Leftists fancying themselves the next incarnation of the original Tea Party have decided to protest against President Trump by refusing to pay their federal income taxes.
Andrew Newman, an associate professor of English and history at Stony Brook University on Long Island, sounded off:
My tax money will be going towards putting up a wall on the Mexican border instead of helping sick people. It will contribute to the destruction of the environment and maybe more nuclear weapons. I think there will be a redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy elite and Trump’s campaign for the working man and woman was an absolute fraud. If you pay taxes you are implicated in the system. The government wants our money and if a lot of people were thinking about this kind of peaceful protest, it would get their attention.Newman acknowledged, “I’ve been discussing this with friends and colleagues and they are extremely interested. People are very responsive but they also say ‘I don’t want to go to jail.'” That’s hyperbole; if he doesn’t pay his taxes he will simply be fined and charged interest.
Ruth Benn, coordinator of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, which urges people to boycott paying their taxes, said her committee’s website has been visited by twice as many people as normal in recent weeks, roughly 1,500 people per day. The committee believes 8,000 people a year refuse to pay US federal income tax. The website acknowledges there is a possibility that tax resisters could be jailed, but insists that the chances are remote.
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