Frustrated MAGA influencers are vowing that they will not pay their taxes until the federal government takes action to address allegations of widespread social services fraud in Minnesota. 

Federal investigators and lawmakers are probing allegations that billions of dollars have been siphoned off in the Midwestern state. However, conservative commentators are fuming that there have not been more arrests or, in their view, stronger actions to curb the fraud. 

A conservative commentator, Savannah Hernandez, wrote on X, “F*ck it, I’m not paying taxes this year.”

“And then when the IRS comes after me, I’ll blow that up into a huge national story about how the government will destroy your life over a couple thousand dollars meanwhile the Pentagon just failed their 8th straight audit in a row, Somalis literally come to the U.S. just to defraud us out of billions and illegals are prioritized for section 8 housing and welfare programs over Americans,” she said. I’m not paying for it anymore.”

One user commented that they would follow her lead, and Ms. Hernandez wrote, “I’m not even joking, I am fully supporting Americans not paying taxes this year or any other year until we see arrests made, funds being utilized properly and fraud being rooted out.”

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene shared Ms. Hernandez’s post and wrote, “This is how angry Americans are and rightfully so, with nearly $40 Trillion in debt and Social Security becoming insolvent in 2033. Now imagine if millions of Americans did this.”

“The revolution to save America is being organized through a 2026 tax revolt,” she added.

Ms. Greene added a list of reasons for conservatives to join the “tax revolt,” including the president’s focus on ending conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Referring to the leaders of Ukraine and Israel, she wrote, “Trump spent the weekend with [Volodymyr] Zelensky and [Benjamin] Netanyahu, Pentagon fails audit again, meanwhile Americans are planning a tax revolt because they don’t know what else to do to get their elected officials to stop their money from being given to thieves, foreigners, and foreign wars.”

A conservative commentator, David Freeman, wrote, “I think paying taxes should be paused until the government can prove to the American people there is no more fraud.”

Another conservative account, Hodgetwins, wrote, “Done paying taxes.”

A conservative commentator, Michael Oxford, wrote, “I’m hearing a lot of people say this, and it warms my cold black heart. Taxation is theft, and it always has been.”

While many MAGA commentators celebrated the “tax revolt,” the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire noted that most Americans have taxes taken out of their paychecks. “There’s nothing left but to file, and if you don’t, you don’t get your refund. So you will,” the party said. 

Some conservative accounts on X are encouraging people to attend “tax strike” rallies at state capitols on January 3. 

Under federal law, it is illegal to willfully fail to pay your taxes or to fail to file a tax return, punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and a year in prison. 

The IRS did not respond to The New York Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication. 

There have been several instances in American history of tax strikes aimed at influencing policy, with the most famous being the Boston Tea Party in 1773, when colonists threw more than 300 chests of tea into Boston Harbor to protest a tax on the product. 

In the 1930s, Americans, who were struggling because of the Great Depression and frustrated with government expenditures and high taxes, chose to register their disapproval by refusing to pay taxes. The Association of Real Estate Taxpayers at Chicago, which had roughly 30,000 members, refused to pay their property taxes.

A historian at Plymouth State University, Linda Upham-Bornstein, argued in her book “Mr. Taxpayer versus Mr. Tax Spender” that tax resistance was influential in state and local governments cutting their spending and taxes in the 1930s.

In the 1960s, anti-war activists encouraged Americans not to pay federal income taxes to protest the Vietnam War. 

The FBI director, Kash Patel, has said his agency is investigating the allegations of widespread fraud in Minnesota. 

The chairman of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, has scheduled a hearing on January 7 to investigate the allegations. Mr. Comer said the committee will hear testimony from state lawmakers who have raised concerns about fraud. 

Mr. Comer said his committee has invited Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, as well as the state’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, to testify at a hearing in February.

Earlier this month, federal prosecutors charged more than 90 individuals — the majority of whom are of Somali descent — with stealing billions of dollars allocated for Medicaid programs in Minnesota.