Article on VICE - Don't Pay Your Taxes - Or: How to back up your empty words with non-violent actio

I rarely post the entire contents of an article on this site. In this case I am going to make an exception. I will post a couple of words of warning though.
1. Do not state on an open forum what your position is on this.
2. There is a big difference between not filing taxes and not paying.
Not filing is exerting your Fifth Amendment right to not provide the Government any documents that can be used against you in a Court of Law. Not paying a tax bill is illegal. This is all i have to say about that as this is an open forum. Do your research.

IMO if you file taxes you have no right whatsoever to complain about how the Government spends the money. Not all revolutions have to involve violence. Please read this article and do some research.

Conservatives like to think of April 15—Tax Day—as the date when hard-working citizens hand over half their paychecks to the federal government so it can buy hard drugs and an HD television for every deadbeat in America. Liberals believe something similar—that taxes redistribute income from the rich and powerful to everyone else—which helps assuage their guilt over calling the cops last Christmas on the homeless man outside their condo.

Reality is less convenient for either faction: The vast majority of income taxes collected by the federal government isn't going to the poor at all—unless prison now counts as public housing—but to a military that enjoys a budget just about equal to what the rest of the world spends on guns and bombs combined. It's enough to make you want to stop paying income taxes altogether.

Corporations, the only legal persons who seem to doing well these days, don't consider it their civic duty to contribute to the federal government. Offshore tax shelters and creative accounting practices have helped 57 of the top 500 companies in the United States pay an effective tax rate of zero. And that makes the rest of us look like suckers.

If the planet's wealthiest corporations aren't paying their taxes, why should a short order cook at Denny's? To be sure, taxes in the US are not as high as they are in Sweden or France, but the average American also gets far less for his tax dollar: In Western Europe, national health care means free trips to the doctor, not a mandate to buy private insurance, while America's priorities are such that more income tax revenue goes to the Pentagon than any other government program. (The things people in need actually benefit from, like Social Security and Medicare, are funded largely by other taxes.) Factor in the cost of caring for veterans and paying interest on all that debt racked up from a century of almost constant war, and you'll find that close to half of the money collected from federal income tax is devoted to covering the expense of armed conflict in one way or another.

If you don't like that, you should know by now that voting for change hasn't changed much of anything, with Barack Obama, the only sitting president to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, proposing a record-breaking military budget the year after he won it. Refusing to give your money to a government that can literally print money might not change things in the short term. But war tax resisters, as people who refuse to pay federal income taxes as a form of protest are known, have decided they have no choice in the matter: They can’t in good conscience financially support a system that spends billions of dollars on machines of death while millions of people go hungry, and they don't believe a politician's failure to act takes away their own responsibility to do whatever they can.

“I wouldn't kill another person myself—and to pay someone else to kill people in my name with my tax dollars, it's essentially the same thing,” said David Hartsough, a Quaker peace activist in his 70s. “I don't have to look at the blood,” he told me over the phone, “but the blood is on my hands.”

Speaking from his home in Northern California, Hartsough said he has been resisting federal taxes since the war in Vietnam. For a long time, he purposely earned so little money he simply didn't owe any taxes, the most popular (and most legal) form of tax resistance. After getting married and having kids, he started earning enough that he started getting a bill from the government; these days, he pays half that bill, explaining in an attached letter to the IRS that he wants the half he does pay to go toward the Department of Health and Human Services, not all that killing stuff.

Link to Vice News Story

It is easy to talk of revolution on this website. So many people here want change. How many of you are actually willing to stand up for your Fifth Amendment Rights? Rebel or cowardly blowhard? Ask yourself" which one am I?

reply to post by Mamatus


Violent solutions are temporary and as such are a waste of time.

At least this is a coherent strategy along tactical and moral lines. It today's world, it's a very strong personal statement and carries significant personal risk.

People talking, is the root of all change and I think this concept creates a much better discussion than what types of "fuzzy dice" you acquired for your favorite weapon. Or cavalier talk about driving to NV for that matter.

reply to post by InverseLookingGlass


I once read an article that if just 10% of Americans stood up for their Fifth Amendment Rights that it would force the Government to reassess how they collect money from it's citizens. Personally I think it not a single bit fair the Americans have to pay multiple taxes and stress out over tax day. Also by the time most of us pay all of our mandatory "turkey taxes" that the average person spends more than 60% of all they make on "The System".

Taxes on Gasoline, Utility bills, retail purchases, Hotel stays, airline travel and a few dozen other places all add up to far more than most realize.

Personally, I feel a flat retail based sales tax on all goods sold (not food) including goods sold to every single business and Corporation while eliminating all write-offs is the only fair way to tax Americans. Corporations and drug dealers will finally have to pay their fair share.

Owning a business I can safely say that one can legally pay next to nothing in taxes for many years. Is this fair? Nope! However, the more you make the more you can afford to legally dodge the excessive taxation that hit people making far less money.

IMO the only way to truly change the way America does business is to follow the advice of the article I posted. It also blows my mind to see a News Outlet post such an article. I already had a lot of respect for VICE News and that just made an even greater leap forward.

reply to post by Mamatus


I am 36 and I think I paid my taxes somewhere in my teens

But not since

Let them find me

reply to post by Mamatus


This is absolutely correct.

The number 1 thing people can do in terms of civil disobedience is to stop filing and paying income taxes. The system would collapse overnight.

Its no coincidence that the Federal Reserve and the IRS were created simultaneously.

I'll be the first to admit, I'm a g-damn chicken s**t, scared as hell. The IRS is essentially the Gestapo. You're guilty until proven slave.

People are incredibly misguided. Instead of demanding that corporations pay more taxes, we should be demanding that we pay less!
Problem is, there are those people who pay no taxes and many who actually receive a credit.

Its very difficult to convince these masses that the IRS and incomes taxes are completely contrary to freedom.

reply to post by Mamatus


I've said it many times--only a government that hates it's citizens uses internal taxation.

There is no reason for taxing your citizens, not when you can just increase tariffs on foreign trade. Tax citizens of other countries for doing business here.

If we stopped taxing citizens and corporations the rippling effect it would have on our economy would be amazing.