The dynamics of tax resistance

By D. Vogt

Tax resistance is a citizen's refusal to pay taxes to one or all levels of government, not out of an inability to pay but rather out of principle or out of protest. Particularly in the United States, there are tax protest movements which argue that the federal collection of income tax is unconstitutional. However, tax resistance typically refers to a broader collection of movements which do not necessarily oppose the collection of taxes at all, but do oppose the collection of taxes for uses which they oppose.

- Tax Resistance -

Tax resisters argue that their tax money (or at least a portion of their taxes) will be used by the government for acts they find immoral or unconscionable (or even illegal), and therefore refuse to pay any taxes at all. In most cases, tax resisters accept that taxation in general is a proper or legal behaviour of the government, but are protesting what the government does with those taxes. This separates them from tax protestors, who argue that taxation is illegal regardless of what the revenue is eventually used for.

There are a number of potential reasons for tax resistance, although the most common one today is opposition to the military budget, to a specific ongoing war, or to the production and maintenance of nuclear weapons. For instance, pacifists argue that, because they are opposed to organized violence in all forms, paying taxes to a government which funds a war-fighting military service would be nearly as bad as joining that army themselves. Those who are not necessarily pacifists but do oppose a specific military program, like a war or nuclear weapons in general, can advance a similar argument. In other cases tax resisters oppose specific forms of taxes which they view as oppressive, like Mahatma Gandhi's salt tax protest in India or Amish protests of social security taxes in America.

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