Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
United States →
Vietnam War, ~1965–75 →
Angela O’Gorman & Robert Calvert
From the edition of The Village Voice:
War Tax Resistance
by Mary Breasted
A number of spring harbingers in Manhattan are much more reliable than the weather on Groundhog Day (which was sunny this year, by the way).
We have stickball players and nodding junkies out in droves to tell us the fair season is coming.
We have some big gathering or other in Central Park, and, like as not, a report in the social columns that Jackie O. was recently seen taking the air on horseback.
And now, just as seasonal, we have the re-awakening of the Peace Movement.
It began last week with a news conference in Washington Square Methodist Church that was as passionless as it was repetitive.
The news release announcing the event had said: “Leading Intellectuals to Explain Why they Refuse to Pay War Taxes.”
And there they all were, seated at a long row of tables Thursday morning, squinting into TV lights, Paul Goodman, Grace Paley, David McReynolds, Dwight MacDonald, familiar faces offering familiar moral aphorisms about mankind’s higher laws superseding the laws of the nations.
And although they were as outspokenly critical of the war as ever they had been in demonstrations and news conferences past, they seemed muted even as they redeclared themselves, as if this time they felt secretly defeated right at the start.
Seven “leading intellectuals” in all, they contributed a total of $325 to an account called the People’s Life Fund or to various beneficiaries of the fund (the Welfare Rights Organization, the Women’s Bail Fund, the United Farmworkers Organizing Committee and Operation Move-In).
The purpose of the conference, aside from giving them a public forum for personal testimonials, was to launch an intensified campaign for the War Tax Resistance in these last two weeks before we all file our returns.
Robert Calvert, the national director of War Tax Resistance, tried to put some zing into the subdued conference by stressing the inconvenience his group would cause the Internal Revenue Service.
“It usually takes the government six months to a year to move and get the money,” he said, adding happily, “I’ve been resisting my telephone tax for a year.
The government has not got a penny from me.”
But Paul Goodman, the most openly cynical of the group, countered that hopeful note by observing, “It would be unrealistic for us to think that this is an economic burden on the government.”
But he said he did hope the action would have some influence upon the opinions of legislators.
When the conference was over, Goodman walked off saying cheerily, “Well, it’s nice to give money to the Women’s Bail Fund.
I always like to see people get out of jail.”
Founded in , the War Tax Resistance now has more than 170 tax resistance centers in various parts of the country.
And in Manhattan, where they’ve been picketing the IRS office, they’ve attracted one clandestine ally, a young man who works for IRS but who opposes the war.
Although he won’t give his name, he did tell me he planned to help the War Tax Resistance people figure out other ways to keep the government from collecting taxes.
If you’re interested in war protest through tax withholding, Calvert’s group suggests that you deduct between $10 and $50 from your federal taxes this year and send the difference to the People’s Life Fund, War Tax Resistance, 339 Lafayette Street, New York 10012 (telephone 477‒2970 or 777‒5560).
The government will eventually collect the money you withhold and charge you a penalty fee for your action, but according to the IRS employee who is counseling War Tax Resistance, “the expense to collect the tax that is not being paid is far greater than the additional penalty imposed for the delinquent action.”
That’s why the Tax Resistance people suggest you withhold such a small sum.
The money will go to the beneficiaries of the People’s Life Fund on , when the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice will lead a demonstration to Wall Street to protest both the war and unemployment.
What happened between the time when Peacemakers was leading the war tax resistance charge and , when the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee was founded?
There was another group, simply called “National War Tax Resistance,” that took the reins during the Vietnam War.
was, as the CNVA Bulletin declared, “The Year of Vietnam.”
Picketing and sit-downs across the country marked the announcement of the first US bombing of North Vietnam on .
These continued throughout the month and much effort was expended gathering signatures for a new appeal, the Declaration of Conscience, circulated by radical pacifist groups, urging civil disobedience.
The Peacemakers group in Cincinnati organized a “No Tax for War in Vietnam Committee” calling for tax resistance.
In a separate group — War Tax Resistance, coordinated by Bob Calvert — was established and at the time included some 200 local tax resistance centers across the country.
Nonpayment of war taxes, practiced by Quakers and others, disappeared as a pacifist testimony soon after the Civil War and Thoreau’s famous stand against the U.S. foray in Mexico.
It first reappeared in World War Ⅱ when a few widely scattered individuals refused to pay federal taxes on the grounds that there was no way to prevent a significant part of their money from being used for military purposes.
One resister, Ernest Bromley, was prosecuted and imprisoned for his refusal.
Many others began to inform the Internal Revenue Service that payment violated their principles.
The enactment during World War Ⅱ of a measure which required employers to withhold taxes from their employees caused particular difficulties for pacifists and led to the formation of Peacemakers in .
A Peacemaker committee promoted tax refusal and provided research, literature, action suggestions, and publicity for those in the tax resistance movement.
Although many hundreds of people were refusing to pay income taxes during , the government prosecuted and imprisoned only six: James Otsuka of Indiana, Maurice McCrackin of Ohio, Eroseanna Robinson of Illinois, Walter Gormly of Iowa, Arthur Evans of Colorado, and Neil Haworth of Connecticut.
These imprisonments and the seizure of a few cars and houses by the IRS, served to highlight the tax refusal testimony and establish it as a major nonviolent principle and tactic.
Tax resistance, like other forms of opposition to the military, increased dramatically during the Vietnam War.
In the federal government levied an additional tax on every private telephone, and in a rare moment of candor, admitted that the money would help subsidize the war in Indochina.
Peacemakers, the War Resisters League, and other nonviolent groups urged refusal of this tax and in the following years countless thousands heeded their call.
Under the leadership of Bob and Angie Calvert, War Tax Resistance was formed in as a separate organization to investigate all aspects and ramifications of conscientious tax refusal.
During the war there were over 200 local war tax resistance centers, as well as a number of “alternative life funds” which rechanneled refused tax money back into the local community for constructive purposes.
Many of these continued after the end of the war.
The tactic of claiming enough dependents so that no income tax would be withheld became more widespread as the Vietnam war continued.
Often the tax refuser would make clear the moral grounds for the protest by listing, for example, “all the Vietnamese” as dependents.
Refusing to pay for war by claiming excessive exemptions brought particularly strong response from the government.
