The Picket Line

The Picket Line — 13 March 2010

2010-03-13T00:00:00Z

13 March 2010

An article by Ann Baker from the 13 March 1972 Eugene Register-Guard gives a peek at how the war tax resistance movement in Eugene, Oregon looked then. The Peace Investors of Eugene group no longer exists, I don’t think, though there is still a thriving war tax resistance group in Eugene.

Anti-war group urges tax resistance

If you happen to walk by the state employment office in Eugene around 10 Wednesday morning, don’t be surprised if someone hands you a tiny sliver of pumpkin pie and says, “We wish this was bigger but the military gets the rest.”
The pie is a symbol for two things — a new Eugene antiwar group called PIE (Peace Investors of Eugene) and an often-used pie-shaped illustration of the federal spending budget.
Members of PIE group think too much of the federal “pie” goes for defense spending. They would like to see people reduce the amount of money available for that purpose by refusing to pay the 10 per cent federal excise tax on their telephone bills and by reducing their federal income tax liability.
The group hopes to collect the money people save through these two methods and donate it to local organizations such as free schools; medical services; legal defense funds; cooperatives; peace, resistance and liberation groups; employment centers for “peace jobs” and child care centers.
When members of the group hand out the pieces of pie in front of the employment office Wednesday, they will also set up large “pie charts” purportedly to show the portion of the federal budget which goes for military spending in relation to the amount allocated for other purposes.
According to Justine Heavilon, one of the organizers of PIE, the group selected the state employment office as the site for its kick-off event because “we wanted to target one of the population groups that needs the kinds of services the federal government should be providing — the unemployed.”
Mrs. Heavilon said the members are primarily people who have refused to pay their federal telephone taxes for a number of years. She estimates the current membership at about 40.
In addition to collecting and allocating money, the group plans to provide tax consultations to tell people how they can legally reduce the amount of federal income tax they have to pay. The group sponsored a clinic for this purpose March 4 and has scheduled another clinic for 2 p.m., March 18 at Harris Hall adjacent to the Lane County Courthouse.
According to Bates, the people who refuse to pay the phone tax attach a note to their phone bills explaining the reason for the refusal.
When a person refuses to pay the phone tax, Mrs. Heavilon said, the phone company turns the unpaid bill over to the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS sends several notices over a period of months, then contacts the person and asks if he would like to pay the tax plus six per cent interest, she said.
“Many people pay at that point,” Mrs. Heavilon said. “If you refuse to pay then, they ask if you have a bank account, if you own a house or car, and if you have a job. The procedure usually used then is to take the amount (of the unpaid tax plus interest) from your bank account.”
Richard Armony, information officer for the Portland IRS district — which includes Eugene — confirmed that this is the procedure used in all tax delinquency cases. Armony said that, in addition to the six per cent interest charged for delinquent payments, there is a “failure-to-pay penalty” charged which is also six per cent of the unpaid tax amount.
Armony also said that he doesn’t know how many people in Oregon have refused to pay the phone tax because tax delinquency cases of all types are lumped into one category.
Members of the PIE group extimate there are about 100 people in the Eugene area who have consistently refused to pay the phone tax.
The PIE group’s headquarters are in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Gray, 1059 Hilyard St., Eugene.

Charles Gray died in 2006. Here’s a news story that covers his life of activism and tax resistance. “Mrs. Charles Gray” — Leslie Brockelbank — died last year. The Eugene Weekly also did a recap of her life.

And yes, Virginia, back in 1952 they really did start newspaper articles with phrases like “An attractive woman newspaper editor” (Rome News-Tribune, 13 March 1952):

Woman Dares Court Fight on Social Security Tax

Summit, Miss., March 13 — (AP), — An attractive woman newspaper editor today refused to pay her social security tax, closed out her bank account and dared Treasury Secretary Snyder to “pop your whip” and jail her.
“To force me to pay this outrageous demand you must either confiscate my business or put me in prison,” Mrs. Mary D. Cain, editor and owner of the weekly Summit Sun, wrote Snyder, “I hope you choose the latter course.”
“This is a test case in the matter of paying this thing,” she said. “Pop your whip, Mr. Snyder. I am ready.”
Last year the government attached the bank accounts of a number of Texas housewives who refused to pay social security on their domestic help.
Mrs. Cain announced today that she had closed her bank account, farmed out the task of printing her paper, and released her husband from any obligation to pay either her own or the newspaper’s debts.
Mrs. Cain’s 1,500 word letter to Snyder sounded a great deal like a playback of the anti-New-Deal-Fair-Deal platform on which she stumped Mississippi last summer as the state’s first woman candidate for governor.
Lately she has been mentioned as a possible candidate for congress or the U.S. senate this year. She has denied both reports.

According to Cain’s obit in the New York Times:

Although she lost a battle that went to the Supreme Court [over her Social Security tax resistance], the Government eventually dropped the case. The Social Security program, she said, was “unconstitutional, immoral and un-American.”
Two revenue agents secured her weekly newspaper office in Summit with a padlocked chain. Mrs. Cain sawed off the lock and chain and mailed them to the Internal Revenue Department with a defiant note.

