Here is a more extensive version of an article on Caroline Urie’s war tax resistance that I first noted :
Won’t Support Military With Income Tax
Navy Officer’s Widow Pays 65.4 Per Cent; Figures Rest Slated For War Purposes
Yellow Spring, Ohio, (AP) — A white-haired widow of a career naval officer challenged the government’s right to tax her for military expenses.
Mrs. Caroline Urie figured that 34.6 per cent of her tax — due — was earmarked for war.
So, she explained, she wrote a letter to President Truman and the internal revenue department advising she would pay only 65.4 [percent] of the tax.
“If they want to send me to jail because I won’t pay the other 34.6 per cent, that’s all right with me,” she said. “I’m perfectly willing to go to jail. I’ll never pay any more money for war.”
Mrs. Urie, a Quaker, a Pacifist and a social worker,” [sic] worked with Jane Adams at Chicago’s famed Hull house and was director of the school for immigrant children for five years. She wrote Mr. Truman and internal revenue officials:
“As a Christian, I must henceforth refuse to contribute in any way to maintaining the institution of war.”
Besides, she added, the atomic bomb has made war a “final criminal absurdity.”
Mrs. Urie doesn’t want people to get the impression she’s dodging that “war tax.” She mailed 34.6 per cent of her tax to four Pacifist organizations — “every one of them non-profit” — and sent receipts for her contributions with the tax return.
Mrs. Urie, who refused to give her age (“just call me a white-haired widow — a very aged widow at that”), admitted she and her late husband often disagreed on her military views.
“For years I used to send a note along with my federal income tax return protesting expenditures for the military,” she explained. “But my husband and I agreed to tolerate each other’s views on the subject.”
Her husband was a medical officer in the navy “for many, many years.” He was retired before World war Ⅱ, she said, because of injuries suffered in a target practice explosion on a battleship.
She had a son-in-law in the army during World war Ⅱ.
“He doesn’t agree with me either,” she laughed.
Mrs. Urie said she has nothing against paying taxes “for any reasonable constructive purposes — like schools, police protection,” and the like.
“The government won’t lose much in war taxes from me because I have small independent means — and live in a rented house,” she said. “It’s the principle that’s important to me. Obediance to governmental authority can not be unlimited.”
