This comes from the 26 May 1972 Minnesota Daily, and gives some rare insight into the government’s anxiety about war tax resisters at the time, and the difficulty it had in responding to the threat in an effective way:

Tax Refusal Case Could Set Precedent

by Steve Brandt

The case of Carole Nelson, a young Minneapolis woman who refuses to pay her federal income tax to support war, could set an important precedent, Richard Oakes, her attorney, said during an interview Thursday.

“The government is kind of flailing around, looking for ways of prosecuting tax refusals,” Oakes said. “They’re exploring various civil and administrative ways to get at this thing.”

Nelson refused to obey a U.S. District Court order requiring her to give tax information to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) May 12.

She is scheduled for a June 2 court hearing to show cause why she should not be held in contempt of court for refusing to obey the order.

Although Sally Buckley, the first war tax resister to be prosecuted locally, was tried under criminal statutes, Nelson’s case has so far been conducted under civil law.

If Judge Earl Larson finds her in contempt of court, he could order her to go to jail with a six-month maximum term until she is ready to pay.

He could also issue a light sentence, ask her to think her refusal over, and then give her another chance to provide the information or he could give her a straight contempt sentence.

All three actions could be challenged in court, Oakes said.

Although he said issuing a fine is rare in contempt cases, Oakes thinks Larson might impose a fine against Nelson comparable to the taxes he thinks she owes.

Paradoxically, since Nelson has said she has very little in assets, she may own [sic] no tax. The amount she owes cannot be figured until she supplies the IRS with the requested information.

The case is also complicated by the fact that the Washington-based Justice Department lawyer prosecuting the case for the IRS, John Hines, would rather not have to prosecute her.

At a previous hearing, Hines told Nelson, “I want to do this even less than you can imagne. I read Thoreau too.”

“Hines is a decent guy,” Oakes said, noting that Hines could have asked for a contempt citation at that hearing. “He’s got some personal sympathies. I don’t think he’d like to see her got to jail.

“The government is quite upset about this case,” Oakes added. “You can be accused of bank robbery and they won’t fly a guy in from Washington.”

One of Nelson’s friends remarked after the hearing that the cost of flying Hines to Minneapolis probably exceeds whatever tax she may owe.

Oakes said he believes the government’s attention to the case rests on the fact that “taxpaying is basically a voluntary act.

“If everybody quit paying their taxes, the government would go out of business,” he added.

Hines confirmed Thursday that the case costs more to pursue than the government expects to gain in tax from Nelson but added that not to prosecute “would set a precedent that we could not afford.

“We have good precedents on our side,” he said. “It’s an important case to us only in the publicity that would come if we lost it.”

According to Ed Hedemann’s list of court actions taken against war tax resisters, Nelson served 10 days for her refusal to turn over records to the IRS. Here is a follow-up on her sentencing from the Minnesota Daily:

War Tax Resister Sentenced to 10 Day Jail Term for Contempt of Court

War tax resister Carole Nelson was held in contempt of court Friday for refusing to obey a court order directing her to provide the federal government with information about her financial status.

U.S. District Court Judge Earl Larson sentenced Nelson to imprisonment for a maximum of 10 days “or until she purges herself of the contempt,” (by complying with the order). Her attorney, Richard Oakes, called the relatively light sentence “nothing short of fantastic.

“I’m amazed. I consider this a victory,” he said.

Nelson was ordered by Larson May 4 to present herself to the Internal Revenue Service May 12 and fill out a form on her financial status. She did not comply.

Justice Department tax division attorney John Hines had asked Larson for incarceration of Nelson until she complied with the order. The maximum imprisonment for contempt is six months.

Hines said the statute the government was trying to get Nelson to obey was intended to combat organized crime.

“I don’t want her (Nelson) to go to jail. But I’ll do anything to fight organized crime,” Hines, who is involved mainly in organized crime tax cases, said.

In his closing statement Oakes said, “I think the government fears the publicity in this matter more than the consequences. This is not a person who ought to be incarcerated.”

Oakes also argued that the government could get the information it wanted about Nelson from social security and other government records.

In a statement read from the witness stand, Nelson said it was “a perversion of justice to be here to show cause why I should not be charged with contempt of court for refusing to be an accomplice to killing.”

She is basing her refusal to provide the information on her Christian beliefs. She has sworn that she has no assets.

If each person obeyed or disobeyed laws according to his conscience, “it would let every citizen be a law unto himself,” Larson said.

Larson said the contempt citation was the first he has issued in the 11 years on the bench.

Oakes said he expects no further prosecution of Nelson.

If you file a U.S. federal income tax return that is inaccurate or incomplete and you justify this by taking explicit positions that the IRS has ruled to be legally “frivolous,” the agency can hit you with an instant $5,000 frivolous filing penalty.

So, for instance, if you were to take a “black tax credit” or “war tax deduction” on your 1040 form, or if you were to submit a blank form along with a letter claiming that you have a 5th Amendment right not to answer questions about your finances, you might get hit with such a fine.

But several American war tax resisters found that they were getting fined in this way even when they submitted complete and accurate tax returns, just because they accompanied the returns with a letter explaining their reasons for not paying the complete amount shown as due. (Here is some background.) This appeared to be overreaching on the part of the IRS, but it was difficult for war tax resisters to challenge this because the agency demands that you pay the fine before you can appeal it.

So instead of appealing, somebody contacted the Taxpayer Advocate Service about this problem, and one of the program analysts there got on the case. I just learned that the IRS Office of Chief Counsel has issued a memorandum (POSTF‒153168‒12 — “Application of Section 6702 Penalty to Taxpayer Who Files a Return with War Complaint”) that states:

When the taxpayer timely files a correct and complete return, the section 6702 [frivolous filing] penalty should not be assessed based solely on the fact that the taxpayer enclosed a letter with the return explaining why the taxpayer is not paying the self-assessed tax due. If a penalty has been assessed, it should be abated.

And, more explicitly:

If a taxpayer submits a document with a frivolous argument to the IRS, a penalty under section 6702(a) will apply only if the taxpayer files a purported tax return that either does not contain information on which the substantial correctness of the self-assessment may be judged or contains information that on its face indicates that the self-assessment is substantially incorrect. I.R.C. §6702(a)(1). As explained in legislative history, “the penalty could be imposed against any individual filing a ‘return’ showing an incorrect tax due or a reduced tax due, because of the individual’s claim of a clearly unallowable deduction, such as… a ‘war tax’ deduction under which the taxpayer reduces his taxable income or shows a reduced tax due by that individual’s estimate of the amount of his taxes going to the Defense Department budget, etc. In contrast, the penalty will not apply if the taxpayer shows the correct tax due but refuses to pay the tax.” S. Rep. No. 97‒494, 97^th Cong., 2^d Sess. 277–78, reprinted in 1982 U.S. Code Cong. & Ad. News. 781, 1024 (emphasis added).

The section 6702 penalty should not be assessed against a taxpayer who encloses with, or attaches to, an otherwise accurate and complete tax return documents articulating frivolous arguments. Congress did not intend for the section 6702 penalty to apply in this limited circumstance. In such circumstances, the return does not contain information insufficient to determine the substantial correctness of the self-assessment, or indicate that the self-assessment is substantially incorrect. Instead, the attachments state the grounds upon which the taxpayer is refusing to pay the properly reported tax.

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

• The creative activists of the Free Keene movement are at it again. This time they’ve formed a group called “Robin Hood of Keene” that shadows parking enforcement officers on their rounds and quickly fills expired meters before they can reach them to write out tickets.

  Members of the group place cards under windshield wipers that read, “Your meter expired; however, we saved you from the king’s tariffs, Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Please consider paying it forward,” and includes an address where donations can be sent.

  Alleging that the Robin Hooders have “repeatedly and intentionally taunted, interfered with, harassed, and intimidated” the meter officers, the city has filed for a restraining order (the activists insist that this has nothing to do with any intimidation or harassment on their part, but with the city’s loss of revenue from the thousands of parking tickets they have prevented).

  In the filing, parking enforcement officer Linda Desruisseaux said, “Besides following me, crowding around me, making video recordings of my activities, and placing coins in expired meters to prevent me from writing tickets, these individuals repeatedly taunt and harass me, asking why I am stealing peoples’ money and telling me to get another job… In particular, Graham Colson likes to taunt me by saying, ‘Linda, guess what you’re not going to do today — write tickets.’… The taunting and harassment tends to get worse when there is a group, as they try to one-up each other at my expense.”

• The IRS scandal that all the frogs are croaking about is largely a steaming pile of political bullshit… but the winds are blowing the smell directly into the offices of the IRS, which which is making it an unpleasant place to do business:

  A former Internal Revenue Service official who ran the unit now at the center of scandal says the agency is about to be hit by a wave of resignations that he fears will hobble its operations.

  “I think there’s going to be a significant number of departures from the agency,” said Marcus Owens, a Washington attorney who served as director of the exempt-organizations’ office from 1990 to 2000.

  The same post is now occupied by Lois Lerner, who has come under fire for her agency’s treatment of conservative groups. “That’s going to have an impact on tax collections and tax administration,” said Mr. Owens, who said he thinks the controversy has been overblown.

  Mr. Owens, who worked for the IRS for 25 years, said a number of IRS officials have talked to him about their plans to leave. He said the investigations underway have crushed morale, while some IRS officials are starting to get threatening anonymous calls at home.

• Dan Carpenter uses the occasion to note how the IRS treats anti-war tax protesters — along the way mentioning or quoting war tax resisters Julie Garber, Phil & Louise Rieman, Kenneth & Viona Brown, and Lonnie Valentine.
• In the other IRS scandal, the one that to me seems more actually scandalous, the agency has backed down from its repulsive legal opinion that Americans have no legitimate privacy expectations in their email communications, so agency investigators should feel free to rifle through them without bothering to get a warrant. The new policy says the agency won’t aim to read your email at all if it is only pursuing a civil action against you, and will “in all cases” obtain a warrant when trying to get your email from whichever Internet service provider is storing it, when pursuing criminal cases.
• Fran Quigley at Counterpunch takes another look at the Transform Now Plowshares case, and in particular how the government progressively ratcheted up a misdemeanor tresspassing charge against the three pacifists until now they stand convicted of federal terrorism felonies, awaiting sentencing from jail as they’ve been deemed violent criminals too dangerous to release.
• The fabled Greek crackdown on tax evasion seems mostly for show: “of the estimated 13 billion euros that government officials say is owed by Greece’s 1,500 biggest tax debtors, only about 19 million euros [≈0.1%] has been collected in the last two and a half years.”

There really isn’t a whole lot of meat on the bones of the big IRS TEA Party tempest that everyone is up in arms about, as far as I can tell.

But thank goodness nobody cares what I think about it. The Fox News demographic is engaging in their usual well-choreographed outrage (their liberal counterparts, with very few exceptions, are conspicuously talking about something else). That much is predictable. But apparently things got bad enough that Obama had to knit his brow in public and put on his angry face. The Attorney General launched a criminal probe of the IRS personnel responsible, and Obama demanded the resignation of the current acting IRS chief (who wasn’t in charge when the controversial IRS policy was in force, and who apparently is getting canned for mostly symbolic reasons, or perhaps because he wasn’t proactively forthcoming about what he knew about the scandal).