The story of the lock and chain is also told in Westbrook Pegler’s column for 1 June 1953, which adds these details:

To frustrate the collectors she assigned her weekly paper, Summit Sun to her niece, Mary Lou Butler, 20 years old, but retained the authority of editor and manager, without pay.…
The government set a marshall to padlock the Summit Sun…
Mrs. Cain sawed off the padlock and mailed it to the marshal. She repeated the job for the benefit of newspaper, newsreel and television cameras. She made her crime as flagrant as she could. She gloried and gloated. The violence against the court’s padlock probably also made her guilty of deliberate, defiant contempt of the federal district court, but still the Department of Justice, like the Treasury, looked the other way.…
…She has received more than 7,000 letters and unsolicited donations of $700 for her legal expanese.…

On 13 March 1949, the St. Petersburg Times covered the early days of the modern American war tax resistance in the Peacemakers group:

Group Plans Tax Strike

Pacifists Balk At Helping Pay For U.S. Defense

New York — (AP) — A pacifist Presbyterian minister said yesterday 150 members of a peace-seeking group had decided they would not pay any Federal income taxes to be used for financing “war preparations.”
The Rev. A.J. Muste, national secretary of the Peacemaker said yesterday he himself was one of “about 15” members of the organization in the New York City area who have launched the tax resistance movement.
Muste described the Peacemakers as a “non-violent revolutionary pacifist group engaged in a campaign similar to that of the late Mahatma Gandhi in India.” The organization has about 2,000 members, he said.
The 150 persons throughout the country who have joined in the tax resistance movement, Muste said, have either decided “to withhold all their taxes or just that part of them which proportionately would go to war preparations.”
Muste predicted general resistance to war preparedness in the form of refusals to register for draft and the tax resistance movement would increase.
He said the Peacemakers organization is “completely non-political, opposed to totalitarianism in any form, including communism.”
Muste also is national chairman of the Fellowship of Reconciliation which he described as a religious organization numbering some 15,000 and dedicated to peace.
Meanwhile, in Yellow Springs, O., a 75-year-old Quaker widow deducted 32.2 per cent from the first installment of her income tax because she said “war and preparation for war in the atomic era is a crime against humanity.”
Mrs. Caroline Urie failed last year in a similar protest. She deducted 34.6 per cent of her estimated tax for the year, but, after taxes in her bracket were reduced, she had still paid more than was called for and at the year’s end the government owed her money.
She said yesterday she had made sure the same things wouldn’t happen this year. She said she would withhold the full amount of military taxes by paying only the first installment of the tax now and giving herself until Jan. 15, 1950, to pay the final quarter.

The Picket Line — 12 March 2010

2010-03-12T00:00:00Z

12 March 2010

From the 12 March 1948 Canadian Jewish Chronicle (excerpt):

Jerusalem Jewish Council says Jews will not Pay Taxes Unless Money will be Used For Jewish Projects

Jerusalem, (JTA). — The Jewish community council here declared this week that Jews would not pay taxes to the municipal government until they were satisfied that the money would be used for Jewish projects while Daniel Auster, former Jewish mayor of the city, said that the Jews would take care of their section of separate municipal councils were formed and each body was permitted to spend its funds on improvements for its own people.…

That was shortly before Israeli independence, but tax resistance in British-occupied Palestine went on for decades before then. Here’s an example from the 20 May 1939 Montreal Gazette:

Jews in Palestine Decree Tax Strike

Decision Is Taken in Protest Against New U.K. White Paper

By Joseph M. Levy.

(Wireless to The New York TImes and The Gazette.)

Jerusalem, May 19.— Lieut. Gen. Robert H. Haining, commander of the British forces in Palestine, invited the heads of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, the National Council of Palestine Jewry and the Jewish Communal Council to his headquarters here this morning and warned them that he intended to enforce order and would make no exceptions. General Haining added that, while he appreciated the three years of restraint on the part of Jews, he would suppress violence unflinchingly.
The first move in the Jewish non-co-operation movement against the Government in protest at the new British policy was a decision of the Landlords Association, composed of rural and urban property owners, to refuse to pay taxes, beginning today, until the White Paper had been repealed.
Despite all stringent measures taken to prevent illegal immigration into Palestine, 300 Jews succeded in landing clandestinely near Ashkalon, Southern Palestine, but were apprehended by British troops and taken to Tel Aviv for detention.
In contrast with yesterday’s turbulence in this Holy City, there was quiet today, although considerable tension still exists. As a result of the violence yesterday, when a mob of Jews attempted to raid the district commissioner’s office, smashed windows of an English shop and a German restaurant and engaged in fighting in which a British constable was killed and more than 100 Jews were wounded, the military today took far greater precautions to prevent further bloodshed.
All Government offices were heavily guarded, various parts of the city were barricaded, and soldiers manned machine guns for action. Only incident today was when several Jewish youths penetrated a branch post office in the Jewish quarter of Mahne Yehuda here and broke window panes and furniture.
Three British police sergeants and two constables, who yesterday annoyed the Tel Aviv public, it is charged, by wearing helmets marked with swastikas and by shouting “Heil Hitler,” were relieved of duty today pending disciplinary proceedings.

The “White Paper” policy, which, among other things, prevented Jewish evacuation into Palestine during the Holocaust, was not repealed until Israel won its independence in 1948.

Tax resistance was practiced both by Jews and by others in Palestine against the British occupation. In at least one case, in 1930, there was a sympathy tax strike in England itself:

…a London Jew declined to pay his income tax as a form of protest.

