Letter to Revenue Nov 2023

Dear Sir/Madam,

As will be evident from my tax return, I have only paid a portion of my nominal income tax liability for last year (2022), and have not paid PRSI or USC for that period at all. My tentative plan is to do the same for this year. This letter is to explain my reasons for tax refusal.

I realize this act of defiance will quite likely backfire on me - that you will quite possibly 'make a show' of me - but I can not with a clear conscience and peace of mind continue paying taxes to support this Government and its policies. (I have discussed some of the policies themselves in a separate article: here.)

Taxation and land

Instead, I hope to use my modest resources to help people directly - e.g. by buying land and sharing it with those who are land-impoverished. I realize this aspiration will seem semi-comical to many, but what is one to do when this Government have proved themselves either unwilling or incapable of facilitating the most basic of all human needs: access to land?

In its stead (i.e. in place of providing people with an opportunity to build a home), we are fobbed with off with public services such as 'health care', 'education' and 'social security'. Our political leaders must know, deep down, that if people didn't spend their lives in chronic stress and fear of eviction and homelessness - ultimately succumbing to the bad lifestyle habits and choices that stressful living conditions typically nurture - that their need for 'health care' would be drastically reduced.

I could go on, but I don't want to ramble. In summary, this Government and preceding ones have allowed the land to be taken from people - and the anti-human, pseudo-scientific policies currently being pushed under the name of 'environmentalism' are only making this problem significantly worse (by rendering more and more land 'off-limits' for human habitation). No amount of 'public services' are every going to compensate for this.

Taxation and empathy

I have not made this choice because I don't care for people. On the contrary, I look forward to a society where people are so sensitive to each other's needs that pensions, welfare payments and other forms of Government alms are actually redundant - and in which people are spared the humiliation and trauma of asking the Government to provide them with shelter because access to land is abundant and the restrictions to building on it are minimal.

In the meantime, it's clear that this Government's vision for the future is a million miles removed from the above. Their vision for the future is tailored to corporations rather than people, to authoritarian and grandiose ideologies rather than simple human-centered values, and to elaborate systems of centralized control (e.g. contact-tracing, digital passports, etc.) rather than decentralized systems geared to individual freedoms.

In other words, their vision for the future is anti-human and anti-freedom, so why would I support it?

Conclusion

I can not willingly contribute to this Government's policies or vision for the future at the present time - either financially or in other ways - because it goes against almost everything I believe in: freedom, self-responsibility, and the right to use the land that God gave us.

Sincerely

P.S. My tax return itself (income statement, etc.) is fully accurate.