I’ve dipped in and out of blockchain research for the past few years, and there are certain things i’ve come to understand about the complexion of projects that are well suited for the technology. One broad thesis that I’ve developed is that blockchain technology is uniquely capable of organizing bottom up user behaviors, especially in areas where there is no profit or political incentive for a company or government to organize said people from the top down. As I have watched protests erupt across our country, and as I have seen bottom up action fight a top down administration, I kept thinking to myself…there must be more impactful forms of leverage than simply visualizing our collective discontent via large scale assembly and marching. So here’s an idea on how the bottom up swell of discontent Americans can exert economic force and leverage on Donald Trump and Co.
Quick Primer on Blockchain for newbies
Blockchain technology enables strangers to trust each other in economic and social agreements. It is the technology that powers Bitcoin, Etherium, and hundreds of other crptocurrencies, but this same technology can power lots of other apps, especially those that deal with the transfer of money between people who don’t know each other. To simplify for non-blockchain folks, the important take away is this: if a blockchain based app (similar to a website or mobile app just w different technology powering it) defines a set of rules…especially around how money is going to be earned and distributed within the app…you can trust that when you put your money in…those rules will be followed by you and everyone else on the app…no matter what the makers of the app decide in the future, or even if the makers of the app are around in the future. Blockchain protocols are like detailed promises of how a community or network of people/companies and their money will behave in a given app or system. These promises, by design, will always be fullfilled, without the need of a company or government or law enforcement agency to make sure of it.
Ok, so here’s the idea:
1) The annual federal budget is around $4 Trillion a year
2) The government collects about $3.6 Trillion in federal taxes (so roughly speaking, our federal taxes pay for most of what the federal government operates on)
3) If a significant portion of US citizens chose to protest with their wallets and not their bodies, in substantial numbers, we could have a material adverse effect on Donald Trump’s operations.
4) Turns out this a thing. It’s called Tax Resistance, and there are hundreds of cases in our country’s history (and around the world) where people banded together and didn’t pay taxes when opposing a war or some other perceived injustice by a ruling government.
5) There is, obviously, deep personal risk to not paying your taxes. You can rack up steep fines, and worst case maybe even go to jail. My premise, is that as an individual, this risk is extreme, but as one of say 20 Million people, who collectively agree to behave this way, the risk is diminished…basically…strength and leverage in numbers. But how could you ensure that you were one of 20 Million before withholding funds? And how could you, collectively, ensure that your withheld funds were heard and responded to with action?
6) I think you could build a blockchain based application to organize mass federal tax resistance. The basic design would be a smart contract built on Etherium (or maybe you’d build your own blockchain from the ground up, i don’t know) that would receive all participants’ owed federal taxes, and that would only release these taxes to the IRS if a set of predefined conditions was satisfied by Donald Trump and the Federal Government. These conditions would be promises of the system that everyone agrees to on the way in. The logic of the contract would enable people to pay into it for the months leading up to Tax Day, and it would be conditional such that it would only become active and withhold on tax day if 1) the conditions had not been met, and 2) the minimum number of people specified at the onset (i.e. 20 million) had come together and funded the contract in time. So if only 100 people did it, on Tax Day, the contract would simply pass through your funds to the IRS automatically. BUT…if the contract had hit 20 Million people, which is the predefined number representing scale and safety for this form of protest, the contract would hold the funds until Administration acted to say 1) lift the muslim bad, 2) oust Bannon from office, 3) whatever else the protocol defines as fundamentally important and constitutional. (NOTE: If i’ve made any technical mistakes in this design or my simplification of blockchain technology, please feel free to correct me. thank you.)
7) The effect would be a big fat pile of money…say $200 Billion or 5% of annual feferal budget…sitting in a smart contract, staring Donald Trump in the face. He would know what he needed to do to release it. And he couldn’t lean on any individual actor in the system, or any top down authority governing these funds (because there isn’t one)..and the money would just be sitting there until he chose to behave. I believe this type of economic leverage would be a language this president understands…sure…he might go nuts and try to arrest all 20 Million people…but I think if a bottom up org represented that type of capital leverage…interesting things would happen.
8) For fun, maybe you’d call the project “Resistcoin”
9) Note to the IRS: I pay my taxes and I am not building this app.