Imagine the overworked, underpaid (or at least salary-frozen) IRS workforce — facing several furlough days this year — now knowing that trying to take creative shortcuts at work might lead to criminal charges if they step on the wrong toes — without a leader at the helm (Obama hasn’t yet nominated a replacement for the old IRS commissioner, who left office seven months ago, and the acting chief just got the scapegoat treatment) — being asked to be the bureaucratic force behind the complex, confusing, and controversial health industry overhaul that’s just beginning to come into force (without being given enough resources to do the job, thanks to a hostile Congress).

Expect more meltdowns and bureaucratic snafus. Each one of which will lead to more outrage directed at the IRS, more Congressional reluctance to give the agency the money it needs, further declines in employee morale at the service, and increasing inefficiency of tax collection.

Here are some examples of how the newspapers of the day covered the Dharasana Salt Raids:

India’s Joan and Her Army Hemmed in by Police Cordon; New Drive Mapped by Hindus

Woman Leader Bides Time When Path Blocked in Salt Raid

Bombay, India, May 15 — (United Press) — Police blocked the raid of Mrs. Sarojini Naidu and her volunteers near the Dharasana salt depot today in one of the quietest and most weird clashes of the independence campaign inaugurated by the Mahatma Gandhi.

Authorities adopted the methods of the Satyagraha, or passive registers, to halt the raid. They formed a cordon around the volunteers headed by Mrs. Naldu and merely prevented them from moving.

When the police halted them. Mrs. Naidu announced that they would not go back to their camp.

“We will not move,” the police superintendent replied.

The volunteers brought Mrs. Naidu a chair and they all sat down to await a move by police, who quietly stood their ground.

The long-awaited raid led by Mrs. Naidu started at 6:30 a.m. when she left the Satyagraha camp at the head of the first group of volunteers, reiterating her intention of seeking “death or victory.” On two previous occasions the raid was stopped by the arrests of Gandhi and his first successor, Abbas Tyabji.

The thinly-clad volunteers trudged along the road to the government salt works in ragged formation, equipped with pliers to cut the barbed wire barricade police had erected. The police force, strengthened by reinforcements from Jalalpur, awaited them.

The volunteer procession was met on the route by the superintendent of police, accompanied by 50 excise policemen and a dozen district policemen armed with sticks. The procession was halted about a half mile from the camp.

Forming a cordon of his men, the police superintendent managed to block the paths of the Satyagrahis and also cut them off from spectators in the rear.

“You cannot proceed,” the superintendent Informed Mrs. Naidu.

“We will not go back,” the poetess and leader replied. “We will stay here.”

“We are going to stay here, too, and offer Satyagraha ourselves as long as you stay,” the superintendent said, ordering his men to stand their ground.

They parleyed for a short time and then Mrs. Naidu ordered a chair brought from a nearby house. She sat down and wrote letters and talked jovially with her friends. Her followers squatted on the ground nearby, many of them engaged in spinning cloth.

Mrs. Naldu, educated in England and the mother of four children, announced before her departure from Bombay for Dharasana, that she was determined to carry out the responsibilities of the leadership she inherited from Gandhi and Tyabji, both of whom now are in prison because they declared India should rule herself.

The Dharasana salt works, state-controlled, have been made the center of the passive resistance campaign, and Mrs. Naidu’s participation in a raid on it marks her entrance into the campaign in an active role.

Indian women have participated in the passive resistance campaign since it was inaugurated at Dandi when Gandhi began making salt illegally, but until yesterday the British government had ignored them. Mrs. Lakshmipathi, a prominent Madras social worker, was arrested yesterday, however, when she went to Vederanyam to lead a salt raid. She was sentenced to one year’s simple imprisonment.

The little woman, who violated the strict rules or Hindu caste to marry Dr. Naidu. declared the Satyagrahis would ask or give no quarter. Her dark eyes glowed as she told of her hopes for India, and she was almost trembling with eagerness when she said neither jail nor death held any terrors for her.

A new plan for deflance of British authority in India, the most deliberate yet made by the Indian national congress and designed as the last stage in the campaign for Indian Independence, has been drawn up by the executive committee of the congress. It was understood on the most reliable authority today.

The executive committee, which has been meeting secretly at Allahabad for the past four days, adopted a resolution urging the peasants of the Bengal and Bihar districts to refuse to pay taxes levied against them for maintenance of village watchmen.

The committee also urged natives of the Gujerat district not to pay the land revenue in protest against the arrest of Mahatma Gandhi, a Gujeratite.

The plan constitutes the most deliberate defiance of Great Britain’s authority yet made by the congress, which previously has contented itself with violations of the government salt monopoly and picketing of liquor and foreign cloth shops.

The plan is fraught with great possibilities, and will affect hundreds of thousands of people if it gains complete response.

The watchmen’s tax was selected because the land revenue in Bengal and Bihar is paid by peasants to landowners and not to the government direct. The watchmen, however, are employed by the government.

No compromise will be made with foreign cloth merchants, another resolution declared, and therefore picketing of cloth shops will be intensified.

Dharasana, India, May 26 (AP) — Indian authorities, including the High Commissioner for the Northern Division of Bombay Presidency, today went to the volunteers’ camps around the Dharasana salt depots to interview the leaders regarding their intentions as to further raids.

“We are all leaders,” replied the volunteers, when the Magistrate asked who directed their activities.

Military officers served notices on the volunteers to quit the camp by [?] P.M. today.

Calcutta, May 26 (AP) — Indian Moslems in a great gathering here protested the policy of the Nationalist Congress group in Calcutta municipality of systematically ignoring Moslem claims. A resolution was passed in favor of a campaign of civil disobedience in the form of refusing to pay municipal taxes, and demanding an amendment to existing municipal law so that at least one-third of the total number of councillors will be Moslems.

Bombay, May 26, (AP) — Undeterred by clashes within British police in which about 200 were injured and as many or more arrested, Indian Nationalists again today raided the Government salt depots at Wadala.

Eighty-three Nationalist volunteers led the assault on the wire enclosure. Thirty returned with two mounds or baskets of salt, while 30 of the remaining 53 were arrested immediately.

The “war council” of the Nationalist Congress convened in a secret meeting here to consider the situation brought about by the week-end raids, in which rioting developed which finally led to the police firing six rounds into the mob. Most of those fired upon were said to be excited textile operatives.

17 Hurt in First Raid

The raids in which 300 were injured began early in the day, with 100 volunteers forming a nucleus of a group which finally circumvented the police and obtained considerable salt from the depot. The police, with their lathis, or bamboo staves, injured seventeen, seven seriously, and arrested more than 100 persons.

Later in the day a mob of thousands, in which the Satyagrahis or volunteers of Mahatma Gandhi, now in prison at Yeroda, Poona, numbered by tens to hundreds of others, stormed the salt works. Eighteen others were hurt, five seriously by the police with staves, and others were arrested.

The brunt of thwarting the raid, which was partially successful, fell principally upon the European police, who were said to have shown great forbearance. The native police, fearing social boycott if they pressed their own kinsmen too hard, in some cases sat idly by and watched proceedings.

Police Stoned

Late in the evening a third raid took place, and about a thousand Nationalist sympathizers, abandoning, it was said, all pretenses at non-violence, stoned guards and police. Five police and three excisemen were injured by the pebbles.

Six police who went to the rescue of some hardly pressed excisemen were themselves surrounded by the mob and obliged to retire. After warning shot into the air six rounds were fired into the crowd. Casualties were not known immediately, although an estimated 50 persons were injured by the police in this in the accompanying action. [sic]

It was reported here from Ahmadabad that 65 Nationalist volunteers leaving on a train for Dharasana, where the Government operated salt pans are located, were arrested at Barejadi, 11 mllea from Ahmadabad.

The Nationalist camp at Untadi, near Dharasana, now is in charge of Miss Maniben Patel, daughter of Villabhai Patel.

Britain Facing Heavy Loss in No-Tax Drive

London, June 2 — (Associated Press) — A dispatch to the Dally Herald today from its Bombay correspondent quoted a “high official” as saying that if by the end of the year the tax-resistance campaign is succeeding, the government will be faced with considerable financial embarrassment. The dispatch added that hope prevailed that civil resistance would have been checked or abandoned by then, “although at the moment all signs point in the contrary direction.”

The correspondent said the growth of the Gandhi movement was shown by the increased number of persons wearing the Gandhi caps. In the cities, he said, a majority of the people wear them; they also are beginning to be worn in villages in Punjab while even in aristocratic Simla one person in six of the population in the bazaars have donned caps, which is the symbol of the nationalist campaign.

Concurrently he said there has been an intensification of the boycott of British goods. He cited an unnamed Punjab merchant who has 100,000 pounds of Lancashire cotton goods on his hands which it is useless to attempt to sell. This merchant is prepared to accept his losses cheerfully as a contribution to the nationalist cause, he added.

The government was represented in the dispatch as determined to put down lawlessness, but the writer implied a doubt whether the civil forces would be able to prevail against disruption without the aid of the military.

Indian Women Renew Picketing in Challenge to Government as Real Test of Home Rule Move

500 Begin Drive Against Foreign Cloth and Liquor Shops — Boycott Expected to Replace Raiding of Salt Depots

Bombay, India, June 2 — (United Press) — Wholesale defiance of the government’s ordinance against picketing shops selling foreign goods or liquors was inaugurated today by the India independence volunteers.

More than 500 women volunteers renewed picketing of foriegn-cloth shops in Bombay and the local congress leaders were organizing more volunteers for the work, which was expected to replace the practice of raiding salt depots.

The picketing campaign was a direct challenge to the recent ordinance of the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, and was expected by many observers to decide definitely the strength of the home rule movement. The independence leaders also have planned to defy the Viceroy’s order to halt propagandizing against payment of land taxes.

Bombay, June 2 — (Associated Press) — Official India today could cease to worry about Indian nationalists’ raids on the government salt pans, but faced a problem of greater importance — non-payment of taxes, which is being instigated as the next step in the nationalist campaign of civil disobedience.

A “flnal” salt raid was undertaken Sunday at Wadala by 15,000 nationalist volunteers and spectators who for a week had prepared for the occasion. One hundred fifty of their number were injured by the police with their bamboo clubs, but the remainder broke through the cordon and obtained handsful of salt.

Holding the salt aloft, and with their bodies covered with slime and mud up to their waistlines, the volunteers paraded the streets of Bombay crying aloud their usual: “We have broken the salt laws.” The spirit of the crowd seemed subdued, however, in comparison with recent raids, a development which authorities attributed to troops which were at hand for use in case of need.

The nationalists had widely advertised the raid, and raids on a smaller scale at Dharasana as “final,” a decision taken because of the approach of the summer monsoons, when the salt areas cannot be approached.

The anti-tax campaign which it was said would replace the campaign against the salt laws already has been initiated in the Bardoli district where officials are arriving to post signs warning the peasants that their lands will be forfeit if they refuse to pay the dues. Thus far they have found the villages deserted.

The government Friday announced a new ordinance aimed at the notax campaign. This provides for heavy prison and monetary penalties against instigators of this form of civil disobedience.