A number of people were prosecuted and imprisoned: Jim Shea, Karl Meyer, William Himmelbauer, Mark Riley, Ellis Rece, Carole Nelson, John Leininger, and Martha Tranquilli (a 64-year-old grandmother and nurse).
The tax resistance movement continued after the war and grew to include both pacifists and non-pacifists who could no longer in conscience support the military priorities of the government.
As more and more tax money was directed toward the [Reagan era] military buildup, many activists revived interest in war tax resistance.
Protests were organized each year, and individual resisters tried a variety of means to deny the government money for war.
In , demonstrations were held in Dallas, Atlanta, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other cities and 24 people were arrested at IRS offices in New York City.
The following year, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee was formed by the Center on Law and Pacifism, Conscience and Military Tax Campaign, WRL, Peacemakers and eighty local groups.
featured the largest show of war tax resistance actions in , including Ralph Dull, an Ohio farmer and tax resister , who drove a truckload of grain to the IRS office as payment for his taxes.
The IRS instituted a “frivolous returns” penalty to discourage the filing of returns with any but the requested information, and some resisters began an insurance fund, pooling their resources to pay fines and interest charges levied against fellow tax resisters.
I’ve many times mentioned Ammon Hennacy’s tax resistance hereabouts, but have only less-frequently commented on his more-well-known Catholic Worker comrade Dorothy Day’s stance.
The site catholicworker.org now has a search engine with which I have been able to recover some of her writings on the subject, which I’ll excerpt here today.
“Render to Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.” Yes, and we have heard too much of that.
Let E.I. Watkin, founder of the Pax movement in England, author of The Catholic Center, Men and Tendencies, and The Bow in the Clouds, answer as he did in his pamphlet, “The Crime of Conscription.”
Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s. This is a favorite text with the hosts of Christian clerics, Protestant and Catholic, who both in the present and in the past, have abused and still abuse religion to enslave men’s consciences to the unjust bondages of a usurping state.
They omit to notice the context.
Our Lord has just asked for a coin, and having obtained the admission that it bear’s Caesar’s image and superscription, bids his questioners render to Caesar what is his.
This is obviously the coin payable in taxation which bears Caesar’s stamp.
The body and soul of man, however, do not bear Caesar’s image.
Whose image they do bear we are told in Holy Scripture.
It is the image of God.
Obviously, therefore, as we are to render to Caesar what bears his image, namely, money, we are to render to God, not to Caesar, what bears not Caesar’s stamp, but God’s; namely, human beings.
Thus the same text which justifies, indeed, imposes the obligation of paying taxes, denies any right of the state to take a toll of man.
All forced labor, for example, is implicitly declared unlawful.
And still more does the principle here enunciated forbid military conscription.
Whether a war be just or unjust, no government may without grave injustice compel me — bearing as I do the divine image which marks me as God’s bondman, but a freeman in respect to my fellows — to slay and be slain in its quarrel unless I freely consent.
If a government unlawfully outsteps its prerogative and imposes conscription, any one who, from whatever motive, refuses to serve, is whether he intend it or not, fighting for human dignity and freedom, as also is anyone who abets and supports his resistance.
But now in these days it would be desirable to go even further, as did Thoreau, to refuse even the taxes which were to be used to pay for the means to kill our fellow man.
In many cases, however, it is all but impossible to separate the tax from the cost of the commodity needed to maintain life.
We believe that social security legislation, now balled as a great victory for the poor and for the worker, is a great defeat for Christianity.
It is an acceptance of the Idea of force and compulsion.
[The people] pay taxes, and it is the city and the state and the federal government that is robbing them and pilfering them, too, They are taxed for every bite they eat, every shoddy rag they put on.
They are taxed on their jobs, there are deductions for this and that, there are the war bonds, eighteen dollars for a twenty-five dollar war bond, paid on the Installment plan.
And they are not only being taxed, but they are being seduced.
Their virtue is being drained from them.
They are made into war profiteers, they are forced into the position of usurers.
The whole nation, every man woman and child, is forced to become a profiteer — hideous word — in this war.
If you cry aloud for land and home and tools and the good natural life for the poor without which a good supernatural life is impossible, then you are either an escapist and an inhabitant of an ivory tower, or you are a Communist in disguise trying to do away with property.
And you are a communist also if you cry out for peace and against increased armaments — against the making of the hydrogen and atom bombs and the paying of federal taxes for the making of those bombs.
We know, who picketed before the tax offices up on 45th street, because we heard these jibes as we walked to and fro with our signs.
We will have more to write about taxes later.
We believe in paying our local taxes but not federal.
Maybe this is quibbling, but the benefits of hospitals, fire department, street cleaning and health department, etc. make us firm in our decision to always pay our local taxes though we will not pay income tax.
I can scarcely list all the people Ammon [Hennacy] introduced me to, all the friends he has made through his constant protest against war and taxes for war, and his distribution of the Catholic Worker.
But I can give a little glimpse of Ammon’s living quarters, in his little three room bungalow on Lin Orme’s place some five miles out of town [Phoenix, Arizona].
Ammon likes to call our Lord the Celestial Bulldozer to indicate that ones way is smoothed for one, the rough ways made plain and the crooked straight.
He arrived in Phoenix broke, he said, as he came further south out of the dairy region to the farming section of the country where he could work by the day and not by the month and so avoid the withholding tax.
He slept all night on an anarchist’s floor (one of the readers of the CW) and got up at daylight to go to the slave market, as the corner is named in every town in every state, Calif., Texas, Florida, New Mexico and Arizona, where immigrant workers are employed.
Some times there are as many as 200 trucks, sometimes only 25. They go as far as seventy miles away for the day’s work.
Mexican trucks take only Mexicans.
He got on the second truck, owned by the Arena brothers, a corporation which owns land in California, Colorado, and Arizona, and specializes in lettuce, melons, cabbage, celery.
This was , the year the withholding tax began.
At the end of his day’s work he asked if there was a shack on the place where he could sleep, and a fellow worker told him of one down the road and he took his sleeping bag and camped out there for the night.
He stayed there for some months and as it was on land rented by Mr. Orme to the company, he became acquainted with that old gentleman who later invited him to occupy the vacant shack on his own land.
There is one room and two porches, rather than three rooms, really, and before Ammon lived there, twelve Mexicans had camped out there.
I sat on the porch one afternoon with Ammon and drank strong black coffee, brewed on a little kitchen stove, stuffed with mesquite which burned fragrantly while we talked.
