Current systems of taxation are out of contol. We give our governments too much money. We force money down the throats of civil servants and they, poor fellows, have to somehow get rid of it. So they buy aircraft carriers costing $100 bn and presidential airplanes costing $660 m and even go to war.  And yet, somehow, government income is never sufficient so they borrow more. (American tax payers pay $ 2 bn per day interest charges on their government’s debt.) There is no rhyme or reason to the way citizens are taxed and to what governments do with the money, and the results are disastrous. Excessive taxation provokes waste and feeds into the squandering of public funds, it tolerates stupidity in government (such as turning local police into a semi-military force capable of extinguishing public dissent). Excessive taxation is the primary and main cause of inflation, and inflation, in turn, is the main cause for our plummeting birth rate. The idea of establishing community-based associations dedicated to turning their tax situation into something more positive and the establishment of an international office servicing those associations comes out of a background that has seen misguided governments destroy civilizations and thereby stopping the positive evolution of the human race, as nature had intended. A time will come, maybe in five years from the date of this proposal, and we will see community-based, tax-payer associations, acting separately or in groups and with impressive treasuries, calling out individual officials for authorizing action that harms the community. This is the missing link in what healthy tax paying is all about.

By the way, communication by member associations will never be threatening. To remain certified by TPI (Tax Payers International) communicating must be respectful and within the framework of existing laws and customs. Belligerency is off limits. TPI’s point is to build things up and not pull things down. An approach all types of government will appreciate.

Q. So, what is it then? Tax Payers International is an network of local associations with this website acting as the network’s coordinating headquarters. Local associations will have names such as “Tax Payers Association of Boston”   or,  “Tax Payers Association of Galveston” and will be dedicated to the wellbeing of their members with membership reserved for residents of the community. (An age old-option, actually, recalling the 11th century guilds of Europe when governments were just as stinky as they are today.)

Q. What does it look like? If an organization chart were drawn, it would show local associations at the bottom of a wide-based, almost flat, two-level pyramid. On the upper level you would find this website, on the bottom level you would find the local associations. Tie-in with the coordinating website is voluntary, as some associations will choose to operate independently. The image of a two-level pyramid is meant to show a division of labor. The work of establishing an association is entirely up to the local individuals who believe in its potential benefits. The other labor involved, promotion, improvement, coordination and certification in a world-wide organization falls to the operator of this web site.

An Example. A retelling of an incident will help describe what Tax Payers International is all about. …In the city of Flint, Michigan , in the late 1980s, the executives of a certain automobile manufacturing company understood that profits could be majestically improved if they got rid of their Amrican workers and installed Mexican workers. Their dreams were possible if they moved out of Michegan and into Mexico. They saw nothing wrong in laying off thousands of workers and  shutting down dozens of factories & warehouses.  Their thinking was undemocratic, if not fascistic. Still, no authority stepped forward to protect Flint from being sabotaged.

What would have happened if there had been a Tax Payers Association in Flint at that time when democracy had yet to be crippled?  At that point in time the city of Flint had a population of 140,000 and would probably have had a tax payers association membership of 30,000 and a treasury of $200,000. Its president would have written a letter to the auto company’s CEO stating that the Tax Payers Association of Flint would bring charges against him and hold him personally accountable for damages incurred by the city by his authorization to close a major component of the city’s economy. Had this been the scenario, rather than the silence, Flint would still be an economic powerhouse having no problem furnishing drinking water to its citizens and the rest of us would not be paying exorbitant prices for imported, uninteresting, cars. The auto company in question, by the way, went out of business after trying to do business in Mexico. I suppose that was inevitable given the management’s interest in profits rather than automobiles.

Q. What could associations attend to? Well, how about making taxation a constitutional subject with logical guidelines? Or, maybe an association will demand a flat tax with repeal of most of the others. Maybe an association will choose to go after a particular politician holding him responsible for damage done by a project he promoted. Or maybe another association will demand a version of capitalism that respects individual rights. Another might choose to stick to pointing out waste. Or maybe free universities will be another association’s reason for being. Or maybe it is the national health program that has been desired for so long. Maybe an association will dedicate itself to demanding a return of independent journalism. Another association might take on the problem of excessive wealth, or excessive executive salaries. Or, what about honest tax money financing crimes against humanity? Actually, there’s much that needs attention.

How To Start.  You have read the material on this website and agree with it.  You give considerable thought to what you are thinking and decide if you want to do something about it.  But, then, how does one do that in this town of mine? Where do I start? How do I start? 

You phone “appropriate” friends. You tell them about this website, ask them to check it out, and when they have, and feel as positive as you do, to come to lunch to discuss matters further. Your friends do all of that and soon you have a small group, maybe two others, maybe five, who agree with the website as you do and who now wish to establish a tax-payers association in your home town.

You feel your sense of mission developing here and you all decide to invite more people to join in the discussion. The new invitees are persons with a certain standing (political, social, financial or patriotic) within the community.  You ask them to read the website and if they agree with it would they join your luncheon group  which is currently meeting once a week to discuss the possibility of establishing an association in your community. From that point on the next steps that need to be taken in to establish a community tax payers associationl will be obvious. You will require funds, about $30,000.  (This would be repaid, with interest, by a successful association because it would have a treasury capable of doing so.)

