Tax protesting is nothing new, as seen here: Petition-and-remonstrance. To complain about the whisky excise tax in the early 1790s, an anonymous North Carolina planter wrote hundreds of lines in verse. Here’s a sample transcription from Scottish dialect:
Some chaps whom freedom’s spirit warms
Are threatening to take up arms,
And headstrong in rebellion rise
‘Fore they’ll submit to that excise.
Their liberty they will maintain,
They fought for it, and they’ll fight again
And some prudent folks who see right clear
Think we have something more to fear,
That fair alarms us: this, they say,
Is but the prologue of your play,
Which if you once can put in practice
There’ll be no end of tolls and taxes,
From less to more, ‘til by degrees,
You’ll tax our bread, hearthstones, and cheese.
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That’s from “A petition and remonstrance to the president and Congress of the United States.” I can’t find a more legible copy. Sorry.
The Center for New Revenue 