Caroline Urie was mentioned in an article I excerpted here . Here is some more information about her resistance. From the Spokane Daily Chronicle:
Widow Refuses to Pay War Tax
Yellow Springs, Ohio, . (AP) — Mrs. Caroline Urie is a pacifist. So she paid only 65.4 per cent of her federal income tax
Mrs. Urie, white-haired widow of a career navy officer, figures the rest of her tax was earmarked for military expenses.
“As a Christian, I must henceforth refuse to contribute in any way to maintaining the institution of war,” she wrote President Truman and the internal revenue department.
Mrs. Urie didn’t keep the 34.6 per cent “war tax.” She sent the money to four pacifist organizations (every one of them non-profit” [sic]) and inclosed her contribution receipts with the tax return.
“If they want to send me to jail because I won’t pay the other 34.6 per cent, that’s all right with me,” she said. “I’m perfectly willing to go to jail. I’ll never pay any more money for war.”
Mrs. Urie describes herself as “a Quaker, a pacifist, a social worker and a white-haired widow — a very aged widow, at that.”
Caroline Urie, reading Satyagraha
Urie was one of the founding members of the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers in , which launched the modern American war tax resistance movement. Her protest fizzled, as the law changed, reducing the tax rate for her tax bracket, so that even after reducing her tax payments by 34.6% she ended up overpaying and getting a refund. But the following year she refined her technique and was at it again:
Widow Defies Government
Yellow Springs, Ohio, — Mrs. Caroline Urie, 75-year-old widow, deducted 32.3 per cent of the first installment of her income tax because she said “war and preparation for war in the atomic era is a crime against nature.” The percentage deducted — the amount she estimated would go for military purposes — will be donated to three non-profit agencies working for peace and abolition of war, she said.
Urie died in .