In 1939, Josiah Wedgewood counseled Jews to maintain a civil disobedience campaign in order to win Palestine: “Jews must find it respectable to go to prison; men and women must be prepared to die; to refuse to pay the property tax, see their goods sold; to occupy land and resist eviction…”

A 1946 report says that some Jews in Palestine were looking for inspiration to Gandhi’s campaign against British rule:

In the all-Jewish coastal city of Tel Aviv a high Jewish source who declined to be quoted by name said meetings were called throughout Palestine Sunday to consider a “passive resistance movement” similar to those undertaken by nationalists in India.
A decision would be taken “as to the best method by which Palestine’s Jewish community can demonstrate to the British they will have to arrest tens of thousands of us if the government thinks we are accepting quietly everything it wants to put on us,” he said.
Passive resistance would include nonpayment of taxes, a strike by Jews in government service and “in all ways complete non-cooperation with the British,” this source said.

From the 21 November 1946 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Palestine Tax Office Bombed

Building Leveled By Terrific Blast

Jerusalem, Nov. 20 — (AP) — The Palestine Income Tax Building was leveled this afternoon by a terrific explosion from a bomb-laden cart which Palestine police said was placed by Jews.
One person, a Jewish constable, was killed. Five persons — a British Army captain and lance corporal, a British police sergeant and an Arab policeman — were injured. Windows were shattered within a radius of three blocks.
All employes had been evacuated from the building following a telephone warning 10 minutes before the blast.
Police said three Jews, one dressed as an Arab, pushed a bomb-laden, Arab-type delivery cart into the building and fled, after clubbing a Jewish policeman and snatching a rifle from an Arab guard.
Police tried to drag the cart from the building, but the rope parted. They said they then detonated the bomb with rifle fire, but “miscalculated the charge.”

Only the best and brightest in the Palestine police force, I see. Another tax office was bombed in Mount Carmel in 1947.

Another 1947 dispatch includes this report:

Tel Aviv police reported… that a young Jew and Jewish girl claiming to represent the Stern Gang, a small Jewish underground unit, had delivered an ultimatum personally to 18 Jewish officials of the Palestine Income Tax Department to resign within 96 hours or face drastic consequences. Special guards were assigned immediately to the 18 officials.
The attempt to bring about the large-scale resignations was viewed by authorities as another step in the Stern Gang’s announced policy of sponsoring non-payment of taxes by Palestine’s Jews.

Another report on the same incident clarifies that the two Jews, “described as Yemenites, visited the homes of the tax officials Thursday night to deliver the warnings.”

Another 1947 dispatch:

Jews Ask Boycott Against British

Underground Group Protests Refugee Order

Jerusalem, Aug. 25 — (AP) — Irgun Zvai Leumi, militant Jewish underground group, exhorted Jews throughout the world today to “hit Britain economically without mercy” in protest against the trans-shipment of 4,400 Jewish refugees to Germany.
In a broadcast denouncing British treatment of the refugees, who were intercepted in mid-July while trying to enter Palestine illegally aboard the Exodus of 1947, a former Chesapeake Bay steamer, Irgun declared:
“You can stop the cruel British machine forever. Do not pay your tax money, do not obey their orders. Do not obey their laws. Boycott, boycott, boycott until the end.
“Jews of the whole world can bring great harm to our enemy. Britain is in economic trouble. They can be hit economically without mercy.”
The Irgun broadcaster also urged Jews to ignore appeals for a hunger strike today to protest treatment accorded the refugees.
“This is no time for fasting,” the broadcast said. “It is now time for war.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same. From the 15 August 1989 New York Times:

West Bank Firebomb Hurts 4 Tax Collectors

Jerusalem, Aug. 14 — Four Israeli tax collectors were wounded today when a gasoline bomb smashed through the windshield of their car as they drove through the West Bank city of Ramallah, the army said.
Two firebombs were thrown at the Israelis, who collect taxes from Palestinians for the military government in the occupied territories, as they drove to work early this morning, income tax officials said.
Palestinians have resisted paying taxes to Israel because the taxes are a potent symbol of occupation. The undergound leadership of the Arab uprising has repeatedly called on Palestinians to boycott the Israeli military government by refusing to pay taxes.
The new military commander of the West Bank, Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Mordechai, ordered a curfew placed on the street where the attack occurred and the nearby Kadura refugee camp. Soldiers later arrested 40 people, the army said.
In the Gaza Strip, Palestinians are required to prove they have paid their taxes before they can obtain a new military pass to go to Israel. The army has said Friday is the deadline after which only pass holders will be allowed to travel from Gaza to Israel.
The army announced today that Gaza Arabs who still do not have a pass by Friday will be able to apply for one, though Israel had said previously that no new passes would be issued after that day.