How does property fit in, people ask.
It was Eric Gill who said that property is proper to man.
And St. Thomas Aquinas said that a certain amount of goods is necessary to lead a good life.
The recent popes wrote at length about justice rather than charity, that should be sought for the worker.
Unions are still fighting for wages and hours, and it is a futile fight with the price of living going up steadily.
They are fighting for partial gains and every strike means sacrifice to make them, and still the situation in the long run is not bettered.
There may be talk of better standards of living, every worker with his car, and owning his own home, but still this comfort depends on a wage, a boss, on War.
Our whole modern economy is based on preparation for war and that is one of the great modern arguments for poverty.
If the comfort one has gained has resulted in the death of thousands in Korea and other parts of the world, then that comfort will be have to be atoned for. the argument now is that there is no civilian population, that all are involved in the war (misnamed defense) effort.
If you work in a textile mill making cloth, or in a factory making dungarees or blankets, it is still tied up with war.
If one raises food or irrigates to raise food, one may be feeding troops or liberating others to serve as troops.
If you ride a bus you are paying taxes.
Whatever you buy is taxed so you are supporting the state in the war which is “the health of the state.”
The argument may go this way, but we still can choose what seems to us the most honorable occupations, which have to do with human needs.
We can choose the kind of work most necessary to do, and if possible where there is no withholding tax for war.
Ammon Hennacy in working by the day, at hard farm labor, has not paid income tax for years.
One can so cut down one’s standard of living that no income tax is required; families with many children pay no income tax.
One can protest in many ways this contribution to the atom and hydrogen bomb.
If one owns property the government then can take a lien on it.
If one has money in the bank, the government can confiscate it.
So truly such protest as this calls for the most profound poverty and a voluntary doing without property.
How obey the laws of a state when they run counter to man’s conscience?
“Thou shalt not kill,” Divine law states.
“A new precept I give unto you that you love your brother as I have loved you.”
St. Peter disobeyed the law of men and stated that he had to obey God rather than man.
Wars today involve total destruction, obliteration bombing, killing of the innocent, the stockpiling of atom and hydrogen bombs.
When one is drafted for such war, when one registers for the draft for such a war, when one pays income tax, eighty per cent of which goes to support such war, or works where armaments are made, one is participating in this war.
We are all involved in war these days.
War means hatred and fear.
Love casts out fear.
St. Augustine in his City of God says that God never intended man to dominate his fellows.
He was to dominate the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, what crawled upon the earth, but men were not to dominate each other.
He preferred shepherds to kings.
It was man himself who insisted on having a worldly king though he was warned what would happen to him.
God allowed the prophets to anoint the kings and once men had accepted their kings they were supposed to show them respect, to obey the authority they had set up.
To obey, that is, in all that did not go against their conscience.
St. Peter was ordered by lawful authority not to preach in the name of Jesus, and he said he had to obey God rather than man, and he left prison to go out again to the market place and preach the Gospel.
Over and over again, men had to disobey lawful authority to follow the voice of their conscience.
This obedience to God and disobedience to the State has over and over again happened through history.
It is time again to cry out against our “leaders,” to question whether or not, since it is not for us to say that they are evil men, they are sane men.
It is all very well to say we must go to the source of all strength, to drink at the living fountain of Christ, but can we go from that fount of Love to a factory where nerve gas and incendiary bombs are manufactured?
When we have talked of a general strike it is of such work and of such evil that we are thinking; when we talk of non-payment of taxes it is of the money which is going to Indo-China in the form of these incendiary bombs and the planes to drop them that we are thinking.
It is not thus that we can love God and our brother; it is not in this way that we can love our enemy.
When it is said that we disturb people too much by the words pacifism and anarchism, I can only think that people need to be disturbed, that their consciences need to be aroused, that they do indeed need to look into their work, and study new techniques of love and poverty and suffering for each other.
Of course the remedies are drastic, but then too the evil is a terrible one and we are all involved, we are all guilty, and most certainly we are all going to suffer.
The fact that we have “the faith,” that we go to the sacraments, is not enough.
“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” with napalm, nerve gas, our hydrogen bomb…
Each one of us must make our decisions as to what he should do, each one must examine his conscience and beg God for strength.
Should one register for the draft?
Should one accept conscientious objector status in the army or out of it, taking advantage of the exceptions allowed, but accepting the fact of the draft?
Should one pay tax which supports this gigantic program?
I realize how difficult this is to decide.
If one is unmarried and strong physically, it is easier to make a decision to do only day labor or work without pay.
But there are many whose mental and physical strength is not equal to this decision and there is a withholding tax taken from even the smallest salary.
Sometimes one can only make a gesture of protest.
It is not for any one to judge his fellow man on how far he can go in resisting participation in preparation for war.
In the very works of mercy which we are performing, we at the Catholic Worker are being aided by those who earn what they do only because they pay income tax for war.
Oh yes, the editors of The Catholic Worker know only too well how far we too are involved in the city of this world.
Perhaps Bob Ludlow, who left us much against our will, felt that he was being more honest in permitting a withholding tax to be taken from his meager wage as hospital attendant that working for nothing for the Catholic Worker.
Who knows the heart of another?
The temptation is always there to go out on one’s own, to walk the lone path of a St. Francis rather than the community way of a St. Benedict.
[Ammon Hennacy] has had to abandon his life at hard labor and to replace that discipline of work he is fasting Fridays; during our recent retreat he fasted, and again in August for nine days he will picket and fast in reparation for Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the cruel weapons of destruction which we have made.
All men are responsible, but Ammon by not paying income tax, and by penance, is doing reparation.
And the other trouble?
It was Federal income taxes and investigations for Ammon Hennacy, Charlie McCormick, Carol Perry and me.
Charlie has had no income for all the years he is with The Catholic Worker, but the rest of us could acknowledge having earned money on which we did not pay taxes, and which we refuse to pay because eighty per cent of the money so gathered goes for wars past and present.
The others were treated with great courtesy, but one of the revenue agents made a coldly insulting remark to me based on my past, which was entirely uncalled for.
But perhaps he was only stupid so I acted as though I did not hear it.
I would like to urge upon the bishops the idea of the non-payment of taxes by Catholic parents for school taxes, when they are sending their children to Catholic schools and so are paying double for their education.
