Unlike you, I've earned millions of dollars through writing. True, the bulk of that was in modest, regular increments over a 45-year period, mostly salary from this newspaper, where writing is only one of several duties — there is navigating the web of colleagues and superiors, the strategic cordiality, the gossip, the bowing, the scraping, the "yes sir, that is a brilliant idea," side as well.
Occasionally — very occasionally, of late — freelance checks show up: article payments, book royalties or advances, and I will announce the sum in my best imitation of a stentorian Bill Kurtis proclamation: "Bumpty-bump thousand dollars!" And my wife, God bless her, dutiful sworn officer of the court that she is, will observe, as if on cue: "Of course, you have to pay taxes on that."
Silly me, I take her at her word. When April 15 comes around, we do indeed pay whatever portion — and it can be between a quarter and a third — that our accountant says is due the federal government.
So it was with gratitude that I recently read in the Sun-Times Sunday how Mayor Brandon Johnson's new communications director, Rachel Cohen, deliberately withheld federal income taxes on her freelance work as a protest against ICE. Can we all do that? Because I too have freelance, and I too have serious disagreements with a considerable part of the federal government — the entire executive branch leaps to mind.
If we can simply withhold our taxes, then not only will I have registered a protest, but saved myself some significant scratch as well, manna I will need on the long slog through retirement, set to begin ... well ... maybe sooner than I care to if I keep turning in stuff like this.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for social action. Protests such as last year's at Broadview were not just heroic, but essential. Like colonial minutemen pouring out of their farms and shops to face the British, patriotic Americans poured into the streets to show that we do not want federal thugs grabbing our neighbors out of their cars for the crime of having immigrated to this country, plunging them into some nightmare gulag system, the true horror of which is not yet fully known. We haven't yet saved the United States from despotism, but if it is indeed saved, they deserve ample credit.
But I'm also a chronic law abider. I can't rip the tag off a new mattress. My fingers tingle seeing how glibly some break the law and get away with it.
Yes, there is a tradition of tax evasion related to the mayor's office. Mayor Harold Washington, you might recall, did not file his federal taxes for four years in the 1960s — not even as a protest, but due to being disorganized, he later said. The IRS went after him, and though it was determined that he had actually paid the baseline amounts, and only owed $508, that was enough for him to plead no contest and be sentenced to 40 days in the Cook County Jail in 1972, serving 36.
He "forgot," Washington told the Sun-Times editorial board during his 1983 run, adding "maybe a psychiatrist could explain it." He still won.
"I'm not proud of this," Washington added, as opposed to Cohen, who seems very proud.
To continue reading, click here.
I am wondering why you think it's a better idea to make subscribers to Every Goddamn Day click TWICE to get to your posts instead of the previous single click. Not a big deal, but definitely not an improvement.
ReplyDeleteYou mean, instead of just putting the blog post on the email? That would work. I'll give it a try tomorrow. Thanks for the suggestion. As I said, I'm still trying to work this out.
DeleteGood job in overcoming the technological difficulties in posting your wonderful blog. Congrats.
ReplyDeleteAs I have mentioned many times in the comment section previously not paying your taxes is real action.
ReplyDeleteAlso it is not against the law to not pay your taxes it is against the law to not file your taxes or to evade taxes that you owe by not claiming all of your income or some such thing but if you file your taxes like you're supposed to and then don't pay the money all they can do is send you notices about the tax due the penalties and interest will accrue and eventually they will put a levy or lean on your bank accounts your income your property. Cuz they're going to get their money but you will not go to jail you'll be making a statement
But no you're going to make fun of this person for being actually brave
Because clearly money is more important to you than your principles which you espouse ad nauseam but won't actually do any concrete action to help change things not that her was holding her taxes is going to change anything but it is concrete action and she seems to have made it public
You ought to just shut up about politics cuz your hypocrite
When I was in HS, my dad told me about a crude sports rival ritual that his classmates ended. His lesson boiled down to this: If you're going to stand up, don't wear a mask when you piss on people.