Here’s Wikipedia’s list of historical tax resistance occurrences dating back to the 1st century A.D. through very modern and recent times.
Before 1500 A.D.[edit]
Jewish Zealots, 1st century A.D.[edit]
See also: Render unto Caesar…
In the 1st century AD, Jewish Zealots in Judaea resisted the poll tax instituted by the Roman Empire.[3] 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).[4]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.[5]
Limoges, 578[edit]
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.[6]
Peace and Truce of God[edit]
In councils organized by the Peace and Truce of God movement, Christian clergy resisted the exaction of taxes against church property by warlords.[7]
Danegeld, 1041[edit]
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.[8]
Lady Godiva′s Ride[edit]
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, rode in the buff, and that was enough.[9]
Constantinople, 1197[edit]
Main article: Alamanikon
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.[10]
Florence, 1289[edit]
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.[11]
Clericis laicos, 1296[edit]
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.[12]
Norman anti-tax riots, 1348–51[edit]
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.[13] 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.[14]
Wat Tyler′s rebellion, 1381[edit]
In 1381, the Peasant’s Revolt occurred in England, when Wat Tyler led an uprising over a new poll tax. Tyler marched an army of tens of thousands of peasants from Kent to Canterbury, then to London, beheaded the archbishop, and exacted radical concessions from King Richard II. During the negotiations, Tyler was killed by officers of the King and was publicly beheaded, and Richard II retracted all of the concessions that he had previously made.[15]
French aides uprisings, 1381[edit]
See also: Harelle and Tuchin Revolt
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….[16]
Bundschuh movement[edit]
The Bundschuh movement was in part a tax resistance movement that encouraged its followers to stop paying tithes to the Catholic Church and taxes.[17] In France, a tithe-payer strike spread from 1529 to 1560 among both Catholics and Protestants.[18]
16th century[edit]
Revolt of the Comuneros, 1520[edit]
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.[19]
German Peasants′ War, 1524–25[edit]
The German Peasants’ War of 1524–25 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.[20]
Revolt of Ghent, 1539[edit]
The Revolt of Ghent (1539) began when the city magistrates refused to pay taxes demanded by Charles V for his war with France.[21]
Hutterites[edit]
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.[22]
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.[23]
Gabelle revolts, 1542, 1548[edit]
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.”[24] A second revolt centered in Guyenne in 1548 was more organized, widespread, and violent; and was violently suppressed.[25] 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.”[26]
Tariff resistance in Holland, 1543–49[edit]
Merchants in Holland successfully resisted a variety of export duties imposed by the Holy Roman Empire via Mary of Hungary.[27]
Tax strikes in France, 1579–80[edit]
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.[28]
The Revolt Against the Tribute, Philippines, 1589[edit]
In 1589, the provinces of Cagayán, Ilocos Norte, and Ilocos Sur rebelled against unjust Spanish colonial taxes and abusive tax collectors in what became known as the “Revolt Against the Tribute,” the “Dingrás Revolt,” or the “Ilocos Norte Revolt.”[29]
Rappenkrieg, 1591–94[edit]
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.[30]
Croquants, 1593–95[edit]
Main article: Croquant rebellions
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.[31]
Sales tax resistance in France, 1597[edit]
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.[32]
Jelali revolts[edit]
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.[33]
17th Century[edit]
Bolotnikov rebellion, 1606[edit]
During the Bolotnikov rebellion, tribes in western Siberia began refusing to pay taxes to the central government.[34]
Brussels, 1619[edit]
In the city of Brussels, then part of the Duchy of Brabant in the Habsburg Netherlands, there was a tax strike in 1619. When the States of Brabant (composed of representatives of the clergy, the nobility, and the four cities Leuven, Brussels, Antwerp and ‘s-Hertogenbosch) met to renew the standard sales tax on the “four species of consumption” (beer, wine, bread and meat), the guilds of the city of Brussels instructed their representatives not to vote the taxes through until their grievances had been addressed. As the constitutional principle was that taxes had to be passed by “full consent”, this meant the taxes could not legally be collected. After two months of constitutional impasse and fruitless negotiations (May–June) the government ordered the taxes to be collected notwithstanding. The guilds made this impossible, and their defiance of the government led to a military occupation of the city in September 1619. The central authorities then revised the civic constitution to limit the power of the guilds to filibuster the States of Brabant. The deans of six of the guilds, and their legal counsel, were served with sentences of lifelong banishment from the Low Countries.[35]
