempts to tax them.
Chatham Islands, 1891
Residents of the Chatham IslandsChatham Islands
The Chatham Islands are an archipelago and New Zealand territory in the Pacific Ocean consisting of about ten islands within a radius, the largest of which are Chatham Island and Pitt Island. Their name in the indigenous language, Moriori, means Misty Sun...
refused to pay a dog tax in 1891 and prepared instead to submit to arrest and trial.
Guerrero, Mexico, in 1892
When people in Guerrero refused to pay federal taxes in 1892, the government sent in troops, who were routed by the tax resisters who captured a General as a hostage.Montreal merchants, 1893
Merchants in Montreal, claiming that a new tax on merchants was unjustly much higher for them than for merchants in other areas, decided to refuse to pay the tax in 1893.Irish Unionists
Irish unionistsUnionism in Ireland
Unionism in Ireland is an ideology that favours the continuation of some form of political union between the islands of Ireland and Great Britain...
used (or threatened) tax resistance in order to fight against home rule
Irish Home Rule Movement
The Irish Home Rule Movement articulated a longstanding Irish desire for the repeal of the Act of Union of 1800 by a demand for self-government within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The movement drew upon a legacy of patriotic thought that dated back at least to the late 17th...
.
Cuban War Tax, 1897
Cuban cigar workers in Florida refused to pay a Cuban war tax that was being withheld from their paychecks in 1897.Maori tax resistance, 1898
Maoris refused to pay the dog tax to their colonizers in 1898.Crow reservation, 1897–9
Members of the Crow NationCrow Nation
The Crow, also called the Absaroka or Apsáalooke, are a Siouan people of Native Americans who historically lived in the Yellowstone River valley, which extends from present-day Wyoming, through Montana and into North Dakota. They now live on a reservation south of Billings, Montana and in several...
refused to pay taxes to the state of Montana in the late 1890s, and the state seized all of the sheep on the reservation in retaliation.
Tancament de Caixes
Traders and industrialists in Barcelona, led by mayor Bartomeu Robert i Yarzábal, began a tax strike on 20 October 1899 that came to be known as the “Tancament de Caixes” (shutting the cashboxes). This was a protest to taxes the Spanish government was introducing to pay for the costs of its defeats in the Spanish-American WarSpanish-American War
The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States, effectively the result of American intervention in the ongoing Cuban War of Independence...
, and also against tax rates that discriminated against Barcelona in favor of Madrid.
Cutting off Police Pay-offs in New York City, 1902
The New York City District Attorney, its Police Commissioner, agents from the Society for the Prevention of Crime, and the president of the New York County Liquor Dealers’ Association in 1902 announced a joint campaign to defend liquor dealers who stopped paying police protection money. This mostly represents a government policy change in how it was going to be taxing saloonkeepers, but because the change involved rescinding an extralegal tax extorted under-the-table by city employees, it was hard for the government to accomplish in ordinary ways. So it had to nurture a tax resistance movement and encourage solidarity among its members by offering some protection of its own (including judges who reduced fines against people arrested by the police in extortion attempts to near-nothing).British nonconformists, 1903
In 1903, British nonconformistsNonconformism
Nonconformity is the refusal to "conform" to, or follow, the governance and usages of the Church of England by the Protestant Christians of England and Wales.- Origins and use:...
began resisting the part of their taxes that paid for sectarian schools. Over 170 would eventually be jailed for their tax refusal.
Sugar manufacturers in the Dominican Republic, 1905
American-owned businesses running the sugar industry in the Dominican Republic refused to pay a new tax instituted by that country’s government in 1905, shortly before the United States formally appropriated the country’s economy.The Russian Revolution, 1905–6
During the Russian Revolution of 1905 a coalition of anti-government groups in PetrogradSaint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
issued a manifesto calling for mass tax resistance and other economic non-cooperation against Russia’s czarist government. It read, in part, “There is only one way out: to overthrow the government, to deprive it of its last strength. It is necessary to cut the government off from the last source of its existence: financial revenue.”
In 1906, when the Czar dissolved the First Duma
State Duma of the Russian Empire
The State Duma of the Russian Empire was a legislative assembly in the late Russian Empire, which met in the Taurida Palace in St. Petersburg. It was convened four times between 1906 and the collapse of the Empire in 1917.-History:...
, its members fled to Finland where they issued the Vyborg Manifesto
Vyborg Manifesto
The Vyborg Appeal was a declaration issued by Kadets and Trudoviks politicians, former deputies of the disbanded Russian First State Duma on July 9, 1906....
which called upon the people of Russia to refuse to pay their taxes until representative government was restored.
Zulus in Natal, 1906
A group of Zulus announced that they would refuse to pay the poll tax to the British colonial government in NatalColony of Natal
The Colony of Natal was a British colony in south-eastern Africa. It was proclaimed a British colony on May 4, 1843 after the British government had annexed the Boer Republic of Natalia, and on 31 May 1910 combined with three other colonies to form the Union of South Africa, as one of its...
. An inspector from the Natal Mounted Police killed one Zulu tax protester, and was in turn slain along with another of his party.
Doukhobors in Canada, 1906
DoukhoborDoukhobor
The Doukhobors or Dukhobors , earlierDukhobortsy are a group of Russian origin.The Doukhobors were one of the sects - later defined as a religious philosophy, ethnic group, social movement, or simply a "way of life" - known generically as Spiritual Christianity. The origin of the Doukhobors is...
exiles in Canada refused to pay school taxes on their lands, saying that, as they always refused to have their children educated, lest they learn evil things, they would not pay money for school purposes. They removed their property from the district so as to evade seizure.
Turkey, 1906–7
In the waning days of the Ottoman EmpireOttoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
, there was widespread and successful refusal to pay the sultan’s poll tax.
Kentucky bond swindle victims fight back, 1906
A corrupt railroad deal that produced no railroad but left the taxpayers of Kentucky on the hook for expensive bond payments led them to refuse to pay a tax to raise the revenue. A mob recovered goods that had been seized from one resister.Winemakers tax strike in France, 1907
A winegrowers’ committee in Argelliers organized a tax strike in 1907 that included the mass resignations of municipal councils, and was met by military force by the central government.Greek community in Lewiston, Maine, 1907
Greek immigrants in Lewiston, Maine, organized a tax strike against a new poll tax.Nicaragua, 1909
Shortly before the fall of president Zelaya’s government to rebels backed by the United States, his government imprisoned resisters to a tax he was using to try to raise funds to prop up his regime.The Women’s Tax Resistance League, 1909–1918
The British women’s suffrageWomen's suffrage in the United Kingdom
Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom as a national movement began in 1872. Women were not prohibited from voting in the United Kingdom until the 1832 Reform Act and the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act...
movement, in particular the Women’s Tax Resistance League
Women's Tax Resistance League
The Women’s Tax Resistance League was a direct action group associated with the Women's Freedom League that used tax resistance to protest the disenfranchisement of women during 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
John Hampden
John Hampden was an English politician, the eldest son of William Hampden, of Hampden House, Great Hampden in Buckinghamshire, John Hampden (ca. 15951643) was an English politician, the eldest son of William Hampden, of Hampden House, Great Hampden in Buckinghamshire, John Hampden (ca. 15951643)...
. According to one source, “tax resistance proved to be the longest-lived form of militancy, and the most difficult to prosecute.”
Tax resistance among the American women’s suffrage
History of women's suffrage in the United States
Woman suffrage in the United States was achieved gradually, at state and local levels, during the 19th Century and early 20th Century, culminating in 1920 with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provided: "The right of citizens of the United States to...
movement was less organized, but also practiced. Julia & Abby Smith, Annie Shaw
Anna Howard Shaw
Anna Howard Shaw was a leader of the women's suffrage movement in the United States. She was also a physician and the first ordained female Methodist minister in the United States. Her birthday is celebrated as Anna Howard Shaw Day, as an alternative to St. Valentine's Day.-Early Life:Shaw was...
, Lucy Stone
Lucy Stone
Lucy Stone was a prominent American abolitionist and suffragist, and a vocal advocate and organizer promoting rights for women. In 1847, Stone was the first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree. She spoke out for women's rights and against slavery at a time when women were discouraged...
, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an American social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early woman's movement...
were among those who practiced and advocated tax resistance as a protest against “taxation without representation.”
Tax resistance also played a role in the women’s suffrage movements of Bermuda and France.
