Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 65, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 April 1908 — BAFFLE THE TAX GATHERERS. [ARTICLE]

BAFFLE THE TAX GATHERERS.

Residents on Irish islands Enjoy Immunity from Taxation. The difficulty of collecting rates in a number of islands lying off the coast of Donegal, Ireland, was discussed at a recent meeting of the Donegal county council. It was stated that rates had not been paid in Tory Island for the last 20 years, and that within the past few years the islanders of Gole, Inisherer, Inishmair, Inishboffin, and others had followed the example of their Tory brethren and developed a conscientious objection to rate collectors. It was impossible to get boatmen to take out collectors to serve demand rates or make collections, and even summons servers, who had summonses for the islanders, were refused a passage. On one occasion the collector engaged a boat and succeeded in reaching the first Island before his mission was discovered. The boatman then refused to take him back to the mainland, and It was only after much promising and pleading that he was allowed to re-en-ter the boat A councilman said that short of catching the islanders when they came to the mainland and stripping their clothes off them, he did not see how they were to be made to pay.