The salt tax, which is the center of the nationalist attack, is less than a farthing a pound, and is not new to India. It is an ancient method of raising money which the East India Company inherited from the Mogul empire. Collected at first only in Bengal, it was subsequently extended to other districts.

The native peasants are great consumers of salt, much of which is required to counteract the insipidity of their vegetable diet.

In some districts the manufacture has diminished owing to the importation of foreign salt, but the industry is still widespread and very important. It is carried on partly by private firms and partly by government agents, but duty has to be paid on it, and to carry on the manufacture without license is illegal, hence the significance of the Gandhi procedure.

Gandhi Aids Open Anti-Tax Campaign

New Action Comes as Rainy Season Halts Salt Raids — 15,000 Take Part in “Final”

150 Injured by Police

Bombay, June 2 (AP) — A drizzling rain fell over Bombay Presidency today from cloudy, forbidding skies, marking the first of the rainy season which comes every summer with arrival of the monsoon.

This year the rain will mark the end of an important phase of the Indian Nationalist civil disobedience campaign. The showers of today will be torrents tomorrow and the salt deposit areas, such as at Wadala and Dharasana, will become morasses of mud and slime, inaccessible to the raiders who during the past two months have harassed British police guarding them.

The final raid of the year at Wadala was undertaken by 15,000 Nationalist volunteers and spectators. Presence of troops was believed to have restrained the crowd somewhat, although about 150 persons were injured when the police charged with their lathis, or bamboo clubs.

There will be some further raiding at Dharasana, but even this will cease within a few days. There was no raiding anywhere today inasmuch as Monday is the day observed by Mahatma Gandhi, imprisoned leader of the swarajist movement, as a day of silence.

Tax Resistance Stressed

With abandonment of the campaign against the salt law, the Nationalist volunteers are stressing the nonpayment of taxes, a campaign of possibly much more serious import for the British authorities than that just concluded.

The antitax campaign which it was said would replace the campaign against the salt laws has already been initiated in the Bardoli district, where officials are arriving to post signs warning the peasants that their lands will be forfeited if they refuse to pay the taxes. They thus far have found the villages deserted.

The Government announced a new ordinance aimed at the no-tax campaign providing heavy prison and monetary penalties against instigators of this form of civil disobedience

Campaign Seen as Serious

London, June 2 (AP) — A Bombay dispatch to the Daily Herald today from its own correspondend there quoted a “high official” as saying that if by the end of the year the tax-resistance campaign still is succeeding the Government will be faced with considerable financial embarrassment. The dispatch added that hope prevailed that [illegible] resistance would have been checked or abandoned by then, “although at the moment all signs point in the contrary direction.”

Tax Refusal Seen Gaining in India

Peasants Reported Leaving Farms as Part of Civil Disobedience Campaign

Await Gandhi Orders

Bombay, Oct. 30 (AP) — Nonpayment of taxes, one of the planks of the civil disobedience campaign platform, appears to be gaining ground in some sections of India.

All-India National Congress reports say that 50,000 peasants of the Bardoli region have left their homes, resolved not to pay land taxes until swaraj, or home rule, is established. Many left their household goods, chattels and crops behind, the Government confiscating and auctioning them off.

The peasants are said to have for their slogan, “No swaraj, no revenue.” The leaders of the movement declare the peasants do not desire to evade payment, but simply will not pay until Mahatma Gandhi is released from jail and has ordered them to pay.

The Congress characterizes the the peasants’ actions as “an unrivaled example of a migration movement on the part of people who are resolved to forfeit their all in the interest of the Gandhi cause.”

The Bardoli district has an area of about 233 square miles and contains 123 villages with a total population of 88,000, of whome 82,000 are rural. The annual land revenue exceeds $183,000.

The Government claims that [illegible] villages have paid all their arrears and that throughout the district only twenty-five peasants have [illegible] payment altogether, dwellers of the villages merely having gone elsewhere to await developments.

So you may have heard that the IRS has been caught targeting overreaching audits at TEA Party groups.

I’ll admit that when I first heard these groups complaining that they were being targeted for their politics, I thought they were probably just being paranoid and histrionic. Turns out they were right.

There’s somewhat less to the story than the headlines might lead you to believe. There isn’t much solid evidence that anyone in the White House, or in the IRS, was on a “let’s nail the TEA Party” kick, exactly.

The IRS did target groups for their politics, but they did so in the course of trying to find groups who were illegally politicking while organized as 501(c)(4) organizations. In other words, they were looking for political groups because they had a reason to be looking for political groups.

501(c)(4) is a variety of tax-exempt non-profit organization. You cannot be a 501(c)(4) if your purpose is to do electioneering and other such political advocacy. But you can if your main purpose is to promote “social welfare,” even if this occasionally includes political work. Naturally, this fuzziness has led to a bunch of political groups trying to redefine themselves as social welfare groups so they can qualify for the exemption. So the IRS has wanted to give extra scrutiny to applications from groups that are attempting to organize under this section to make sure they’re not campaign funds in disguise.

But the IRS, as I’ve been gleefully noting hereabouts, has been struggling with a shrinking budget and workforce in recent years. During the run-up to the last election, the agency got a bunch of applications for new 501(c)(4) groups, more than it could handle, and so it tried to come up with a way of scrutinizing those that seemed more likely than not to be improperly political groups.

One way they selected groups to scrutinize more closely — and the IRS claims that this decision was made by a rank-and-file employee of the agency — was to see if they had words like “patriot” or “TEA Party” in their names. This had the effect of skewing IRS harassment toward right-wing critics of the status quo.

501(c)(4) groups also have the advantage (particularly when they are being used as cover for electioneering) that they do not have to report who donates money to them, the way political campaigns do. But during the IRS inquiries into these right-wing protest groups, the agency asked the groups to provide a list of their donors, which it was not authorized to do. I haven’t yet seen a good explanation for how that turn of events came about (a TIGTA report on the scandal will be released soon, and may have some details).

When these groups initially raised the alarm and said they suspected they were being targeted, asked inappropriately delving questions, and having their applications delayed for partisan reasons, the IRS flatly denied it was doing anything of the sort. The recent revelations are an embarrassing walk-back for the agency.

I’m back from Asheville, North Carolina, where NWTRCC was holding its Spring 2013 national gathering: A pretty town, though it was a stormy weekend so we didn’t get out much.

David Swanson spoke on Friday evening, and later wrote up his impressions of the gathering. Cindy Sheehan was also there, and addressed the gathering on Saturday evening in her usual tell-it-like-she-sees-it way. Here are some video excerpts from their talks.

I gave a couple of presentations:

Highlights from the 14^th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns

These are some notes on what I learned in Bogotá last February, along with a closer look at the marketing analysis conducted by Conscience UK.

How to identify and reach out to diverse varieties of war tax resisters

There are several distinct varieties of war tax resister, each with subtly different motives for their resistance and a somewhat different idea of what war tax resistance is meant to accomplish. Because of this, when we counsel or try to recruit new resisters, it is important that we take the time to learn what sort of resisters they are.

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

• The Household Tax resistance movement in Ireland has adopted a new tactic. Two Cork city council members, among others, were arrested for demonstrating inside a Bank of Ireland branch. The bank was targeted in part to protest that the government has been using tax money to bail out banks while raising taxes and imposing austerity budgets on citizens.
• Enric Durán had another plan to strike back at the banks: he visited 39 banks, and took out 68 loans for a total of €492,000, which he donated “to various social movements that are building alternatives to capitalism.” Then he went underground and left the banks holding the (empty) bag. Waging Nonviolence recently interviewed Enric Durán in hiding, and published an article about his actions. Apparently he’s at the core of the group that is promoting “Desobediència Integral” (Comprehensive Disobedience) that I mentioned last month.
• The Washington Post published a nice long-form piece about the Transform Now Plowshares activists who boldly broke into and vandalized the Y-12 (Oak Ridge) nuclear weapons facility last summer.
• Bill Buppert, at Zero Gov, has written a nice profile of incorrigible moonshiner Popcorn Sutton.

Tomorrow I’m heading out to North Carolina for the Spring 2013 National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee national gathering in Asheville. If you’re in the area, stop by and say “hi.”

Elsewise… for what I think is the first time, the gathering is going to be broadcast over them thar interwebs. You can eavesdrop starting Friday afternoon at http://new.livestream.com/accounts/3800127/nwtrcc.

From the 2 May 1975 Daily Illini:

Anarchist encourages social non-violence

by Gary Puckett
staff writer

A commitment to non-violence embodies much more than simply resisting the draft or refusing to pay taxes to a government engaged in war, according to Karl Meyer, pacifist and anarchist.

To be truly non-violent people must relate the concepts of non-exploitation of others to all phases of their lives, Meyer said to a group of about 30 persons at the Lutheran Student Center Wednesday night.

Meyer has been involved with anti-war groups since 1959 and served nine months in the Cook County Jail for refusing to pay federal income taxes.

“Non-violence begins with overcoming our fears of economic deprivations, death, and loss of social status,” Meyer said. “It also consists of overcoming our hatreds of those who have the wealth, the weapons, and the power. The reaction to those who harm us is usually one of violence. Non-violence goes beyond this and disarms the fear of others towards us.”

Meyer disputed the truth of People’s Republic of China Party Chairman Mao Tse-Tung’s axiom that power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

“It isn’t the gun that makes us strong,” Meyer said, “it’s the bond between people. The reason the Vietnamese people were able to defeat the United States was because they had a much greater spiritual power.

“The gun was unnecessary for them. Unfortunately, they saw the gun as a symbol to overcome people’s fears. If there had been some way to change their strength to peaceful power, the opposition would have collapsed just the same,” he said.

Meyer also questioned the power the Internal Revenue Service exercises over citizens. He called on the members of the audience to follow his example and not give money to a government that used 60 per cent of its taxes for defense.

“I haven’t paid any federal income tax since 1960,” said Meyer. “I don’t pay now and I don’t think I ever will.”

Meyer does believe people have an obligation to contribute to society and said he does give his share, although not to the government.

“I believe in paying my social dues,” Meyer explained. “I tax myself one-third of my annual income and give it to the Catholic Worker newsletter and the United Farm Workers.”

Although in the past the government has pressured Meyer to pay his taxes, his income now falls below the non-taxable poverty line of $2,050 a year. Meyer works for an Illinois state agency which helps train mentally retarded and physically-handicapped adults.

“I prefer this,” Meyer said, claiming to be wearing second-hand clothing. “When I enter into an exchange with other people, I know I will at least be entering into an equitable exchange.

“I want to live my life without stepping on other people. Unfortunately, most peoples’ lives are lived at the expense of others. They believe we must kill in order to survive,” he said.

