History of tax resistance

Egyptian peasants seized for non-payment of taxes during the Pyramid Age.

Tax resistance has probably existed ever since taxes were first imposed at the beginning of civilization. Indeed, it has been suggested that tax resistance played a significant role in the collapse of several empires, including the Egyptian, Roman, Spanish, and Aztec.

Many rebellions and revolutions have been prompted by resentment against taxation or had tax refusal as a component. Examples of historic events that originated as tax revolts include the Magna Carta, the American Revolution and the French Revolution.

Examples

Before 1500 A.D.

Jewish Zealots, 1st century A.D.

See also: Render unto Caesar...

In the 1st century AD, Jewish Zealots 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.

Limoges, 578

In 578 AD residents of Limoges, 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harshly, with punishments including torture and crucifixion, though Queen Fredegund later was said to have repented and rescinded the tax.

Peace and Truce of God

In councils organized by the Peace and Truce of God movement, Christian clergy resisted the exaction of taxes against church property by warlords.

Danegeld, 1041

In 1041, residents of Worcester rebelled against the Danegeld 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 Godiva′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.

Constantinople, 1197

When Alexios III Angelos 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.

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 VIII 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.

Norman anti-tax riots, 1348–1351

In Normandy in June 1348, tax resisters attacked the tax collectors of King Philip VI, “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.

Wat Tyler′s rebellion, 1381

In 1381, Wat Tyler 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.

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 movement 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.

16th Century

Revolt of the Comuneros, 1520

Residents of Salamanca 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.

German Peasants′ War, 1524–5

The German Peasants' War 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 V for his war with France.

Hutterites

In the 16th century, Hutterites refused to pay taxes for war or capital punishment. 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 Rochelle 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.”

Tariff resistance in Holland, 1543–9

Merchants in Holland successfully resisted a variety of export duties imposed by the Holy Roman Empire via Mary of Hungary.

Tax strikes in France, 1579–80

In Romans-sur-Isère 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.

Rappenkrieg, 1591–4

In a three-year-long tax refusal campaign called the Rappenkrieg 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, tailles, 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 Poitiers, 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.

Jelali revolts

The Jelali revolts 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.

17th Century

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 Hampden was imprisoned for his opposition to the loan Charles I authorised without parliamentary sanction, and he also refused to pay ship money to the Royal Navy. The attempts to imprison resisters like Hampden led to the English Civil War.

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.

17th Century tax rebellions in France

In 1615, the residents of one commune refused to pay the wine tithe and threatened to throw the collector into the Rhône.

In Poitiers, 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.

In 1682, a village curate led a tax revolt in which the villagers stoned the monks and the tithe agent who had come to collect a grain tithe.

Algonquian resistance, 1637

In 1637, the Algonquian resisted being taxed by Dutch colonialists to pay for improvements to Fort Amsterdam.

Italian tax revolts, 1647

Main article: Masaniello

Residents of Palermo and of Naples revolted in 1647 and destroyed the tax offices and the homes of tax farmers.

Swiss peasant war of 1653

A devaluation of Bernese money caused a tax revolt and the Swiss peasant war of 1653 that spread from the Entlebuch valley in the Canton of Lucerne to the Emmental valley in the Canton of Bern and then to the cantons of Solothurn and Basel and also to the Aargau.

Resistance to Cromwell’s Taxes-by-Decree, 1654

In 1654, an English merchant named George Cony refused to pay customs duties that had been established by Oliver Cromwell’s government without its having bothered to go through Parliament, and thereby called into question the legal underpinnings of the whole regime.

Revolt of the papier timbré, 1675

Main article: Revolt of the papier timbré

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 Wise 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).

18th Century

Camisard revolt, 1700–3

Tax resistance was a feature of the Camisard revolt.

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 Walpole’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

Main article: Porteous Riots

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.

Tithe resistance in France, 1736

Peasants in disguise attacked and reclaimed the grain from the granary of a tithe collector in France in 1736. Authorities could find no witnesses willing to testify against any of the attackers.

