Tax Redirectors Daniel Sicken, Ellen Kaye, Bob Bady, and Erik Schickendanz

The Brattleboro Reformer reports on a group of tax resisters — including Daniel Sicken, Ellen Kaye, Bob Bady and Erik Schickendanz — who decided to write their checks to charity instead of to the U.S. Treasury :

In all, $5,000 was given to charities, including to the Windham County Reads program, to a group starting a community garden on Upper Dummerston Road and to the Citizens Awareness Network, a local activist group. ¶ Morningside Shelter received almost $800 from the tax resistors.

“We are opening a new building for homeless pregnant women and those who have just given birth,” said David Mattocks, the executive director of the shelter. “This is a significant contribution to that project.”

Daniel Sicken, an East Dummerston resident and a member of Tax Resisters of Conscience, said, though he pays local and state taxes, he hasn’t paid federal taxes in . He said giving the money instead to charity is much more appropriate.…

“But it’s hard to be a resistor,” said Sicken. “It has a lot of rewards, but also a lot of difficulties.” Sicken said though he has never been prosecuted for his failure to pay federal taxes, he and other resisters have had to learn to live with very little money or within the barter economy — trading goods and services for other goods and services.…

“Not paying taxes has liberated me from consumer society which has improved the quality of my life,” said Ellen Kaye, a 43-year-old Brattleboro resident who said she stopped paying federal taxes after a trip to Nicaragua in .

Kaye said she saw how her tax dollars were being used to kill innocent people and she was disgusted. She said when it came time to file her taxes that year, she became physically ill, thinking about where her money was going.

Her husband, Bob Bady, 53, of Brattleboro, said the last time he paid federal taxes was during the Vietnam war. He said though he was 18 at the time, he refused to serve in the military.

“And if I’m not willing to fight, why would I pay for someone else to fight for me?” asked Bady.

In Washington, D.C., Carol Moore announced that the group there would be redirecting about $3,000 “to peace and humanitarian organizations.”

“My conscience will not allow me to pay for violence and war by the state.” ―Carol Moore

The Rutland Herald profiles some war tax resisters from Vermont:

Shortly before performing the , the Rev. Thaddeus Bennett wrote a letter to the Internal Revenue Service explaining why, once again, he only was paying 51 percent of his federal taxes.

For , Bennett, a Newfane resident and pastor of St. Mary’s in the Mountains Episcopal Church in Wilmington, hasn’t paid the part of his federal income taxes equal to the military portion of the federal government’s budget.…

Bennett started the practice soon after he was ordained in , and said he sees the practice as a natural offspring of his Christian beliefs and his activist nature. He said he finds inspiration from Jesus when he said, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.”…

…Luise, who asked that her last name not be used, said she lives frugally to get by.

“I wanted to do this legitimately, so I changed my life to a point where I don’t make enough money to pay taxes,” she said. “I had to do something because I could not continue supporting that.”

In Oakland, California, the People’s Life Fund donated over $8,500 — most of this just the interest earned on an account that area tax resisters pay into in in lieu of paying their taxes — to an assortment of groups.

Afterwards, members of Northern California War Tax Resistance went to the nearby post office to hold up banners, hand out flyers, and project a slide show of war tax resistance info for the traffic jam of last-minute tax filers. We were joined by some folks from Grandmothers for Peace who had organized their own Tax Day protest, and later by some members of the National Treasury Employees Union who came to the post office fresh from a union meeting to protest the IRS’s plans to use private debt collection agencies to pursue delinquent taxes.

At first it seemed a little awkward to be protesting alongside IRS agents who today were fighting to keep their jobs from being outsourced but tomorrow might be trying to seize our assets. But the ones who had no signs of their own to wave took extra ones from us and, to our delight, we had employees of the U.S. Treasury and their families protesting war taxes right along with us!