Yes, we must set ourselves with all the force we possess, against war, and the making of instruments of war, and our means are prayer and fasting, and the non-payment of federal income tax which goes for war.
The message of The Catholic Worker is that simple one for all the rank and file, for the masses, that we have free will, we can make our choice, that our personal responsibility which we exercise is what matters.
Ammon [Hennacy], in his non-payment of taxes for war, and his civil disobedience, is bringing that message to countless thousands of people.
When we got home from our little tour of the neighborhood and I had explored the view from the eleventh floor, Ammon came for supper and brought us up to date on his journeyings as well as on the news of our own workers in Chicago.
He had no sooner arrived in town on Saturday when he was called on to picket in front of the courthouse for Roseanna Robinson.
They are keeping up a vigil night and day, people joining for a stint of three hours at a time.
I certainly hope to join them sometime these next few days.
Roseanna is a young colored woman who had refused to pay any income tax 85 per cent of which goes for war, or to file any returns.
She had been given an indeterminate sentence and she is now for two weeks on hunger strike.
I suppose they will forcibly feed her.
The newspapers are paying little head to this, so it is necessary to have the picket line, and Karl Meyer has gotten out a leaflet which is signed by The Catholic Worker, 164 West Oak street and the War Resisters League which takes in all those who are not Catholic who wish to participate but might hesitate if it were only under Catholic leadership.
There is much to be done in these small Indian schools throughout the country [the United States South-West], and a peace army could be at work there right now, without waiting to be drafted.
There would be no pay besides a living, and so no bother about income tax, and so no contributing to war in this way.
I could not help but think of Don Milani’s statement in his defense against the charges made against him of advocating resistance to conscription for war.
He said that even those who cooked for troops contributed to war.
How involved we all are, what with the hidden taxes we pay for war, the high standard of living all of us enjoy, even when we refuse to pay income tax, so much of which goes for war, and when we build prisons for draft refusers.
Every summer for a Peacemakers training program has been held at our Tivoli farm for the last two or three weeks of August.
The old mansion and the Peter Maurin house are filled with guests, and campers come and set up their tents on the lawn facing the river.
The organizer of the Peacemakers’ school is Wally Nelson, who has been in the workhouse in Cincinnati for the past two weeks, fasting.
He and several others were arrested during a vigil for DeCourcy Squire, an 18 yr. old Antioch student who had been hospitalized after fasting since her arrest and subsequent sentence of 9 mo. for participating in a peace demonstration.
(DeCourcy has since been released.)
A psychiatric examination was ordered for Wally when he refused to co-operate with his arrest and trial.
Found by court psychiatrists to be “sane,” he was sentenced for “loitering” to ten days in the workhouse, $25 and costs.
Again refusing to co-operate with legalized injustice, he was dragged from the police van by his legs, an action that caused his wife Juanita to follow him, cradling his head in her hands.
When they arrived at Wally’s cell, Nita bent over to kiss him, was arrested for “disorderly conduct” and fined $25 and costs.
This she refused to pay, and was ordered to the workhouse.
Detailed stories of these arrests are given in the February 10th issue of the Peacemaker, (10208 Sylvan Avenue, (Gano) Cincinnati, Ohio 45241).
I hope that many of our readers will subscribe to the Peacemaker, since news of the conscientious objectors who are in prison and much other war-resistance news can be obtained there.
Peacemakers have led in direct action for many years.
Wally and Juanita have both refused to pay income tax for many years, and it is of them particularly I wish to write, with the most heartfelt sympathy for their suffering and the greatest admiration for their dedication.
It is their vocation to realize and to lead others to realize the horror of the times through which we are passing.
Wally has explained that his fasting during the jail sentences he has undergone was the result not of willful refusal but of a total inability to swallow food while imprisoned.
Simone Weil, the French woman whose brilliant writings on man and the state, work and war, were widely published after her death, suffered during the second world war in the same way.
She was literally unable to swallow enough food to keep her alive, in the face of world starvation.
In the stories of the saints, one reads of such sensitivity, such penances undergone, such fastings endured and they are little understood by the secular world.
I am convinced that this vocation, this calling, to give oneself to one’s brother, in loving communion, in loving understanding of the heinous crimes that are being committed today was at the root of Roger La Porte’s immolation in front of the United Nations .
It is as though such men said, “We will suffer with you, since we have no way of stopping the bombing, the burning, the napalm, the defoliation, the destruction of homes and an entire countryside.
There is no act of ours extreme enough, no protest strong enough, to deal with this horror.”
Wally Nelson was in prison for thirty-three months during World War Two and fasted for a hundred and eight days (with forced feeding by tube) as a protest against racial segregation of prisoners.
He had had time to think out his position while in Civilian Public Service camp, as forced labor camps which were set up for conscientious objectors were called.
These very camps were a concession to pacifists, who had been imprisoned and brutally treated during World War One.
But Wally decided to walk out and did so and was arrested and jailed.
His example and that of other absolutists led to further concessions.
In this present undeclared war in Vietnam, to which ten thousand more men were shipped off yesterday, the conscientious objector position is recognized, and paid employment is offered in home hospitals as “alternative service.”
To accept this is still to submit to the draft, hence the continued protests against war, and the drafting of youth to wage this hideous struggle.
[To Hennacy,] Obedience, of course, was a bad word.
Authority was a bad word.
In vain I pointed out to him that when the retired army major for whom he worked in Arizona told him to do a particular job, he did it, and he did it as he was told to.
He admired the army officer because he knew farming.
And he cooperated with Ammon in paying him by the day and thus evading the federal income tax which the tax man was trying to collect from Ammon.
I visited Art Harvey of South Ackworth, New Hampshire who has a mail order book shop handling a great number of books by and about Gandhi.
Art and Ammon Hennacy served six month terms in Sandstone Prison in Minnesota for trespassing on a missile base some years ago.
He carries on a practical application of Karl Meyer’s tax refusal (see article in this issue) by having teams of workers in orchards where they prune trees, harvest apples and later blueberries and work seven months of the year.
They work and live in a style which frees them from the payment of taxes for war.
Perhaps about a hundred are engaged in this way of life, which results usually in some settling in communities of the moshavim variety, each having some small acreage and a house built by themselves.
Considering the New England climate, no small achievement!
It certainly means an emphasis on the ascetic, on sacrifice.