And another Times piece from November of the same year:

West Bank Town Elated but Poorer As Israel Ends Six-Week Tax Siege

By Joel Brinkley, Special to The New York Times

Beit Sahur, Israeli-Occupied West Bank, Oct. 31 — Israeli soldiers cleared roadblocks today, ending a six-week state of siege here, and the residents of this Palestinian town cheered.
“We won — we beat them,” said Khalil Hana Rishmawi, even though Israeli officials had seized the machinery in his sewing factory in lieu of the taxes he and most residents in this small, moderately affluent town had refused to pay.
“The campaign failed,” he said. “No one paid the taxes.”
$1.5 Million in Goods Seized
But the Israeli authorities were declaring victory too. Tax collectors have seized cars, refrigerators, clothing, washing machines and other belongings valued at $1.5 million. And this afternoon, Brig. Gen. Sheikhe Erez said, “We decided to end the operation today since we did what we wanted to do.”
In truth, the Beit Sahur tax revolt was fought to a draw, and it came to be a symbol for the Palestinian uprising as a whole. Almost to a person, Beit Sahur’s residents refused to pay their taxes. But many of them had to stand by and watch as their belongings were seized instead.
And when Israel auctions off the goods next week, it will finally collect some of the back taxes that Beit Sahur owes, but at a price. The Beit Sahur seige brought a new array of international criticism. And the town’s tax debtors, most of them middle-aged businessmen who had no involvement in the uprising, are anything but chastened.
Earlier this month Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin vowed, “We will teach them a lesson.” But tonight Tawfik Abu Aita, a 51-year-old clothing manufacturer, said: “They used a cannon against a bird and blew away the whole tree. That’s why they failed.”
And several liberal Israeli legislators said this afternoon that if the army was willing to deal with a nonviolent civil protest so harshly, it would only encourage Palestinians to use violence instead. The army and the residents of Beit Sahur are likely to find themselves in a similar position a year from now, both sides stubbornly refusing to move, but neither side is saying what it will do.
In mid-September, the army singled out Beit Sahur, a largely Christian town of 10,000 near Bethlehem. Military officials found that 320 businessmen had not paid taxes, even though most of them were regular taxpayers before the uprising began 23 months ago.
“I paid the taxes before, but now all of us go by the rules of our leadership,” Mr. Rishmawi said, referring to the underground leaders of the uprising. In leaflets for many months, they have urged Palestinians not to pay taxes. “The taxes should be spent on services, health, roads and other things we need here,” said his son-in-law, Majed Rishmawi. “But do you see any services being offered here? No.”
After sending tax collectors door to door and getting unanimous refusal, the army sealed off Beit Sahur. No visitors or journalists were allowed in, and only people who paid taxes were let out. Still, hardly anyone paid. Then 40 debtors were arrested and 35 were indicted. Some have been given stiff fines or sentenced to time in jail.
Still almost no one paid. So tax collectors escorted by troops showed up with trucks and started confiscating belongings left and right. “They took 1,500 blouses, 700 kilograms of wool and a 1986 Opel Cadet,” Mr. Abu Aita said. They didn’t get the 1989 Audi 80 parked in front of his house. “I had that registered under a different name,” he said. And when the soldiers tried to seize the knitting machines in his factory, “they found it very difficult to dismantle them and put them in the car,” he added with a chuckle. The soldiers gave up and left the machines behind.
Mr. Rishmawi said each man was given a Hebrew-language inventory of items seized — “9 umbrellas, 20 small cartons of socks, 4 baby suits” — and told that the goods would be sold at auction if the back taxes were not paid.
Auctions a Few Days Away
Now that the tax siege is over and the auctions are only five days away, Mr. Rishmawi and Mr. Abu Aita, like most everyone in town, say they will stand by and watch as their belongings are sold. They still have no intention of paying their taxes, even though without the sewing machines Mr. Rishmawi’s factory has had to close down.
“We will just have to help each other now,” he said. “This is not tax collection. It’s Mafia work. And I think the Israeli learned. We will not pay.”
But in a statement released today, the army said, “Some of the taxpayers paid their debts willingly.” And as a result of the Beit Sahur siege, the army added, dozens of reluctant taxpayers in other parts of the West Bank came forward to pay their taxes, too.
The military government “places great importance on this,” the statement said, “because the taxes collected finance government services for Arab inhabitants in the territories, such as health, education and welfare.”
But Mr. Abu Aita said that what “they’ve really done with this kind of collective punishment of an entire city is draw people into the intifada who have never been in it before.”

The Picket Line — 11 March 2010

2010-03-11T00:00:00Z

11 March 2010

Last Spring I shared some charts that showed how IRS enforcement activity was changing over time and also some charts showing how “delinquent” taxpayer activity was changing over time.

The new IRS Data Book is out, so I can update the numbers. The number of levies and seizures are down from their peaks, but the use of liens continue to rise:

On the “delinquent” side, the number of people who didn’t pay their taxes when they were due and the number of people who didn’t file on time (or at all) are both off from their peaks, but the IRS continued to to be overwhelmed by the backlog of delinquent cases and so the total unresolved delinquent accounts continued to rise:

The Picket Line — 10 March 2010

2010-03-10T00:00:00Z

10 March 2010

That emerging left/right/libertarian anti-militarist coalition now has a homepage. There’s not much there yet (some more write-ups of the inaugural meeting from some of the participants), but there’s an RSS feed if you want to be notified when things get moving.

Paul Buhle, whose anti-militarist activism goes back to his time with Students for a Democratic Society in the Vietnam years, writes of the group’s first meeting: “There never was such a boundary-crossing event before, at least not in my 50 year political lifetime or any historical incident that I can recall.”

