The Secret Key to I.R.S. Processing Codes

A few more interesting bits and pieces that flew past my eyeballs in recent weeks:


The Chicago Daily News Service sent out a wire report on Joan Baez that touched on her tax resistance. Here’s an excerpt from the version that made it to the Knickerbocker News of Albany, New York, on :

Another of Miss Baez’ means of protest against the Vietnam war is her refusal to pay the percentage of her income tax she feels would be used for armaments. “I pay 28 per cent of what they’re asking for now, and they collect the rest by liens and attaching concert fees and so on. Some people say what’s the point of it since the government gets it in the end anyway? I know they get it, plus fines, but it costs them money to get it so it evens out along the line.

“And now there are at least two groups organizing to spread this kind of protest, the War Tax Refusal, people who make the government take the money from their incomes so they don’t have to pay it. And the Taxpayers Against War, who pay the tax and plan soon to sue the government to regain that amount spent for whatever their consciences do not agree with.

“Even if nothing comes of this, it does raise a huge question in the minds of some people who might never have thought about how their money was being used. A Saigonese monk visited the Institute [for the Study of Non-Violence] one day and he said, ‘Many people in my country have heard of the woman in the United States who would not volunteer her money to drop bombs on our people’ and that’s more than anyone could ask for as results go.”