Peacemakers Vow Gandhian Tax Resistance to End War
From the
New York Times:
“Peacemakers” Convene
Group Organized to Fight Draft With “Gandhian Methods”
Chicago, — The Peacemakers, organized a year ago in Chicago to apply “Gandhian
methods” to resist militarism and conscription, opened its first annual
conference here .
Attended by 200 delegates from about fifteen states, the first sessions of
the meeting were devoted to
reports from committees and speeches by four young men who explained their
reasons for refusing to register for the draft. A.J. Muste of New York,
secretary of the group’s national committee, presided.
In a press conference, the
Rev. Ernest Bromley of
Wilmington, Ohio, chairman of the organization’s tax refusal committee,
said that on forty-three persons
from various parts of the country “concertedly refused to pay all or part of
their income taxes on the ground that such funds were being devoted to
preparation for atomic and biological warfare.”
Support for military runs counter to pacifist ideals
Military Tax Resistance of Lane County is dedicated to the philosophy and use
of nonviolence. MTRLC is one of many regional nonviolent-activist
organizations in the United States comprised of faith-based pacifists who are
deeply troubled by our nation’s enormous military budget.
The war-tax resistance movement in the United States includes people of all
faiths who object to the use of military force as a method of conflict
resolution. Our spiritual beliefs are violated when we are coerced to
contribute financially to the military budget through the Internal Revenue
Service federal income tax withholdings system. As pacifists we do not own
or use weapons and would rather not contribute to the manufacture,
distribution and use of weapons.
When our tax contributions are used to subsidize weapons research as well as
military and
CIA
operations we are acting in complicity with the commission of crimes against
peace, war crimes and/or crimes against humanity as set forth in Nuremberg
Principle Ⅳ: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his
government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under
International Law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”
We believe that there can be no justification for killing another human being
and that war and preparations for war are basically evil. We do not believe
that Americans benefit from maintaining a strong defense. On the contrary, we
suffer from maintaining a strong defense. In
the National Council of Churches, a body representing 32 Protestant, Orthodox
and Anglican church bodies (including the United Methodist Church, Church of
the Brethren, Friends United Meeting and American Baptist Church) adopted a
statement on U.S.
spending priorities.
NCC
said, “When government priorities serve military interest at the expense of
family life… the moral vision is discarded.”
The major spiritual belief systems existing in the world today — Buddhism,
Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism — all contain a core essence of
nonviolence, forgiveness and understanding. For example, Buddhism teaches to
cause no harm and to know no conflict. All Buddhists are expected to exercise
self-restraint and kindness toward all living creatures. The founder of
Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama, became a master of nonviolent conflict
resolution. He stated, “I have stopped forever doing violence to beings.”
However, throughout history many people have creatively misinterpreted their
own spiritual doctrines in order to justify and rationalize warring against
their neighbors.
As a child in Catholic school, I learned basic Judeo-Christian principles
that later became the foundation for my pacifism as an adult. In Catechism
class a great deal of emphasis was placed on the Ten Commandments. The most
profound for me was, “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13). I was taught that
to kill another human being was a mortal sin. I was also taught the Golden
Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7:12). I
was taught to love my enemies and to turn the other cheek if struck. The
priests at my school encouraged the students to protest against
U.S. military
offensives abroad.
Though all Catholics are not necessarily in agreement with regard to Christ’s
teachings of nonviolence, there are certainly many Christian sects practicing
in the U.S. today
whose members oppose participation in, or support of, the armed forces and
the judicial arms of the state including the Amish, Church of the Brethren,
Hutterian Brethren, Mennonite Church and Quakers (Society of Friends).
In “War Tax Concerns — A Quaker History” Edwin Bronner states, “Friends
(Quakers) have historically refused to engage in military activities and have
sought to achieve change through reconciliation rather than the use of force.
They have believed it wrong for one human being to take the life of another,
either in war or through civil processes by means of capital punishment.
Quakers refer to the teaching of Jesus, especially in the Sermon on the
Mount, as the basis for their position, in addition to their belief that the
Inner Light guides them in the same path.”
The Rabbi Jesus offered teachings in pacifism in his Sermon on the Mount,
“Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the Earth… Blessed are the
peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”
It should be noted that one of the three charges brought against the Rabbi
Jesus which led to a sentence of crucifixion, was “forbidding the payment of
taxes to the emperor” (also translated as “forbidding to pay tribute to
Caesar”) (Luke 23:2).
In closing I would like to quote from an English translation of the ancient
Tao Te Ching (translation by Frank MacHovec) wherein the master Lao-tse
states, “War is Evil… Weapons are tools of destruction avoided by followers
of Tao… Weapons are the tools of destruction not used by people of dignity…
Whenever a great army is formed, hunger and evil follow… I would rather be
invaded than be the invader; I would rather retreat one foot than advance one
inch.”
“Military Tax Resistance of Lane County” is now, I believe, organized under
the name of “Taxes for Peace Not War” and operates out of Eugene, Oregon.
Police horses won’t stop them. Ranks of cops in riot gear won’t stop them
either. Even rush hour traffic on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue won’t stop
Americans determined to end the war in Iraq. The tax man, however, gives them
pause.
“It’s surprising to me that people are more willing to risk arrest than refuse to pay their taxes.
The fear of the IRS is tremendous in this country,” says Ed Hedemann, author of the 144-page War Tax Resistance: A Guide to Withholding Your Support From the Military.