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

Mencius Moldbug, who has established himself as the voice of the contemporary anti-Whig movement, turned me on to Vaclav Havel’s essay on The Power of the Powerless. It eloquently describes one of the forms that coerced consent took in communist Eastern Europe. “Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get along well with those who work with them. For this reason, however, they must live within a lie. They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.”
National Treasury Employees Union president Colleen Kelley says that the Joe Stack kamakaze attack seems to have proven an inspiration: “There were calls where taxpayers said they were thinking of ‘taking flying lessons’ in the context of an audit or a collection. There are 70 that have been reported. I have to tell you that the first time I heard the one about ‘taking flying lessons,’ I cannot imagine in any scenario, following the Austin attack, where that's an appropriate comment to make.”
The IRS is so fearful of taxpayer retaliation that it has started to develop a sort of paranoid autoimmune disorder, in which it shuts down and heads for the bunkers at the sign of anything in the least bit unusual — this time, “a suspicious package found near the IRS building — the contents of which were soon found to be harmless.”
Here’s another example of inmates raking in bogus tax refunds while still behind bars. Prisoner Shawn Clark was caught on tape discussing his scheme: “I’m through with the street crime. I’m strictly white collar from now on. I love the IRS.” The scheme netted over $100,000 before they got caught.

Thanks to Queer Equality Revolution for plugging The Picket Line.

The Picket Line — 7 March 2010

2010-03-07T00:00:00Z

7 March 2010

I’ve got an article in this month’s Simple Living News on your favorite topic and mine.

The article aims to pitch tax resistance through the low-income, simple-living lifestyle to people who already see the merits of that lifestyle and who might want another arrow in their salespitch quiver when trying to talk it up to others, or who might think “well, I’m almost a tax resister already, might as well go the extra yard and pick up that merit badge too.”

I deliberately tried to cast a wide net, including lots of information on war tax resistance (since there’s lots more information to be had there), but also trying to be welcoming to potential resisters of other stripes. The impression I have is that the Simple Living News has a pretty ideologically diverse readership.

The March 2010 issue of Rojo y Negro, a Spanish anarcho-syndicalist monthly, has a couple of articles about war tax resistance. (Translations mine, and I’m not very good at it.)

We Continue Our Disobedience to Military Spending

At least 875 people have resisted taxes in 2009, redirecting up to €80,600, which has been allocated to alternative projects

One year more we publicly present the data that we have compiled on objectors to military spending in different regions of the Spanish state in the 2009 tax season. Although we are aware that there are several more, there are 875 people who have reported their objection in this campaign by directly informing Antimilitarist Alternative/Conscientious Objectors Movement or other groups that promote war tax resistance and are responsible for collecting these data. In particular we are aware that at least €80,600 has been deducted from Spanish military spending and has been redirected to other citizens’ organizations that certainly will apply it to a superior end.

We Are at War

We are at war. Although the bombs do not drop on our territory, or spray us with shrapnel, the Spanish state participates in military conflicts all over the world (Afghanistan, Lebanon, Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, the Congo…), subsidizes the war industry with sweet public contracts and does business in the arms trade. Armies in the world are sustained by three fundamental pillars: human resources (reserve and active military, professional or conscript), ideological justification (these days they legitimize their existence with the excuse of global security; rich countries, that is), and, of course, the important economic pillar. All three are necessary for the functioning of the military machinery of modern armies, with their hypocritical humanitarian façade that has the function of defending the interests of the most rich and powerful to sustain a situation of injustice that condemns three-quarters of the world population to poverty.

Military Spending: Data That Is Obscured

All of this is done, whether we like it or not, with our money. The Spanish army is a real consumer of economic resources. The state has budgeted for 2010 military spending that amounts to a whopping €18,161 million. Rather than covering the real social necessities (sustinance, shelter, education, health…), an average of €394 per person will be spent every day in preparation for war.
It is not an accident that the money budgeted for the Defense Ministry will not be more than 42% of actual military spending. In order to get the complete figure, one must add the money corresponding to military R&D (nice self-contradiction!) since most of the military industry is financed with this money, those parts of the Foreign Affairs Ministry budget destined for spending on NATO and the EU, military pensions, and more spending besides, with which they hide the final scandalous figure. The fact that the state will not be transparent in its public accounting is an indication that they have something harmful to hide. And our objective is to undo this harm.

War Tax Resistance

War Tax Resistance, as we know, is a a form of civil disobedience that consists of refusing to pay the taxes for military spending, and aims to stop it. Anyone can be a tax resister by nothing more than deducting, on one’s tax return, a quantity of money for military spending (a symbolic amount, or a percentage that corresponds), which is then destined to some project of solidarity that actually contributes to constructing a more just world. In this way we demonstrate that the redirection of money to non-military purposes can be effective. Together with the tax return, is included a declaration of the redirected money and a letter explaining to the Treasury the reasons for our disobedience: we commit tax resistance because we refuse to collaborate in the sustaining of the military machine and because we want to make a public denunciation of this injustice.
War Tax Resistance is now in its third decade in the Spanish state. It has involved many thousands of people over the years and has also managed to redirect substantial amounts of military spending that have enabled the realization of numerous social projects of solidarity both in the Spanish state and in various countries. In recent years it has supported antimilitarism, nonviolence, feminism, and different struggles and basic skills in places like Colombia, Zimbabwe, Chile, Russia/Chechnia, Palestine/Israel, Iraq… or the Spanish state itself.

Appeal to Common Sense: Invitation to Disobedience

Antimilitarist Alternative/Conscientious Objectors Movement wants to make an appeal for sanity and common sense in order to fight against the army and military insanity. In a world where capitalist imperalism has gone so far that the destruction of the planet is, in this day, a work in progress, and where the domination of the powerful over the impoverished majority forms part of the “inevitable” scenario, disobedience is necessary. It is necessary that we say no, it is necessary that, like years ago in the disobedience campaign, we set forth and refuse to collaborate with the army. Not a single woman, not a single man, not a single euro for war!

