I find the timing of this situation amusing given my earlier post on how to fix Detroit through tax exemption.
Last week I received tax return forms in my name mailed to my address by a nearby city government. I’ve never worked in that city and as the letter states my physical address is not within that city’s limits. I’ve lived at the address for over 10 years and this was the first time I’ve received such a notice.
I sent this letter in response with copies of the forms they had mailed to my address:
NOTICE TO CEASE AND DESIST
To Whom It May Concern:
My spouse and I recently received City of X individual tax return documents which stated a “return must be filed by April 30, 2010.” This letter you are now reading serves your agency notice that we are not required to file a tax return with the City of X. I will make it clear that we do not work in the City of X. Likewise, the mailing address your agency used to contact us is not and never has been within the city limits. Therefore, you will cease and desist from attempting to collect money outside of your legal authority.
Any future attempts by your agency toward collection of taxes on person(s) employed outside the city or at this address which is outside the physical boundary of the City of X will be considered harassment. Therefore, it would be in your agency’s best interests to remove our names and our address from your tax collection rolls posthaste.
Sincerely,
Chris Sullins
As you can tell I don’t take kindly to the local city-state extending its boundary. I’m sure this overreach was done by the city due to their lower revenues, lost income and property taxes. But, to do this under the color of law is nothing short of official fraud. However, proving official misconduct is another matter. There was no official’s name on the forms and I can’t imagine I’m going to find a signed memo authorizing this new attempt at collection outside of the city’s limits.
In the meantime I wonder how many people who reside on the same road also received the same tax forms? How many of them are just going to fill out the forms and send checks to the city without any protest? How many of them will ignore it altogether? But the important question is out of how many households did anyone bother to write a letter of protest? How many actually told them NO? This last question is the most important when considering the extent of the local MacRib Test.
If enough people don’t say No early enough, things often tend to go past the camel’s nose in the tent. I can imagine the local city continuing to extend its boundaries in the future and/or performing other actions under an air of legality. I can imagine situations in which cities overreach their boundaries and authority, yet still convince judges or a state administrator (aka bureaucrat) to garnish citizens’ paychecks for supposedly unpaid taxes and fines which were never owed in the first place.
This outright theft would continue until the citizen trudges through an onerous Kafkaesque process of “proving” they didn’t reside within the city and that the tax wasn’t ever really owed. The city/judge/administrator could then play the “oops” game and blame a computer error or some other complexity of the system which they had purposely misused. Of course, the costs for the citizen to challenge such an “error” will be designed in advance to exceed the cost of submitting to the “error” in the first place.
Citizens must box in any attempts by government to exceed its authority. They must frame and contain any acts conducted under the color of law. This does not require violence. The simple act of refusing to comply is enough. This was evident in the many peaceful revolutions that took place in 1989 when people said NO to communism across Eastern Europe. Although governments hold the threat of force in reserve to force compliance, the American government will not use it against the citizens over taxation at this time.
As one of my lead characters Josiah Shroud said “In the past when the federal and state government was really unwilling or incapable of following through on using physical violence as a consequence, it was the conditioned and residual fear of such consequences from an authority figure that acted as a powerful force alone in the minds of most people. But just like the story of the people in Plato’s cave, these things were just shadow and illusion. We, too, were prisoners in our own minds until we freed ourselves over the past decade.”
The key to doing this successfully is to stand together.
Stand with me and tell them NO.
Thank you.
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