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Tax Strike Tactics

Develop Positive Relationships with Tax Officials

As much as violence and intimidation has featured in struggles between the taxers and the taxed, there are gentler (and perhaps nobler) paths to change. It may sound like a long shot, but has your campaign considered making friends with the tax collector?

Example American War Tax Resisters

The American war tax resistance group “Peacemakers” was eventually successful in winning back Ernest and Marion Bromley’s home, which had been seized by the government for back taxes. In a retrospective, they claimed:

The Peacemakers were resolute that their confrontation with the government would be on their terms.… They put enormous energy into building relationships with IRS [Internal Revenue Service] officials that would allow for honest dialogue. And always, they challenged and responded to the bureaucracy in a highly personal manner.

Dorothy Day wrote of this:

Chuck Matthei had told me the story of his interviews with the head of the Internal Revenue Service, the almost daily dialogue that went on between them, and the frank and “manly” admission, made finally by the IRS chief, that a mistake had been made, that the Peacemakers had Truth on their side. I felt a great sense of joy and thanksgiving, a sense of hope too, that our officials in Washington D.C. could be approached in this way—with dignity and perseverance, with courtesy, with the recognition that we are all, each one of us, whether government official or radical (one who gets to the roots of things), children of God.

In 2000, war tax resister Robin Harper met with an IRS tax auditor and one of the agency’s “frivolous tax coordinators.” He described how it went:

I quickly assured them that an accurate accounting should of course be established, but that in no way could I alter my refusal to deliver my tax dollars into the U.S. military machine. Earlier I had described how my conscientious objection was rooted in our Quaker Peace Testimony and how I had performed two years of civilian alternative service with a self-help housing project during the Korean War.

With his defensive posture evaporating, Mr. Means [the IRS’s “frivolous tax coordinator”] told us that his father fought in the Korean War and came home tormented by post traumatic stress disorder. Thereafter he would have nothing more to do with guns, “because he had seen what guns can do.” That gave my supporter, who had lived through World War Two in Germany, an opening. Drawing a parallel with my war tax refusal, she pointed out how German income taxes funded the governmental atrocities of the Third Reich.…

Near the end I took the opportunity to unfurl the large chart which chronicles my war tax redirection these past forty-one years and to describe how I was first propelled into war tax protest by U.S. nuclear atmospheric bomb testing in Nevada and the Pacific.

After more than three hours (and well past normal lunchtime), the two finally closed the interview with smiles and friendly handshakes. Mr. Means even admitted that his title of “Frivolous Tax Coordinator” was really a substitute for “Tax Protester Coordinator,” an internal administrative category which Congress had abolished in recent Taxpayer Bill of Rights legislation.

Despite their training to be suspicious (all taxpayers are trying to get away with something), IRS folk, like all human beings, can be positively affected by openness, honesty, and sincerity. Transparency can often trump suspicion.

I have learned how we all hunger for caring, person-to-person exchanges. Look how a one hour audit stretched into more than three hours, much of which involved genuine sharing far beyond the scope of the audit!

As our discussion rose above tax details, Mr. Means, the tax protester “sheriff,” was led to cast aside some of his official persona and let his personal feelings and thoughts come through. He also became increasingly interested in discerning what makes war tax refusers tick. I am sure he came to understand that our witness is anything but “frivolous.”

Example Quakers

Quaker Thomas Watson was seized by the American army during the revolution, and condemned “to be stripped and ironed, and on the next afternoon to be publicly hanged” for refusing to use the continental currency that Congress had issued to finance the war. His family was given little hope for him. “You may go home,” one petitioner was told, “and rest assured your uncle will be hanged.”

But the wife of the prisoner had a warm friend in the landlady of the inn at Newtown; and when was woman’s kindness ever invoked for the relief of suffering, or woman’s tact required in vain? She was advised not to apply in person for the release of her husband. The landlady had learned Lord Sterling’s fondness for the creaturely comforts of life; and knew that wine had the effect to soften the severity of his temper. To take advantage of this disposition, she invited him to a sumptuous dinner. He did full justice to the delicacies of the table, and willingly partook of the generous old wine, which had been reserved for special occasions. As the wine warmed the General’s good-nature and disposed him to kindlier feelings, she cautiously introduced the case of the condemned; pitied his condition, cold, and in irons; regarded his treatment as needlessly severe; and at length requested that his fetters might be removed and his clothes restored to him. He could not resist this appeal of his hostess; and a note was sent to the guard in answer to her request.