Meyer explained that at the heart of non-violence is a spirit of tolerance and conciliation” [sic]

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

• The “necessity defense”: yes, your honor, I broke the law, but I had to do it to prevent a greater harm — American activists have tried to use it to defend their civil disobedience against the militarist government and its stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, but rarely do the courts even permit such an argument to be made (activists in other countries have had more success). But in the trial of the Transform Now Plowshares activists in federal court last week, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark testified for the defense on the subject.
  • The activists — Greg Boertje-Obed, Megan Rice and Michael Walli — broke into the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant last year, held a Christian ceremony with a bible and candles, splashed some human blood about, and spraypainted messages like “woe to the empire of blood” and “the fruit of justice is peace” on the walls. The empire, not amused, and embarassed that an 82-year-old nun made a fool of its nuclear weapons security, has thrown the book at them.
  • Ramsey Clark is an interesting case. You can’t get much more establishment than being the United States Attorney General (under Lyndon Johnson). At that time, he was prosecuting anti-war activists (his office successfully prosecuted Dr. Benjamin Spock for conspiracy to aid and abet draft resistance, for instance). But since then he has become an enthusiastic critic of the American empire — even to the extent of defending, legally and otherwise, such unsavory American enemies as Slobodan Milošević, Lyndon Larouche, Omar Abdel-Rahman, and Saddam Hussein.
  • Clark testified that the use of nuclear weapons represents an imminent — “omnipresent” was his word — threat. The judge was skeptical:

    “Excuse me,” the Judge said. “Are you saying the President intends to use nuclear weapons? Are you in a position to know that? Are you tied in with the President? … does the President have his finger on the button?”

    “Well,” said Clark, “he walks around with it by his side.”

    Then there was this examination of Clark by the defense attorney:

    Quigley: Is it reasonable to believe that what is being refurbished at Y12 are weapons of mass destruction?

    Clark: It’s an established fact.

    Quigley: And reasonable to believe they violate international law?

    Clark: Reasonable. Under the NPT we agreed to eliminate them.

    Quigley: And I believe I just heard today or yesterday that the Boston bomber was indicted for use of a weapon of mass destruction — that is part of our criminal code…

    The Judge stepped in. “A weapon in the hands of a terrorist or a citizen is different than a weapon in the hands of the government. A machine gun, or a tank—is that a fair statement?”

    Clark: It’s fair if you limit it to machine guns or rifles, but weapons of mass destruction — the U.S. is in violation of the intent of the most important treaty we ever signed.

    Quigley: Do you believe the continuing threat of the use of Y12 weapons constitutes a war crime?

    Clark: It is a reasonable and fair statement of belief.

    Quigley: And a soldier can commit war crimes?

    Clark: Yes.

    Quigley: And using, or preparing to use weapons of mass destruction is a war crime.

    Clark: That is reasonable to believe.

    Quigley: The defendants believe the work at Y12 is preparation for genocide, could be carried out by civilians or armed services. But they believe the weapons activities at Y12 are in preparation for genocide and a violation of international law.

    Clark: That is reasonable. Because of the magnitude of the program at this time. One sub, one sub can carry one hundred warheads. Eight submarines, on alert at all times, eight hundred warheads in a position to strike. Think of maps. Eight hundred places in Europe… or on the continent of the Americas. It is criminally insane.

    Quigley: Not homicidal, but omnicidal.

    Clark: The life of the planet is at risk from this one plant here in Tennessee.

    The prosecutor tried to pin Clark down: “A minute ago, you testified that the activities at the Y12 site were unlawful. Are the people who work there criminals?”

    Clark: They are engaged in a criminal enterprise.

    It was interesting to hear of arguments like these being explicitly aired in court. I don’t really expect the judge to address them forthrightly and at their worth, but there is some satisfaction in imagining His Honor trying to figure out just how he’ll sidestep the issue.
• On Monday I mentioned the chill I felt when I noticed that two Google execs’ new book on the future of the internet had gotten glowing prepublication reviews from folks like Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, and a handful of other national security state celebs. Here is an op-ed the book’s authors wrote for the Wall Street Journal. It largely strikes a nonconfrontational freedom-is-good tyranny-is-bad tone, though I thought I saw a little saliva appear at the corners of the authors’ mouths when they wrote this:

  The world’s autocrats will have to spend a great deal of money to build systems capable of monitoring and containing dissident energy. They will need cell towers and servers, large data centers, specialized software, legions of trained personnel and reliable supplies of basic resources like electricity and Internet connectivity. Once such an infrastructure is in place, repressive regimes then will need supercomputers to manage the glut of information.

  The authors look at movements like the Arab Spring, and conclude that they petered out because their grassroots, leaderless, decentralized beginnings never matured: “some sort of centralized authority must emerge if a democratic movement is to have any direction.” Indeed, these grassroots, leaderless, decentralized movements constitute a threat: a “mad consensus” that will require “a great leader” to defy, according to Henry Kissinger, whom they approvingly quote.
  
  Over at Slate, Mya Frazier suggests that Google has aspirations of statehood. The internet is just such a grassroots, leaderless, decentralized dystopia… a mad consensus in need of a great leader… and Google knows just the company for the job.
• At The New Yorker, James Surowiecki offers a meditation on the American underground economy. “Ordinary Americans have gone underground, and, as the recovery continues to limp along, they seem to be doing it more and more.”
• I’m not sure it makes much sense to spend time worrying about Obama’s proposed budget. It’s part wish-list, part advertisement, but not policy. But one of the things it includes is a 94% bump in the federal excise tax on cigarettes. Every pack of cigarettes purchased would have a $1.95 federal excise tax attached to it. While on the one hand, this would be one more reason to quit smoking and to discourage others from taking up the habit, on the other hand it would make tax resistance via smuggling that much more attractive. State cigarette excise tax increases in New York, for example, have grown to the extent that the majority of cigarettes smoked there are smuggled in. As marijuana legalization spreads, expect the smuggling networks that have so successfully supported the marijuana trade over the years to find a new use in combatting the cigarette tax.

The judge in the Transform Now Plowshares case decided not to allow the defendants to use the necessity defense, the Nuremberg principles, or anything of that sort.

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

• Some more tax day news is trickling in:
  • Here’s a nice interview with war tax resister David Waters on Birmingham, Alabama’s local CBS news station.
  • And take a gander at this photo of Juanita Nelson holding her “Haven’t Paid Taxes Since 1948” sign on tax day outside the downtown post office in Brattleboro, Vermont.
• Here’s a bit more about the tax resistance campaign that activists for Catalan independence are engaged in:

  

  • “Spain is robbing us,” a number of impatient Catalan municipalities are saying, and in response several have begun depositing their taxes with the regional Catalan tax agency rather than forwarding them to the federal government as the law demands. The tax resistance campaign is being organized by Catalunya Diu Prou (“Catalonia Says ‘Enough’”), which says that some freelancers and independent businesses, which are responsible for their own tax withholding, will follow suit.
  • About twenty resisters gathered in the Plaza de Catalunya in Barcelona to launch a symbolic tax resistance action in which they will withhold a token amount (such as €50) from their tax payments in protest against government corruption. They plan to pay this money into an escrow account and not turn it over to the government until their demands are met, which demands include legal changes that they hope would bring transparency to the actions of the government and of politicians.
• The IRS is reacting to budget cuts by sending its employees home without pay for at least five days this year. This is bound to reduce the effectiveness of the already struggling agency, and to make it difficult to retain and to recruit talented personnel.

  In addition to the furloughs, the IRS has frozen hiring, cut spending on travel, training and supplies, and directed managers to scrutinize contract and grant funding.

  Before sequestration became a reality, the IRS had already been dealing with tighter budgets, a shrinking workforce, and an increasing workload.

  [National Treasury Employees Union president Colleen M.] Kelley noted that because of those prior budget cuts, the IRS operated “this filing season with 5,000 fewer employees than just two years ago.”

• The “Google” brand has earned a lot of warm fuzzy associations in my heart, with all of the generous contributions the company has made to the project of expanding the availability of knowledge and information. But those who find its size, ubiquitousness, and growing intrusiveness somewhat ominous have a point, and that point got a lot more pointed to me recently when someone pointed me to a page touting a new book, due to be released tomorrow I think, by Google executive chairman (and former CEO Eric Schmidt and Google Ideas director Jared Cohen (“a former adviser to secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton”).
  
  The description of the book’s content isn’t what caught my attention (it was pretty vague anyway). What grabbed me was the list of people who have provided blurbs, which includes:
  • Tony Blair
  • Bill Clinton
  • Henry Kissinger
  • Michael Hayden (former CIA director)
  • Madeleine Albright (former U.S. Secretary of State)
  • Robert Zoellick (former World Bank president and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State)
  • Michael Bloomberg (notoriously nanny-stateish New York City mayor)
  • Brent Scowcroft (former U.S. National Security Advisor and Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board chairman)
  This, apparently, is the audience Schmidt & Cohen feel like enthusing when they are talking about “the new digital age” to come, and that gives me a bit of a chill.

“Fr33 Aid” is a group of volunteers who organize free first aid and health services and who educate people about first aid skills (like CPR) and about the value of voluntary mutual aid at libertarian/anarchist-leaning events.

According to a press release on their site, dated tax day, 2013, they have given up on their frustrating quest to gain government-certified non-profit status. Instead they are going to try to withdraw from the state-monitored banking system and the use of state-controlled currency and instead do as much of their operations as possible with the newly-developed currency known as “bitcoin.”

“When we founded Fr33 Aid in early 2011, the banks all required a taxpayer ID number and government paperwork,” said Teresa Warmke, Fr33 Aid’s co-founder and treasurer. “Bitcoin changed everything. We can focus on our mission now that Fr33 Aid’s assets are safe in our Bitcoin wallet.”

In a follow-up Q&A, Warmke explained: “Now that there are ways for us to do banking without government involvement, we decided fulfilling [IRS requirements] would not be a responsible way for Fr33 Aid to spend its money nor for our volunteers to spend their time.”

The organization will continue to accept donations denominated in dollars from people who have not adopted bitcoins, but will convert such donations to bitcoins “in a timely manner.” This way, Warmke says, “If at some point either the bank or a government tries to confiscate our account for taxes they believe we owe or failure to file paperwork, they would only be able to find a few dollars for their trouble.”

Bitcoins are very interesting. They are a form of currency that is backed by the full faith & credit of its community of users and the sophisticated and clever algorithm they agree to use and that gives the currency value as a medium of exchange. It is composed of numbers, minted by mathematics, often never takes material form, is recognized by no government, and backed by no material goods… and yet it seems strikingly more secure and useful and dependable than the currencies we have grown used to (for which, on close inspection, many of these same frightening conclusions hold true).

I’ve been hearing about them for months, but only recently have I investigated them in earnest. I don’t feel economically or mathematically sophisticated enough to give them a full-throated endorsement, but I’ve learned enough to know that most of my initial skepticism about bitcoin was superficial and invalid. This may very well be the real thing: a currency that is not controlled by a central authority, but by the community of people who use it; and one that is relatively easy for people to safeguard from government attempts at confiscation or restriction of trade across national boundaries.

(This would be an example of the tax resistance tactic of abandoning government currency or of switching to alternative currencies, which I covered on earlier Picket Line posts, and is related to the tactics hide taxable or seizable assets, join cooperative business arrangements, manufacture & sell alternatives to taxed goods, and participate in barter and other off-the-books transactions.)

The IRS “Office of the Taxpayer Advocate” has released a preliminary report on its study of tax compliance and noncompliance among sole proprietors, who represent a large portion of the “tax gap” the agency hopes to close.

They want to know the factors that might cause such people to evade their taxes, and so do I, though with much different motives, and so I took a peek at the report. Here are some bits that stood out to me:

Most taxpayers believe tax laws are unfair.

