Celebrating a Triumph over the IRS, with Redirection
By David Gross – August 2018 For the first time this year one of my outstanding tax debts hit the ten-year statute of limitations for collection. During those ten years, the IRS sent me increasingly exasperated letters, threatened me with thousands of dollars of interest & penalties, and even seized $469 from my bank account… Continue reading
Billions, Billions & Billions…Who’s Counting?
On September 1st, the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee backed a proposal to increase military spending for the Department of Defense by $25 Billion. That total was more than the Biden Administration had requested of $715 Billion. The vote was 42 to 17 which passed in the Senate. Many have been raising the… Continue reading
IRS Circumvents “Statute of Limitations”
Three letters arrived from the IRS within a week of each other. On the one hand this is rather exciting since the IRS has been quiet for the last few years, and I haven’t had much to report as far as consequences of refusal to pay. At the same time, it could take months of correspondence to sort out what they’ve done.
Website Refresh, Peace Week, & Extinction Rebellion
Moral Injury – It’s Not Just For Soldiers
“It’s been a hard week for Afghanistan veterans,” began an article on the front page of the local newspaper. While there has been a dizzying amount of every person turned pundit about the war; many of them are on the defense industry dole and would like to see the war continue into the third decade.
The Obvious Futility of War. What Can We Do?
“You don’t know if it’s going to last two days or two weeks or two months. It certainly isn’t going to last two years.” That was Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld in September of 2002, almost a year after the invasion of Afghanistan and at the time the Bush Administration was building support for their… Continue reading
Righting the Ship
Part I Addressing the Harms in Our Neighborhoods Long time war tax resister Robert Randall introduced me to his hometown of Brunswick, Georgia by saying it was mostly known as a port town for automobile transportation; quickly followed by saying “not much happens there.” On April 4, 2018, 7 people entered the King’s Bay naval… Continue reading
Biden’s IRS Funding Proposal
In April, President Joe Biden began his push to provide an additional $80 billion to the IRS over the next decade to close the tax gap. The tax gap is the difference between what people owe the IRS and what it actually manages to collect in a given year. The estimated tax gap has been… Continue reading
Taxing Issues
The IRS has been so quiet lately that it’s been hard to find topics to write about — except for interesting historical notes or the horrors resulting from the massive U.S. military budget. But three people got in touch recently with three different issues. At a time when war tax resistance seems pretty quiet too,… Continue reading
Left in the Dark: $2 Trillion and Counting…
In the early hours of Friday morning, US troops departed Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan. They turned off the electricity and lights before leaving; it appears as though members of the Afghan government were left in the dark about the departure of US troops. Biden has been clear about a formal departure on September… Continue reading
Two Sides of the Coin
The Costs of War Project with the Watson Institute at Brown University recently published a report on the high suicide rates of military members and veterans of the post 9/11 wars. Their study repeated what has been known for some time, that members of the military are 4 times more likely to die by suicide… Continue reading
Czar Nicholas II to the Pentagon Papers: The Unexpected Power of Individual Actions
The Pentagon Papers at 50 is getting a lot of attention and giving Daniel Ellsberg another chance to tell his story as well as talk about more recent releases of secret documents including his own. Ellsberg says he’s ready to go to jail again for his use of classified information in his 2017 book The… Continue reading