DeleteYou call Ms. Cohen brave for openly publicly announcing her pov.. Yet, you?
Anonymous. You can and people have gone to prison for not paying taxes. Usually not the big dogs for all the usual reasons, but the common mutts and an occassional show dog, yes.
Deletehttps://www.lawyer-monthly.com/2026/03/not-paying-taxes-jail-us/
They changed the tags on furniture years ago. Now they read something like: "Not to be removed except by the customer that buys it."
ReplyDeleteAnd dimbulb Rachel just might find herself staring at a couple of FBI agents with arrest warrants & handcuffs for her if she continues not to pay her taxes.
Would tunnel under a mountain of rocks to get to read egdd. Whatever it takes.
ReplyDeleteI am torn.
ReplyDeleteTaxes should be paid. Taxes should be fair. Taxes should be just.
I applaud Ms. Cohen. I could never do that, as I am sure I would be made an example of and spend the remainder of my life behind bars.
But why do we focus on Ms. Cohen so much when Elon Musk, Donald Trump and his children, Jeff Bezos, Ken Griffin, the Uihleins, Peter Theil, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Mark Zukerburg, and the rest of the billionaire class pay a fraction of what the rest of us do?
Paying aside, why hasn't there been an uproar from the right about how our tax dollars are spent? Congress is supposed to allocate funds, and yet no republican cares about guilded statues, paved over gardens, painted and repainted pools, personalized jets... the list goes on and on.
Republicans are frauds, liars, fascists, anti democracy, and as anti American as can be. I dislike Mayor Johnson and think we need a better mayor. But I'd take 100 mayor johnsons over any republican.
And it's about time we start saying so when critiquing the left.
I'm so tired of over analysing every detail of a democrat proposal or idea and then sane washing the right. Elon Musk did a seig heil, and we're concentrating more on Rachel Cohen withholding her taxes. The "drug boat" murders by the American military barely make it to the paper, but we won't talk about Andy Kim's Medikids.
Republicans are the problem. The media's treatment of republicans only makes the problem worse.
Vote in every election. Vote for democrats. anything else is dereliction of duty.
To answer your question, because Ms. Cohen is the matter at hand. I rarely point out that Musk is a dangerous fascist and nutcase hater who bought the United States government for $285 million because, well, it's kinda obvious, right? Pointing out the readily apparent is my occasional skill set, but only among matters too inconsequential to notice. Elon Musk's seig heil is both old news and not exactly relevant to the next Chicago mayoral election. You have been reading regularly, have you not, Double B? Kinda preaching to the choir here, are we not?
DeleteVery good points, Neil.
DeleteThough I do believe that the next mayor of Chicago should be willing -- at a bare minimum -- to call these things out.
I worry that we forget too easily.
After all, if the collective we had better memories, donnie do little wouldn't have won a second time.
Perhaps we don't talk enough about how republicans are complicate in this authoritarian slide. If you use a tesla product, you should be shamed. if you don't pay your fair share, you should be shamed.
right?
Of course, the only way that you know about Musk's seig heil or the drug boat murders in the first place is because they ARE covered.
DeleteThat's my take. Whenever someone complains about the media ignoring something, I reply, "Then how do you know about it?"
DeleteSorry, but people don't get to express their policy choices through their tax payments. That's what voting is for. Doing what Ms. Cohen is doing is a recipe for a prison term.
ReplyDeleteNot paying her mere pittance in protest of ICE is asinine. Her absent dollars are inconsiquential. And she hasn't even sacrificed anything. She won't lose her job. She'll never have her "moment" in a jail cell. She doesn't have to abstain from tea as she dumps it into the harbor. Maybe she'll be fined, some day. Maybe. She's a phony.
ReplyDeleteWith respect to the ad that appeared 11 times in the SunTimes rendition of today’s column, it is too fat. Is the ST. Now running scammy ads?
ReplyDeleteNot my table.
Delete