Two tax resisters stand up to the Treasury

Valencians Hugo Alcalde and Jorge Güemes have been practicing war tax resistance for several years. For example, Hugo deducted from his tax returns between 2003 and 2008 about €1,500 which he donated to various pacifist, nonviolent resistance, and social media organizations in protest against war and militarism, as he stated in an explanatory letter along with his returns which included an accounting. In each of these tax returns he deducted a percentage equal to that which in the Federal General Budget represents spending on military and armaments, and he recorded this on the form itself, creating his own handwritten line-item deduction “For War Tax Resistance.”
A few months ago the Treasury demanded the amounts deducted along with penalties and interest. Both Hugo and Jorge maintain the legitimacy of their action, and each one, on his own, decided to resist the administrative decision, appealing it. With this they are not seeking for preferential tax treatment for themselves, of course, nor the recognition of an individual right not to pay the part of the taxes related to the military establishment, but rather the active demand of a collective right to live in a world at peace, which involves the progressive dismantling of the machinery of war. So far, with the support and advice of Antimilitarist Alternative/Conscientious Objectors Movement, Hugo Alcalde and Jorge Güemes have appealed their tax claims before the Regional Administrative Economic Court and plan to gather public support and to appeal to the Superior Court of Justice in Valencia, Hugo in the coming months, and Jorge in the coming weeks. Hugo and Jorge are only two of nearly a thousand people each year who redirect a percentage of their income taxes as an active, conscientious, open, and committed signal for demanding the progressive elimination of the military budget and the abolition of the military.
All this forms an even more outrageous picture today, seeing all the generous aid to banks, carmakers, and the housing industry, and in the midst of significant cuts in social rights in connection with a crisis of capitalism that fiercely struck the most vulnerable sectors. In view of this, it appears necessary to update the classic antimilitarist pacifist proposal: We end war (and the economic crisis) by dismantling the army. Let the army pay for the crisis.

The Picket Line — 6 March 2010

2010-03-06T00:00:00Z

6 March 2010

David R. Henderson gives a more complete summary, with a more complete guest list, of the recent gathering of people from across the political spectrum who want to create a broad antiwar movement that I mentioned last month.

It sounds like it was a fascinating meeting of the minds and that it went well. Henderson says, “I emerged with more hope for the antiwar movement than I’ve had in a while.”

Henderson has been working hard to establish and maintain a left/right/libertarian anti-war coalition in Monterey, California. It requires some delicate stitch-work, but is showing promise. I included some observations by Henderson about individual responsibility for state actions in a Picket Line entry back in 2006, and also in We Won’t Pay.

In other news…

The U.S. Treasury Department is required to publish a list of people who have renounced their United States citizenship. “[D]uring the quarter ending December 31, 2009[, a] total of 502 individuals expatriated. This is the highest quarterly number of individuals expatriating for many years. In fact, during that one quarter, there were more expatriations [than] in the combined previous seven quarters.” International Tax Blog speculates that this is because of a recent change in the law concerning tax treatment of expatriates. Until recently, even if you renounced your citizenship and moved to another country, the U.S. still wanted you to file tax returns for 10 more years, and would tax you on all of your income if you spent more than 30 days a year in-country. Now “moderately wealthy individuals can expatriate without any U.S. taxation… the 10 year tax filings are no longer necessary, making the expatriation a clean break from the U.S.”
Karl, at Embracing Mystery, reports on the “Possibility Alliance” community in Northern Missouri, founded by Ethan & Sarah Hughes:

Inspired by Gandhi’s whole-system approach to nonviolence, they are guided by five principles: simplicity, service, activism, inner work, and celebration.
In terms of simplicity: they grow their own food (including everything from peaches and nuts to goat cheese) in permaculture food forests and they can food for the winter; they travel by foot, horse, bicycle, or public transportation (Ethan has been in a car less than 10 times in the last 10 years); they live electricity-free and computer-free, eating dinner by candle-light every night; they make their own music with guitars, a piano, and their own voices; and they tell stories by the wood stove at night. Some of their many forms of service and activism include: they live by the “gift economy,” sharing free food, free lodging, free permaculture courses and more; they helped start a bicycle cooperative in a local town; they advise people on natural building techniques; they are war-tax resisters; and one month a year Ethan leads a group of costumed “superheroes” on bicycle-powered spontaneous service adventures in various parts of the world. For inner work they regularly share readings from various spiritual traditions, study Nonviolent Communication, and support one another to live with open hearts and minds.

