War Tax Resisters Redirect Their Taxes to Charity

Tonight, I helped the People’s Life Fund distribute $10,000 of redirected tax dollars that war tax resisters have kept out of Congress’s clutches.

The funds were distributed to local charities such as The Central American Refugee Committee, Gender Spectrum, City Slicker Farms, Freedom Archives, and Food Not Bombs.

It was a good opportunity for the local war tax resistance community to come together and spread the word (and some cash) to other local do-gooders. There were a dozen or so charities, with as many tax resisters handing out checks — each shared their story.

The IRS Oversight Board just released its annual report. One section caught my eye:

Integrity and Service are Both Needed to Boost Voluntary Compliance

Our system of tax administration is based on the premise that taxpayers will self-assess their tax obligations, file their taxes honestly, and pay what they owe on their own initiative. For taxpayers to achieve higher levels of tax compliance voluntarily, they must first regard tax compliance as an expected social norm, an obligation they are expected to meet.

Secondly, taxpayers must have the information available to them to make their tax obligations easy to understand and fulfill. The IRS does little to stress the need for integrity in the self-assessment process, yet the Oversight Board’s annual taxpayer attitude survey found strong support for personal integrity as a principal factor in paying taxes honestly. The survey found that 86 percent of respondents cite personal integrity as a principal factor influencing whether they report and pay their taxes honestly.

The IRS needs to find ways to leverage this strong support of voluntary compliance as a critical civic duty. It must remind taxpayers that tax compliance is a “social norm” expected of every taxpayer, much like obeying laws against shoplifting or drunk driving, and that noncompliance with taxes hurts our great nation. Such campaigns can have a long-term effect on public opinion, such as that wages by Mothers Against Drunk Driving to reduce the number of alcohol-related traffic fatalities. In a similar vein, the Motion Picture Association of America created an aggressive campaign that equaled downloading music or movies illegally with stealing.

The Board is particularly concerned that the tax compliance message be reinforced with America’s young people. All members of the tax administration community can help disseminate this message. For example, the National Society of Tax Professionals (NSTP) is receiving high marks for its “Teaching Taxes to High School Students.” This presentation could be an excellent candidate for the IRS and NSTP to partner and create a similar product on the national level.

Jeff Knaebel has another article up at lewrockwell.com. Excerpts:

Self-Realization cannot be achieved in the absence of the purest ethical life. There is no possibility of an ethical life if, by the mere act of earning one’s daily bread, he becomes an accomplice to murder. Thus does the State, by its mere existence, abrogate the ultimate right of the human being.…

…The simplest form of resistance is refusal of taxes. It is also the most effective. All war is tax-and-debt financed. The common man pays in blood and sweat. The parasitic Central Banker and his mouthpiece “Statesman” live well, in air-conditioned suites, enjoying the emoluments of those who are high on the predator food chain.

The fact that refusal of taxes may require a simplification and moderation of lifestyle has the double ethical benefit of helping to save our ecological commons from destruction.