pixelwank

On that day of April 2025, I was notified I would go through a tax audit. How ingenuous was I. Never would I have imagined the scale of the brutality and the perversity of the French tax system. On October 7th, I will attend the last meeting with the tax hierarchy where a shift in the decisions could potentially happen — which is highly unlikely. After that, I will be bankrupted. We will go to court then, but that's 3 years minimum of having to survive. Besides stating like it's normal to take 600% tax income ( not a typo ), it's the destruction of the willpower, the humiliation, the destruction of the sense of self-worth, the theft of the entire working time that should have gone toward making the only thing that my dreams were made of : making art. This is how my country treats the builders, the innovators, the free spirits who chose not to depend on their nanny state of a system and pour their energy and their hopes into exploring a brighter future instead. The most interesting feat in this, is that I didn't commit any crime. They admitted that I never cheated, hid income or planned any tax evasion or even, optimization. I did not spend. I did not change my modest way of life. I never chased money. The "pretend internet money" never reached my bank account for me to spend it. They just felt entitled to cash that out, 4 years later, at an arbitrary price set at the peak of the NFT boom, while I was working 120 hours a week and that no response had been given by the tax dpt on how to treat that stuff. Worse : the most official source of fiscal information for artists was displaying a very official-looking way of doing it right, that was actually very wrong, and a trap. Not gonna lie, the rare works that I've been able to produce since the tax audit started, have happened through immense efforts, fighting the fatigue, the worthlessness, the summoning of the greater good, of seeking beauty within the hostility. I have gone through months of anxiety, disbelief, and despair. I have stopped going outside and see the world, or people. I secluded myself with only my helpless questioning for company. As the ultimate deadline approaches, I am now noticing a new feeling growing inside of me. Revolt. I hate politics. Stupid circus masqueraded in moral and illusion of democracy. But if you see me drop tweets outside of my artistic practice, don't bother them, just understand that I will not sleep, or stand the look of myself in a mirror, if I don't speak up. 💚 🤜