The other young man who visited Russia was Karl Meyer, who at present is serving his sentence of a two-year term (and thousand dollar fine) at Sandstone Federal Prison, for obstructing the income tax system by refusal to pay taxes for war.
He had made the San Francisco-to-Moscow walk some years before, joining the march at Chicago.
The walk ended at Moscow University, where the students, though not agreeing with the American visitors, demanded that the time of their talks be extended.
He also distributed leaflets in Red Square!
The Catholic Worker has received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service stating that we owe them $296,359 in fines, penalties, and unpaid income tax for .
As the matter stands right now, there might be a legal battle with delays and postponements which may remind us of Dickens’ Bleak House.
Or, since we will not set up a defense committee to campaign for funds, it may terminate swiftly in the confiscation of our property and our bank account (never very large).
Our farm at Tivoli and the First Street house could be put up for sale by government agents and our C.W. family evicted.
One of the most costly protests against war, in terms of long-enduring personal sacrifice, is to refuse to pay federal income taxes which go for war.
The late Ammon Hennacy, one of our editors, was a prime example of this.
He earned his living at agricultural labor, always living on a poverty level so as not to be subject to taxes, though he filed returns.
Another of our editors, Karl Meyer, recently spent ten months in jail for what the I.R.S. called fraudulent claims of exemption for dependents.
He ran the C.W. House of Hospitality in Chicago for many years, working to earn the money to support the house and his wife and children.
Erosanna Robinson, a social worker in Chicago, refused to file returns and was sentenced to a year in prison.
While in prison she fasted and was forcibly fed.
It will be seen that tax refusal is a serious protest.
Wars will cease when we refuse to pay for them (to adapt a slogan of the War Resisters International).
The C.W. has never paid salaries.
Everyone gets board, room, and clothes (tuition, recreation included, as the C.W. is in a way a school of living).
So we do not need to pay federal income taxes.
Of course, there are hidden taxes we all pay.
Nothing is ever clear-cut or well defined.
We protest in any way we can, according to our responsibilities and temperaments.
(I remember Ammon, a most consistent, brave, and responsible person, saying to one young man, “For the love of the Lord, get a job and quit worrying about taxes.
You need to learn how to earn your own living.
That is most important for you.”)
We have to accept with humility the fact that we cannot share the destitution of those around us, and that our protests are incomplete.
Perhaps the most complete protest is to be in jail, to accept jail, never to give bail or defend ourselves.
In the fifties, Ammon, Charles McCormack (our business manager at the C.W.), and I were summoned to the offices of the I.R.S. in New York to answer questions (under oath) as to our finances.
I remember I was asked what happened to the royalties from my books, money from speaking engagements, etc. I could only report that such monies received were deposited in the C.W. account.
As for clothes, we wore what came in; my sister was generous to me — shoes, for instance.
Our refusal to apply for exemption status in our practice of the Works of Mercy is part of our protest against war and the present social “order” which brings on wars today.
In the issue of The Catholic Worker I wrote of the crisis The Catholic Worker found itself in when we received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service stating that we owe them $296,359 in fines and penalties and unpaid income tax for .
This was a very impressive bill, and we wondered what it would be if they started figuring out what they thought we owed them !
The New York Times, in a story signed by Max Seigel, with a four column head and a picture of a few of us at lunch in our headquarters at 36 East First Street, brought our situation to the attention of a vaster group of readers, and followed up the story with an editorial [“Imagination, Please” — excerpt: “Surely the IRS must have genuine frauds to investigate.
Surely there must be some worthwhile work this agency could be doing instead of obstructing acts of corporal mercy for the poor.”].
The New York evening Post also editorialized on our situation.
The National Catholic Reporter and the Commonweal editors also registered their protest and other papers followed suit.
Letters come in daily from our friends, reassuring, comforting, indignant at the government, a few of them indignant at us, that we cause them so much worry.
We certainly are grateful and must apologize that we cannot keep up with the mail and get them all answered.
There is not any real news for them at the moment, nor will be until our edition of The Catholic Worker.
I will have to appear before a Federal Judge on to explain why the CW refuses to pay taxes, or to “structure itself” so as to be exempt from taxes.
We are afraid of that word “structure.”
We refuse to become a “corporation.”
We repeat — we do not intend to “incorporate” the Catholic Worker movement.
We intend to continue our emphasis on personal responsibility, an emphasis which we were taught from the beginning by Peter Maurin who used to quote Emmanuel Mounier’s Personalist Manifesto, and his Personal and Communitarian Revolution, Peter was our teacher, and being a Frenchman, a peasant, he emphasized decentralization, manual labor, voluntary poverty.
Voluntary poverty meant that everyone at the CW worked without salary, and contributions came from them, and from our readers, which kept the work going.
Rumblings first came from the Internal Revenue service after many on the CW staff, together with other peace groups, demonstrated against war in the Fifties and Sixties and were jailed for Civil Disobedience.
Writing about jails and courtrooms resulted in much publicity.
But it was Ammon Hennacy and Karl Meyer who wrote most consistently on Tax Refusal, and its importance.
“Wars will cease when men refuse to pay for them.”
…And while you are at it, write to TAX Talk, published by War Tax Resistance, 339 Lafayette St., N.Y., N.Y. 10012 which contains letters from all over the country from individual tax resisters, telling what is happening to them.
Stimulating and invigorating.
Good make up and good format.
First Rate.
While I write, Arthur J. Lacey comes in to hand me my mail and it contains a notice from one of our two lawyers.
“Please be advised that I have been contacted by the Conference Section of the Internal Revenue Service and we have arranged for the hearing on .”
Good news first!
On we received absolution from the U.S. Government in relation to all our tax troubles.
In the Catholic Worker this year we told of the notice we had received — that we owed the government nearly $300,000 in back income taxes which included penalties for “late filing and negligence.”
The examining officer of the Manhattan District had arrived at these figures through the reports we had obediently made to Albany on our appeals for funds, which we send out once or twice a year.
We accept this compromise with our local state because we are decentralists, personalists, anarchists (in addition to being pacifists).
When we first thought about Federal income taxes, most of which go for war or “defense,” we simplistically considered ourselves exempt because we had no income; no salaries are paid at the Catholic Worker, nor ever have been .
I myself have been questioned because of my writings, and lecture fees which were not really fees but offerings made to the work which covered all expenses of travelling and supported the work besides.
