War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
In , most of the mentions of war tax resistance in the Friends Journal were brief and retrospective.
The issue noted that Christopher Moore-Backman had lost a federal district court suit in which he had asserted “that the use of his federal income tax payments for military spending substantially burdened his religious exercise in violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”
An obituary notice for Alfred Frederick Andersen in the issue noted that “[h]e refused to pay federal income taxes for most of his adult life, and the family home was sold at auction by the IRS in .”
A review of a book on conscientious objectors of World War Ⅱ mentioned that, among the activities such conscientious objectors took after the war, “Stephen L. Angell, a Quaker CO and a social worker, started his own business during the Vietnam war to avoid paying taxes toward a war he could not morally support.” And an obituary notice for Angell, in the issue said that “[i]n , to avoid paying taxes for the Vietnam War, he resigned from Nassau County Health and Welfare Council and formed a consulting organization that would pay him less than taxable wages.”
There were also some mentions of Robin Harper’s war tax resistance in that issue (I covered these in the Picket Line).
A retrospective on the lives of George & Lillian Willoughby in the issue remembered:
Lillian had always felt a deep calling to refuse to pay income taxes since such a large percentage went to war costs. One day after lunch, George and some students and I [Lynne Shivers] were chatting under the trees. Two IRS agents approached us and announced that they planned to confiscate the Willoughbys’ red Volkswagen Beetle. We were stunned and said little. A few minutes later, Lillian walked briskly toward all of us, carrying a briefcase with papers she needed as a dietary consultant. She opened the car door and got in, saying, “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have to get to work!” And she drove away! Friends bought the car when it was auctioned off and gave it back to the Willoughbys, but the IRS did not use an auction again in the Philadelphia region for the next 30 years. The IRS called it “The Willoughby Principle.”