English Civil War[edit]
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.[36]
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.[37]
17th-century tax rebellions in France[edit]
In 1615, the residents of one commune refused to pay the wine tithe and threatened to throw the collector into the Rhône.[38]
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.[39]
The success of anti-tax rebellions in Saintonge and Angoumois led to other rebellions in France, including some in which excise officers were lynched.[40] The most notorious incident was the massacre of tax officers responsible for collecting the gabelle at Agen in June 1635.[41]
A second “Croquants′ Revolt” in 1636–37 (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.[42]
From 1638 to 1645, 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.[43]
In 1639–43, the revolt of the va-nu-pieds in Normandy included a tax strike and attacks on the homes of tax farmers.[44] In 1643 there were attacks on tax collectors in multiple regions of France.[45] The Fronde of 1646–53 was also marked by anti-tax riots.[46]
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.[47]
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.[38]
Algonquian resistance, 1637[edit]
In 1637, the Algonquian resisted being taxed by Dutch colonialists to pay for improvements to Fort Amsterdam.[48]
Italian tax revolts, 1647[edit]
Main article: Masaniello
Residents of Palermo and of Naples revolted in 1647 and destroyed the tax offices and the homes of tax farmers.[49]
Swiss peasant war of 1653[edit]
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[edit]
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.[50]
Quaker Tithe and War Tax Resistance, 1659–[edit]
George Fox′s Quaker movement included resistance to tithes and other mandatory fees destined for the establishment church. Soon, the movement also incorporated resistance to militia taxes and fees, and to “trophy money” (taxes for equipping soldiers). These were early examples of war tax resistance in the Quaker movement.[51]
Revolt of the papier timbré, 1675[edit]
Main article: Revolt of the papier timbré
Scottish presbyterian dissent, 1678–88[edit]
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.[52] (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.[53])
Resistance in New England, 1687[edit]
Main article: 1689 Boston revolt
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.[54]
Then followed a revolution. Andros and Judge Dudley, who had tried the case against Wise and the rest, were overthrown and imprisoned.
18th century[edit]
Camisard revolt, 1700–03[edit]
Tax resistance was a feature of the Camisard revolt.[55]
New Jersey resistance to a Catholic assessor, 1715[edit]
In 1715, 36 New Jersey residents pledged to refuse to pay taxes “Because wee have been Illegally Assessed by an Asseser who being a Known & open profest Roman Catholick which is Utterly Repugnant to the Laws of Great Brittain & Contrary to ye Rights & Liberties of his Royall Majties faithfull Subjects.” Some of the signers of the pledge were indicted for their refusal.
18th-century uprisings in Japan[edit]
Successful peasant uprisings in the Fukuyama fief in 1717 (and again in 1752 and 1770), in the Tsuyama fief in 1726–27, and in Iwaki Daira in 1739, focused on the oppressiveness of taxes and tax collection.[56] Other tax revolts in Aizu in 1749, in Shinano Ueda in 1761–63, in Tenma Sodo in 1764–65, in Koyasan in 1776, in Kozuke & Musashi in 1781, and in Hokkaido in 1790, were only partially successful but also led to severe reprisals.[57]
Malt tax riots in Scotland, 1725[edit]
Main article: Malt tax riots
A duty on malt had been imposed in England to pay for a war against France. At the union with Scotland in 1707, most taxes were made uniform, but under the Treaty of Union Scotland was given a temporary exemption from the malt tax, until the end of the war. After the war, in 1725, the House of Commons applied a new malt tax which applied throughout Great Britain, but charged at only half the rate in Scotland. Scots were unused to this tax, which increased the price of beer. Enraged citizens in Glasgow drove out the military and destroyed the home of their representative in parliament, who had voted for the tax.[58] In Edinburgh, brewers went on strike, illegally. Andrew Millar, then a book trade apprentice, helped overthrow attempts by Edinburgh magistrates to control dissemination of opinion during the unrest. The pamphlet Millar refers to in the letter to Robert Wodrow dated 10 August 1725, and his actions detailed in the letter dated 15 July, emphasized contemporary doubts and challenges to the strike’s “illegality”.[59] 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.[60]