Unrest in China, 1907–16
The salt tax and other taxes, and conflict with organized smuggler associations, led to conflict in China, which included, in 1910, an assault on tax collectors and on the salt tax monopoly office, and the “Two Kitchen Knives Rebellion” led by He LongHe Long
He Long was a Chinese military leader. He rose to the rank of Marshal and Vice Premier after the founding of the People's Republic of China.-Early life:He Long was a member of the Tujia ethnic group...
in 1916 in which the Salt Tax Bureau at Ba Maoqui was torched and the bureau’s director was killed.
Malaga, 1911
In Canillas De Aceituno, Spain, residents rioted at the sale of a tax resister's goods and took up arms against government forces.Baby Carriage Tax disregarded in Brest, 1913
A tax on handcarts in Brest, France, was interpreted to apply also to baby carriages, which led to universal refusal to pay what was seen as a ridiculous tax.Master Plumbers in Joplin, Missouri
Ten master plumbers in Joplin, Missouri, signed a resolution vowing to refuse to pay a new $50 annual tax on their profession in 1914.World War I in the United States, 1917–8
In the United States, although the decision of whether or not to purchase war bonds to support World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
was ostensibly voluntary, those who chose not to buy them were subject to strong pressure including mob violence. For example, John Schrag was beaten, arrested, and prosecuted and he and his property were smeared with yellow paint by a mob for having refused to buy war bonds. One witness said:
[T]hey tried to get him to buy liberty bonds during the war, and he wouldn’t buy none.… They brought him in and he never said a word, and the questions or anything they’d ask him, he never, never complained or never put up no resistance whatsoever.… I never saw so much yellin’ and a cursing and slapped him. And buffeted him and beat him and kicked him. He never offered any resistance whatsoever. One of the fellows went and got a, a hardware store and got a gallon of yellow paint. And pulled the lid off and poured it over his face. He had a long beard, kind of a short heavyset man, had a nice beard, and that run down all over his eyes, his face, and his beard, and his clothes. Of course that was yellow.… He never offered no resistance whatsoever and they, one man went to the hardware store again and he got a rope and put it around, got there, and put around his neck and marched him down to the, close to the city jail, a little calaboose there. Had a tree there and they was going to hang him to this tree.
…I don’t know how many people walked right up to him and spit in his face and he never said a word. And he just looked up all the time we was doing that. Possibly praying, I don’t know. But there’s some kind of a glow come over his face and he just looked like Christ.… (inaudible). Enemies smite you on one cheek, turn the other and brother he did it. He just kept doing it. They’d slug him on the one side of the face and he’d turn his cheeks on the other. He exemplified the life of Christ more than any man I ever saw in my life.
Soft drinks tax, United States, 1919
When World War I ended, people stopped paying a tax on soft drinks that had been instituted as a war funding measure, although the tax had not yet been rescinded. The Bureau of Internal Revenue threatened tax evaders with fines and imprisonment.Northern Territory and Papua, 1919–21
Tax resistance was a tactic used both by anti-capitalist labor groups and groups agitating for democratic representation in the Northern TerritoryNorthern Territory
The Northern Territory is a federal territory of Australia, occupying much of the centre of the mainland continent, as well as the central northern regions...
and Papua in the years around 1920.
Weimar Germany (1919–33) tax resistance
Tax resistance campaigns sporadically broke out in Germany between the world wars, including a tax strike in Württemberg, Stuttgart, Cologne, Essen and other areas in 1920, an income tax strike by Prussian farmers in 1922, and a tax strike by farmers in and around Beidenfleth around 1928.Burma during the 1920s
Burmese Buddhist monks organized tax resistance and other forms of civil disobedience against British colonial rule during the 1920s.Dutch West Indies, 1921
Residents resisted an income tax from which Dutch settlers were exempt, then successfully disrupted an auction at which a resister's goods were being sold for back taxes.Sinn Féin in 1921
Sinn FéinSinn Féin
Sinn Féin is a left wing, Irish republican political party in Ireland. The name is Irish for "ourselves" or "we ourselves", although it is frequently mistranslated as "ourselves alone". Originating in the Sinn Féin organisation founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith, it took its current form in 1970...
organized tax resistance against home rule
Home rule
Home rule is the power of a constituent part of a state to exercise such of the state's powers of governance within its own administrative area that have been devolved to it by the central government....
in Northern Ireland in 1921.
Arkansas road tax rebellion, 1921
Craighead County residents forced the commissioners of a road improvement district to resign at gunpoint before they could spend tax money on a corrupt roads project.Guntur tax refusal, 1921
In an early manifestation of satyagraha, Indians from the Guntur district organized a noncooperation campaign and tax strike against British rule in 1921 that led to the government collecting less than 25% of the expected taxes.The Poplar Rates Rebellion, 1921
In 1921 the government of Poplar, a division of London, in protest against an unequal sharing of tax revenue between rich and poor boroughs, stopped collecting and passing on a variety of tax called “precepts” to the regional authorities. Thirty members of the Poplar Borough Council were imprisoned amid large protests.Bondelswarts Rebellion, 1922
The British colonial administrators of South-West Africa imposed a tax on the Bondels as a way of making them more dependent on taking low-wage jobs for other colonists. The Bondels refused to pay and the British responded with aerial bombardments.Income tax evasion in France, 1922
Syndicalist groups in France promoted income tax evasion and defended evaders whose goods were in danger of government seizure.Women Win the Vote, and the Tax; Refuse the Second, 1923
When women won the right to vote in the United States, this sometimes also exposed them to taxes they had hitherto been exempt from. In 1923, 89 women in Pottstown, Pennsylvania said that they weren’t interested in voting or in paying taxes, and refused to pay a school tax they’d recently become vulnerable to.Red Spear Society, 1923–38
A peasant secret mutual-defense group in China called the Red Spear SocietyRed Spear Society
The Red Spear Society began as a rural self defense movement in Henan, Hebei, and Shandong in northern China during the Warlord Era in the 1920s . These were local groups of small-holders and tenant farmers organized to defend villages against roaming bandits, warlords, tax collectors or later...
supported tax resistance.
Argentina, 1924
A coalition of 1,500 leading industrialists of Argentina refused to pay into a state-run pension fund following a general strike and labor lockout organized to fight the law that established the fund.American Samoa, 1927
In 1927, The Committee of the Samoan League organized tax resistance against the United States NavyUnited States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
’s occupation of the American Samoa
American Samoa
American Samoa is an unincorporated territory of the United States located in the South Pacific Ocean, southeast of the sovereign state of Samoa...
.
Shanghai, 1927
Around the time of the Shanghai massacre of 1927Shanghai massacre of 1927
The April 12 Incident of 1927 refers to the violent suppression of Chinese Communist Party organizations in Shanghai by the military forces of Chiang Kai-shek and conservative factions in the Kuomintang...
, businesses were conducting a strike against municipal taxes there.
Samoa, 1928
Residents of Samoa refused to pay taxes to the New Zealand occupation government in 1928.
Uri “bobbed hair tax”
The canton of Uri in Switzerland instituted a tax on women’s bobbed hair in 1928, and by the following year the government was reporting widespread resistance (and ridicule) of the law.Igbo Women's War, 1929
The Igbo Women's War began as a dispute over taxes and a resistance against a census that was being conducted in preparation for taxes. Further tax revolts in 1938 and 1956 grew out of the same movement.Indian independence campaign
Mahatma Gandhi’s independence campaign in IndiaIndia
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
used a variety of tax resistance strategies, including attacking the British taxed monopolies
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
on salt
Salt
In chemistry, salts are ionic compounds that result from the neutralization reaction of an acid and a base. They are composed of cations and anions so that the product is electrically neutral...
and textile
Textile
A textile or cloth is a flexible woven material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, or other material to produce long strands...
s 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 miles (386.2 km) Salt March to Dandi
Salt Satyagraha
The Salt March, also known as the Salt Satyagrahah began with the Dandi March on March 12, 1930, and was an important part of the Indian independence movement. It was a campaign of tax resistance and nonviolent protest against the British salt monopoly in colonial India, and triggered the wider...
to harvest sea salt in contravention of British law. Other tax resistance campaigns persisted after this period, including resistance to the Damodar Canal tax in 1937–9.