Only 15 percent of both groups agreed or strongly agreed that the tax laws are fair. Rather, most taxpayers believe that:

• Large businesses have loopholes to reduce their taxes that smaller businesses do not have;
• The wealthy have ways of minimizing their taxes that are not available to the average taxpayer;
• Not everyone pays his or her fair share; and
• The federal tax laws are unfair

Those in the low-compliance group were more likely to participate in local organizations.

Among respondents who belong to local organizations, those in the low-compliance group were more likely to report that they usually participate. This was true for various organizations identified by the survey, including local business organizations (50 percent from the low-compliance group usually participate vs. 30 percent from the high-compliance group), local trade, labor, or occupational organizations (40 vs. 24 percent), and local civic, community, or fraternal organizations (67 vs. 47 percent). Thus, active participation in these groups appears to be negatively correlated with tax compliance, possibly promoting social noncompliance in terms of the typology. Perhaps those with a closer connection to local groups feel a weaker connection to the federal government, and a weaker obligation to comply with federal tax laws. They may also chose to associate with those who hold similarly negative views about the federal government and tax compliance, which reinforced their own views

Those in the low-compliance group were more likely to report that other members of local organizations view tax laws and the IRS negatively.

Those in the low-compliance group were more likely than those in the high-compliance group to report that other members of local business organizations believe tax laws are unfair (48 percent of the low-compliance group vs. 28 percent of the high-compliance group) or that the IRS treats taxpayers unfairly (37 vs. 21 percent). They were more likely to report that other members of local trade, labor and occupational organizations believe tax laws are unfair (42 vs. 38 percent) or that the IRS treats taxpayers unfairly (46 vs. 28 percent). They were also more likely to report that other members of local civic, community, and fraternal organizations believe the tax laws are unfair (50 vs. 23 percent) or that the IRS treats taxpayers unfairly (36 vs. 18 percent). Participation in these organizations may have allowed taxpayers to learn that noncompliance is an acceptable norm among other participants, or perhaps they assumed that other participants shared their negative views. In any event, the differences in the responses to these questions by members of the high- and low-compliance groups may suggest that a person’s perception about whether other participants in local organizations feel the tax law or the IRS is fair has an effect on their own compliance behavior (e.g., social and symbolic noncompliance), perhaps eroding tax morale.

Another thing they noted was that “Surprisingly, those in the low-compliance group were also more likely than those in the high-compliance group to believe that the IRS detects and penalizes noncompliance.” This is another data point that suggests that deterrence via tax enforcement is not particularly effective, and that fear of IRS reprisals is not the prime motivator keeping people from refusing to pay.

Also surprising is that people in the high-compliance group were more likely than those in the low-compliance group to report that they felt their business competitors were not tax compliant. This upsets the theory that people “flock” in their tax compliance behavior — tending to behave in the way they believe their peers are behaving.

[T]he results of both surveys [they also did a study that divided people up geographically into low- and high-compliance communities] associate distrust of the national government and the IRS with the low-compliance groups and communities. For example, respondents from the low-compliance group were more likely to report that the government is too big and wastes tax dollars, that tax laws are unfair, and that the IRS is unfair (e.g., often believing the IRS is more concerned with collecting as much as possible instead of the correct amount, and indicating less satisfaction with IRS services).

The results of both surveys suggest that norms and distrust of the national government, the law, and the IRS may promote noncompliance. Respondents from both the low-compliance groups and from low-compliance communities held negative views about government and the IRS and were more likely to participate in local organizations. They were also more likely to believe that other members of those organizations held similarly negative views, which appeared to reinforce their own views, though they generally professed that noncompliance was morally wrong. In other words, they affiliated with others who reinforced noncompliance norms at the local level, and probably feel a closer connection to a local collective than to the national collective. In terms of the typology discussed above [which divides non-compliant taxpayers into several categories based on the causes or motivations for their noncompliance], this tendency to affiliate where distrust of government is the norm may be a form of social and symbolic noncompliance.

The authors say that “social and symbolic” noncompliance are emerging as “the primary types of noncompliance among small businesses.” These are defined as:

Social

Acted in accordance with social norms and peer behavior

Symbolic

Perceived the law or the IRS as unfair

…and are in contrast to a motive they call “Asocial” (“motivated by economic gain”) and a variety of other motives that have to do with ignorance of the law, laziness, difficulty following complex tax laws, or acting on advice from crafty tax professionals. The “Symbolic” category amounts to tax resistance, and so it is interesting to see that the IRS is coming to believe that much of what it has traditionally categorized as selfish, “asocial” tax evasion, is really motivated by feelings of dislike for the government and how it spends tax money (only about 6–8% of respondents believe “the federal government spends tax dollars wisely”).

Interestingly, people in the low-compliance group were more likely to report that everyone should correctly report all of their income — 97%! (And they were just as likely to report that “I feel a moral obligation to correctly report all of my income” — 96%) That should give you some skepticism about the value of such survey questions. The report notes that “the low-compliance group may have answered these questions aspirationally (e.g., they may not be living up to their aspirations because tax morale does not drive their tax compliance behavior) or defensively, to avoid making an admission.”

One caveat: the people who conducted the survey divided the respondents into “high-compliance” and “low-compliance” categories, but they did so not by measuring actual compliance, but by using “IRS tax compliance estimates to identify sole proprietors most likely to have high or low levels of reporting compliance.” These estimates are based on the taxpayer’s “examination activity code,” their “total gross receipts” and their “total positive income.”

[I]t is difficult to measure actual compliance with perfect accuracy. Taxpayers are not likely to confess any noncompliance in response to a survey, and even detailed audits conducted by the IRS’s National Research Program (NRP) are likely to contain errors. Even assuming that NRP audit results, as adjusted by IRS researchers, reflect actual compliance, the audit itself has an effect on the taxpayer’s attitude about the tax system, potentially biasing the taxpayer’s response to any subsequent survey. Thus, TAS decided not to survey taxpayers who had been subject to an NRP audit. While surveying taxpayers immediately before they were subject to an NRP audit might have been more productive, TAS deemed it overly deceptive. Thus, TAS opted to rely on DIF scores as an imperfect, but acceptable, measure of actual compliance.

There’s a possibility that the way they divided people up has biased the results, making some of their conclusions logically circular. And also, you should keep in mind that the “low-compliance” group in this survey is not “a group of people all of whom are less tax compliant” but “a group of people in which the IRS believes you are more likely to find individuals who are less tax compliant.”

On this date in 1966, Joan Baez was interviewed on the Belgian television station RTBF and asked about her war tax resistance.

Q: Why don’t you pay your income tax?

JB: I pay 40%, which goes to highways and things like that, and I won’t pay…

Q: Medicare perhaps?

JB: I hope so [laughs]. And I won’t pay 60% because it goes to armaments and armaments are wrong.

Q: And you’ll not have any problem with not paying?

JB: Oh, I have plenty of problems with not paying.

Q: And… what’s going to happen?

JB: Well, every year the same thing happens: they… you see, the government has the power to take the money from me. What I’m saying is I won’t give it, I won’t offer it anymore. And they fine me and they do this and do that. But, um… it’s their problem.

Each year, the Tax Foundation divides the amount of taxes collected by American governments during the year by the amount of money earned in America over the course of a year.

The group then takes the resulting number and says this is the proportion of our income-earning activities that we must do just to pay for the cost of government. If you were to take that proportion and multiply it by the number of days in the year, you’d get the number of days the “average American” must work to support government spending.

The Tax Foundation then says: let’s pretend all those days come at the beginning of the year, so that when they’re over, we’re finally working for ourselves and our families again. They name the day of this liberation “Tax Freedom Day,” and, according to their calculations, today is that day this year.

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

• Tax Day has come and gone, and NWTRCC is collecting a list of war tax resistance actions that happened on or around that day. Here’s a photo of Juanita Nelson holding her “Haven’t Paid Taxes Since 1948” sign in front of the Brattleboro post office on Tax Day.
• The Chief Counsel of the IRS Criminal Tax Division issued something called a Search Warrant Handbook a few years back to give its Criminal Investigation personnel with guidance about when they need search warrants to do their investigations. The Handbook stated:

  [T]he Fourth Amendment [to the U.S. Constitution, governing searches and seizures] does not protect communications held in electronic storage, such as email messages stored on a server, because internet users do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in such communications.

  and

  [E]mails and other transmissions generally lose their reasonable expectation of privacy and thus their Fourth Amendment protection once they have been sent from an individual’s computer.

  A copy of the Internal Revenue Manual issued that year also says that “the government may obtain the contents of electronic communication that has been in storage for more than 180 days” without going through the hassle of obtaining a search warrant. Other agency memos, dating as recently as October 2011 restate the position.
  
  When the ACLU exposed these policies, there was a bit of an uproar. The agency didn’t help matters much by issuing a non-denial denial:

  Respecting taxpayer rights and taxpayer privacy are cornerstone principles for the IRS. Our job is to administer the nation’s tax laws, and we do so in a way that follows the law and treats taxpayers with respect. Contrary to some suggestions, the IRS does not use emails to target taxpayers. Any suggestion to the contrary is wrong.

  But the acting head of the IRS appeared before a Senate committee yesterday and seemed to indicate that the agency would back down, at least somewhat, and at least until the fuss dies down.
• The IRS is also catching flak for its ineptitude in dealing with identity theft. The USA Today editorial board concluded that “the crooks appear to be one step ahead of the IRS” as the IRS has responded to the growing problem by expanding its bureaucracy in a way that made things more complicated without making it more effective. In one example, a study of 17 people who had filed identity theft complaints with the IRS showed that the agency had responded by opening 58 distinct and uncoordinated cases in its myriad subunits in response.
• None of this is coming at a convenient time for the tax agency. The acting Commissioner, Steven Miller, recently appeared before the House Appropriations Committee to beg them not to cut the IRS budget any more. Miller “explained that the budget cuts that the IRS must make on account of sequestration will reduce IRS enforcement levels. In the short-term, revenue will drop because the number of audits will drop and collection activity will decline. In the long-term, the diminishing presence of the IRS will cause the voluntary compliance rate to drop, further reducing revenue.”
• Harriet Bicksler wrote an interesting piece — “Gambling on the Rapture” — about her on-again/off-again experiments with war tax resistance.
• The Mesa de Enlace Agropecuaria (Agricultural Liaison Bureau) in Argentina met in Santa Fe to decry encroaching “Marxism and Chavezism” in the country, and to call for tax resistance: “pay no taxes until June so the government cannot pay the bonuses and treat itself to a good time.”
• The American Enterprise Institute has issued a new edition of their useful compendium of poll results: Public Opinion on Taxes: 1937 to Today.

Say… what’s going on with the tax resisters in Spain these days? There are two active tax resistance campaigns that I know about: one is a sort of expanded war tax resistance campaign that has grown to include a critique of centralization and of austerity budgets that favor international bankers over taxpayers and citizens; the other is part of a Catalan independence movement that is upset that the region is paying far more in taxes to the central government than it receives in government benefits and services.

The first of these groups is updating their “Right of Rebellion” manifesto for the coming tax year and is fine-tuning the way in which they encourage people to redirect their tax money from the central government to local, autonomous social welfare projects. They are also continuing to staff “economic disobedience offices” to give face-to-face advice to resisters.

