Frustrated taxpayers eye ruling

Mila

Mila

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http://fin24.com/articles/default/d...icleId=1518-25_2577151&IsColumnistStory=False

Pretoria - The Free State High Court will soon be asked to declare the legality or otherwise of withholding taxes at municipal level.

This follows pressure from Free State voters who are fed up with poor service delivery and want to ascertain from their DA councillors whether it is permissible to withhold their municipal taxes.

DA representatives in the Free State have asked the party at national level for permission to obtain a declaratory order from the Free State High Court.

The National Taxpayers Union (NTU) is currently coordinating campaigns protesting poor municipal service delivery in more than 300 towns. :)

The NTU campaign involves residents individually declaring disputes with their local authorities, and then withholding taxes. Members of taxpayer associations pay the tax monies into a communal, separate account and use this to provide the services themselves.

Sannieshof is the best-known example where taxpayers have repaired water pumps, the sewerage plant and potholes in the roads from this money.

According to NTU spokesperson Jaap Kelder, taxes are currently being withheld in this way in about 40 towns.

Various legal experts and Sicelo Shiceka, Minister of Cooperative Government and Traditional Affairs, have expressed reservations about the legality of this campaign.

Shiceka has threatened to take those withholding taxes to court if negotiations fail.

He said he was preparing a war room in his department, and that he would first tackle the head of the movement. He had previously told Beeld that he would fight the dissenters with their own money.

Although several related issues have already come before various courts, declarations of dispute and the withholding of taxes, as applied by the NTU, have as such never come to court.

Constitutional expert Professor Marinus Wiechers says a declaratory order by the Free State High Court would create a precedent to be followed by high courts in the other provinces.
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Its amazing to try follow their logic, or lack thereof. I mean, instead of, you know, providing services, like they are supposed to, they try a legal campaign to get the money while still not providing services. One would think the easiest thing to do would be to actually provide the services, but I guess that way they cant use the taxpayers money for luxury German cars.
 
Luxury German cars are more important than repairing the potholes in the road, according to some people's logic.
 
There is some measure of logic to it - German luxury cars are much better suited to negotiating potholed roads!
 
The following quote sums up the whole issue rather well :

Taxation serves only one purpose, regardless of what arguments are used to justify taxation. That purpose is to forcibly transfer wealth from one group of people to another. All kinds of arguments might be offered to defend taxation, but those arguments cannot change the ultimate purpose of taxation. Taxation is a method of coercively sustaining energy flows without providing direct labor.
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Coercing money from someone and not providing a service for the monies coerced, is both fraud and theft.

No service = no pay , simple, not ....pay and get no service. :(

The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: “Your money, or your life.” And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.

The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the roadside, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is nonetheless a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.

The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a “protector,” and that he takes men’s money against their will, merely to enable him to “protect” those infatuated travelers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful “sovereign,” on account of the “protection” he affords you. He does not keep “protecting” you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villanies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.
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http://www.simpleliberty.org/taota/taxation.htm
 
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