An article by Alba Muñoz that appeared in PlayGround a few days back examines the Troika Fiscal Disobedience Consultancy project (translation mine):

A Tax Haven For All: The Decisive Rebellion?

Disobedience.eu is born, a consultancy designed to resist the Troika

An old guy on my block used to say: “If you’re going to steal, steal big. Because if you stay small, you’re just a thief, but if you steal big you’ll be a millionaire. All it takes to be rich is to skim a little from everybody.”

“You make a lot of sense!” I thought. But the old guy never stole, at least not on a grand scale, and to me, frankly, the proof is in the pudding. The world is an unfair place, sir, and what are you going to do?

He who has the most pays the least, and this, at least when it comes to taxes, goes without saying: all of the companies in the IBEX 35 — those that are publicly traded and have the most liquidity in Spain — are located in tax havens and pay minuscule amounts to the Treasury in comparison to their earnings. Citizens, small- and medium-sized businesses, aren’t so fortunate with the tax collector.

It’s unfair, but legal. They bask in the sun on a private beach, and to the rest of us they leave only a miserable puddle to splash around in. Is there really nothing that can be done?

Beyond complaining, there’s a new plan — a yet untried option: drag our towels and camping chairs onto the private beach to say, “Hello, buenos días, good morning, guten morgen, we are also in the club.”

Just a week ago, last January 14th , Disobedience.eu , the first tax rebellion consultancy meant for the common people, was launched.

It all began when the artist Núria Güell contacted Enric Duran, the activist known as the “Robin Hood of the banks” for swindling — or expropriating, you might say — some half a million euros from various financial institutions in 2008 , with the motive of finding a way to buck the Troika. From there a small tax advisor emerged, the Troika Fiscal Disobedience Consultancy.

A score of European activists, and Duran from the underground, launched what may come to be the largest hack of the financial system in Europe, at least on the part of the citizenry.

“It starts by resisting the Troika through financial strategies, by playing with the law in the same ways as the neoliberal corporations,” says Güell.

The idea is to imitate Apple, Google, and Banco Santander — not for personal gain, but “to stop paying an illegitimate debt and to start financing the common good.”

“The Troika is dedicated to commandeering and privatizing the commons, it has a colonizing nature: all the countries that are subjected to it, like Spain, Ireland, or Greece, lose their sovereignty. We must create a parallel financial system.”

Fiji, the Cayman Islands, Liechtenstein, your home

If we were to do a math problem, it might go as follows: Say that John has a balance last trimester that comes to 2,000 euros VAT . John sends an email to Disobedience.eu with the amount he wants to resist (2,000 euros) and they will supply him with an invoice for that amount.

John will pay 8% for the service: management fees (1%) and a contribution to a common fund (7%). “The rest (92%), although recorded as paid, will not actually be charged. As far as I know, to forgive a debt is not a crime,” says Güell.

So John has an invoice that states that he has made a tax payment in Spain, although in reality no such thing happened.

“In the EU there is free trade, but in practice there is no common fiscal policy, and the justice system is not coordinated. The countries as a result have trouble obtaining information from one another. The big companies benefit from this, and now the little guy can do so as well. It would be very difficult for the administration of the country where he is consulting to know who has not claimed the income.”

John has evaded taxes, mimicking the techniques of the big multinationals, but for another purpose.

“92% of the money is yours. The idea is that you can dedicate it to projects for the common good, which are increasingly privatized or abandoned by the state.” For example, a support network for refugees or school libraries.

Desobedience.eu was inspired by the Coperativa Integran Catalana and the Right of Rebellion Collective, and will be linked to the international Fair Coöp collective. For this reason, Güell expects there will be a rapid increase of clients, projects, and affinity groups: “The assignment of the funds is up to each client. Nobody will be monitoring or checking on where it is going.”

Isn’t this a do-gooder form of tax evasion? How can you prevent “dishonest” evaders from using this tool?

Activists will sift the clients: “If a capitalist business wants to use this service to evade taxes, it will be turned down. On the other hand, a group of lawyers with a social focus have already been accepted.”

Gandhi versus Starbucks

The tax disobedience initiative has sparked interest, but also an understandable fear of possible legal problems. Güell asserts that the activists involved have everything sorted out: “The only people who run a real risk are those who put in their names to form the company, but they are insolvent and that protects them.”

Throughout history there are numerous examples of economic disobedience. “From the Boston Tea Party in 1773 to the Salt March of Mahatma Gandhi in 1930 .” Though there are also much more recent examples:

In 2015 the residents of Crickhowell, a town in Wales, grew tired of paying much more in taxes than Starbucks and decided to declare themselves a tax-free town and to create a company in the Cayman Islands: “They initiated a collective action of tax resistance, and since then the State has not done anything.”

With the activists of Disobedience.eu there is more resolution to attack the core of the system than fear of the possible repercussions. Furthermore, for Güell, economic disobedience is better politics than voting in democratic elections.

“If we do not have autonomy with respect to the Troika and the markets, there is no way to advance the many initiatives that we put forward. They are the obstacle, because they are above democracy. The dictator is only a dictator if he has subjects; disobedience is the only way remaining to us. Furthermore, disobedience is intrinsic to democracy.”

The real hurdle is to go beyond the environmental activists and the more politicized minorities and to extend the initiative across the whole population.

“Workplace exploitation; inability to make ends meet; a rainbow assortment of pills for depression; daily suicides from eviction, foreclosure, or meaninglessness; and murderous barbed-wire over some fictitious dividing lines. Why dedicate your life to feed this machinery that only benefits a minority?” asks Güell.

“You just need to open your eyes to notice that Europe is at a dead-end, caught between the technocrats of the Troika and the anti-immigration nationalists. The European Union is no more than a financial plan for plundering social wealth and impoverishing the workers, a set of legalized financial crimes that act to transfer the income of citizens to the banks and large corporations.” And as such, the response should be collective and in the financial sphere.

As Aristotle told us, politics does not manage the public sphere, rather our everyday actions are what create policy.