A crowd of people living together as we do, in houses of hospitality, has to give something of an account to each other as to how well we are living up to our profession of voluntary poverty.
We are always bound to have healthy guilt feelings about that, and keep trying to do better.
Certainly a number of us do work on the side to provide what we need for books or rent on cheap apartments in the neighborhood, since our house at 36 East First Street is always so crowded.
But with the growing tax resistance throughout the United States, the government has become concerned.
Telephone calls and official visits made us realize that trouble was impending.
And we have been having it and have reported on it in both the and issues of our paper.
Now we are happy to report the outcome.
In a conference in with William T. Hunter, litigation attorney from the Department of Justice, one of the Assistant Attorney Generals of the United States, we reached a verbal settlement couched in more human and satisfactory terms than the notice we later received.
“They” were willing to recognize our undoubtedly religious convictions in our conflict with the state, and were going to drop any proceedings against us.
They had examined and looked into back issues of the Catholic Worker, and they had noted the support we had from the press (the New York Times news story and the editorials of the Times and the New York Post), and had come to this conclusion that ours was a religious conviction.
They had come to the conclusion also that it was not necessary that the Federal Government seek for any other kind of a “conviction” against us.
The conference took place in a law office in Manhattan, 9:30 of a Monday morning.
John Coster, our lawyer, Mr. Hunter and Ed Forand, Walter Kerell, Patrick Jordan, Ruth Collins and I attended.
There were no hostilities expressed.
As peacemakers we must have love and respect for each individual we come in contact with.
Our struggle is with principalities and powers, not with Church or State.
We cannot ever be too complacent about our own uncompromising positions because we know that in our own way we too make compromises.
(For instance, in having a second-class mailing privilege from the government we accept a subsidy, just as Mr. Eastland does in Mississippi!
[This refers to Senator James Eastland, who was a beneficiary of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in federal cotton subsidies, overseen by a Senate committee he sat on.])
It was Jesus who said that the worst enemies were those of our own household, and we are all part of this country, citizens of the United States and share in its guilt.
Yes, we would survive, I thought to myself, even if the paper were eventually suppressed and we had to turn to leafleting, as we are doing now each Monday against the I.B.M. Wall-Street offices, trying to reach the consciences of all those participating by their daily work in the hideous and cowardly war we are waging in Vietnam.
I must not forget the beautiful young ghinkgo tree which we purchased from the city last year, and which we planted in honor of Carmen Mathews, herself a great lover of the countryside (and of drama).
She rescued us from a foreclosure when a first mortgage fell due and so has become part of this house on First Street, and of the bits of greenery back and front of it.
The fact that prisoners on Riker’s Island so I have been told, grow these trees which brighten our streets makes that tree especially dear to me.
When I pass it, I make the sign of the cross on its bark, to encourage it to grow fast and strong.
Maybe we can plant another this year in gratitude to God for saving us from the hands of the tax gatherers.
Fr. McNabb, the French Dominican, said that when Jesus left his apostles, “Peter could go back to his nets, but Matthew could not go back to his tax gatherings.”
Letter from the Internal Revenue Service:
From: District Director, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, PO Box 3100, Church St. Station, New York, N.Y., 10008
To: The Catholic Worker Movement, 36 East 1st Street, New York, N.Y. 10003
Gentlemen:
After examining your financial records and reviewing your activities for the above years, we find that you are not required to file annual returns for the years shown, and no further action is necessary regarding the proposals in our letter of .
…of our own conflict with the IRS.
We live in what we can only regard as a temporary truce.
We have not applied for or received tax exemption.
The letter we received (and published) from the N.Y. State Offices of the IRS stated:
After examining your financial records and reviewing your activities for the above years (), we find that you are not required to file annual returns for the years shown, and no further action is necessary regarding the proposals in our letter of .
Thank you for your cooperation.
Sincerely yours, District Director Internal Revenue Service
The Washington official representative who met with us conveyed to us the respect they held for our religious principles and assured us that the presented bill for almost $300,000 could be ignored.
The matter would be dropped, it was indicated (but, “for the present” was the qualifying clause in my own mind).
Mr. Nixon’s first statement that he would attack the problem of “permissiveness” was a warning note.
The jailing of newspaper reporters, the Ellsberg trial — in fact, any criticisms of government policies or actions was going to meet with repressive measures.
The tax refusal movement all over the country grows.
The conflict between State and people is coming out into the open here in the United States.
The Totalitarian State is not just Germany (Hitler), Italy (Mussolini) and the USSR (Stalin), but is here and now with the “all encroaching State” as our Catholic bishops once called it, involving China and ourselves, as well as Russia.
We assure our readers that we try to get rid of our gifts as fast as they are given to us.
But the threat still hangs over us of prosecution for not paying income tax.
We are not tax-exempt.
On principle we refuse to pay income tax, because so great a portion goes for wars, preparation for wars (defense, it is termed), and providing other countries with billion of dollars to buy our instruments of war and material and plants to make their own.
There is a sizable movement truly the foundation of the peace movement which is based on tax refusal.
(Contact Robert Calvert, War Tax Resistance, 912 E. 31st St., Kansas City, Mo. 64109.)
Our refusal goes deep.
Our motivation is fundamentally religious.
We are told by Jesus Christ to practice the works of mercy, not the works of war.
And we do not see why it is necessary to ask the government for permission to practice the works of mercy which are the opposite of the works of war.
To ask that permission to obey Christ by applying for exemption, a costly and lengthy process, is against our religious principles.
It is an interference of the state which we must call attention to again and again.
A father who educates a young man or woman other than a blood relative is taxed for his generosity.
A poor family who takes in another poor family (as many of them do in time of unemployment or crisis), cannot count that as tax deductible.
Of course the poor suffer from the withholding tax which is taken from their weekly pay.
To understand their rights, they must plough through booklets and forms put out by the government (which I am sure I could not manage to do) before they are able to collect money at the end of the year which is owing to them due to some change of circumstance.
To get the advice of the Internal Revenue Department means standing in lines, paying excessive fares by bus or subway, with generally little redress of their grievances.
(A cheering note for us, with our very large family, which seems to increase day after day, is that when confronted by the government forces not long ago, Washington representatives from the Department of Justice were willing to concede that we were not making profits out of the poor, that we were motivated by religious principles, and that they would so notify the New York offices of the Internal Revenue Dept. which had handed us a awful bill for taxes due, along with penalties and fines, over a space of four or five years.
