Tax protester history in the United States

A tax protester, in the United States, is a person who denies that he or she owes a tax based on the belief that the Constitution of the United States, statutes, or regulations do not empower the government to impose, assess or collect the tax. The tax protester may have no dispute with how the government spends its revenue. This differentiates a tax protester from a tax resister, who seeks to avoid paying a tax because the tax is being used for purposes with which the resister takes issue.

Origin of American tax protesters

People have protested taxation at various times in the history of the United States, sometimes violently.

In the colonial era, Americans insisted on their rights as Englishmen to have their own legislature raise all taxes. Beginning in 1765 the British Parliament asserted its supreme authority to lay taxes, and a series of American protests began that led directly to the American Revolution. The first wave of protests attacked the Stamp Act 1765, and marked the first time Americans from each of the Thirteen Colonies met together and planned a common front against taxes the colonists considered illegal. At the Boston Tea Party, colonists threw British tea into Boston Harbor because it contained a hidden tax Americans refused to pay. The British responded by trying to crush traditional liberties in Massachusetts, leading to the Revolutionary War in 1775.

In 1794, settlers in western Pennsylvania responded to a federal tax on liquor with the Whiskey Rebellion.