Something that’s new to me is that they’re promoting something they call “Desobediència Integral” (Comprehensive Disobedience):

Comprehensive disobedience involves breaking the social contract with the state of the territory where you live, in order to make a new social contract with a community in which the individual feels really connected.

This campaign has provoked a backlash from that portion of the left that sees the central government as an important part of its program and is threatened by proposals to weaken it. An organization called the “Grupo de Trabajo Economía Sol” (Sun Economy Working Group) made the following criticisms:

• If people withhold taxes from the government, the government will probably begin cutting the budgets of education, health, and social welfare programs before those of the more objectionable parts of the government.
• The law now requires Spain to make debt payments a priority over social spending, so if you reduce tax revenue, you do nothing to fix the problem of illegitimate debt, but only hurt recipients of social spending.
• Tax revenue should be managed by the people as a whole, and not by small groups on a local scale. The projects proposed as recipients for tax redirection may be nice, but they are lacking in transparency and in democratic control.

Meanwhile, the Tortoise Antimilitarist Group is ramping up its more traditional war tax resistance campaign.

In the second of these campaigns, some 650 municipalities in Catalonia have decided not to forward the taxes they withhold from their employees (and certain other taxes they administer) to the central government in Madrid, but instead to give the money to the Catalan Tax Agency. This is something of a symbolic measure as the Catalonian government itself sends this money along to Madrid, but the rebellious towns see this as an opening gambit in a series of measures it hopes will lead to increased Catalan independence.

Some more tax resistance news from days of yore:

From the Colombia Missourian, 16 April 1985:

11 demonstrators oppose use of taxes for military

By Mollie Vento
Missourian staff writer

Eleven demonstrators gathered Monday outside the Federal Building, 600 E Cherry St., to protest the use of tax dollars for military spending.

George Mummert, a spokesman for the demonstrators, said they represent no organization. “We’re just a gathering of concerned citizens who have an objection to our tax dollars going toward war and its preparation and not to peace.”

The protest came on the final day to file income-tax returns.

Mummert said the protesters received mainly positive response from passers-by. In addition to passing out literature and holding signs, the group planned to deliver a giant postcard bearing supporters’ signatures to Rep. Harold Volkmer’s office.

Most of the demonstrators Monday were “people of faith,” according to Mummert, although they are not affiliated with any particular denomination or church. “It’s hypocritical for us to pray for peace and pay for war,” Mummert said.

He cited statistics stating that 64 percent of the federal income tax revenue goes toward current military expenses and debts from past wars. All the protesters were what Mummert called “hard core war tax resisters.” They do not file federal income tax returns, he said.

Mummert, a conscientious objector in 1971 and 1972, said other tax resisters pay half their tax, some pay all but $1, while still others refuse to pay their telephone excise tax.

From The Washington Post, 16 April 1996:

Tax Resisters Refuse to Fuel War Machine

by Colman McCarthy

Well-deserved acclaim has been given to sociologist Daniel Jonah Goldhagen for his recent book Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. It details the complicity of German citizens during the political reign of the Nazis when much of the public accepted the intellectual arguments for the mass murder of Jews.

“Hundreds of thousands of Germans contributed to the genocide and the still larger system of subjugation that was the vast concentration camp system,” writes Goldhagen. He states that “the moral bankruptcy of the German churches, Protestant and Catholic” was “extensive and abject.” Religious leaders “were men of God second and Germans first.” They blessed state violence.

As the main military force that defeated the Nazis, the United States has been able to position itself since 1945 on the moral high ground and, with furrowed brow, ponder in astonishment why so few Germans protested their government’s well-organized barbarity.

If a cold eye is to be cast on Germany’s behavior a half-century ago, why not a condemning word and a protesting stance of resistance against the violent policies of the U.S. government in 1996? What violence? Congress lavishes the Pentagon with $700 million a day, a sum nearly equal to the military budgets of all other nations combined and 17 times more than the combined budgets of the six nations the Pentagon claims are threats. Also each day, about 38,000 children are dying throughout the world of hunger-related diseases, according to Oxfam International.

The United States is the planet’s largest arms merchant, with Commerce and State Department officials roaming the world on trade missions to hustle more customers for the U.S. weapons industry. Client states include such habitual violators of human rights as Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Since 1945, uncountable dictators to whom the United States has supplied weapons turned them on their own people. From Sunday through Wednesday, the annual arms bazaar — the “Contingency and Operational Procurement Exhibition” — is scheduled at the Sheraton-Washington Hotel. This is the mercantile occasion when the newest wares of death are displayed. The Peace Action Education Fund is organizing a protest.

Differences between Germany’s military machine 60 years ago and America’s today are obvious. Less so are the similarities. Germany had a complicit clergy, as does the United States today. America’s church leaders offer a biblical argument: Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, to God what is God’s. Dorothy Day had an answer for that: After you give to God, there should be nothing left over for Caesar.

The second similarity is how rarely dissent is voiced by ordinary Americans. Normalcy prevails, as if it were rational to have a proposed 1996 military budget $20 billion larger than in 1980, at the peak of the Cold War.

Not all Americans fall into line. This month in more than 50 cities, such groups as Veterans for Peace, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the War Resisters League have been organizing programs and demonstrations for tax resistance. Last year, according to the National War Tax Resisters Coordinating Committee, about 20,000 patriots who value their government but not its warrior spirit refused to channel money to the Pentagon through the IRS They are back this year, again finding it both illogical and immoral to work for peace while paying for war or war preparation.

The IRS labels them tax cheats, which is incorrect. They are happy to pay taxes when the money is for social programs that enhance life, not for the world’s most effective killing machine. Those with religious ties argue persuasively that providing money for military people to kill violates the teachings of the world’s religions.

For Marian Franz of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, a Washington nonprofit group, conscientious tax resistance is a religious liberties issue. She has allies in Congress, including Sen. Mark O. Hatfield (R-Ore.) and Rep. Andrew Jacobs Jr. (D-Ind). Each recently introduced legislation — the U.S. Peace Tax Fund bill — that would provide legal protection for citizens who want their taxes to be diverted from the Pentagon maw. The legislation is not likely to pass in this or the next millennium. Its value may be for historians, ones who will ask how and why so many ordinary Americans in the late 20^th century said or did nothing about their government squandering its wealth on militarism. In this current darkness, a few lights shine. Honorable dissent may be only flickering, but it is still a flame.

McCarthy seems to have had a soft spot for war tax resisters. He penned another op-ed on the subject in 1987:

Dreaming of a Peace Tax Fund

Colman McCarthy

Washington — Whether a taxpayer obeys or violates his or her conscience on April 15 is no concern to the Internal Revenue Service. It wants dollars, not qualms. But at tax time, conscience is an issue to a fair number of citizens whose religion, ethics, or value system holds that cooperation with war or war preparation is not moral.

They see no consistency of conscience in working 364 days of the year opposing policies that make the United States the earth’s most militarized nation while, on the 365^th day, paying taxes that overflow the government’s war trough.

Tax money has paid for all seven of America’s declared wars and all of its 137 “presidential actions,” the latest of which are Grenada, Libya, and Nicaragua. Citizens helped provide the Pentagon with nearly two trillion dollars under the Reagan administration, including a doubling of money for nuclear weapons and the beginning of a space battlefield.

The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, an East Patchoque, N.Y., group estimates that between 10,000 and 20,000 people will be sitting out April 15 for reasons of conscience. The estimate is probably low. This isn’t a group much given to self-generated publicity or issuing press releases every time Caspar Weinberger emits another war whoop. Street theater is rare, although a few war tax protesters will put up a picket line April 15 in front of the IRS offices in Washington.

More important than the precise number of resisters is the growth of lawyers or counselors assisting them: More than 120 are now at work, up from 55 in 1981. Strength is seen in another figure: a 400 percent increase — from 45 to 180 — in the past seven years for national and local groups working on war tax resistance.

Kathy Levine of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee reports that the people saying yes to their consciences and no to the IRS form a diverse group: “During Vietnam, it was mostly ‘the peaceniks’ who protested this way. They were against just the Vietnam War. Today there are people from all kinds of political and philosophical positions who are refusing to pay their taxes. Some are opposed to the development of nuclear weapons. Some have religious convictions who feel they must obey God’s law before a civil law. And many in the middle class are sickened and fed up with the amount of money going to the military.”

Groups like the War Resisters League and the Friends Committee on National Legislation calculate that 55 percent of the tax dollar goes for military or military-related purposes. The federal tax law lacks a provision for pacifists or others who want no part of the government’s violent solutions to conflicts. After that, though, good news and bad news emerges.

The good news is that no conscientious tax resister has been jailed for 15 years. For the IRS, the strain in dogging tax cheats and willful evaders, and prosecuting them if they are caught, is too great for it to be coming down hard on the noncriminal resisters. The bad news is that the IRS, through the “frivolous return” penalty that was added to the tax code in 1982, has increased enforcement powers to make it easier for the government to get not only the money that wasn’t paid by April 15 but also a larger amount from penalties Bank accounts and personal assets can be attached. Without a meticulous plan of resistance before a decision is made and the services of a skilled tax lawyer after, a conscientious resister can end up paying the IRS more than if he had not protested at all.

In a few days, a solution that would satisfy both the resisters and the government will be proposed in Congress: the Peace Tax Fund bill. With some 55 House sponsors and four in the Senate when offered in the last session, the legislation would amend the tax code. Citizens opposed in conscience to participating in any way in military solutions would be allowed to redirect their taxes to non-military purposes. These tax resisters aren’t out to deny money to the government. They seek only to deny it to that part of government that wants money for military violence, which is morally unacceptable.

Marian Franz, the director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund and who has been working for this law for 16 years, says that “during the Vietnam era 15 percent of all draftees were recognized as conscientious objectors. If that same percentage of taxpayers diverted their tax payments to the Peace Tax Fund, this trust fund for peace projects would receive about $2 billion each year. These funds would have an impact on the way the wortd would think about, and moves to resolve, international conflict.”

A dreamer? Yes, gloriously. But not a dangerous dreamer. The planet-threatening menaces are those who keep on dreaming — especially around April 15 — that more money for more militarism is the way to peace. All that group proves is that well-funded dreams become expensive nightmares.

Democracy Now! has a good piece on war tax resistance today featuring an interview with Ed Hedemann:

Something that stood out to me in the Hedemann interview was how well he articulates the civil-disobedient-protester point of view on tax resistance (see ♇ 9 January 2013 for my system of categorizing varieties of tax resisters).

Here are some of his comments about the Peace Tax Fund:

I think it would be better if such a Fund existed, but I wouldn’t participate in it, because… part of the reason why I refuse to pay is I want to be an irritant to the government. I want to make a protest that can’t be ignored. And I think that the government would use such a Fund, if it were to be formed, to shuttle away people who are noisy and people who are protesters and people who agitate. And I refuse to do that: I want to do a protest that the government has to pay attention to.

And here he responds to a question about tax resisters who suffer from government reprisals:

I think that’s the risk you take. But, to me, part of the issue is that the protest is as important as how much money is resisted. And I think that there are people who are war tax resisters that do have their salaries seized, but they continue to protest despite that because the point of refusing to pay — from my point of view — is protesting.