The New York office then sent us a brief notice concluding that our income did not obligate us to file returns.)
To talk economics to the rich and Jesus to the anarchists gathered in convention [a conference at New York’s Hunter College] these two days (and have to write this column) is a job.
Besides, I did not “talk Jesus” to the anarchists.
There was no time to answer the one great disagreement which was in their minds — how can you reconcile your Faith in the monolithic, authoritarian Church which seems so far from Jesus who “had no place to lay his head,” and who said “sell what you have and give to the poor,” — with your anarchism?
Because I have been behind bars in police stations, houses of detention, jails and prison farms, whatsoever they are called, eleven times, and have refused to pay Federal income taxes and have never voted, they accept me as an anarchist.
And I in turn, can see Christ in them even though they deny Him, because they are giving themselves to working for a better social order for the wretched of the earth.
Proceeded to the Kansas City, Mo. House of Hospitality and War Tax Resistors’ Center in adjoining buildings and run by Bob and Angela Calvert who are gardening every inch of the land in their front and back yards.
It is much to the edification of the city block families and we hope their imitation.
Spent a Sunday afternoon with Karl Meyer and Jean and their three beautiful children, and all happy in the life of voluntary poverty where he receives an income low enough to be untaxable and so will not anticipate any more jail terms. His work is with the retarded in sheltered workshops.
Some of the best all around accounts of this ferment which is going on, among the young especially, is in The Peacemaker, 1255 Paddock Hills Ave., Cincinnati, Ohio 45229. This small packed newspaper deals extensively and specifically in works for peace, listing all those imprisoned for conscience — refusing conscription; one valiant woman is confined on Terminal Island for refusal to pay taxes (Martha Tranquilli, Terminal Island, San Pedro, Ca. 90731).
All those activities which we Catholics call “works of mercy,” are also performed by many Protestant, Quaker, and other groups in the country.
I remember a young woman who came to help us years ago, who, after her first, early enthusiasm had worn away, used to sigh wearily and say — “What’s it all about?”
I am sure many of our friends and readers also pose, more seriously, the same question.
For instance, what are Ernest and Marion Bromley all about?
Why is this frail, elderly man in jail right now for “disorderly conduct,” that is, for distributing leaflets about the nefarious workings of the Internal Revenue Service and their ways of penalizing people for advocating tax refusal.
Remember, it is the Federal taxes paid by each of us that supply arms that are keeping wars going, I cannot go into the important discussion of Tax Refusal now.
(Subscribe for The Peacemaker, 1225 Paddock Hills Ave., Cincinnati, Ohio 45229 or write to War Tax Resistance, 339 Lafayette St., New York, N.Y. 10012.)
What I want to bring out is how a pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions.
And each one of our thoughts, words and deeds are like that.
Going to jail, as Ernest Bromley has done, short though his stay may be, causes a ripple of conscience among us all.
And of remembrance too.
Did they search him and list every item contained in every pocket?
Did they strip him and search every nook and cranny of his body, as they did the young women arrested during the protests against air raids drills (psychological warfare) in the 50’s?
As they are doing now to Martin Sostre in Dannemora prison even after every visit from friends or lawyers.
What sadistic impulse is it that causes guards to continue these searches?
Ernest Bromley is sharing, in his (we hope) brief jail encounter, the sufferings of the world.
And we hope, like the apostles, he rejoices in having been accounted “worthy to suffer.”
The Peacemaker, every issue, has a list of those imprisoned for conscientious objection to war.
I was happy to see that Martha Tranquilli was due for release .
The Peacemakers discussed, among other subjects like voluntary poverty, life styles, etc., the kind of demonstrations to show our determination not to pay income tax which goes for building up monstrous implements of war.
Wally Nelson and his wife Juanita were there, both of whom are familiar with arrests and jailings.
I got acquainted with them years ago when Koinonia, in Central Georgia, was literally under fire from the small-towners all around them.
Next issue, I will try to write more about federal income tax which is providing the weapons for war — why we pay local taxes and not the federal income tax.
We recognize the seriousness of this and the risks involved for families.
The Bromley case is an example.
Their house was sold from under them in Cincinnati but they have not yet been evicted.
The price paid was excessively above its value.
It looks like the government is trying to make an example of them.
(It was not bought by friends and given back to them — an erroneous rumor; the Bromleys would not have put up with a connived sale which would mean still more money going to the government for war.)
This is a good and historic case, involving as it does, simple, plain and powerless (?) people.
I’d like to call special attention to a story in this issue of the paper — it is Peggy Scherer’s story, on the front page, of the Peacemaker victory [the IRS surrendered in their attempt to seize and sell Ernest and Marion Bromley’s home].
(It is the completed story of the news box which appeared on page three of the last issue.)
It is a story of gentle persistence, the power of Truth — faith in Truth (remembering that Christ is our Truth).
He is the Way, the Truth, the Life.
Chuck Matthei had told me the story of his interviews with the head of the Internal Revenue Service, the almost daily dialogue that went on between them, and the frank and “manly” admission, made finally by the IRS chief, that a mistake had been made, that the Peacemakers had Truth on their side.
I felt a great sense of joy and thanksgiving, a sense of hope too, that our officials in Washington D.C. could be approached in this way — with dignity and perseverance, with courtesy, with the recognition that we are all, each one of us, whether government official or radical (one who gets to the roots of things), children of God.
We do believe that we are all brothers and sisters.
We believe, too, that we can only show our love for God by our love for our brothers and sisters.
So we share our joy with you, our readers, and hope we all have a sense of renewed strength and energy to continue our opposition to all violence, to all wars.
We point out that one way not to have to pay income tax, so much of which goes to the military, into stockpiling, into sales of weapons to other countries, is to seek more ways of living a life of voluntary poverty, to follow our Lord Jesus and his loveable servant St. Francis.
[Speaking of Pentecostal Christian groups on the Mexican border:] I could tell of other works these groups have done, but there is no space here.
I only wish that the cause of peace, the rejection of war and service in the armed forces, and refusal to pay income tax could be part of their way of life.
Jesus told us to love our enemies and St. Francis’ followers made a rejection of feudal service to the war lords of the time part of their religious commitment.
In the Catholic Worker organization itself was targeted by the IRS for failure to pay income tax.
Eventually the IRS backed down in the face of public ridicule and Catholic Worker resistance.