Womens' suffragists in Bermuda, 1931
Womens’ suffragists in Bermuda, in particular Gladys Misick Morrell, refused to pay taxes unless they gained the vote.Tyrol, Austria 1931
Peasants’ federations in eastern Tyrol resolved to stop paying taxes in October 1931 to protest bloated government, agricultural policy, profiteering, and a large tax burden.Real Estate Taxpayers, 1931–3, 1977
During the Great DepressionGreat Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
in the early 1930s, Americans throughout the United States formed thousands of taxpayers’ leagues to protest high property taxes. In some cases, these groups illegally withheld taxes through tax strikes and other forms of resistance. The largest tax strike was in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
and led by the Association of Real Estate Taxpayers. At its height, the Association had more than thirty-thousand dues-paying members.
A second, similar but smaller property tax payer’s revolt hit Chicago in 1977.
Puerto Rico sales tax, 1932
300 businesses in Ponce, Puerto Rico declared that they would refuse to continue to pay the sales tax after the United States governor of the island refused to repeal the tax.New York City automobile owners, 1933
The automobile club of New York organized an auto tax strike in 1933 to protest a doubled license fee for City residents.Irish “Blue Shirts,” 1935
To protest Irish intransigence in the Anglo-Irish Trade WarAnglo-Irish Trade War
The Anglo-Irish Trade War was a retaliatory trade war between the Irish Free State and the United Kingdom lasting from 1932 until 1938...
, the quasi-fascist “Blue Shirts” declared a tax strike. One striker was killed during a protest designed to disrupt an auction of cattle seized from a tax striker.
Sales tax resistance in Montreal, 1935
Mayor Hervé Ferland of Verdun led 164 or more shopkeepers there in refusing to collect or remit Montreal's sales tax.Sales tax resistance in Arkansas, 1935
98% of merchants in Stuttgart and 59 of 60 merchants in DeWitt signed a pledge to refuse to collect or pay a new Arkansas sales tax in 1935.Sales tax resistance in Alabama, 1936
Gadsen, Alabama merchants met and unanimously voted to refuse to collect or remit the state sales tax. Montgomery, Alabama pharmacists also resisted the tax.Coal Township, 1939
Taxpayers in Coal Township, Pennsylvania, threatened a tax strike to protest the fact that the large coal companies in the region had been neglecting to pay their taxes, causing the township to fall behind on schoolteacher salaries and other expenses. This forced some concessions from the coal companies.World War II
During World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the Christian anarchist
Christian anarchism
Christian anarchism is a movement in political theology that combines anarchism and Christianity. It is the belief that there is only one source of authority to which Christians are ultimately answerable, the authority of God as embodied in the teachings of Jesus...
and pacifist Ammon Hennacy
Ammon Hennacy
Ammon Ashford Hennacy was an Irish American pacifist, Christian anarchist, social activist, member of the Catholic Worker Movement and a Wobbly...
refused to register for the American draft and announced that he would not pay his income tax
Income tax
An income tax is a tax levied on the income of individuals or businesses . Various income tax systems exist, with varying degrees of tax incidence. Income taxation can be progressive, proportional, or regressive. When the tax is levied on the income of companies, it is often called a corporate...
es. He also tried to reduce his tax liability by adopting a life of simple living
Simple living
Simple living encompasses a number of different voluntary practices to simplify one's lifestyle. These may include reducing one's possessions or increasing self-sufficiency, for example. Simple living may be characterized by individuals being satisfied with what they need rather than want...
and barter
Barter
Barter is a method of exchange by which goods or services are directly exchanged for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money. It is usually bilateral, but may be multilateral, and usually exists parallel to monetary systems in most developed countries, though to a...
ing. He wrote:
…I [learned] the principle of voluntary poverty and non payment of taxes… from TolstoyLeo TolstoyLev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
and the [Catholic Worker]. When I was working a man asked me “Why does a fellow like you, with an education, and who has been all over the country, end up in this out-of-the-way place working for very little on a farm?” I explained that all people who had good jobs in factories, etc. had a withholding tax for war taken from their pay, and that people who worked on farms had no tax taken from their pay. I told him that I refused to pay taxes. He was a returned soldier and said that he did not like war either, but what could a fellow do about it? I replied that we each did what we really wanted to.
Palestine/Israel, 1936–48
In 1936, in what one author called “the first truly grass-root rebellion/uprising by PalestinianPalestinian people
The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...
s,” 150 Palestinians called for a general strike and tax strike to protest the British occupation.
Between 1939 and 1948, there was widespread resistance by Jews in Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
against the income tax imposed by the British occupation, which included bomb attacks against tax offices, and many Jews instead voluntarily paid taxes to Jewish organizations. A few years after Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
gained its independence, its government became the target of widespread tax evasion and resistance, including a major tax strike in 1954.
The birth of the modern war tax resistance movement, 1948
In 1948, a ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
conference on “More Disciplined and Revolutionary Pacifist Activity” attracted more than 300 people, and resulted in the formation of the group Peacemakers
Peacemakers
Peacemakers, was an American pacifist organization. The name of the group is taken from a section of the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”...
and its “Tax Refusal Committee.” This is considered to be the birth of the modern organized war tax resistance movement in the United States.
Oaxaca, 1952
A general strike in Oaxaca in 1952 was directed against the government’s new tax plan. Rioters in Tlacolula stoned to death mayor Diodoro Maldonado.Social Security tax protests, 1951–3
In 1952, Louisiana newspaper editor Mary Cain protested against social security taxes by refusing to pay, concealing her assets, and even sawing the lock off of her business’s front door when it was closed by the tax collector and mailing the lock to the Internal Revenue Service.From 1951 to 1954, a group of “Texas Housewives” refused to pay social security taxes on the wages of their domestic help, and took their resistance all the way to the Supreme Court (where they lost their case).
Poujadism, 1955
In 1955, a right-wing, anti-tax, middle-class, populist movement led by Pierre PoujadePierre Poujade
Pierre Poujade was a French populist politician after whom the Poujadist movement was named.-Biography:Poujade was born in Saint-Céré, Lot, France, Europe. When he was only 8 years old, his father died, in 1928....
began resisting taxes in France. The resisters used a variety of tactics, including strikes, harassment of tax collectors, disruption of government auctions, and running for office (several Poujadists were elected to the Chamber of Deputies).
J. Bracken Lee, 1956
Utah Governor J. Bracken LeeJ. Bracken Lee
Joseph Bracken Lee was a political figure in the state of Utah, United States. A Republican, he served two terms as the ninth Governor of Utah , six two-year terms as mayor of Price, Utah , and three terms as the 27th mayor of Salt Lake City ., Lee is the most recent Governor of Utah who was not a...
stopped paying federal income tax in 1956 to protest what he felt was unconstitutional federal spending. He hoped to become a test case, but the Supreme Court declined to hear his case.
The Amish gain exemption from social insurance programs in the United States, 1935–65
In 1965 the United States CongressUnited States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
allowed the Amish
Amish
The Amish , sometimes referred to as Amish Mennonites, are a group of Christian church fellowships that form a subgroup of the Mennonite churches...
to be exempt from the Social Security
Social Security (United States)
In the United States, Social Security refers to the federal Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program.The original Social Security Act and the current version of the Act, as amended encompass several social welfare and social insurance programs...
tax, following a persistent resistance campaign from some Amish who regarded insurance programs as mistrustful of God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
and therefore against their religious teachings. See and (this exemption also covers Medicare
Medicare (United States)
Medicare is a social insurance program administered by the United States government, providing health insurance coverage to people who are aged 65 and over; to those who are under 65 and are permanently physically disabled or who have a congenital physical disability; or to those who meet other...
taxes).
Tax resistance in Ethiopia, 1943–68
There were several outbreaks of armed resistance focused on tax complaints in Ethiopia. In some cases, farmers defaulted on their taxes and abandoned their land rather than pay, some fleeing into neighboring countries. In others, districts refused to elect or admit tax assessors, and used a mix of persuasion and coercion to prevent people from obeying the tax law.A court in the United Kingdom rejects war tax resistance, 1968
In 1968, in the UK case of Cheney v. Conn, an individual objected to paying a tax that, in part, would be used to procure nuclear armsNuclear weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...
in unlawful contravention, he contended, of the Geneva Conventions
Geneva Conventions
The Geneva Conventions comprise four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish the standards of international law for the humanitarian treatment of the victims of war...
. His claim was dismissed by the court, the judge
Judge
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is supposed to conduct the trial impartially and in an open...
ruling that “What the [taxation] statute
Statute
A statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative authority that governs a state, city, or county. Typically, statutes command or prohibit something, or declare policy. The word is often used to distinguish law made by legislative bodies from case law, decided by courts, and regulations...
