Revolutionary tax is a major form of funding for

violent non-state actor In international relations, violent non-state actors (VNSAs), also known as non-state armed actors or non-state armed groups (NSAGs), are individuals or groups that are wholly or partly independent of governments and which threaten or use viole ...

s such as

guerrilla Guerrilla warfare is a form of unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military, such as rebels, Partisan (military), partisans, paramilitary personnel or armed civilians, which may include Children in the military, recruite ...

and

terrorist Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war aga ...

organizations. Those outside the organization may consider it to be a euphemism for "

protection money A protection racket is a type of racket and a scheme of organized crime perpetrated by a potentially hazardous organized crime group that generally guarantees protection outside the sanction of the law to another entity or individual from viol ...

."Detection of Terrorist Financing
, U.S. National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), 2002 Proponents of such groups maintain however that there is no difference between the revolutionary taxes "extorted" by given groups and corporate taxes raised by governments. Revolutionary taxes are typically extorted from businesses, and they also "play a secondary role as one other means of intimidating the target population."

Examples

The Irish

Provisional IRA The Provisional Irish Republican Army (Provisional IRA), officially known as the Irish Republican Army (IRA; ) and informally known as the Provos, was an Irish republican paramilitary force that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland ...

and Corsican

National Liberation Front of Corsica The National Liberation Front of Corsica ( or ; , Abbreviation, abbreviated FLNC) is a name used by various Guerrilla warfare, guerrilla and paramilitary organizations that advocate an Independence, independent or Autonomy, autonomous state on t ...

have extorted revolutionary taxes as well as the following organizations:

Argentina

The Argentinian

neo-Nazi Neo-Nazism comprises the post–World War II militant, social, and political movements that seek to revive and reinstate Nazism, Nazi ideology. Neo-Nazis employ their ideology to promote hatred and Supremacism#Racial, racial supremacy (ofte ...

organisation Movimiento Nacionalista Tacuara (MNT) demanded a "revolutionary tax" from

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

shops in

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...

.{{cite book , last=Perdue , first=J.B. , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TcNy985Q-LQC&pg=PA79 , title=The War of All the People: The Nexus of Latin American Radicalism and Middle Eastern Terrorism , publisher=Potomac Books , year=2012 , isbn=978-1-59797-704-3 , page=79 , access-date=1 May 2018

Colombia

The revolutionary taxes of Colombian guerrilla movements have become more common in the 1980s and 1990s.

Spain

The Basque nationalist organization

ETA Eta ( ; uppercase , lowercase ; ''ē̂ta'' or ''ita'' ) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the close front unrounded vowel, . Originally denoting the voiceless glottal fricative, , in most dialects of Ancient Greek, it ...

depended on revolutionary taxes.Terrorism versus democracy: the liberal state response
Paul Wilkinson, Frank Cass Publishers, 2001, p. 70 Small to medium-sized businesses were extorted between the amounts of 35,000 to 400,000 euros each, which comprised most of ETA's 10 million euro budget in 2001.

Nepal

The Maoist guerillas of

Nepal Nepal, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mainly situated in the Himalayas, but also includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China Ch ...

have also widely extorted revolutionary taxes.

Philippines

In the

Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...

some local and foreign companies pay revolutionary taxes to the

Maoist Maoism, officially Mao Zedong Thought, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed while trying to realize a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic o ...

New People's Army The New People's Army (; abbreviated NPA or BHB) is the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). It acts as the CPP's principal organization, aiming to consolidate political power from what it sees as the present "bourgeo ...

. According to the army, the tax is a major obstacle for the country's development while the

justified it as a tax to be paid upon entering territories controlled by the rebels being a belligerent force.Chapter 6 -- Terrorist Organizations
Country Reports on Terrorism 2007, U.S. Department of State

References

Euphemisms Funding of terrorism Extortion