Proceeding further and in a positive way your group organizes itself so that there is has leadership, a secretariat and treasurer.  Word is then disseminated within the community that such an organization if being established, that the subject can be learned about by reading the material on the web at https://www.taxpayersinternational.com/  and that one can enroll as a member (costing $12.00 per calendar year).  Appropriate space has to be rented for an office complete with furniture, telephones, computers, lights, and whatever else is required for an organization that will probably have a membership equal to about 30% of the community’s adult, tax-paying population.

Your office should be spacious enough and sufficiently equipped to handle the successful unification of a sizable group of local, tax-paying citizens who insist on having a voice in the civic discussions that affect their lives. That office should have desks, chairs, filing cabinets, computers, appropriate lighting and a space for town-hall-type meetings.  That office and the organization that uses it should be registered and legal. And when all that is done it should, by the tenth of October of every year, register itself with TPI (Tax Payers International) to receive the certification, protection and services available to it.

Why? Why should you, or anyone,  devote time & money to the founding of a taxpayers association?

I think you would do such a thing because you love life and your community. You are also a proud and vain individual appalled by the political corruption, a corruption that blatantly crippled the democracy you so loved.  And you feel sad when you think of the nightmare that your generation is leaving to the young, especially those of your own family.  You also realize that the battle to save democracy has not, as yet, been lost

You can also see clearly that the taxpayers in your community share a common attitude of distain towards the inappropriate spending of public funds and this commonality has great potential in saving democracy.  You realize that had a network of taxpayers associations been established by the late 1980s, the U.S. government would have bailed students in debt instead of corrupt bankers.

Most of all you will involve yourself in establishing a taxpayers association in you home town because you are simply capable of doing so.  You’re retired, you have money in the bank and you realize you have a certain standing in the community. These things beg you to assume leadership.

And finally you believe that what is written in this  website is correct and you can see the relationship between between the growth of political corruption and a network of taxpayer associations.  That hankering to do something seems to have grown into a a yen to do your duty, assume that measure of civic responsibility for which you were meant.  If you did the chances of your never being forgotten would be good.

Rules of Conduct.  Association membership in TPI (Taxpayers International) are expected to conduct themselves in a peaceful and law-abiding way.  This does NOT imply that local associations are expected to suck up to existing power blocks.  What this rule emphasizes is the reality that there are two areas of operations:  the national level and the municipal level.

Local tax payer associations are left out of the circumstances effecting work at the national level.  What goes on at the national level is exclusively the work of those who control the nation.  It is therefore expected that TPI (Tax Payers International) member associations will “know their place” and seek a long-term relationship with  their power blocks.  This should be a relationship  marked by loyalty & respect regardless of the type of government involved.

None of this is meant to curtail the local association’s mission of speaking truth to power.  It means that local associations, individually or collectively, must learn how to communicate successfully with its own power block at the national level.  TPI is designed to be a world-wide holding company for local tax payer associations operating in nations that may be Democratic, Oligarchic, Monarchistic, Theocratic, Communistic, or Technocratic.  Each one of these governments loathe criticism but appreciate sound & friendly advice.  TPI does NOT want association members fighting authority and ending up in the hospital.  The leadership of each local association has to learn how to “go along” with its current power block, celebrating their victories and sympathizing with their losses.  Tax payers associations are meant to build things up, not tear things down.

Q. What are the fees? Membership in local associations certified by TPI costs $1.00 per month payable in one payment for the calendar year. To maintain currency & vitality, memberships expire at the end of every year and must be renewed for the following year. Membership of local associations in TPI requires the reporting of names and telephone numbers of their member and the payment of $1.00 per member reported. Personal information sent to us is used solely for the purpose of registration. It is protected under the European Union’s law on privacy No. 2016/679, does not travel beyond our archives and is erased at the end of every year.

About me. I am the son of Italian immigrants who left Calabria in 1910 to establish themselves in the USA, the land of hope for the impoverished of Europe.  My parents chose to settle in New Britain, Connecticut.

New Britain was an industrial city known internationally as the “Hardware Center of the World.”  It had a population of about 80,00 who easily found employment and decent salaries.  But the place was terminally crippled — along with other small-town american cities — by the Eisenhower Administration’s Interstate Highway Project.  My memory of all that has a lot to do with developing the idea of taxpayers associations.

My father spent his life working in factories, and he was happy with that.  My mother illiterate, could not even write her name, but was the wisest person I ever met.  It was she who imposed the United States on my father with the condition that marriage could only happen in the USA where children were legally required too go to school.  There would be no further illiteracy in her family, and that was that.  They got married on Ellis Island.

I graduated from Boston University in 1951 with a degree in Education.  But I did not go into teaching.  The money offered to new teachers, $11.000.00 per year, was peanuts to one who sold vacuum cleaners door to door.  So I dropped out as a teacher and signed in as a salesman.

At some point, I was hired by the Egry Register Company of Dayton Ohio to sell business forms.  There was a man at Egry, Reg Howe, who went around teaching systems analysis and flow charting.  Most paid little heed, but I took  Reg’s teachings seriously.  I adopted his methods, became proficient at producing understandable flow charts, saw my commissions sky rocket, and ended up by going into business for myself.

I became a free lance consulting systems analyst and, in the following years worked for companies in the USA, Canada, England, Italy, France and Germany.   All this just to say that I know my way in, and out, and around, messes.  My teachings are known to have been successful and my solutions have proven to be sound.  I am a 95 year old man with a lot of experience, who knows his way in, out and around messes.