From the “Liberation News Service” wire service, dated :
Resist War: Don’t Pay tax
New York (LNS) — For every dollar which the U.S. government expects to spend in Fiscal Year 1971, 64.8% will go to Defense expenditure — 48.4% of that will go for current military costs, including the war in Vietnam. 17% of the total budget will go to Health, Education, and Welfare; 18.2% for other expenditures.
The deadline for paying income taxes is . On that day the War Tax Resisters will publicly submit 1040 forms to the IRS with all or part of their taxes deducted.
The WTR suggests these ways of withholding taxes:
- Refuse to pay the 10% telephone excise tax on telephone service. Deduct the tax from your phone bill and pay the remainder of the bill. Include a letter with your payment to the phone company explaining your actions.
- On the 1040 form, line #17, “Adjustments to income”, declare the percentage that went for war expenditures as an adjustment.
- On the 1040 form, line #22, “Total Credits”, declare the percentage that went for war as a war tax credit.
- Don’t file a return.
- If you claim a sufficient number of dependents on your W-4 form you can reduce the amount of taxes withheld from your salary to zero. This is an illegal act and five people have been arrested, two have been convicted but are appealing. They are charged with fraud but they are saying it is not fraud since they notified the IRS they were going to declare these extra exemptions.
- File the W-4E form with your employer which will enable you to have no federal taxes withheld.
Although there is a penalty for openly refusing to pay federal taxes (Section 7203 of the Internal Revenue Code — a fine of up to $10,000 and up to a year in jail, plus the costs of prosecutions) no war tax resisters have been prosecuted under this law. The only war tax resisters arrested have been those who filed “fraudulent” W-4 forms, refused to file any income tax form, refused to present financial statements to the courts when ordered to do so. There have been prosecutions and convictions based on Section 7203 but none for openly refusing to pay for conscientious reasons, as far as we know.
For further information about the actions or other forms of war tax resistance write to: War Tax Resistance, 339 Lafayette St., New York…