Hedemann was also interviewed for today’s RadioActivity show:

Here’s a quote on a similar theme from that interview:

Q: Do you report all this to the IRS?

Hedemann: Oh yes; absolutely. I mean, that’s one of the reasons I do this, is — not just for the sake of purity, because I don’t want to have my money sullied by war and military — but to make a statement, to make a point. I want the IRS to know. So I file my taxes, I include a letter explaining exactly what I’m doing and how much I owe and am not paying the IRS and that I’m giving the money away to other organizations — sometimes I even mention the other organizations, like the New York Times has a “Neediest Fund” [that] gives money to people who are poor, down-and-out, homeless — so I say “okay, I’m giving $1,000 to the New York Times ‘Neediest Fund’ — $1,000 of my tax dollars, instead of to the IRS, to this other fund.” And I tell them directly what I’m doing.

April 15^th has long been the date for war tax resisters to have their “fifteen minutes of fame” in the papers. Here are some examples from years gone by:

1966

IRS Warns Objectors To Pay Taxes

N.Y. Times News Service

Washington — The Internal Revenue Service will, if necessary, seize cash and property owned by opponents of the war in Viet Nam who are recusing to pay their income taxes, Commissioner Sheldon S. Cohen said Thursday.

The service will take this action “in fairness to the many millions of taxpayers who do fulfill their obligations,” he said in a statement in response to an advertisement urging non-payment of taxes in Thursday’s Washington Post.

The government has been upheld in court on all occasions when individuals have refused to pay taxes because of disapproval with the uses to which their money was being put, revenue officials said.

One noted precedent was the case of Milton Mayer, the Quaker author, who in 1956 attempted unsuccessfully to refuse to pay one-half of his income tax, on the ground that the money was being used for purposes that violated his pacifist beliefs. The case was made on constitutional grounds under the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of religion, but Mayer lost both in the District Court in the Northern District of California and in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

IRS and Justice Department officials could not remember a similar case that has reached the Supreme Court.

A group of Amish farmers in Pennsylvania lost a somewhat similar suit recently in the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania when they attempted to refuse to pay Social Security taxes. Their property was seized in payment of the tax.

The standard IRS procedure in cases where taxpayers file returns but do not pay the tax that is due is to send a notice as soon as the non-payment is discovered. If the return is filed on or near the April 15 deadline, this could be as long as a month, although it is usually less than that, revenue officials said.

The initial notice gives the [illegible] make his payment or make arrangements with the IRS for a later payment. The latter is permitted to cases of [unusual?] financial hardship.

If there is no response to the 10-day notice, the IRS generally sends a second notice. After another 10 days or so has elapsed, the service then moves to seize the assets of the delinquent. Under law, it may do this without specific authorization from any court.

1968

“War” Tax Resister Gives Joy to Some

San Francisco — (UPI) — Irving Hogan, 44, distributed his unpaid income tax yesterday not to Uncle Sam but to his fellow man.

Hogan stood in a crowd of about 150 startled persons, handing out $1 bills. About 60 of them.

That, he said, was the amount of his unpaid federal income taxes he guessed would be spent on the Vietnam war.

“I want this money to be used for the delight, not the destruction, of men,” the well-dressed philanthropist said.

“Here,” he called to one man, “go buy yourself a beer.”

“And here,” he said to another, thrusting the bill in his hand. “Buy your wife a nosegay.”

The money soon ran out, and the crowd moved to other events of the three ring circus billed as an antitax rally outside the federal building.

Ogling curvy showgirls who paraded in bikinis and barrels was, they agreed, a more enjoyable way to celebrate April 15 than the traditional payment of taxes to the federal government.

The young morsels were protesting taxes. One, Bonnie Parker, said she would not pay the $500 she owes.

“I refuse to pay. I am not even filing. I don’t have it and I don’t know what I would do to get it,” she said, shivering in a brisk wind.

Through it all, the IRS offices did a brisk business on deadline day.

Here’s a short article on Sally Buckley’s creative war tax resistance protest action in 1971:

IRS Refuses Goods For Tax Payment

St. Paul, Minn. (AP) — U.S. marshals have refused to permit an antiwar group to deliver medical supplies to the Internal Revenue Service in payment of a St. Paul pacifist’s 1970 income taxes.

The security guards denied entrance to the federal building to the group Wednesday so they left the four boxes of medical supplies on the sidewalk in front of the building’s main entrance.

The supplies were brought on behalf of Sally Buckley, 26, a former hospital employe who refuses to pay the tax because she believes the money would go to finance the government’s war in Indochina.

I did a little sleuthing to try to find out more about Sally Buckley. At The Sampson Family blog, “SueS” writes:

My colleague at the Seattle City Attorney’s office was Sarah Ann (“Sally”) Buckley. She joined the office a year or so after I, joining in 1978 or so, and was an intern until she could take her Bar exam. She was quiet in person, but she was passionate about her politics. She told me that a few years earlier, she had protested the Vietnam war, and as part of her protest, she had refused to pay the tax on her telephone service. That tax was earmarked to support the war, and it was a federal offense to fail to pay it.

Of all things, a prosecutor in the Midwest — I am thinking Minnesota or Michigan — decided to prosecute Sally over the pittance that was due. Now, my prosecutor friends will point out that it’s the nature of the offense, not its magnitude, that is the crime — you are just as guilty if you pinch one grape from a grocery store as if you steal a whole ham. But if you consider the costs of a prosecutor, a judge, a courtroom, and a public defender, you have to question the public policy of criminalizing acts with very small consequences.

Sally completely admitted refusing to pay her phone tax, and made her reason clear. The United States District Court judge had no choice but to convict her, and to impose sentence. He ordered that she pay the tax, or go to jail. Sally was fully prepared to go to jail, but hours before she was due to report for incarceration, somebody paid the tax for her.

Her conviction issue came up when Sally applied for admission to the Bar in Washington. She had to explain to the Bar whether or not her crime was one of moral turpitude. She wrote to the federal judge who had convicted her, asking “Do you remember…?”

The judge replied at once, saying essentially, “Yes, I certainly do remember you, young lady.” He supported Sally’s petition to be admitted to the bar. He remembered that her act was one of moral conviction, not an act of moral turpitude at all.

On the strength of the judge’s letter, and others such as that from our boss, City Attorney Doug Jewett vouching for her character, Sally was admitted to the bar.

She told me that she never did find out who had paid her telephone tax — but she suspected that it was the judge.

In another version of the story (or perhaps a second confrontation), Buckley declared “the family of man” as her dependents when she filed her W-4 form. The government responded by arresting her on 23 September 1970 and charging her with criminal tax fraud! Clearly they had gotten spooked by war tax resisters. In this story, too, she was ordered to pay the tax or go to jail, but some anonymous person paid the tax for her.

While doing some book research today I stumbled on a bunch of documents concerning the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” tax resistance pledge of 1967. I found the documents at The Harold Weisberg Archive:

Item 01 (four pages)

A three-page letter from David Welsh on Ramparts letterhead dated 25 September 1967 “enclosing a copy of the statement signed, so far, by 220 writers and editors…” and saying that they hoped to run the ad in the New York Times (the Times would turn them down). The letter asks Weisberg to sign on, and includes a couple of Thoreau quotes. It also says that Welsh sees this as a first step towards organizing the American “intelligentsia” to be an organized and articulate political force. The final page lists the signers to that point. Also included is Weisberg’s response in which he complements the Thoreau quote, notes that he signed the pledge and sent it in with a donation, and then goes on for four paragraphs about Kennedy assassination conspiracy research, which was his specialty.

Item 02 (eight pages)

An undated letter from the Protest to “Fellow Signers” noting that “We now have over 350 names” and “hope to achieve, or surpass, 500 by the end of October” so they can put the ad in the Times “the first week in November.” The letter notes that the anticipated 10% Vietnam War tax surcharge has run into snags in Congress, but still expects a modified version to pass. It also solicits funds, noting that they’re only about half way to the budget they need to place a full-page Times ad.

A second page includes the text of a Thoreau quote and of the tax resistance pledge.

A third page includes a “coupon” that signers can fill out to register their pledge with the Protest office, and begins the partial list of signers. The next two pages continue the list, and then the following page includes “Additional Signers” (including Weisberg).

The last two pages are a “Fact Sheet” explaining the reasoning behind the protest, the process that resisters can go through to make their resistance effective, a summary of the possible legal consequences, the possibility of filing a legal challenge, and the Protest’s willingness to reach out to other groups interested in taking a similar stand.

Item 03 (four pages)

Only the first page is interesting. It’s a hand-drawn invitation to a “Deficit Party” fundraiser “to help pay for our newspaper ad” to be held on 22 December “at Betty Friedan’s apartment [at] The Dakota”: “Eric Bentley, Betty Friedan, Paul Goodman, James Leo Herlihy, Larry Josephson, Dwight Macdonald, Gloria Steinem, [&] Gerald Walker invite you to join them, and all the other signers of the Writers and Editors War Tax Protest…”

Item 04 (two pages)

The first page is the last of a three-page list of pledge signers (the first two pages are missing); the second page is a list of “Additional Signers” with marginal notes indicating that the number had risen to 309, and then to 324.

Item 05 (four pages)

A letter from Lawrence M. Bensky & Gerald Walker of the Protest to “Fellow Signers” dated 28 February 1968. It notes that Congress did not institute the expected 10% income tax surcharge by tax filing season, and so if people want to resist, they’ll have to choose the other option, which was to refuse to pay some portion of their ordinary income tax: “we urge you to do so. Obviously, the effectiveness of our action hinges on the number of participants.” It notes that 50 more people have signed the pledge since the ads appeared “in February Ramparts, The New York Review of Books of Feb. 15, and The New York Post of Jan. 30” which brings the total signers up to that desired 500 threshhold.

Hundreds of people have written us to request tax-refusal information; many of these were non-writers and non-editors who were sufficiently impressed to follow our lead, and these information requests continue to come in without any sign of tapering off.

The letter notes that contributions have been coming in as well, but proposes not to spend any more money on advertising, but to keep the funds in reserve in case the government retaliates against any signer, so as “to focus publicity on such cases; and where a case offers the opportunity to press a legal test of the government’s right to ‘draft’ our money for Vietnam, we will contribute to the costs of legal defense.” The letter then recommends that people look into the newly formed “Tax Resistance Project of the War Resisters League.”

The next page lists some sympathetic organizations, discusses the possible government retaliation actions against signers, and includes a coupon resisters could send to the War Resisters League if they want to be included in their coordinated tax resistance action.

The next page gives “some facts about tax refusal and its consequences” including a how-to guide giving several options for how to resist.

The final page announces a protest to be held at the IRS headquarters in Washington on March 15^th:

Join us in an act of collective tax resistance. Bring your completed tax return, form 1040, or a statement explaining why you’re not filing, and together we will return forms and statements accompanied by either no money or an insufficient amount of money. The action at IRS will be preceded by a public meeting nearby. Dr. Arthur Waskow of the Institute for Policy Studies and Dave Dellinger, Chairman of the National Mobilization Committee, will be among the speakers.

