Maybe you don’t like the war with Iran. Perhaps widespread Medicaid fraud has you questioning our massive federal government’s ability to manage sprawling budgets. Or perhaps, like many folks in blue cities that faced ICE and Border Patrol surges in Trump’s second term, you don’t want your tax dollars underwriting these actions.
This is not a new phenomenon. Taxes at nearly every level are painful, and governments — from the city of Chicago to the state of Illinois to the federal government — like to spend. Big.
None of that changes the bottom line: The IRS still expects its check.
We were fascinated by a broader trend — covered locally by the Chicago Sun-Times and nationally by outlets including CNBC and The New York Times — of people turning the humble 1040 into a form of civil disobedience.
“Taxation is theft” is typically Libertarian-coded, a view that carries deep skepticism about the wisdom, efficiency and trustworthiness of government’s ability to spend our money better than we would ourselves. We suspect many folks who voted for President Donald Trump do not like paying taxes. Perhaps they even have this slogan taped to their rear bumper.
But the voices featured in these stories lean progressive — people who generally support a more active government, but object to how this particular one is spending their money.
One Harvard-educated Chicago attorney profiled in the Sun-Times story said she paid her state taxes but not what she owed the federal government, instead setting aside roughly $10,000 in a savings account. That’s a calculated risk, and one more accessible to someone with financial flexibility and legal expertise than to the average taxpayer. For most Americans, fines, wage garnishment or worse are too big a risk to take.
A representative from the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee shared how his group trains people on the best ways to protest taxes, including using loopholes to lower their income enough — “roughly $16,000 for an individual” — that they won’t owe any federal taxes.
Fair enough. But isn’t this, at least in spirit, what many on the left criticize when wealthy taxpayers find ways to avoid paying more?
We understand the instinct behind “tax resistance.” We’ve long resisted what we see as bad tax policy, such as the graduated income tax push back in 2020 or the “mansion tax” of 2024, which we opposed as wrongheaded ideas dressed as ways to soak the rich that would in actuality punish small business and folks across the income spectrum.
We commiserate with those who bristle at funding waste, bloat or policies they oppose. In that sense, this moment is almost clarifying: It’s your money, and government spends it whether you like it or not.
You can protest how your tax dollars are used. You can press your lawmakers for a different approach. You can support candidates who reflect your priorities and hold them accountable once they’re in office. You can argue about how much should be collected in the first place.
But unless you’re prepared for the consequences, you don’t get to simply opt out.
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