Excise tax riots in England, 1733[edit]
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.[61]
“Jack-a-Lents”, 1734–49[edit]
In Gloucester and Hereford counties, 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.[62] A royal proclamation complained of the rebels that they “have made publick and open Declaration, that they would proceed to pull down ſeveral other Turnpikes; and that if any of the Commiſſioners ſhould attempt to ſet up the Turnpikes again, they would pull down their Houſes, and would cut down the Turnpikes as often as they ſhould be ſet up.”[63]
A similar outbreak took place in Bristol in 1749, in which self-styled Jack-a-Lents, “many naked with their faces blacked … destroyed the gates at Bedminster, Ashton, Don John’s Cross, Dundry, Backwell, Nailsea, Redcliffe, Totterdown, Teasford and Bath Roads, Hanham, Kingswood, Stoke’s Croft, &c., &c.”[64]
Porteous riots, 1736[edit]
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.[65]
Tithe resistance in France, 1736[edit]
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.[38]
North Carolina Counties Resist, 1746[edit]
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.[66]
French and Indian War, 1755[edit]
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.[67]
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.[68]
The “Regulator” movement, 1767–71[edit]
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).[69]
A revolt in Palermo, 1773[edit]
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).[70]
American Revolution[edit]
See also: No taxation without representation
Boston Tea Party, 16 December 1773.
British colonists in America 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.[71]
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.[72] 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.[73]
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.[74]
African American protests against taxation without representation, 1780[edit]
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.”[75] In 1783 free, taxpaying African Americans in Massachusetts were given full citizenship rights, including the right to vote.[76]
Revolt of the Comuneros, 1781[edit]
The Revolt of the Comuneros in Colombia began with bands of armed protesters confronting tax commissioners and state monopoly shops.[77]
New Hampshire secessionists, 1781[edit]
For a while, during the early days of the United States, Vermont was an independent republic of sorts, though with aspirations for statehood. Some regions of neighboring New Hampshire felt more loyal to the Vermont Republic than to the confederation of United States, and expressed this by refusing to pay taxes to the latter.
York tax riot, 1786[edit]
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.[78]
Tax resistance during the French Revolution[edit]
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.[79]
The Whiskey Rebellion, 1791–94[edit]
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.[80]
White Lotus Rebellion, 1793[edit]
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.[81]
Pazvantoğlu rebellion, 1794[edit]
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.[82]
Fries′s Rebellion, 1799–1800[edit]
Main article: Fries’s Rebellion
Resistance in Mexico, 1780–1807[edit]
There was widespread resistance to the pulque tax and other taxes in Zempoala and Otumba, beginning in 1780.[83]
19th Century[edit]
A mass tax strike in Benares, 1810–11[edit]
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.[84]
Radical Reformers, 1819[edit]
The “Radical Reformers” were advicates if democratic reforms in England — things like universal male suffrage and secret ballots. In the wake of a military massacre of reform demonstrators in Manchester in August, 1819, reformers vowed to refuse to buy and consume products on which the government applied an excise tax, like tea, tobacco, and alcoholic beverages.[85]
See also: Radicalism (historical)
Bermuda, 1821[edit]
When residents of St. George parish refused to pay their church tithes, William Lumley, governor of Bermuda, put several in military jail.[86] Lumley’s acts were later ruled illegal (Basham v. Lumley, 1829), the court ruling that although the governor of the Bermuda colony had also been granted ecclesiastical authority by the crown, he was not authorized to use his civil authority to imprison people who refused his ecclesiastical orders; at most he could excommunicate them.
Tumenggung Mohammad revolt, 1825[edit]
The followers of Tumenggung Mohammad in Indonesia practiced tax resistance, including rioting against tax collectors.[87]
Tax resistance against Charles X of France, 1829[edit]
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.[88]
Tax resistance in Georgian England[edit]
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.[89]
The Tithe War, 1830–38[edit]
Main article: Tithe War
From 1830 to 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[edit]
Syrians resisted being taxed both by Egypt and later by Turkey, and refused to pay these occupation governments.[90]
Tax resistance for