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.”
There remains in the United Kingdom a significant movement of people who wish to withhold the percentage of their taxes used for war and weapons, but instead contribute them into a ring fenced pool for peace-building or peacekeeping purposes. This may be either for religious or economic reasons. See the website Peace Pays or the Peace Tax campaign “Conscience,” which produces an alternative tax return form to document the withholding of the military percentage of your taxes (approximately 12% of the total tax bill in the UK).
Vietnam War, 1968–72
In early 1968, 448 writers and editors put a full-page ad in the New York PostNew York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
declaring their intention to refuse to pay taxes for the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. The signatories included Nelson Algren
Nelson Algren
Nelson Algren was an American writer.-Early life:Algren was born Nelson Ahlgren Abraham in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Goldie and Gerson Abraham. At the age of three he moved with his parents to Chicago, Illinois where they lived in a working-class, immigrant neighborhood on the South Side...
, Bob Avakian
Bob Avakian
Bob Avakian is Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA , which he has led since its formation in 1975. He is a veteran of the Free Speech Movement and the Left of the 1960s and early 1970s, and was closely associated with the Black Panther Party. He has published writings on Marxism and...
, James Baldwin
James Baldwin (writer)
James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.Baldwin's essays, for instance "Notes of a Native Son" , explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th century America,...
, Russell Banks
Russell Banks
Russell Banks is an American writer of fiction and poetry.- Biography :Russell Banks was born in Newton, Massachusetts on March 28, 1940. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in upstate New York, and has been named a New York State Author. He is also...
, Sally Belfrage
Sally Belfrage
Sally Belfrage was an United States-born British-based 20th century non-fiction writer and international journalist...
, Eric Bentley
Eric Bentley
Eric Bentley is a critic, playwright, singer, editor and translator. He became an American citizen in 1948, and currently lives in New York City...
, Bill Berkson
Bill Berkson
Bill Berkson is an American poet, critic, teacher and sometime curator, who has been active in the art and literary worlds since his early twenties.-Life:Born in New York on August 30, 1939, Bill Berkson grew up on Manhattan’s Upper...
, Daniel Berrigan
Daniel Berrigan
Daniel Berrigan, SJ is an American Catholic priest, peace activist, and poet. Daniel and his brother Philip were for a time on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list for their involvement in antiwar protests during the Vietnam war....
, Philip Berrigan
Philip Berrigan
Philip Francis Berrigan was an internationally renowned American peace activist, Christian anarchist and former Roman Catholic priest...
, Herbert Blau
Herbert Blau
A director and theoretician of performance, Herbert Blau is Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor in the Humanities at the University of Washington...
, Robert Bly
Robert Bly
Robert Bly is an American poet, author, activist and leader of the Mythopoetic Men's Movement.-Life:Bly was born in Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota, to Jacob and Alice Bly, who were of Norwegian ancestry. Following graduation from high school in 1944, he enlisted in the United States Navy, serving...
, Richard O. Boyer
Richard O. Boyer
Richard O. Boyer was an American freelance journalist who, before appearing at a Senate hearing, had contributed profiles to The New Yorker and written for the Daily Worker. He was implicated in Winston Burdett's June 1955 testimony before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee as a Communist...
, Kay Boyle
Kay Boyle
Kay Boyle was an American writer, educator, and political activist.- Early years :The granddaughter of a publisher, Kay Boyle was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in several cities but principally in Cincinnati, Ohio...
, Susan Brownmiller
Susan Brownmiller
Susan Brownmiller is an American feminist, journalist, author, and activist. She is best known for her pioneering work on the politics of rape in her 1975 book Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, Brownmiller argues that rape had been hitherto defined by men rather than women; and that men use,...
, Jerome Charyn
Jerome Charyn
Jerome Charyn is an award-winning American author. With nearly 50 published works, Charyn has earned a long-standing reputation as an inventive and prolific chronicler of real and imagined American life...
, Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
, Robert Claiborne
Robert Claiborne
Robert Watson Claiborne, Jr. American folk singer, labor organizer and writer.-Overview:Robert Claiborne, grandson of John Herbert Claiborne, was a folk singer and union organizer in the 1940s and 1950s. He travelled and performed with such luminaries as Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and...
, Peter Collier
Peter Collier (political author)
Peter Collier is a writer, and publisher. He was the founding publisher of Encounter Books in California and held that position from 1998 until he resigned in 2005, when it moved from San Francisco to New York City, and Collier was replaced as publisher by Roger Kimball. He remains a consultant...
, Fred J. Cook
Fred J. Cook
Fred James Cook was an investigative journalist whose prime years of reporting spanned from the 1950s to the late 1970s...
, Robert Coover
Robert Coover
Robert Lowell Coover is an American author and professor in the Literary Arts program at Brown University. He is generally considered a writer of fabulation and metafiction.-Life and works:...
, Philip Corner
Philip Corner
Philip Corner is an American composer, action musician, trombone/alphornist, sometime vocalist, pianist-improvisor, theorist-educator, graphic score designer, and visual artist, collage&assembleur, calligrapher.-Biography:After The High School of Music & Art in New York City, Philip Corner...
, Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school's. He was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn. He served as the Samuel P...
, James Crumley
James Crumley
James Arthur Crumley was the author of violent hardboiled crime novels and several volumes of short stories and essays, as well as published and unpublished screenplays...
, Peter Davis
Peter Davis (director)
Peter Frank Davis, born January 2, 1937, is an American filmmaker, author and journalist.-Biography:Davis was born in Santa Monica, and grew up in Upland and Pacific Palisades, CA. His parents were the screenwriters Frank Davis and Tess Slesinger, and after his mother's death in 1945, Isabelle Fair...
, Emile de Antonio
Emile de Antonio
Emile de Antonio was a director and producer of documentary films, usually detailing political or social events circa 1960s–1980s...
, David Dellinger
David Dellinger
David T. Dellinger , was an influential American radical, a pacifist and activist for nonviolent social change.-Chicago Seven:...
, Barbara Deming
Barbara Deming
Barbara Deming was an American feminist and advocate of nonviolent social change.- Early life :Barbara Deming was born in New York. She attended a Friends school up through her high school years....
, Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
, Martin Duberman
Martin Duberman
Martin Bauml Duberman is an American historian, playwright, and gay-rights activist. He is Professor of History Emeritus at Lehman College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York and was the founder of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the CUNY Graduate School...
, Robert Duncan
Robert Duncan (poet)
Robert Duncan was an American poet and a student of H.D. and the Western esoteric tradition who spent most of his career in and around San Francisco. Though associated with any number of literary traditions and schools, Duncan is often identified with the poets of the New American Poetry and Black...
, Andrea Dworkin
Andrea Dworkin
Andrea Rita Dworkin was an American radical feminist and writer best known for her criticism of pornography, which she argued was linked to rape and other forms of violence against women....
, Garrett Eckbo
Garrett Eckbo
Garrett Eckbo was an American landscape architect notable for his seminal 1950 book Landscape for Living.-Youth:...
, Stanley Elkin
Stanley Elkin
Stanley Lawrence Elkin was a Jewish American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. His extravagant, satirical fiction revolves around American consumerism, popular culture, and male-female relationships.-Biography:...
, Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers...
, Leslie Fiedler
Leslie Fiedler
Leslie Aaron Fiedler was a Jewish-American literary critic, known for his interest in mythography and his championing of genre fiction. His work also involves application of psychological theories to American literature. He was in practical terms one of the early postmodernist critics working...
, Donald Freed
Donald Freed
Donald Freed is an American playwright, novelist, screenwriter, and actor. He is associated with writing programs at the University of Southern California, and was Artist in Residence at the Workshop Theatre, University of Leeds, UK , and Playwright in Residence at York Theatre Royal ,...
, Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan was an American writer, activist, and feminist.A leading figure in the Women's Movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the "second wave" of American feminism in the twentieth century...
, Eugene D. Genovese
Eugene D. Genovese
Eugene Dominic Genovese is an American historian of the American South and American slavery. He has been noted for bringing a Marxist perspective to the study of power, class and relations between planters and slaves in the South. His work Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made won the...
, Mort Gerberg
Mort Gerberg
Mort Gerberg is an American cartoonist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Playboy, and Publishers Weekly, among other magazines...
, Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
, Todd Gitlin
Todd Gitlin
Todd Gitlin is an American sociologist, political writer, novelist, and cultural commentator. He has written widely on the mass media, politics, intellectual life and the arts, for both popular and scholarly publications.-New Left activist:...