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 Quaker 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:

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 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

Main article: War of the Regulation

The Regulator movement against the corrupt colonial administration of North Carolina 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

See also: No taxation without representation

Boston Tea Party, 16 December, 1773.

American colonists used various methods of tax resistance to resist the British in the years leading up to the American Revolution, 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.

African American protests against taxation without representation, 1780

Main article: Paul Cuffe

In 1780, African American 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 Americans in Massachusetts were given full citizenship rights, including the right to vote.

Revolt of the Comuneros, 1781

The Revolt of the Comuneros 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 Revolution 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

Main article: Whiskey Rebellion

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

Main article: White Lotus Rebellion

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 rebellion, 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.

Fries′s Rebellion, 1799–1800

Main article: Fries's Rebellion

Resistance in Mexico, 1780–1807

There was widespread resistance to the pulque tax and other taxes in Zempoala and Otumba, beginning in 1780.

19th Century

A mass tax strike in Benares, 1810–1

When the occupation British Raj 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.

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 France 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.

Tax resistance in Georgian England

In the 1820s and 1830s, activists like William Benbow and Thomas Jonathan Wooler 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

Main article: Tithe War

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 War, 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.

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 Union 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.

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

Main article: Rebecca Riots

The Rebecca Riots 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.

“White Quakers,” 1843

The White Quakers, an Irish Quaker splinter group named for their characteristic undyed clothing, undertook tax resistance in 1843 to protest government harassment of their sect.

Mexican-American War, 1846

Main article: Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)

Perhaps the most famous American example of a tax resister, Henry David Thoreau, 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:

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 Amos Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane 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 1848 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 states, 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, 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.

Prussian democrats, 1850,1864

In 1850 Lothar Bucher, 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.

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 1848 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.,

Don Cossack resistance, 1864–1882

The Don Cossacks refused to pay the taxes levied by their provincial zemstvo 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 Louisiana, 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.

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.

White miners in Griqualand West, 1874

In 1874, a group of white, small-scale diamond miners at the “New Rush” in Kimberly, South Africa (then in a British colony called Griqualand West), launched a tax strike to protest the British colonial government’s lack of response to their grievances.

Mexican-American Tax Resistance in Texas, 1877

During the San Elizario Salt War, residents of El Paso County, Texas with loyalties to Mexico stopped paying taxes to the United States-loyal government.

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 War 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.

Paisley abbey manse tax resistance, 1880

Paisley instituted a tax to raise funds to repair the manse (minister's house) of Paisley Abbey. People who were not members of that church (the official Church of Scotland) did not feel they should have to pay for this, and in December 1880 they organized a tax resistance campaign. Some 200 people refused to pay the tax. The authorities took legal action against a few, but then quickly dropped the charges.

The Irish Land League calls for a rent strike, 1881

In 1881, the Irish National Land League 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” 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 Islands 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 unionists used (or threatened) tax resistance in order to fight against home rule.

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.

The Hut Tax War, 1898

Main article: Hut Tax War of 1898

In 1896, the British government decreed that the inland “protectorate” adjacent to its Sierra Leone colony should be taxed. The tax would be imposed on dwellings, at an annual rate that in some cases exceeded the value of the dwelling itself, and came to be known as the “Hut Tax.”

Natives of the protectorate were unused to regular taxation of any sort, and interpreted the tax as meaning that the British were assuming ownership of all of the dwellings in the area and charging rent. They were furious at this wholesale appropriation of property, and refused to pay, then adopted armed rebellion when the colonial forces responded with violent reprisals.

Maori tax resistance, 1898

Main article: Dog Tax War

Maoris refused to pay the dog tax to their colonizers in 1898.

Crow reservation, 1897–9

Members of the Crow Nation 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 War, and also against tax rates that discriminated against Barcelona in favor of Madrid.

20th Century

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 nonconformists 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 Petrograd 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.

Zulus in Natal, 1906

A group of Zulus announced that they would refuse to pay the poll tax to the British colonial government in Natal. 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

Doukhobor 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 Empire, 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

Main article: Women's Tax Resistance League

The British women’s suffrage 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.

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 Long 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.