We act because for many verbal opposition to the war in Vietnam is no longer enough. Resistance has become necessary. Our consciences dictate it. The young men resisting the draft have shown a way and we who are not subject to the draft must develop creative parallels. Tax resistance is such a parallel act because it confronts the administration directly and challenges it at a vital point. It liberates the tax resister by showing him that he does have choices.

Item 06 (two pages)

A Washington Post clipping dated 16 March 1968 — “Marchers Protest War Taxes” concerning a protest of about 40 people at the IRS Building. Protesters included Barbara Deming, Dave Dellinger, William C. Davidon, Arthur Waskow. The article includes a photo of Waskow and of protesters marching with “Don’t Pay War Taxes” signs, but the copy quality is low.

Item 07 (one page)

A letter dated 10 May 1968 from Eric Bentley, John Leonard, Peter Spackman, Gloria Steinem, and Gerald Walker to “Fellow Signers” about “how best to wind up the group’s affairs.” They plan to donate the group’s remaining funds to the Civil Liberties Legal Defense Fund, which has made a reciprocal agreement to give legal assistance to any Protest signers who run into trouble in the coming year. “The Writers and Editors War Tax Protest was always a temporary organization, and its limited goals have now been achieved. We remain pledged as individuals, however, to the moral and financial support of any of our number who is prosecuted or harassed because of non-payment or simple membership.”

WEWTP certainly added its bit to the anti-war clamor which produced the current atmosphere and the many swift changes that have taken place in it. We ended up with 528 signers. And if there were that many strongly anti-war people from one small area of American Life, surely the political computers in Washington were capable of extrapolating that figure to the population as a whole. So [President] Johnson got the message. Thanks for lending your voice and your name to ours.

The “current atmosphere” of changes since the start of the Protest project included the abandonment of the 10% income tax surcharge plan, the Tet Offensive, the resignation of Secretary of Defense McNamara, Johnson’s decision not to run for another term, and the opening of peace negotiations.

Item 09 (one page)

A press release from the Protest dated January 30. At this time, the Protest had attracted 437 signers, and “at least one-third” of these had pledged not only to refuse to pay any war surcharge, but also “not to pay the 23 per cent of their current income tax which is being used to finance the war in Vietnam.”

The protest was announced today at a press conference in New York’s Algonquin Hotel, traditionally a gathering place for New York’s literary world. Three writers and three editors spoke for the group: Eric Bentley, drama critic, professor of Columbia, and author of several books on the theater; James Leo Herlihy, well-known novelist and short story writer; and Sally Belfrage, author of “Freedom Summer.” Publishers included Richard Grossman of Grossman Publishers; Aaron Asher of Viking Press; and Arthur A. Cohen of Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

One of the group’s organizers announced that today’s advertisement had been rejected for publication by seven major newspapers before being printed by the New York Post. The New York Times, where ten of the advertisement’s signers are employed, twice rejected it, the second time after the advertisement had been changed to meet their earlier objection. Other newspapers which refused to accept the prepaid full-page advertisement were The Boston Globe, the Washington Post, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Christian Science Monitor, the National Observer, and the Chicago Tribune. A spokesman for the Writers and Editors War Tax Protest expressed regret that the nation’s press, “which is so quick to condemn violent demonstrations, actually encourages them by frustrating conscientious expression of dissent from our actions in Vietnam.”

Item 10 (one page)

A newspaper clipping dated January 1968 that, in the form of an article about the ad, essentially reproduces it, including the complete list of signers. It is unclear what newspaper the clipping is taken from.

Item 11 (one page)

“Writers Vow Tax Revolt Over War” — a news clipping from the 31 January 1968 Washington Post. It gives the number of signers as 448, and explains that the Post refused to print the ad “on the grounds that it was an implicit exhortation to violate the law.”

Item 12 (one page)

A letter from Lawrence M. Bensky & Gerald Walker to “Fellow Signers” dated 1 December 1967. It gives the number of signers as 450. “Two months have been spent dickering with the NY Times (where 11 of the signers work), which has just refused an ad revised to meet earlier Times objections.” (Harding Bancroft of the Times eventually said: “the advertisement was turned down by the Times in accordance with our general policy that we do not accept advertising urging readers to perform an illegal action.”) The letter notes that some signers have wondered why the Protest continues to stress the 10% surcharge which by now is looking less politically viable. Finally, the letter announces the above-mentioned “Deficit Party.”

An interview with former Catholic bishop Thomas Gumbleton was aired on Democracy Now! today. He briefly addressed war tax resistance. Excerpts:

Amy Goodman: Bishop Gumbleton, Monday is Tax Day, April 15^th. What do you think of war tax refusal, war tax resistance, refusing to pay taxes that go to war?

Thomas Gumbleton: I feel strongly that that would be one of the things that people should try to do. Now… in fact, for the most part, I haven’t been paying federal taxes for a number of years. But I can do it because I don’t need much income, and so I can stay under the level where I’m taxed.

Amy Goodman: You haven’t paid federal taxes because…?

Thomas Gumbleton: Because I feel a good portion of those taxes goes to our war budget, which is our so-called defense budget, but it’s really a war budget. It’s the largest of any nation in the world. And years ago, Pope Paul Ⅵ said the arms race — and that’s what we are doing with our defense budget — is, in itself, an act of aggression against the poor. Using that money for weapons and strategies to use them is taking money away from the poor and causing them to starve. We should be using our natural resources and our wealth to promote development and to promote justice in the world. When you have a world where there’s such a gap between the rich and the poor, and such huge numbers suffering because of that, the church has a real responsibility to use whatever income it can bring to — I mean, our nation has a responsibility to use its income to help development happen, because that’s the basis for peace.

I skimmed a bit of the pitch for Obama’s new budget proposal to see if there was anything there we tax resisters ought to keep an eye out for. A few things caught my eye:

• Some years back, when “deadbeat dads” were the objects of the latest Hate Week, Congress set up something called the “National Directory of New Hires” so that if anyone who owed child support got a job, the government would be on them like flies on shit to make sure they made their payments. Obama would give the IRS access to this database “for general tax administration purposes, including data matching, verification of taxpayer claims during return processing, preparation of substitute returns for non-compliant taxpayers, and identification of levy sources.”
• Obama would also make “repeated willful failure to file a tax return” a felony, rather than a series of misdemeanors like it is today. “Repeated” would be defined as a failure to file returns for any three years within a five-year period, if the total tax liability during that period is at least $50,000.
• Obama would index all penalty amounts in the Internal Revenue Code to inflation, so that they would increase every year automatically rather than increases requiring Congressional action.

These are only proposals, of course, and Congress will have its own ideas, but they give you some idea of what sort of things are percolating through the mire in Washington.

There’s another wave of “Tax Day” protests coming this year. Here’s a press release from the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee about some of them:

Refusing to Pay for Cruise Missiles and Drone Strikes:

30 Years of Tax Day Antiwar Protests

On April 15 people in communities across the United States will be leafleting, marching, doing street theatre, committing civil disobedience, and picketing at post offices, IRS offices, federal buildings, among other public spaces, using materials calling attention to the harmful effects of military spending. A list of U.S. Tax Day events with links to international actions can be found at www.nwtrcc.org/taxday2013.php. April 15 is also the third annual Global Day of Action on Military Spending.

Thirty years ago, during his first term, President Ronald Reagan set off a massive buildup in the U.S. armed forces that stands out on historical graphs of U.S. military budgets since World War Ⅱ. This motivated thousands of taxpayers to resume the civil disobedience (begun during the Vietnam War) by refusing to pay taxes to buy cruise missiles and other weapons, and led to the 1982 formation of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC). In that same year Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle, risking official censure, withheld half his income tax to protest nuclear weapons, calling on others to do the same.

The spike in military spending since 2001 surpasses that of the Reagan years. Today U.S. taxpayers are buying even more expensive weapons systems, new nuclear weapons plants, assassinations by unmanned drones, and soaring interest payments on the national debt along with burgeoning health care costs for thousands of wounded veterans.

On March 30, 1983, an ad placed in a Massachusetts weekly began, “We refuse to pay taxes for the violence of war preparations and other military expenditures including present military involvement in other countries. Over half of the federal income taxes are used for military expenses.” Many of the 120 signers still refuse today and still protest on tax day, joined by newer activists who have been provoked into protesting taxes for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the endless war on terror.

Massachusetts residents Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner were signers of that 1983 ad. Despite a house seizure and other collection efforts by the IRS, Kehler and Corner say, “With the federal government running up huge deficits by spending trillions of taxpayer dollars on weapons and war, at the expense of its own people (especially its soldiers) and the people of other countries, we invite our fellow citizens to join us in saying ‘No!’ and to begin re-directing their federal tax money to local projects that meet genuine human needs.”

On the evening of April 15 in Berkeley, California, members of Northern California War Tax Resistance and the People’s Life Fund will be taking this advice and presenting grants of resisted war taxes totaling over $20,000 to local social service, peace, and justice organizations. That event and others from Maine to Kentucky to Washington are posted online with contacts at http://www.nwtrcc.org/taxday2013.php.

Contact NWTRCC to talk with individual war tax resisters and refusers.

Global Day of Action on Military Spending also has a list of actions being done around the world on April 15.

From the 11 April 1938 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

Catholic Vets Refuse Taxes In Gerson Row

Queens Foes Warn They Won’t Pay Until Communist Is Removed

Property owners among the 149 members of Richmond Hill Post, Catholic War Veterans, will refuse to pay their real estate taxey until Simon W. Gerson, a member of the Communist party, is removed from his office as confidential examiner to the Borough President of Manhattan, it was learned today.

This was decided at a meeting Thursday in the post quarters, 115–16 Liberty Ave., Richmond Hill, pending consideration and release by the organization’s executive committee. Similar action is asked of other divisions of the Catholic War Veterans.

Will Deposit Taxes

To forestall foreclosure of their property as a result of the tax strike, members of the post will deposit their taxes in escrow with banks and loan companies holding mortgages on their property. The taxpayers declared they were willing to bear the 7 percent penalty for late payment of the levy.

The resolution adopted follows:

“Be it resolved that in so far as the Mayor of the City of New York and the President of the Borough of Manhattan have seen fit to ignore the protest formerly taken by our organization and countless other organizations and citizens of our city and State against the appointment of Simon W. Gerson as confldential adviser and secretary to the President of the Borough of Manhattan and have seen fit to retain Mr. Gerson as a public servant on the city payroll and Mr. Gerson still continues to act as a public servant of the City of New York although an avowed Communist and as such an open enemy to the Constitution of the United States and the principles upon which our country is founded,

Refuse to Pay Taxes

“We, the members of this post, refuse to be a party to the actions taken by our public officials and pledge ourselves to do everything in our power to bring the career of Mr. Gerson as a public official to a close as speedily as possible by refusing to pay our taxes now due on our property, so that the funds necessary to supply Mr. Gerson with his weekly pay check may not be available to our Mayor and President of the Borough of Manhattan, and

“We further resolve that we will request our friends and neighbors and other available citizens that we come in contact with to pursue the same course of action;

Urge Similar Action

“Be it further resolved that copies of this resolution be forwarded to the county, State and national departments of our organization with the request that they take similar action,

“Be it further resolved also, that copies of this resolution be forwarded to the Mayor of the City of New York and to the President of the Borough of Manhattan.”

William F. McCumiskey is commander of the post.