, Paul Goodman
Paul Goodman (writer)
Paul Goodman was an American sociologist, poet, writer, anarchist, and public intellectual. Goodman is now mainly remembered as the author of Growing Up Absurd and an activist on the pacifist Left in the 1960s and an inspiration to that era's student movement...
, Daniel Greenberg, Donald Hall
Donald Hall
Donald Hall is an American poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2006.-Personal life:...
, David Harris, James Leo Herlihy
James Leo Herlihy
James Leo Herlihy was an American novelist, playwright and actor.Born into a working class family in Detroit, Michigan, Herlihy is known for his novels Midnight Cowboy and All Fall Down and his play Blue Denim, all of which were adapted for cinema...
, Edward S. Herman
Edward S. Herman
Edward S. Herman is an American economist and media analyst with a specialty in corporate and regulatory issues as well as political economy and the media. He is Professor Emeritus of Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He also teaches at Annenberg School for...
, Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs, was an American-Canadian writer and activist with primary interest in communities and urban planning and decay. She is best known for The Death and Life of Great American Cities , a powerful critique of the urban renewal policies of the 1950s in the United States...
, Galway Kinnell
Galway Kinnell
Galway Kinnell is an American poet. He was Poet Laureate of Vermont from 1989 to 1993. An admitted follower of Walt Whitman, Kinnell rejects the idea of seeking fulfillment by escaping into the imaginary world. His best-loved and most anthologized poems are "St...
, James Kirkwood, Jr.
James Kirkwood, Jr.
James Kirkwood, Jr. was an American playwright, author and actor. In 1976 he received the Tony Award, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the Broadway hit A Chorus Line.-Biography:Kirkwood was born in Los Angeles, California. His father...
, Richard Kluger
Richard Kluger
Richard Kluger worked as a journalist before becoming an accomplished Pulitzer Prize-winning author and book publisher.-Journalism:...
, Andrew Kopkind
Andrew Kopkind
Andrew Kopkind was an American journalist. He was renowned for his reporting during the tumultuous years of the late 1960s; he wrote about the anti-Vietnam War protests, American Civil Rights Movement, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panther...
, Hy Kraft
Hy Kraft
Hyman Solomon Kraft , aka Hy Kraft or H.S. Kraft, was an American screenwriter, playwright, and theatrical producer....
, Paul Krassner
Paul Krassner
Paul Krassner is an author, journalist, stand-up comedian, and the founder, editor and a frequent contributor to the freethought magazine The Realist, first published in 1958...
, Saul Landau
Saul Landau
Saul Landau is journalist, filmmaker, and commentator. He is Professor Emeritus at California State University, Pomona. He is a senior Fellow at and Vice Chair of the Institute for Policy Studies.-Career:...
, Sidney Lens
Sidney Lens
Sidney Lens , also known by his party name Sid Okun, was an American labor leader, political activist, and author, best known for his book, The Day Before Doomsday, which warns of the prospect of nuclear annihilation, published in 1977 by Doubleday. He also wrote a history of U.S...
, John Leonard
John Leonard (American critic)
John Leonard was an American literary, television, film, and cultural critic.-Biography:John Leonard grew up in Washington, D.C., Jackson Heights, Queens, and Long Beach, California, where he graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School...
, Denise Levertov
Denise Levertov
-Early life and influences:Levertov was born and grew up in Ilford, Essex.Couzyn, Jeni Contemporary Women Poets. Bloodaxe, p74 Her mother, Beatrice Spooner-Jones Levertoff, came from a small mining village in North Wales...
, Philip Levine
Philip Levine (poet)
Philip Levine is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet best known for his poems about working-class Detroit. He taught for over thirty years at the English Department of California State University, Fresno and held teaching positions at other universities as well...
, Walter Lowenfels
Walter Lowenfels
Walter Lowenfels was an American poet, journalist, and member of the Communist Party USA. He also edited the communist newspaper the Daily Worker.-Early career:...
, Staughton Lynd
Staughton Lynd
Staughton Craig Lynd is an American conscientious objector, Quaker, peace activist and civil rights activist, tax resister, historian, professor, author and lawyer. His involvement in social justice causes has brought him into contact with some of the nation's most influential activists, including...
, Dwight Macdonald
Dwight Macdonald
Dwight Macdonald was an American writer, editor, film critic, social critic, philosopher, and political radical.-Early life and career:...
, Jackson Mac Low
Jackson Mac Low
Jackson Mac Low was an American poet, performance artist, composer and playwright, known to most readers of poetry as a practioneer of systematic chance operations and other non-intentional compositional methods in his work, which Mac Low first experienced in the musical work of John Cage, Earle...
, Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
, William Mandel
William Mandel
William Marx "Bill" Mandel is an American broadcast journalist, left-wing political activist and author, best known as a Soviet affairs analyst.-Senator McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee:...
, William Matthews
William Matthews (poet)
William Matthews was an American poet and essayist.-Life:Raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, Matthews earned a bachelor's degree from Yale University, and a master's from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.In addition to serving as a Writer-in-Residence at Boston's Emerson College, Matthews...
, Peter Matthiessen
Peter Matthiessen
Peter Matthiessen is a two-time National Book Award-winning American novelist and non-fiction writer, as well as an environmental activist...
, Milton Mayer
Milton Mayer
Milton Sanford Mayer , a journalist and educator, was best known for his long-running column in The Progressive magazine, founded by Robert Marion LaFollette, Sr in Madison, Wisconsin.- Biography :...
, Ed McClanahan
Ed McClanahan
Ed McClanahan is an American novelist, essayist, and professor.-Biography:Edward Poage McClanahan was born in Brooksville, Kentucky in 1932 to Edward Leroy and Jesse McClanahan. He attended school there and later in nearby Maysville, Kentucky where the family relocated in 1948. McClanahan...
, David McReynolds
David McReynolds
David McReynolds is an American democratic socialist and pacifist activist who described himself as "a peace movement bureaucrat" during his 40-year career with Liberation magazine and the War Resisters League...
, David Meltzer
David Meltzer
David Meltzer is an American poet and musician of the Beat Generation and San Francisco Renaissance. Lawrence Ferlinghetti has described him as "one of the greats of post-World-War-Two San Francisco poets and musicians." Meltzer came to prominence with inclusion of his work in the anthology, The...
, Henry Miller
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...
, Merle Miller
Merle Miller
Merle Miller was an American novelist best known for his biographies of Presidents Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson. Three years before his best-selling book Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S...
, Helen and Scott Nearing
Helen and Scott Nearing
Helen Knothe Nearing and Scott Nearing were well-known American back-to-the-landers who wrote extensively about their experience living what they termed "the good life".- Philosophy :...
, Jack Newfield
Jack Newfield
Jack Newfield was a muckraking journalist, employed by The Village Voice, the Daily News and the New York Post. He covered the emergence of the New Left and the civil rights movement, and was a close friend of Robert F...
, Michael Novak
Michael Novak
Michael Novak is an American Catholic philosopher, journalist, novelist, and diplomat. The author of more than twenty-five books on the philosophy and theology of culture, Novak is most widely known for his book The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism...
, Carl Oglesby
Carl Oglesby
Carl Oglesby was an American writer, academic, and political activist. He was the President of the leftist student organization Students for a Democratic Society from 1965 to 1966.-Early years:...
, Tillie Olsen
Tillie Olsen
Tillie Lerner Olsen was an American writer associated with the political turmoil of the 1930s and the first generation of American feminists.-Biography:...
, Grace Paley
Grace Paley
Grace Paley was an American-Jewish short story writer, poet, and political activist.-Biography:Grace Paley was born in the Bronx to Isaac and Manya Ridnyik Goodside, who anglicized the family name from Gutseit on immigrating from Ukraine. Her father was a doctor. The family spoke Russian and...
, Victor Perlo
Victor Perlo
Victor Perlo was a Marxist economist, government functionary, and a longtime member of the governing National Committee of the Communist Party USA...
, Frances Fox Piven
Frances Fox Piven
Frances Fox Piven is an American professor of political science and sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, where she has taught since 1982.-Life and education:...
, Richard Poirier
Richard Poirier
Richard Poirier was an American literary critic.He co-founded the Library of America, and served as chairman of its board. He was the Marius Bewley Professor of American and English Literature at Rutgers University...