Rhodesia, 1911

In 1911, the Legislative Council passed an ordinance imposing a one shilling per month tax on farmers for each native laborer they hired, payable to the Labour Bureau, which coordinated the exploitation of African labor for colonial farmers and miners. The farmers decided to resist the tax. Hundreds were convicted and fined, and some were jailed after refusing to pay the fines. The farmers were successful in convincing the government to rescind the tax.

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 I 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 Territory and Papua in the years around 1920.

European Pacifists (1920s)

After World War I, some European pacifists associated with the movement that would coalesce around War Resisters International, like Beatrice and Kees Boeke, adopted war tax resistance as one of their forms of resistance.

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 Féin organized tax resistance against home rule 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

Main article: Poplar Rates Rebellion

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 Society 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 Navy’s occupation of the American Samoa.

Shanghai, 1927

Around the time of the Shanghai massacre of 1927, 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

Main articles: Champaran and Kheda Satyagraha and Salt Satyagraha

Mahatma Gandhi’s independence campaign in India used a variety of tax resistance strategies, including attacking the British taxed monopolies on salt and textiles by advocating the illegal production of salt outside of the monopoly system and the home-based spinning of cloth. In 1930 this tax resistance culminated in Gandhi’s famous 240-mile (390 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.

The Great Depression, United States

In the United States, the term "tax revolt" is sometimes used to refer to a series of anti-tax state initiative campaigns. The first significant wave of these campaigns was during the 1930s. The Great Depression introduced unprecedented tax burdens to Americans. While real estate values plummeted and unemployment skyrocketed, the cost of government remained high. As a result, taxes as a percentage of the national income nearly doubled from 11.6 percent in 1929 to 21.1 in 1932. Most of the increase took place at the local level and especially squeezed the resources of real estate taxpayers. Local tax delinquency rose steadily to a still standing record of 26.3% in 1933..

Many Americans reacted to these conditions by forming taxpayers' leagues to call for lower taxes and cuts in government spending. By some estimates, there were three thousand of them by 1933. Taxpayers' leagues endorsed such measures as laws to limit and rollback taxes, lowered penalties on tax delinquents, and cuts in government spending. Partly as a result of their efforts, sixteen states and numerous localities adopted property tax limitations while three states instituted homestead exemptions.

While taxpayers' leagues usually favored traditional legal and political strategies, a few were more direct. Probably the best known of these was the Association of Real Estate Taxpayers in Chicago. From 1930 to 1933, it led one of the largest tax strikes in American history. At its height, it had 30,000 paid members, a budget of $600,000, and a weekly radio show.

By 1933, the taxpayers' leagues had entered a period of decline. Several factors undermined the conditions that had nurtured revolt. For example, economic conditions gradually improved, the federal government extended aid to homeowners, and local governments reduced reliance on real estate taxes. To some extent, the tax revolt also fell victim to an effective counterattack by municipal reformers, government officials, and the holders of municipal debt such as bondholders and bankers who formed so-called "Pay Your Taxes" campaigns throughout the country. These campaigns used a combination of door-to-door solicitation, threats of coercion, and inducements, such as installment payment plans, to collect back taxes.

An alternative theory describing the decline of the taxpayers' leagues is that laws limiting existing taxes and new tax revenues from the manufacture and sale of alcohol due to the repeal of prohibition eliminated the need for the taxpayers' leagues.

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

Main article: Association of Real Estate Taxpayers

During the Great Depression 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.

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

Main article: Blueshirts

To protest Irish intransigence in the Anglo-Irish Trade War, 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 II, the Christian anarchist and pacifist Ammon Hennacy refused to register for the American draft and announced that he would not pay his income taxes. He also tried to reduce his tax liability by adopting a life of simple living. He wrote:

…I [learned] the principle of voluntary poverty and non payment of taxes… from Tolstoy 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 Palestinians,” 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.

The birth of the modern war tax resistance movement, 1948

Main article: Peacemakers

In 1948, a Chicago conference on “More Disciplined and Revolutionary Pacifist Activity” attracted more than 300 people, and resulted in the formation of the group Peacemakers and its “Tax Refusal Committee.” This is considered to be the birth of the modern organized war tax resistance movement in the United States.