The good woman continued her entreaties, and still plied the wine; when, at the proper moment, the wife was introduced. She fell on her knees before him, burst into a flood of tears, and told him who she was, and, with all the earnestness, feeling, and eloquence of a loving wife pleading for the one she loved best on earth, begged him to spare her husband’s life. Her entreaties were of a nature hard to be withstood. He remained some time silent; then, raising her to her feet, he said, “Madam, you have conquered. I must relent at the tears and supplications of so noble and so good a woman as you. Your husband is saved.” He immediately wrote a pardon for the prisoner, and ordered his discharge. The happy pair now returned to their homes rejoicing.

But such shows of hospitality do not always end well, as Quaker Henry Paxson learned when he was visited by the tax collector some 300 years ago. He treated the collector to his best food and cider, and the ungrateful collector responded by seizing “the plates he had eaten on, and the tankard he so freely toped out of.”

Example Rebecca Riots

The Rebecca Rioters could be cruel, even deadly, to the keepers of the toll gates they were destroying. But more frequently, they would allow the keepers a few moments to collect their personal belongings and remove them from the building before they demolished it. On some occasions, the encounters were almost cordial:

The gate-keeper begged of them not to destroy the furniture, as it was his own; and his wife and child were in bed, but they might do as they liked with the gate and toll-house. Rebecca went to the door, and ordered her [Rebecca’s] daughters not to touch anything but the gate and the roof of the toll-house, and not to break the ceiling for fear the rain would harm the woman and child in bed. In their hurry, however, to unroof the house, one of them slipped between the rafters, and his foot got through the ceiling. Rebecca expressed her sorrow at the accident, as it might cause inconvenience to the gate-keeper.…

They behaved remarkably well to the gate-keeper, and frequently desired him and his wife not to be alarmed, as they would not injure them in the least; but at parting Rebecca desired him not to exact tolls at that gate any more.

Example British Women’s Suffrage Movement

During the tax resistance campaign for women’s suffrage in the U.K., resisters were better able to use tax auctions as rally and propaganda opportunities thanks to the respectful relationships they had developed with the auctioneers. On one occasion:

…the auctioneer opened the proceedings by declaring himself a convinced Suffragist, which attitude of mind he attributed largely to a constant contact with women householders in his capacity as tax collector.

When Kate Raleigh’s property was seized by the tax collector:

Miss Raleigh naturally made use of the occasion for propaganda purposes, conversing with the tax collector for some time on the subject of Woman Suffrage, and presenting him with Suffrage literature, which he accepted. Before taking his leave he expressed himself as, on the whole, in favour of women’s claims to enfranchisement.

Example Sojourners

Jim Wallis is the president and founder of Sojourners, a Christian ministry and magazine “committed to social justice and peace.” People who worked in the Sojourners project kept their income extremely low and practiced additional forms of income tax resistance. On one occasion, the group got a visit from an IRS agent. Wallis remembers:

I could tell that the IRS agent was nervous by the way he was chain-smoking. At the end of our conversation, he admitted to me that he had been told by the IRS that he was going to be auditing some “radicals” and was warned to “be careful” because “they probably have guns.”

The first thing he said, with fear and agitation, was, “Now, I don’t want to talk about politics. I’m just here to do an audit.”… We assured the IRS agent that we bore no hostility toward him and wanted simply to be helpful in giving him the information he needed. He seemed to relax a little after that.

After Wallis explained the Sojourners’ astonishingly small salaries and other details about the group’s finances…

He looked completely incredulous as he said, “In all my years working for the IRS, I have never run into anything like this. Do you realize that there is absolutely no economic incentive in your life?”

He went on to ask, “Why do you people live this way?” There was my opening. I began to speak about the gospel, the way of Jesus, and the economic sharing of the early church. We were just trying to make those things real in our own experience, I told him.

A glimmer of understanding came into his eyes, and he said with a smile, “Oh, I bet I can guess then why you aren’t paying all your taxes.”

“You’re catching on,” I said, and then explained how I had decided not to pay taxes for war because of my Christian convictions.

“Well, can I ask you a question?” he responded. “What about the Russians? If we laid down our arms, wouldn’t they take us over?”

“That’s a good question,” I replied. “Let’s talk about it.” For a man who didn’t want to talk about politics, he got deeply involved in our conversation about war, peace, and the gospel.

When it was over, he said, “You know, this really makes a lot of sense to me. Now, I’m not ready to refuse to pay my own taxes, you understand, but…” there he was, an agent for the IRS, in a serious conversation about whether he should continue to pay his own taxes for war. It felt like quite an evangelistic conversation to me. Before he left, he told us that we were the nicest people he ever had to audit and wished me luck.

Notes and Citations