, Jefferson Poland
Jefferson Poland
John Jefferson Poland is the founder of the Sexual Freedom League, and a registered sex offender.-Sexual Freedom League:In 1963, he founded the Sexual Freedom League in New York City with Leo Koch. He then moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and focused his organizing efforts at the University of...
, Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...
, Anatol Rapoport
Anatol Rapoport
Anatol Rapoport was a Russian-born American Jewish mathematical psychologist. He contributed to general systems theory, mathematical biology and to the mathematical modeling of social interaction and stochastic models of contagion.-Biography:...
, Anton Refregier
Anton Refregier
Anton Refregier was a Russian immigrant painter in the United States.He made the 27 murals in the Rincon Center in San Francisco, California, which depict the history of California, in the style of the social realism.- Life and early career:Refregier was born in Moscow and emigrated to the United...
, Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Cecile Rich is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century."-Early life:...
, Muriel Rukeyser
Muriel Rukeyser
Muriel Rukeyser was an American poet and political activist, best known for her poems about equality, feminism, social justice, and Judaism...
, Marshall Sahlins
Marshall Sahlins
Marshall David Sahlins is a prominent American anthropologist. He received both a Bachelors and Masters degree at the University of Michigan where he studied with Leslie White, and earned his Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1954 where his main intellectual influences included Karl Polanyi and...
, Kirkpatrick Sale
Kirkpatrick Sale
Kirkpatrick Sale is an independent scholar and author who has written prolifically about political decentralism, environmentalism, luddism and technology...
, Ed Sanders
Ed Sanders
Ed Sanders is an American poet, singer, social activist, environmentalist, author and publisher and has been a longtime member of the band The Fugs. He has been called a bridge between the Beat and Hippie generations.-Biography:...
, Richard Schechner
Richard Schechner
Richard Schechner is Professor of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University , editor of TDR: The Drama Review, and artistic director of East Coast Artists. His BA is from Cornell University , MA from the University of Iowa , and PhD from Tulane University...
, Robert Scheer
Robert Scheer
Robert Scheer is an American journalist who writes a column for Truthdig which is nationally syndicated by Creators Syndicate in publications such as The Huffington Post and The Nation...
, Orville Schell
Orville Schell
Orville Hickock Schell III is an activist and writer working on China, and is the Arthus Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York...
, André Schiffrin
André Schiffrin
André Schiffrin is a European-born American author, publisher and socialist.- Life :Schiffrin is the son of Jacques Schiffrin, a Russian Jew who emigrated to France and briefly enjoyed success there as publisher of the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, which he founded, and which was bought by...
, Peter Dale Scott
Peter Dale Scott
Peter Dale Scott is a Canadian born, former English professor at the University of California, Berkeley, a former diplomat and a poet....
, Robert Sherrill
Robert Sherrill
Robert Sherrill is an American investigative journalist and longtime contributor to The Nation, Texas Observer, and many other magazines over the years including Playboy, the New Republic and the New York Times Magazine....
, Irwin Silber
Irwin Silber
Irwin Silber was an American journalist, editor, publisher, and political activist.-Early years:Irwin Silber was born October 17, 1925 in New York City to ethnic Jewish parents....
, Bennett J. Sims, Robert Sklar
Robert Sklar
Robert Anthony Sklar was an American historian specializing in the history of cinema.Robert Anthony Sklar began his career as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. He received a Ph.D. in the history of American civilization from Harvard University in 1965...
, Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag was an American author, literary theorist, feminist and political activist whose works include On Photography and Against Interpretation.-Life:...
, Terry Southern
Terry Southern
Terry Southern was an American author, essayist, screenwriter and university lecturer, noted for his distinctive satirical style...
, Benjamin Spock
Benjamin Spock
Benjamin McLane Spock was an American pediatrician whose book Baby and Child Care, published in 1946, is one of the biggest best-sellers of all time. Its message to mothers is that "you know more than you think you do."Spock was the first pediatrician to study psychoanalysis to try to understand...
, Gloria Steinem
Gloria Steinem
Gloria Marie Steinem is an American feminist, journalist, and social and political activist who became nationally recognized as a leader of, and media spokeswoman for, the women's liberation movement in the late 1960s and 1970s...
, Dorothy Sterling
Dorothy Sterling
Dorothy Sterling was a Jewish-American writer and historian.- Biography :She was born and grew up in New York City, attended Wellesley College and graduated from Barnard College in 1934. After college, she worked as a journalist and writer in New York for several years. In 1937 she married Philip...
, Donald Ogden Stewart
Donald Ogden Stewart
Donald Ogden Stewart was an American author and screenwriter.-Life:His hometown was Columbus, Ohio. He graduated from Yale University, where he became a brother to the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity , in 1916 and was in the Naval Reserves in World War I.After the war he started to write and found...
, William Styron
William Styron
William Clark Styron, Jr. was an American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work.For much of his career, Styron was best known for his novels, which included...
, Robert Sward
Robert Sward
Robert Sward is an American and Canadian poet and novelist. Jack Foley, in his Introduction to Sward's Collected Poems, 1957-2004 calls him, "in truth, a citizen, at heart, of both countries...
, Norman Thomas
Norman Thomas
Norman Mattoon Thomas was a leading American socialist, pacifist, and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.-Early years:...
, Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author who wrote The Rum Diary , Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 .He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to...
, Judith Viorst
Judith Viorst
Judith Viorst is an American author, newspaper journalist, and psychoanalysis researcher. She is perhaps best known for her children's literature, such as The Tenth Good Thing About Barney and the Alexander series of short picture books.In 1968, Viorst signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax...
, Milton Viorst
Milton Viorst
Milton Viorst is an American journalist.He studied history at Rutgers University. In 1951, he was a Fulbright scholar in France. He returned and attended Harvard University and Columbia University, where he graduated in 1956 in journalism....
, Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...
, Arthur Waskow
Arthur Waskow
Arthur Ocean Waskow, born Arthur I. Waskow, is an American author, political activist, and rabbi associated with the Jewish Renewal movement.-Education and early career:...
, Lew Welch
Lew Welch
Lewis Barrett Welch, Jr. was an American poet associated with the Beat generation of poets, artists, and iconoclasts.Welch published and performed widely during the 1960s...
, John Wieners
John Wieners
John Joseph Wieners was an American lyric poet.-Biography:Born in Milton, Massachusetts, Wieners attended St. Gregory Elementary School in Dorchester, Massachusetts and Boston College High School. From 1950 to 1954, he studied at Boston College, where he earned his A.B...
, Laird Wilcox
Laird Wilcox
Laird M. Wilcox is an American researcher specializing in the study of political fringe movements. He is the founder of the "Wilcox Collection on Contemporary Political Movements," said to be one of the largest collections of American political material in the United States. It is housed in the...
, Alice Wolfson
Alice Wolfson
Alice Wolfson, a Barnard graduate and former Fulbright Scholar, is a veteran political activist in women's reproductive health issues, a lawyer, and a co-founder of the National Women's Health Network....
, Sol Yurick
Sol Yurick
-Biography:He was born in 1925 to a working class family of politically active Jewish immigrants. At the age of 14, Yurick became disillusioned with politics after the Hitler-Stalin pact. He enlisted during World War II, where he trained as a surgical technician. He studied at New York University...
, Gordon Zahn, and Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn was an American historian, academic, author, playwright, and social activist. Before and during his tenure as a political science professor at Boston University from 1964-88 he wrote more than 20 books, which included his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United...
.
In 1970, five Harvard and nine M.I.T. faculty members, including Nobel
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
laureates Salvador E. Luria and George Wald
George Wald
George Wald was an American scientist who is best known for his work with pigments in the retina. He won a share of the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Haldan Keffer Hartline and Ragnar Granit.- Research :...
, announced that they would be resisting taxes in protest of the war.
In 1972, Jane Hart, wife of U.S. Senator Philip Hart
Philip Hart
Philip Aloysius Hart was a Democratic United States Senator from Michigan from 1959 until 1976. He was nicknamed the Conscience of the Senate.-Early years:...
, said that she would be resisting the federal income tax. By this time, every major I.R.S. center had a staff member assigned to be the “Viet Nam Protest Coordinator.”
Also in 1972, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania decided the case of United States v. Malinowski That case involved John Paul Malinowski, an instructor in theology at St. Joseph’s College in Philadelphia and a member of the Philadelphia War Tax Resistance League protesting the use of tax money in the Vietnam War. The taxpayer had filed a false Form W-4, and admitted he knew that he was not legally entitled to claim the exemptions (that is, the allowances) he claimed on the W-4. Malinowski was convicted, and his motion for a new trial or acquittal was denied.