Hedemann has not paid any federal income tax and does not plan to start .
the Bush administration hit
up Congress for $75 billion in taxpayer money to cover immediate war costs
(some $30 billion of which the Pentagon has already spent). With unrest over
this war evoking comparisons to the Vietnam era, when war tax resistance was
at its peak, Hedemann hopes to multiply the “several thousand” compatriots he
believes he has nationwide. Already, dozens of how-to sites have cropped up
on the Internet, and lefty discussion groups have begun to embrace the idea.
While jail time and bad credit are real possibilities for war tax resisters,
Hedemann says such consequences are far rarer than most people imagine and
are easily avoided. There is a degree of tax resistance for every level of
risk tolerance, he says. The tamest form is to pay all owed taxes but include
a letter demanding that the money not be spent on the military. Another mild
mode is to underpay by just a dollar, or not to pay the 3 percent federal
excise tax on telephone bills, a tax which in the past rose with war costs
and thereby became an object of protest.
The next level up entails not paying a percentage of one’s taxes equivalent
to the portion of federal funds used for military purposes, a figure whose
estimates vary widely — from 20 percent to 80 percent — depending on the
source and the definition of “military.” (Even diehards like Hedemann pay
safely nonmilitary taxes, like Social Security and state and local levies.)
But the ultimate form of tax resistance is not to pay any federal income tax
at all and then keep the government from collecting it anyway. After all, tax
resistance is supposed to transcend symbolism and deplete the dollars and
cents that purchase the very tanks and missiles of the war machine. Rather
than profit from their protest, resisters are expected to funnel their unpaid
taxes into socially beneficial causes. In its highest form, Hedemann admits,
war tax resistance “takes hard work.”
It requires something of a holistic lifestyle commitment. The successful war
tax resister does not have seizable assets, such as a bank account, home, or
car. He works for an employer who agrees not to withhold federal taxes from
his paycheck. Or he earns so little that he is exempt from being taxed.
Hedemann, 58, says he rents an apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and
describes himself as a freelancer for nonprofits. “I do have a bank account,”
he says, “but it’s not in my name.”
U.S. Treasury
Department spokesperson Tara Bradshaw says, “Every American should pay their
fair share of taxes.” The government does not track nonpayers “that way,”
meaning by cause, she says, so it is difficult to tell how well the
resisters’ message gets across. (Hedemann discovered through a Freedom of
Information Act request, however, that the
IRS had
kept his letters.)
Potential consequences naturally include fines, typically a percentage of the
unpaid taxes, plus interest. Hedemann says that anyone who files a return
form but refuses to pay — the strongest form of protest — should expect at
least a written notice from the feds. He recalls a few instances when
IRS
agents, seemingly unfamiliar with the First Amendment, fined people who paid
all their taxes but also wrote in with political complaints. “That’s always
been reversed, of course,” he says.
The IRS
can place a lien on property, tarnishing a person’s credit. (Hedemann says he
has “a lousy credit rating,” although he managed to obtain “regular credit
cards” with some effort.) In , there has been only one case each of house seizure and car
seizure, he says. “Usually, these kinds of things happen in isolated areas,”
he says, such as suburban Massachusetts, where war tax resisters stick out.
Never, to his recollection, in New York City.
Then there are the criminal penalties. Tax evasion, “willful failure to pay,”
and fraud can land a person in federal court, according to the
IRS.
In , 30 people have gone
to jail, typically for one to three months, on resistance-related charges,
Hedemann says. Some were convicted of fraud, usually claiming too many
dependents. The bulk of convictions resulted from people refusing to divulge
financial information to
IRS
investigators. Hedemann himself was prosecuted for that
. “It was a rather intensive
instance,” he recalls. A particularly industrious agent charged him with
contempt for not disclosing his assets. “The judge, a Bush One appointee,
ruled in my favor, based on my right not to incriminate myself,” he says.
“You really have to go out of your way to go to jail. The
IRS
gives you all kinds of opportunities,” he says, to pay up and avoid
repercussions, as the agency’s own collection rule book notes. The risks are
worthwhile, Hedemann insists, because “tax resistance has a direct impact on
the government.”
Federal budget experts are quick to disagree with him. Robert McIntyre heads
Citizens for Tax Justice, a Washington,
D.C.-based
nonprofit known to lean liberal. Nevertheless, he puts war tax resistance
“somewhere between silly and evil.” Silly, because if resistance were
actually to rise to a felt level, the government would simply borrow the
money it could not get from taxes to keep the war going. And evil, because
resisters are “putting their share of the government on other people.” (A
bill to create a peace tax fund — a federally approved way to pay taxes but
keep them away from the military — was introduced in the spring of
and supported by a number of Congress
members, including current House minority leader Nancy Pelosi. It has not
been reintroduced this year.)
If war tax resisters intend to deplete the funding merely for this particular
war, they should know that its cost is relatively low and easily supported by
other means, according to Steven Kosiak, director of the nonpartisan Center
for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. (Moreover, Kosiak doubts that “it’s
even intellectually possible” to deduce what percentage of the war payout
derives from personal income tax revenue.) The Korean War cost 14 percent of
the U.S. gross
domestic product, he says, and the Vietnam War cost 19 percent. Current
estimates for the war in Iraq amount to 4 percent or less.
The entire military budget for — minus the cost of the war in Iraq — comes in it at about
$390 billion. Hedemann admits that the occasional resister “may not bring the
military to a grinding halt.” Yet if the hundreds of thousands of recent
anti-war protesters were to decide, “ ‘I’ve had enough of marching, I want to
do something more,’ ” says Hedemann, “it would be something the government
couldn’t ignore.”