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 Poujade 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 Lee 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 Congress 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 26 U.S.C. § 3127 and 26 U.S.C. § 1402(g) (this exemption also covers Medicare 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.

Tithe resistance in Malaysia, early 1960s

In 1960, the Malaysian government converted the traditional Islamic zakāt (tithe) paid voluntarily by rice farmers into a mandatory tax payable through the government. Opposition to the new government-controlled tithe was, at least in some places, “unanimous and vehement,” and rice farmers developed a number of tactics to resist the tithes, successfully reducing the government’s take to a fraction of what the law allowed.

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 arms 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).

Vietnam War, 1968–72

In early 1968, 448 writers and editors put a full-page ad in the New York Post 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.

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 Larzac, 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.

Efforts to legalize conscientious objection to military taxation

Main articles: Conscientious objection to military taxation, National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, and Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act

In 1972 United States Congressman Ron Dellums 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.

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 Somoza regime in Nicaragua, the opposition organized a tax strike.

United States, Proposition 13, 1978

A wave of tax revolts began in the late 1970s and were particularly popular in the West. In 1978, voters in California passed Proposition 13, sponsored by Howard Jarvis and passed overwhelmingly by voters in 1978, which drastically limited property tax levels in the state.

In subsequent years, the state initiative process, initially championed by Populists and progressives, has been increasingly used for such purposes by conservative and corporate political forces. In the United States, notable examples include a series of initiatives in Oregon (see Oregon tax revolt) and Washington (see Tim Eyman), the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) in Colorado, and Proposition 2½ in Massachusetts.

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 Hunthausen of Seattle, Washington announced that he would be refusing to pay half of his income tax in protest against the nuclear arms race.

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 Party 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

See also: Tax resistance in Beit Sahour

In 1988-9, during the first Intifada, 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

UK Poll Tax, 1989–93

Main article: Community Charge

In 1989-90, the government of Margaret Thatcher 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.

Cameroon, 1991

In 1991 Cameroon’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 Americans 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 Liberation 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.

21st Century

Same-sex marriage rights

In the United States, 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 Kingdom, senior citizens in opposition to steep increases in council tax, claiming that increases of as much as 30% are not affordable to those living on a pension, refused to pay the tax in full or in part (some paying the previous year’s amount plus an inflationary rise). One of these, Sylvia Hardy of Exeter, was jailed for seven days.

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 Chavez 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

Main article: Addiopizzo

In 2006, after the arrest of Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano, 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 buycotting 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, 2003–2011

The government responded to an organized municipal tax strike involving hundreds of households in Ondárroa in the Basque region of Spain by cutting the water supply to 120 homes and businesses there. The residents were supporters of a banned Basque nationalist political party and ended their strike (though without paying any of the previously-resisted taxes) when they regained government representation under the banner of a new, legal party in 2011.

Ivory Coast, 2011

Alassane Ouattara 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.

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-Bissau 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 Cultural, 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.

Road Toll Resistance in Argentina, 2011

Argentine congresswoman Griselda Baldata noticed that nobody was maintaining the road on Route 36, but that the company in charge of maintenance was still collecting a toll. So she stopped paying and urged her constituents to do likewise.

Protests against European austerity measures, 2011

In the wake of the European sovereign debt crisis, some governments raised taxes and implemented harsh austerity measures to bring down the government budget deficits and satisfy international creditors. Some people and groups who opposed these measures adopted tax resistance as a protest tactic, for instance in Spain, Germany, Greece, and Italy.

Resistance against increased utility rates in Ireland, 2012

A group including Teachta Dálas Joe Higgins, Clare Daly, Joan Collins, Richard Boyd Barrett, John Lyons, Mick Wallace, Thomas Pringle and Séamus Healy, European Parliamentarian Paul Murphy, and councilors Ruth Coppinger and Ted Tynan promoted a campaign of resistance against the “stealth tax” of increased household and water rates.

External links

• An International History of War Tax Resistance National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee
• History of War Tax Resistance War Resisters League