The Picket Line — 4 March 2010

2010-03-04T00:00:00Z

4 March 2010

From the 4 March 1978 Spokane Daily Chronicle:

Tax Protest Techniques Told

Military expenditures take up 53 percent of the national budget, “a disproportionate amount,” but there are ways to protest it, Irwin Hogenauer, a war tax resistance counselor, said here today.
“Resistance can take two directions: Personal, by not paying taxes to carry out your convictions, disengaging yourself from the production of war material; and public, making it a political effort to raise the social consciousness of others,” Hogenauer said in an interview.
Some methods of tax resistance are legal and others are not, he added. One that is legal is to file a return with a letter of protest, saying the money is being paid under duress, he said.
“Let your employer and your friends know how you feel,” Hogenauer said. “But the government still gets the money. That’s one of the difficulties.”
Hogenauer, 66, has been a volunteer war tax resistance counselor in Seattle for 30 years. Before he retired four years ago he said he showed his resistance to use of tax money for war materials by refusing to file a yearly tax return.
He was never prosecuted, Hogenauer said, although from time to time an Internal Revenue Service employee would appear at his door.
“But that’s not unusual,” he said. “Thousands of people across the nation don’t file a tax return and there are no efforts at prosecution of most of them. It is selective and hit-and-miss.”
Hogenauer is in Spokane today to lead a “Personal Responses to War Taxes Workshop” sponsored by the Spokane Fellowship of Reconciliation.
He said he was one of about a half dozen conscientious objectors during World War II who formed a tax refusal committee.
He said there is no way of knowing how many people refuse to pay income tax, but said the number is increasing.
Hogenauer cautioned that there is always the potential for prosecution and incarceration of war tax resisters. The IRS can get the tax payments and penalties from bank accounts, wages and seizure of property.
“But even for refusal to pay the telephone tax, the amount is so small, say $12 a year, that it would cost the government a minimum of $50 or more to begin to collect it.”
He said he advocates total disarmament of the United States, and unilateral disarmament of the rest of the world [sic].
Asked if he would approve of disarmament if the United States were the only country to go through with it, Hogenauer said:
“That’s fine. It’s about time some country take the lead. The strongest need to do it because the weakest won’t.”

Hogenauer was among that group of World War II conscientious objectors who qualified for civilian work camps but then soured on the idea and decided that they could not accept being conscripted even into civilian work tangentially-related to the war effort. He went AWOL from his civilian work camp and ended up doing 10 months of a two year sentence in prison.

Here’s a second article on Hogenauer’s resistance, from 1983:

No tax woes — he just doesn’t file

Seattle (AP) — Irwin Hogenauer doesn’t fret or fume as tax deadline nears. The 70-year-old Quaker and war protester just keeps doing what he’s done since 1948 — refuse to pay.
To protest spending taxes on the military, Hogenauer hasn’t filed a tax return for 35 years.
“I’ve lived a life of principle and I’ll continue to stand by it,” he says.
Occasionally, the Internal Revenue Service checks up on him.
“Once they came to my door and asked me to sit down with them and fill out a form,” he says. “I tol them I wasn’t interested.”
Another time, he had a chat with an IRS official in Tacoma, who said “he would be sure my papers would come across his desk and I’d be hearing from him. I never heard a single thing from him,” says Hogenauer.
He is one of a small but committed group of people who resist paying income tax because of moral objection to war.
Few, however, are so extreme. Most file proper 1040 forms and, like Roman Catholic Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle, withhold a port of their tax equivalent to the budget’s percentage of military spending. Others wind up paying when the IRS closes in.
But Hogenauer feels that even filing a return cooperates “with the sytem of war.”
Why hasn’t the IRS grabbed him?
One reason is that his income usually hasn’t been taxable. Hogenauer, who is retired, has held a variety of jobs, including milk truck driver, bowling alley attendant, school janitor, children’s program director, carpenter, and YMCA executive secretary.
“People who are conscientious objectors often mold their lifestyles so they don’t have any taxes to pay,” said Helen Provost-Kees, IRS spokeswoman.

The Picket Line — 3 March 2010

2010-03-03T00:00:00Z

3 March 2010

There’s a movement afoot — pushed by groups like “Move Your Money” — that’s encouraging people to take their money out of the big banks that have been plundering the Treasury and put it instead into other institutions like local credit unions.

Another good reason to move your money into credit unions is that, unlike banks, credit unions do not generate taxable profits, and have been tax-exempt since the credit union structure was codified by the 1934 Federal Credit Union Act.

Last month’s kamakaze attack on the IRS building in Austin was a good excuse for reporters to go back through the archives and write up something about the recent history of attacks and threats against the IRS and its employees.

One of the better of the bunch was Andrea Ball’s, for the Austin American Statesman. Excerpts:

Threats, contempt come with job for IRS workers

Some Americans heckle or mail tea bags; others, such as Stack, act in more dangerous ways.

Michelle Lowry knows first-hand how much people hate the Internal Revenue Service.
The 37-year-old Leander woman, who processes forms for the IRS in Austin, confronts that venom regularly. People slip razor blades and pushpins into the same envelopes as their W-2 forms. They send nasty notes with their crumpled documents. Last year during the height of the Tea Party movement, hundreds of taxpayers included — what else? — tea bags with their returns.
And then there’s the weird stuff.
“Sometimes you’ll see stuff that looks like blood on them,” said Lowry, who has worked as a seasonal employee for five years. “We wear gloves.”

Lowry is used to the presence of security guards at the IRS office in which she works. She’s been through evacuations caused by suspicious items in the mail, such as white powder. (It turned out to be packing material.) And while she has always known the risks of her job, she wasn’t concerned about her safety until now.
“I’m a little worried, honestly,” she said. “Every time I walk into the building, I’m going to think about it.”
Austinite Jesse Pangelinan, 41, never felt threatened during his 13 years at the IRS. He said it wasn’t until after he left the agency in 2000 to become a stand-up comedian that he came face to face with true IRS rage. After he joked about his former job at a comedy club in Ardmore, Okla., one audience member heckled Pangelinan so badly that the heckler had to be removed from the building.
“I was escorted back to my car in case he followed me,” said Pangelinan, who also works at an insurance company in Austin. “The security guard followed me back to my hotel.”

