[Y]ears ago when a notice to garnish wages was received by an employer, the
employer had 30 days to comply. Now it appears that the 30-day notice is sent
directly to the non-taxpayer and the 30 days begins ticking then. Thirty days
later the employer receives the notice if no payment has been made by the
resister. The employer must comply immediately. In other words, there is no
longer a grace period to sort things out once the employer has received the
notice. This means the
IRS
will receive whatever wages have been earned during the pay period when the
employer receives the notice to garnish. The only way this might be stopped
is to file a collection appeal. When the appeal is filed the
IRS is
required to suspend collection during the appeal process.
A brief article on war tax resistance by Anita Katz
appeared in the issue of
Mother Jones. It is mostly the standard boilerplate
war tax resistance article, but in a couple of paragraphs it tries to
guesstimate the size of the movement.
This photo by Lionel Delevigne of war tax resisters Juanita and Wally Nelson accompanied the article
It was opposition to the Vietnam War that first created widespread national
attention for antiwar tax resisters. The number of antiwar income-tax
resisters rose from 275 in 1966 to an estimated 20,000 in
, with telephone tax
resisters during this peak period estimated at between 200,000 and 500,000.
Though figures have since leveled off — there were an estimated 5,000
income-tax resisters in — many in the
movement are hoping that further revelations of the Reagan administration’s
mucking about in Central America will fuel a new round of war-tax resistance.
Says David Croteau at the War Resisters League, “The two fundamental needs
for the government to conduct war are men to serve in the military and cash
for equipment — which comes from taxes.”
