Not One Red Cent to the I.R.S. Says Katherine Kohrman

A brief note from The Citizen of Auburn, New York, from :

Not One Cent…

While most Americans are thinking about paying their income taxes, Katherine Kohrman of Brattleboro, Vt., is thinking about not paying hers. Ms. Kohrman, an anti-war activist, made news in by refusing to pay income taxes in order to protest military spending. She says she will continue her tax resistance movement in . Ms. Kohrman, 26, complied with a court order to turn over her tax records to the Internal Revenue Service. But she refused to hand over her records, and also refused to pay a $300 fine imposed by a federal judge. The IRS still hasn’t billed Ms. Kohrman for her back taxes. A spokesman said, “The wheels of government grind slowly. Just because it’s taken what may seem to some people to be a long time, I don’t think she should feel safe.”

I haven’t found much else about Kohrman on-line or elsewhere. She’s listed as the author of The Common Ground Dessert Cookbook, and co-signed a letter regretting the policies of new owners of the Common Ground Community Restaurant in Brattleboro. Elsewise, the interwebs is unrevealing, and she doesn’t appear in the index of my war tax resistance books.

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

  • Anthony Bing reflects on his time in Beit Sahour during the tax strike there.
  • Shopkeepers in an Athens suburb sent four policemen to the hospital while defending themselves against a raid by tax officials.
  • Eric Frank Russell’s satyagraha sci-fi story …And Then There Were None is now on-line in a new and improved format.
  • Tom Cordaro remembers Catholic Bishop Walter Sullivan, who supported Cordaro during a dispute with the IRS over his war tax resistance. “I could not believe that this man — who had never personally met me –was willing to stand with me and my parish in this struggle against the U.S. government. Because of Bishop Sullivan I knew that we were not alone and that support for war tax resistance existed in the Church.”
  • James Drummond reviews the course of the rebellion against Thatcher’s poll tax: “[I]t is worth pointing out the significance of this, and what it means for all of us fighting against cuts and austerity today. Firstly, this was a struggle which united the left. Secondly, not only did it unite the left, but it mobilised millions of working class people to take direct action and break the law in their own interests, in open defiance of the Labour Party and trade union leaders. Thirdly, it was a campaign which sank real roots into working class communities. Finally, after years of defeat both before and since, it was a victory for our class. The campaign brought down Thatcher and forced the abolition of the tax.”