I have an idea. I don't know if it's been brought up before, so I'll apologize in advance if so.

'withhold' their taxes to fund the causes near and dear to their pocketbooks

The average working class person has his/her taxes withheld prior to getting paid

Or -- if there are any legal ways for which we can "refuse" to pay our taxes, or have our taxes go to specific causes. Any legal tax experts out there?

I'm going to assume you work for someone and aren't self-employed. That means taxes are WITHELD from your paycheck. The only way to get any of that money back a as refund is to file your tax return. Believe it or not, most people do get a refund. Then there's the punishment if you don't file. Assume you find that you owe $$ instead of getting refund. They WILL find you, sooner or later, and penalties start to accumulate from the day the return was due. The total penalty for failure to file and pay can eventually add up to 47.5% (22.5% late filing, 25% late payment) of the tax owed. Interest, compounded daily, is also charged on any unpaid tax from the due date of the return until the date of payment.

An accountant didn't file his taxes for 4 years and was sentenced to prison.

The Con DID file his taxes, he just made enough money to be able to take advantage of several quite profitable loop holes. We avg. Joes don't have any loop holes that we qualify for, unless you want to consider home mtg. interest and real estate taxes.

We can protest, call your reps & sens, but not paying taxes is not a good idea.

I've heard all kinds of numbers that he may be in as much as 300 million in the negative.

And it's not that I'm in favor of not paying my taxes...What I'm trying to figure out is how we, the people, can use whatever leverage we have (as we do pay taxes) do prevent catastrophic cut-backs. Yes, I'm all for writing letters and signing petitions and all of that, but what else. Is there anything in the tax code that gives us tax payers any kind of leverage?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_resistance