Tax day is here, and with it the annual fifteen minutes of fame for the American war tax resistance movement. Popular Resistance picked up the news about the various actions taking place around the country to protest against taxes for militarism.
Ruth Benn from NWTRCC was on KBOO’s “Old Mole Variety Hour” to talk tax resistance:
And Peter Smith was on WMAY’s “Bishop On Air” show:
There was an article about the Peacemakers in the Daily Intelligencer of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, but the only copy of that paper I’ve been able to locate is missing the opening page of the article. Here is what remains:
73 Refuse To Pay Tax
…ents of four children. Swann is a designer and builder.
Peacemakers is a nation-wide movement based on Gandhian concepts of non-violence. Believing that peace will never come by means of war and war preparations, the group advocates, in addition to income tax refusal, refusal to cooperate with the draft and refusal to work in war industry.
Opposes CD Drill
The executive committee of Peacemakers recently issued a statement calling for non-cooperation with the civil defense drill on , and suggesting that instead of “duck and cover” drills, schools conduct “an alternative program in which the constructive ways individuals can work for peace be presented.”
The Peacemaker group also advocates non-violent resistance in case of invasion or suppression of freedom; wide-spread and complete economic sharing; inner transformation within the individual.
A complete statement of the 73 non-payers released today is as follows:
“War-making has come to be the major activity of the Federal Government. Nowhere is the fact better reflected than in the Federal budget. The staggering tax load placed on the American people is staggering only because of military expenditures, which take four-fifths of each tax dollar. The sharp upward trend of expenditures for high-powered bombs and long-range missiles greatly increases the possibility that mankind will be extinguished.
“We dissent and want our lives to be a counter-friction to stop the machines. As individual we assert with Henry David Thoreau ‘What I have to do is to see that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.’
“Some of us have refused to pay the whole of our taxes, some of us have refused to pay part of them, some are living on incomes intentionally kept too low to be taxable, some have given non-cooperation to collection of taxes for war by filing no tax return.”
And, over 50 years later, that’s still pretty much the lay of the land in American war tax resistance circles.
A United Press dispatch from :
Man Refuses To Pay Tax On Income for 15th Year
Mount Vernon, Iowa (UP) — Walter Gormly, a pacifist, told President Eisenhower today he will refuse for the 15th year to pay federal income taxes in protest to wars, atom bomb tests, and nuclear fallout.
Gormly, 42, Mount Vernon engineer, said he has not willingly paid income taxes because so much money has been spent for wars. The government, however, has collected taxes from him through various legal procedures.
“I do not care to finance the murder of my fellow man nor the possible murder of myself,” Gormly told President Eisenhower in a letter. “So your income tax men won’t receive any tax payment nor statement of income from me.”
“The unmistakable conclusion is that the U.S., England, and the U.S.S.R. have been killing people with their nuclear weapons test just as surely as if they lined them up against a wall and shot them,” Gormly said.
“It is not unusual for governments to kill people, but they are usually angry at the people they kill. The U.S. government doesn’t care who it kills.”
Tax authorities seized a station wagon owned by Gormly in and sold it at a public auction. They also collected $1,000 from him in from a debt that was owed him, he said.
Gormly served a sentence in a Sandstone, Minn., prison for refusing to go to a camp for conscientious objectors during World War Ⅱ.
An Associated Press dispatch from :
Doctor to Lose Scholarship If He Refuses to Pay Tax
Washington (AP) — Professor William C. Davidon of Haverford College, one of the signers of a published statement pledging to withhold payment of federal income taxes in protest against the Viet Nam war, has been warned he may lose a Fulbright scholarship for study abroad if he carries out the plan.
U.S. officials said the Board of Foreign Scholarships, a non-governmental group which selects recipients for scholarships administered through the State Department, had reminded Davidon that he could forfeit the scholarship if he violates the law.
Officials said the board has asked the Internal Revenue Service to let it know if Davidon breaks the law.
Davidon, chairman of Haverford’s physics department, was awarded the $12,000 grant for a study trip to Denmark next year.
