As always, around this time in spring one of the flowers of civil disobedience blooms: fiscal objection to military expenditures. And it flowers now because it is the time when we pay part of our taxes through the income tax return, the feared IRPF. (Impuesto Sobre la Renta de las Personas Físicas/Personal Income Tax). A certain amount of these taxes, not inconsiderable, is dedicated to maintaining the entire military complex from maneuvers with live ammunition at the Reserva Natural de las Bardenas Reales of Navarra, to the foreign missions of the Armed Forces (17 missions on 4 continents with a budget in 2020 of 758 million Euros. And let us not forget the export of weapons eventually being used against Yemen.
We could stop to think about the effectiveness of a tank facing a pandemic with global consequences. The concept of “Defense” has been restricted to the Armed Forces that protect us from foreign threats, when in reality the threats come from elsewhere. A better defense would be to reinforce the immune system of people and the planet with substantial public services.
- In 2020, in just one year, more than 30 thousand million Euros were destined in Spain for military expenditures and social control (https://www.grupotortuga.com).
- It has been estimated that in our country about 61 thousand million Euros would be the cost to mitigate the effects of Covid-19 on families and businesses, as calculated between 2020-2023.
Facing this, we can adopt an active posture of civil disobedience, which far from being illegal becomes a right because it is disobedience in the face of an unjust law.
The campaign Fiscal Objection to Military Expenditures, which has been going on for more than 38 years, drives us to not collaborate with the military structure in a public and collective way. It is necessary only to “divert” our military taxes toward a more ethical destination. That destination can be the collective or the organization that each person chooses, the one we feel really does help in the defense of the people and the planet.
This time we are not going to ask the governments for anything. We appeal to you directly:
- Anyone can submit a fiscal objection, whether he has made payments or not, receives a salary or not. Anyone can express his rejection of the military expenditures, subtracting even just 1 Euro from the budget.
- All the simple steps in this active nonviolent campaign can be found at: https://objecion fiscal.info/
- Finally, as matter making the campaign public, we are sending a letter to the Agencia Tributaria (Tax Agency) stating the motives for our conscientious objection.
- In the 2020 campaign at least 258 objectors deviated 18.088 Euros towards 92 alternative projects.
It’s not just a matter of changing the location of amounts of money.
To exercise Fiscal Objection is a transformative experience that helps us modify our responsibility for the consequences of wars.
If you demilitarize your taxes, the world demilitarizes.
WiB Madrid -25th of April 2021
Translation: Trisha Novak, USA