Tax revolts are funny things. The powers that be are lulled into complacency, for increased taxation is inevitable, for do we all not know that progress is inevitable, and so the grinding business of governmental coercion as usual must continue on unabated? But this is like the man who was striving to live to be one hundred and twenty because nobody dies after that.
But after a while a certain restiveness sets in, and the signs are such that the blinkered politicos simply cannot see it. They proceed blithely on, assuming that the protests are simply “more politics.” But they are not reading what is actually there — just what they would love to believe is there.
Seeing what I take to be signs that we are already in the early phases of a major tax revolt, I recently undertook a study of the history of tax revolts. And my, is there an awful lot to learn. And double my, nobody appears to be learning it.
Tax revolts are usually very messy, but they could be organized, I suppose. An organized revolt would go something like this. Suppose a major political figure, with populist leanings and populist appeal, urged everyone to reduce their withholding to lowest legal level, and to set aside the money to pay the penalty for doing that. Say twenty million people did that. Then say this civilized rabble rouser told everyone who had done that much, when that fiscal year closed out, to file for an extension, and twenty million people did that. Do you think that all this perfectly legal behavior would get anybody’s attention?
But like I say, the chances of it being that orderly are slim.