And… right on cue: another “suspicious substance” sent to an IRS building led to an evacuation and the deployment of a hazmat team. The cause of the panic was “an envelope that appeared to have seeds inside” — showing that the level of paranoia has risen to the point where things that are out-of-the-ordinary, even if they appear completely benign, are considered threatening.

The Picket Line — 2 March 2010

2010-03-02T00:00:00Z

2 March 2010

The IRS has released a new Statistics of Income Bulletin with the first numbers on the 2008 tax season.

Last year, I noted that the percentage of people who filed returns that indicated that they paid no federal income tax had dropped slightly, to 32.4%. A revised figure brings that back up to 32.6% which is typical for recent years. But for tax year 2008, the percentage has jumped to 36.3%:

Tax Year	Number of Zero-Tax Filers	Zero-Tax Filers as a Percent of All Filers
2004	42,500,000	32.6%
2005	43,800,000	32.6%
2006	45,700,000	33.0%
2007	46,600,000	32.6%
2008	51,600,000	36.3%

(These numbers only represent tax filers who owed no federal income tax for the years in question; it does not include other taxes. In tax year 2007, some people who ordinarly would not have filed a tax return — for instance because they didn’t have any income to report — filed anyway in order to claim their stimulus payment. Those people aren’t included in the totals above.)

Between 1980 and 2000 this percentage hovered in the 18–25% range. Then it climbed to this 32–33% plateau during the Dubya years. This new 36.3% figure represents a jump, but there is an even bigger jump expected from people filing this year.

From the 3 March 1913 New York Times:

Won’t Pay Tax On Babies.

Socialist Town Council Thwarted by Indignant French Mothers.

By Marconi Transatlantic Wireless Telegraph to The New York Times
Paris, March 2.— The Socialist Municipal Council of Brest has imposed a tax of 6 cents daily on market vendors for the right to wheel handcarts through the streets. The ordinance applies to baby carriages, and mothers and nurses are up in arms at the demand that they pay 6 cents every time they take a baby out for an airing.
The first attempt to collect the tax was made yesterday, and all the women refused to pay.

The Picket Line — 1 March 2010

2010-03-01T00:00:00Z

1 March 2010

The Miami News 1 March 1951

I didn’t find much else about the Riggses in on-line newspaper archives, but one other article, from 15 March 1950, reads:

Tax Collector Wins, But Refusal Registers War Tax Protest

Boston — AP — The tax collectors always catch up with Mrs. Francis R. Riggs — by her own admissions — but she feels she scores a point.
The Cambridge woman was one of nearly a score of persons who participated in a public protest yesterday against use of tax funds for military purposes.
She told reporters that for seven years she had deducted from her federal income tax that proportion she believes is being spent to prepare for war.
This year, she said, she and her husband are withholding 39.3 per cent of their tax.
“They catch up with me in the end and charge me six per cent,” Mrs. Riggs said, “but I am convinced that public protest is morally right and necessary.”
The group, led by the Rev. Wolcott Cutler of St. John’s Protestant Episcopal Church, Charlestown, carried posters reading “I refuse war taxes” and “H-bombs return to burn.”
The posters said members of the group represented the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the War Resisters’ League and the Peacemakers.
The walked for an hour on Tremont Street between Park and Boylston Streets. The protest was timed to interest workers hurrying home at 5 P.M.

The MIT Tech ran this editorial in their 11 April 1950 edition:

The Saga of Valerie: The Tech receives all sorts of mail — bills, checks, Clipsheets from the Board of Temperance. But in garnering material for this article, I was handed a letter with the scribbled commentary, “required reading.” It is from one Valerie Riggs, who says that she has refused to pay income taxes since 1944 and is refusing again this year because, to put it simply, she doesn’t like the way the government is spending it. She says that “…those in our government who are deciding our fate for us … are consulting the cleverest minds in science to concoct the most diabolical schemes for killing innocent men, women, and children…” This is probably accurate enough to make the boys in Ballistics run their fingers around the insides of their collars, but Valerie has found the solution, fellows! Just refuse to pay your taxes, and the world situation is solved! Let’s all Laissez-faire with a big bang!
We appreciate the thought, but someone, whose initials are V.R., is being awfully idealistic. There is even an organization known as the Peacemakers whose members are doing the same as Valerie. So if any of you want to do away with your taxes, we can give you the address of these people and you too can refuse to pay. There’s only one catch — it’s illegal.

And this is from the 14 March 1952 Rome News-Tribune:

Pacifist Couple Refuses To Pay War Tax Funds

Whittier, Calif. March 14 — (AP) — A Quaker pacifist couple have mailed their income tax returns to the Bureau of Internal Revenue, minus 72.6 per cent of the tax due, which they figure is the amount the government would spend on war.
Francis Behn Riggs, 70, retired boys’ school headmaster, and his wife, Valerie, 67, said they expect the bureau to seize the missing funds from their savings accounts. “as it has been doing since 1944.”
But, Mrs. Riggs added, “There is a difference between handing the government our income tax for the military and the government taking it from us.”
Along with the returns, Mrs. Riggs sent a note saying: “My conscience tells me that the killing of human beings is a criminal act, and that paying for that killing is likewise criminal. This conviction is based on religious belief.”