Papua New Guinea, 1969
The Mataungan Organisation launched tax resistance in support of the indigenous government against a mixed indigenous/immigrant government in 1969.Resistance to the Larzac base, 1970
In 1970, when the French defense minister announced plans to expand a military base in LarzacLarzac
The Causse du Larzac is a limestone karst plateau in the south of the Massif Central, France, situated between Millau and Lodève...
, José Bové
José Bové
Joseph Bové is a French farmer and syndicalist, member of the alter-globalization movement, and spokesman for Via Campesina. He was one of the twelve official candidates in the 2007 French presidential election...
and other activists led a campaign to withhold 3% of their taxes (an amount they said was equivalent to the amount the government was spending on its base-expansion campaign) and redirect this money toward agricultural projects.
Efforts to legalize conscientious objection to military taxation
In 1972 United States Congressman Ron DellumsRon Dellums
Ronald Vernie "Ron" Dellums served as Oakland's forty-fifth mayor. From 1971 to 1998, he was elected to thirteen terms as a Member of the U.S...
introduced legislation that would legalize a form of conscientious objection to military taxation
Conscientious objection to military taxation
Conscientious objection to military taxation is a legal theory that attempts to extend into the realm of taxation the concessions to conscientious objectors that many governments allow in the case of conscription — thereby allowing conscientious objectors to insist that their tax payments not be...
, allowing some taxpayers to designate their taxes for non-military spending only. Advocated by National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund
National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund
The National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund is a non-profit organization located in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1971 to address conscientious objection to military taxation.-History and purpose:...
, this legislation is regularly reintroduced in the United States Congress and has a number of cosponsors. 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 problem that leads them to resist taxation.
Norwalk Taxpayers League, 1972
The Norwalk Taxpayers League, led by Vincent DePanfilis, collected pledges from taxpayers that they would refuse to pay any more tax in the 1973–74 tax year than they had in 1972–73. This was a rare example of tax resistance during the American tax revolt movement of the 1970s.Castine school tax resistance, 1975
In Castine, Maine, residents voted to illegally refuse, as a town, to pay a state school tax, in 1975.Nicaragua, 1978
In the last months of the Anastasio SomozaAnastasio Somoza Debayle
Anastasio Somoza Debayle was a Nicaraguan leader and officially the 73rd and 76th President of Nicaragua from 1 May 1967 to 1 May 1972 and from 1 December 1974 to 17 July 1979. As head of the National Guard, he was de facto ruler of the country from 1967 to 1979...
regime in Nicaragua, the opposition organized a tax strike.
Sales Tax Boycott in Ottawa, 1981
In 1981, a tax resistance campaign in Ontario targeted the provincial sales tax and included both merchants and consumers as participants.Palestine, doctors in 1981
Doctors in Gaza City refused to pay a 12% income tax to the Israeli occupation and were supported by a two-day general strike.Archbishop Hunthausen resists, 1982
In 1982, Catholic Archbishop Raymond HunthausenRaymond Hunthausen
Raymond Gerhardt Hunthausen is a retired American prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as Bishop of Helena from 1962 to 1975 and as Archbishop of Seattle from 1975 to 1991.-Early life and education:...
of Seattle, Washington announced that he would be refusing to pay half of his income tax in protest against the nuclear arms race
Nuclear arms race
The nuclear arms race was a competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies during the Cold War...
.
Citing a previous pastoral letter he wrote on the subject, Archbishop Hunthausen stated that certain laws may he peacefully disobeyed under serious conditions, and that there may be times “when disobedience may be an obligation of conscience.”
“I believe,” he said, “that the present issue is as serious as any the world has faced. The very existence of humanity is at stake.”
Churches resist the social security tax, 1984
The Quint City Baptist Temple in Iowa, the Indianapolis Baptist Temple, and several other churches refused to pay social security taxes on the wages of their employees, maintaining that it was unconstitutional to make them tax collectors for the government. The courts disagreed.Irish Unionists, 1986
The Democratic Unionist PartyDemocratic Unionist Party
The Democratic Unionist Party is the larger of the two main unionist political parties in Northern Ireland. Founded by Ian Paisley and currently led by Peter Robinson, it is currently the largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly and the fourth-largest party in the House of Commons of the...
called on its supporters to refuse to pay taxes in protest against an Anglo-Irish settlement on the political status of Northern Ireland.
Beit Sahour, 1988–9
In 1988-9, during the first IntifadaFirst Intifada
The First Intifada was a Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories. The uprising began in the Jabalia refugee camp and quickly spread throughout Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem....
, the Palestinian resistance urged people to resist paying taxes to Israel. The people of Beit Sahour
Beit Sahour
Beit Sahour is a Palestinian town east of Bethlehem under the administration of the Palestinian National Authority...
responded to this call with an unusually organized and citywide tax strike
Tax resistance
Tax resistance is the refusal to pay tax because of opposition to the government that is imposing the tax or to government policy.Tax resistance is a form of civil disobedience and direct action...
. As a result of the tax strike the Israeli military authorities placed the town under curfew for 45 days and seized goods belonging to citizens in raids.
Israel’s occupation military forces had the authority, independent from the rest of Israel’s government, to create and enforce taxes in occupied areas. As a result, they would impose taxes on Palestinians as collective punishment measures to discourage the intifada, for instance “the glass tax (for broken windows), the stones tax (for damage done by stones), the missile tax (for Gulf War damage), and a general intifada tax, among others”
Among those prominent in Beit Sahour’s tax resistance were Ghassan Andoni
Ghassan Andoni
Ghassan Andoni is a native of Beit Sahour in the Bethlehem area. He is a professor of physics at Bir Zeit University, and a Palestinian Christian leader who advocates nonviolent resistance in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...
and Elias Rishmawi. Some tax resistance continued in Beit Sahour for some years after the end of the 1989 tax strike there
UK Poll Tax, 1989–93
In 1989-90, the government of Margaret ThatcherMargaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
reformed local taxation in Britain by replacing Domestic Rates
Rates (tax)
Rates are a type of property tax system in the United Kingdom, and in places with systems deriving from the British one, the proceeds of which are used to fund local government...
with a new tax known officially as the Community Charge, but more widely and disparagingly known as the 'Poll Tax'. Whereas Rates had been, at least to some extent, a progressive tax
Progressive tax
A progressive tax is a tax by which the tax rate increases as the taxable base amount increases. "Progressive" describes a distribution effect on income or expenditure, referring to the way the rate progresses from low to high, where the average tax rate is less than the marginal tax rate...
, the Poll Tax was a regressive tax
Regressive tax
A regressive tax is a tax imposed in such a manner that the tax rate decreases as the amount subject to taxation increases. "Regressive" describes a distribution effect on income or expenditure, referring to the way the rate progresses from high to low, where the average tax rate exceeds the...
which resulted in much larger bills for many poor families. Many people considered the new tax to be extremely unfair, and a major non-payment campaign saw up to 30% of the population of some council areas refusing to pay. Draconian enforcement measures caused civil unrest, and untimately led to the Poll Tax riots
Poll Tax Riots
The UK Poll Tax Riots were a series of mass disturbances, or riots, in British towns and cities during protests against the Community Charge , introduced by the Conservative government led by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher...
. The new tax became a major electoral liability for the Conservative Party
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
, and was a significant factor in the ousting of Mrs Thatcher by her own party. Due to its unpopularity and the disastrous impact of non-payment on local authority finances, the tax was replaced by the Council Tax
Council tax
Council Tax is the system of local taxation used in England, Scotland and Wales to part fund the services provided by local government in each country. It was introduced in 1993 by the Local Government Finance Act 1992, as a successor to the unpopular Community Charge...
in 1993.
Cameroon, 1991
In 1991 CameroonCameroon
Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon , is a country in west Central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west; Chad to the northeast; the Central African Republic to the east; and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Cameroon's coastline lies on the...
’s major opposition political parties called for tax resistance in support of their campaign to end one-party rule.
Native Americans in Canada, 1994
For 29 days in 1994, a group of Native AmericansFirst Nations
First Nations is a term that collectively refers to various Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis. There are currently over 630 recognised First Nations governments or bands spread across Canada, roughly half of which are in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. The...
occupied one floor of the building housing the Revenue Canada Taxation Centre in downtown Toronto, in protest of Canada’s plans to tax Native Americans who had previously been exempted from taxation as a result of treaty provisions. Many continue to resist the tax.
