War Tax Resisters Made a Splash on “Tax Day”

and tax resisters made a splash, including:

  • Matthew Hoh announced “I Will No Longer Pay Taxes for War”. Excerpts:

    [M]y annual voluntary forfeiture of money to my government pays for violence around the globe, at astounding levels, and I am not able to provide any more excuses or rationalizations that paying without protest, that being complicit in funding war without resistance, is not contradictory to my faith and to my conscience. Quite simply put, I can no longer ignore the basic, yet just, wisdom and truth found in the war tax resisters’ dictum: “If you work for peace, stop paying for war.”

    As I have come to accept that I can no longer justify providing money to my government to pay for the bombs and bullets our forces use to kill millions abroad, or contribute to the funds that supply and resupply the arsenals of our allies, such as Egypt, Israel and Saudi Arabia, as they kill others and repress their own people, my choice to willfully not pay taxes has crystallized. It has been aided, in great part, by the testimonies of those who have practiced war tax resistance, in some cases, for several decades, and who by their courage and dedication to laws of love and peace have risked the authority of the federal government to follow what is right. I am also indebted to peers like Rory Fanning and Logan Mehl-Laturi and old friends, like Count Leo Tolstoy, who, by articulating their convictions, have helped not just to educate me, but to embolden me.

  • Sam Koplinka-Loehr writes: “This Tax Day, a 23-Year-Old Refuses to Pay for War”. Excerpt:

    This week, I am saying to the U.S. government: No more war with my tax dollars. I am refusing to pay the $593 I owe in taxes, and have instead donated this money to important community projects including a youth-led farm, an environmental justice organization, and two community art projects.

  • Marta Rusek, at NewsWorks, profiles war tax resister Susan Lee Barton.
  • Paula Rogge contributed a column to The Cap Times urging readers to “put tax dollars to work preventing war.” She writes: “Over the last 34 years I have filed my tax returns yearly, but redirected my federal income taxes to organizations that meet basic human needs and promote nonviolent conflict resolution.”
  • War tax resister Bill Ramsey was the guest on WMNF’s Radioactivity call-in show:

A United Press dispatch from :

An Unpaid Bill

Pair Refuse To Pay Tax For Military Use

Menlo Park (UP) — Roy C. Kepler and his wife, Patricia, refused to pay their federal income tax because they object to the government’s military spending.

The Keplers, who operate a book store here, sent their return properly made out to the collector of Internal Revenue in San Francisco. But instead of enclosing a check, they sent a letter.

The letter stated their opposition to the nation’s $34 billion military budget and development of the H-bomb.

“This policy of deterrence through mutual terror and the threat of massive retaliation is, in plain words, preparation for mass killing on the one hand and suicide on the other,” they said.

Kepler said he and his wife belong to a group known as the Tax Refusal Committee. He said it was founded years ago by Rev. Ernest R. Bromley, Sharonville, Ohio, whose name appeared on a mimeographed statement attached to the Keplers’ letter. The statement bore the names of 29 persons, including the Keplers, who comprise the committee.

Harold Hawkins, district director of Internal Revenue, said the affair will be handled “in a routine manner.” He said the local office would send a written request for remittance. If this is ignored, tax liens will probably be filed against the Keplers.

The Keplers turned up again in a San Mateo Times article the following year ():

Menlo Couple Resist U.S. Tax

Menlo Park — Roy C. Kepler, local book store owner, has again informed the federal government that he doesn’t intend to pay his income tax as long as the country continues to create and test nuclear weapons.

Replying to a notice that his income taxes are unpaid and overdue, Kepler states in a letter to the district director of internal revenue that “my wife and I… are determined not to support any government in the preparation of genocidal weapons which can destroy a whole city by blast and fire, and then kill millions of others for thousands of miles around through radioactive fallout…”

The Keplers first came to gain publicity on their stand a year ago when they refused to pay their income taxes.

Unperturbed internal revenue officials at that time merely attached a portion of the Keplers’ bank account to pay the taxes and penalties. They have indicated they will follow the same procedure this year.

In his letter to the district director, Kepler states, “One significant change has come about since our initial refusal .”

“The American people,” he claims, “are more disturbed than ever before about the creation and testing of nuclear weapons of mass murder; public opinion here and throughout the world is increasingly demanding an end to such madness…”

A United Press International dispatch from :

Six Refuse to Pay Tax on War Making Grounds in State

Philadelphia (UPI) — A perennial refusal to pay taxes on the grounds the money goes for war purposes bobbed up again as the midnight deadline for income tax returns neared.

The Peacemakers, described as a nation-wide movement based on Gandhian concepts of non-violence, announced 73 of its members signed declarations of non-payment of taxes. Sixteen were from the Philadelphia area.

The signers included David Gale (3509 Hamilton St.) Philadelphia, a member of the crew of the Golden Rule, the 30-foot pacifist ketch which attempted to sail into the U.S. nuclear testing zone in the Pacific last year.

Rev. Maurice McCrackin, a Presbyterian minister, and Rev. Theodore Olson, a Baptist minister from suburban Fallsington, also were listed as signers of the non-payment pact.

McCrackin is at an Allenwood, Pa., federal camp serving the last weeks of a six month term for refusal to pay federal income taxes. Olson was released from the county jail at Cheyenne, Wyo., after serving four months for his attempt to impede construction of the first U.S. international missile base.

The Peacemakers is the group which called for non-cooperation in a civil defense drill scheduled for .

In announcing the non-payment declaration, the group said “war-making has come to be the major activity of the federal government.”

“The staggering tax load placed on the American people is staggering only because of military expenditures which take four-fifths of the tax dollar,” the declaration said.

“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 machine.”