Water tax strike, 1994–6, 2007
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions, among others, promoted a non-payment campaign against the government water monopoly in 2007. An earlier “water war” in 1994–6 had led to a victory by the resisters in which the water charge was revoked.Lech Walesa in 1995
In 1995, Poland’s president Lech Walesa called for people to refuse to pay any higher income tax rates.Zapatistas municipios autónomos
When the Zapatista Army of National LiberationZapatista Army of National Liberation
The Zapatista Army of National Liberation is a revolutionary leftist group based in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico....
moved from organizing armed resistance to the Mexican government to establishing autonomous villages free from central government control, one of the things they did was to stop paying taxes to the outside governments.
Fuel tax protests, 2000
In multiple areas of Europe, in 2000, people protested increases in motor vehicle fuel taxes by blockading ports, refineries, fuel depots, and highways.Zimbabwe, 2000
Opposition parties in Zimbabwe urged citizens to refuse to pay taxes to protest government misuse of funds in 2000.Same-sex marriage rights
In the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, some gay people adopted a form of tax resistance to protest the government’s lack of legal recognition of same-sex marriage.
UK council tax
In the United KingdomUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, senior citizens in opposition to steep increases in council tax
Council tax
Council Tax is the system of local taxation used in England, Scotland and Wales to part fund the services provided by local government in each country. It was introduced in 1993 by the Local Government Finance Act 1992, as a successor to the unpopular Community Charge...
, claiming that increases of as much as 30% are not affordable to those living on a pension
Pension
In general, a pension is an arrangement to provide people with an income when they are no longer earning a regular income from employment. Pensions should not be confused with severance pay; the former is paid in regular installments, while the latter is paid in one lump sum.The terms retirement...
, 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
Exeter
Exeter is a historic city in Devon, England. It lies within the ceremonial county of Devon, of which it is the county town as well as the home of Devon County Council. Currently the administrative area has the status of a non-metropolitan district, and is therefore under the administration of the...
, was jailed for seven days.
Bin Tax protests, ~2001–2005
There was a long campaign of resistance to rubbish-hauling charges in Ireland.Venezuelan opposition, 2003
The political opposition to ruler Hugo ChavezHugo Chávez
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías is the 56th and current President of Venezuela, having held that position since 1999. He was formerly the leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when he became the leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela...
launched a tax strike aimed at ending the Chavez regime’s control.
“Flatulence Tax” resistance, 2003
New Zealand farmers protested a livestock tax that was ostensibly designed to discourage and ameliorate methane emissions by announcing they would refuse to pay and by sending packages of manure to government ministers.Nepal, 2006
Political parties in Nepal urged people to stop paying their taxes in 2006 as part of a push against the power of the monarchy.Tijuana, 2006
The Chamber of Commerce in Tijuana voted to pay taxes into an escrow account rather than to the government to protest the government’s inability to provide adequate security.Organized resistance to paying Mafia, 2006
In 2006, after the arrest of Mafia boss Bernardo ProvenzanoBernardo Provenzano
Bernardo Provenzano is a member of the Sicilian Mafia and is suspected of having been the head of the Corleonesi, a Mafia faction that originated in the village of Corleone, and de facto capo di tutti capi of the entire Sicilian Mafia until his arrest in 2006.His nickname is Binnu u tratturi...
, 100 shopkeepers in Palermo, Italy declared publicly that they would stop paying taxes to the Sicilian Mafia. They encouraged consumers to support the resisters by buycott
Buycott
A buycott is the opposite of a boycott; that is, an active campaign to buy the products or services of a particular company or country.For example, various buycott organizations in support of Israel have been set up around the world, in order to oppose the many Boycott Israel campaigns.When Whole...
ing their stores.
Tehran Bazaar, 2008
Government attempts to extend a value-added tax to cover the Tehran Bazaar were frustrated by a strike that shut down the Bazaar until the government gave in.Nankang, China, 2009
Protesters in Nankang “overturned police cars and blocked roads over plans to more strictly enforce payment of taxes.”Delhi lawyers, 2009
Lawyers in Delhi, India went on strike in 2009 rather than pay a sales tax that the government was trying to extend to cover legal services.Chascomús/Lezama secessionist struggle, 2009
Groups on both sides of the debate over the secession of Lezama from the city of Chascomús used tax resistance to try to pressure the government into siding with them.Vecinos Autoconvocados in Paraná, Justo Daract, and Villa Nueva, Argentina, 2009-10
In February 2009, residents of Paraná, Argentina launched a property tax strike to protest large jumps in property assessment values. In March, residents of Justo Daract followed suit.In 2010, residents of Villa Nueva announced a tax strike to protest against inadequate government services. Residents were also urged to refuse to pay taxes for roadwork that resisters alleged had already been paid for out of federal taxes.
Luzerne County, 2010
A Pennsylvania county government beset with corruption hiked taxes by 10% and some residents said no. One recorded a protest song titled “Take This Tax and Shove It” and launched a tax resistance campaign.Nepalese doctors, 2010
Doctors in Nepal planned to engage in tax resistance and other acts of civil disobedience to protest the government in 2010.San Juan, Argentina shopkeepers, 2010
Shopkeepers in San Juan, Argentina, upset at being undercut by untaxed street vendors, announced a tax strike in 2010.Tax refusal protests China’s one-child policy
Yang Zhizhu and Chen Hong protested China’s one-child policy by refusing to pay a 200,000 yuan fine on their second child.Coventry “Axe the Tax” protest, 2010
Hundreds of small businesses refused to pay a municipal tax in Coventry in 2010 and successfully had the tax (and the body that levied it) rescinded.Tax protest and strike in Romania, 2010
In August 2010 a tax strike was declared after newly introduced regulations were found to force freelancers and unincorporated companies waste over 24 man-hours each month on filling tax declarations and depositing those declarations in person at three different offices, in addition to forcing freelancers pay an unemployment insurance they cannot take advantage of. The new rules apply whether the freelancers or the unincorporated companies had any income or not, and declarations have to be submitted even for amounts less than €10.Barinas, Venezuela transit licensees
Licensed public transit drivers in Barinas, Venezuela who were getting undercut by unlicensed, unofficial ones launched a tax strike to protest a lack of government protection for their privilege.Ondarroa municipal tax strike, 2010
The government responded to an organized municipal tax strike involving hundreds of households in Ondarroa in the Basque region of Spain by cutting the water supply to 120 homes and businesses there.Ivory Coast, 2011
Alassane OuattaraAlassane Ouattara
Alassane Dramane Ouattara is an Ivorian politician who has been President of Côte d'Ivoire since 2011. An economist by profession, Ouattara worked for the International Monetary Fund and the Central Bank of West African States , and he was the Prime Minister of Côte d'Ivoire from November 1990 to...
apparently won the presidential election in Ivory Coast over incumbent Laurent Gbagbo
Laurent Gbagbo
Laurent Koudou Gbagbo served as the fourth President of Côte d'Ivoire from 2000 until his arrest in April 2011. A historian by profession, he is also an amateur chemist and physicist....
. Gbagbo disagreed and refused to leave office. Ouattara then called on the citizens of Ivory Coast to discontinue paying taxes to the Gbagbo government, which eventually was defeated.
No Taxation Without Representation in D.C.
Former District of Columbia council member Carol Schwartz, upset at the lack of Congressional representation for people in the district, threatened to start resisting her federal income taxes over the issue and called on other D.C. residents to join her.Guinea-Bassau Cashew Traders Strike
Cashew traders in Guinea-BissauGuinea-Bissau
The Republic of Guinea-Bissau is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Senegal to the north, and Guinea to the south and east, with the Atlantic Ocean to its west....
went on strike in April, 2011 rather than pay a new export tax on cashews.
Òmnium Cultural Calls for a Tax Resistance Campaign for Catalan Independence
In July, 2011, the Catalan nationalist group Òmnium CulturalÒmnium Cultural
Òmnium Cultural is a cultural association based in Barcelona . It was originally created to promote the Catalan language and spread Catalan culture....
, at its 50th anniversary meeting, called on citizens to redirect their taxes from the central government to a Catalan-run fund until such time as the government concedes more autonomy to the region.
External links
- An International History of War Tax Resistance National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee
- History of War Tax Resistance War Resisters League