Some of the Catholic Worker articles about this were written by Dorothy Day and I’ve already excerpted them in an earlier Picket Line post focusing on her writings.
The issue published a couple of reader reactions to the kerfluffle:
Dear Dorothy,
Ho, you are on the right track.
I just read your tax exemption article in the issue.
You are absolutely correct.
I don’t know how you will do it.
But you owe to all those you help, not the money represented, but the faith and steadfast purpose for which you stand — the guiding light.
I pray for you.
I hope some way you can make it — somehow.
Love, Dick Mayer 409 West 11th St. Newton, Kansas 67114
Dear Friends at CW,
I just read the 39th Anniversary issue and am tremendously excited by the article: “If the Present Is Different…”
We are in a bit of a “predicament,” between seizure of our car and auction by the IRS.
The IRS has adjourned the open auction and declared an auction for sealed bids; peace people around here are ready to rise to that challenge also.
We are starting a peace action center in this area.
We’d be interested in literature lists of books and pamphlets written by CW people.
We read that the CW has to appear in court to justify its tax refusal and its refusal to ask for exemption — as if mercy had to ask permission!
We are in a three-family intentional communlty of Mennonite background.
War tax resistance is one of our pillars and we’ve not yet found our way out of tbe maze of incorporation into some status that gives us the kind of freedom we seek.
But our existence together, our resistance and service, are dally victories.
So we keep on.
Peace and Joy be with you, David Jansen of the Bridge
During the Vietnam War, resistance to the federal excise tax on telephone service was very popular in the anti-war movement, including the campus peace movement.
Here are some newspaper articles from that period.
Ithacans who have been refusing to pay their federal telephone tax in protesting the Vietnam war have so far escaped tax free.
“A lot of people are doing this across the country,” said Natalie P. Kent,
who suggested withholding the tax at a meeting of the recently formed
Tompkins County Peace Association.
The federal tax, which is listed on the itemized bill, was originally three per cent and scheduled to be abolished.
In it was raised to 10 per cent, specifically to help finance the war in Vietnam.
Protesters deduct either seven or ten percent taxes from their payments and
enclose a letter to the telephone company explaining why they are not paying
the full bill.
The telephone company acts only as a billing agency in collecting the federal tax.
When an incomplete payment accompanied by an explanatory letter is received, the company reports it to the Internal Revenue Service, said D.J. Martin, manager of the New York Telephone Company.
Since the bills are confidential, no estimate of how many people are refusing
to pay is available. The protest action is not coordinated by any
organization.
Prof. Carol L. Marks, English, said that the tax withholding, like any protest, is “more for the private satisfaction of the people involved,” because the significance lies in the mind of the person who’s doing it.” [sic]
She subtracts the tax from her bill every month out of habit, and does not
expect the government to take action to collect the taxes because “its not
worth it.”
Information on such tax refusal is sent to regional Internal Revenue Service offices in Buffalo.
“Sooner or later they (the protesters) will be contacted to collect the
tax,” said an Internal Revenue spokesman.
Washington (UPI) — Americans looking for a cheap and safe way to protest the war in Vietnam are refusing to pay the federal excise tax on their telephone bills, the Internal Revenue service said today.
But the IRS usually collects the money after all.
Last week it issued new rules aimed at speeding up the collection process by cutting out time consuming hearings on war protest cases.
So far, nobody has gone to jail over the telephone tax protests, and IRS officials doubt if they ever will because, as one spokesman explained:
“These people generally only do it once or twice and then start paying again, so the money held back is never great enough to warrant criminal action.”
The bargain-basement method of dissent has been operating around the nation for the past 15 months, according to the IRS.
But the number of citizens involved is less than 4,000 once-a-month protesters.
The approach is made to order for the timid soul who wants to clear his
conscience over a burning issue but doesn’t want any risk involved.
It’s cheap: The 10 per cent tax on a monthly phone bill is rarely more than a dollar or two, so there aren’t any fines or costly bail bonds to pay.
It’s safe: No getting trampled in crowds.
And best of all, the telephone service continues without interruption as long as the rest of the bill is paid.
The IRS explained that the phone tax is levied against the customer but is collected by the company.
So, as long as the service charge is paid, the phone stays connected.
All the company does is notify the IRS when a customer pays all but the tax on a bill.
Persons who refuse to pay the federal excise tax on telephone service during the Moratorium demonstrations could have the tax deducted from their earnings or bank account, according to the Utica office of the Internal Revenue Service.
In addition: they could be fined up to $10,000 or imprisoned for up to five years or both.
The Utica Moratorium Committee plans to hand out leaflets in front of the New York Telephone Company’s office building at 270 Genesee Street.
The leaflets will urge telephone customers not to pay the federal excise tax which is included in their telephone bills, the Moratorium Committee claims that the excise tax is used to further “the war machine” and says persons refusing to pay cannot be prosecuted.
A spokesman for the IRS yesterday quoted Section 6331 of the IRS Code, entitled Levy and Distraint.
“If any person liable to pay any tax neglects or refuses to pay the same within 10 days after notice and demand, it shall be lawful for the Secretary of the Treasury or his delegate to collect such tax and such further sum as should be sufficient to cover the expenses of the levy by a levy upon all property (except such property as is exempt under Section 6334) belonging to such person.”
Punishment for non-payment is covered in Section 7201 of the same code:
“Any person who willfully attempts, in any manner to evade this title or payment shall, in addition to other penalties provided by law, be guilty of a felony and upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years or both, together with the costs of prosecution.”
The Moratorium Committee decided at its meeting to picket the Internal Revenue Service in addition to passing out leaflets in front of the Telephone Company.
The Cornell Vietnam Mobilization Committee has stated that it “endorses tax resistance as a protest to the continuing war in Vietnam and urges people to refuse to pay the federal telephone excise tax which was levied expressly and retained to help finance the Vietnam War.”
According to the committee’s statement, “The Vietnam Moratorium Committee, The New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, Clergy and Laymen Concerned,” and several other groups “are working together with the War Tax Resistance to build the largest tax movement possible.”
The War Tax Resisters will hold workshops on tax resistance during the America is Hard to Find Weekend at 10, 11 and noon Saturday and at 11 a.m.
Sunday in the Willard Straight Kimball Room, said the statement.
Father Daniel Berrigan, S.J. and 45 other members of the Cornell University staff and their wives have “declared their intention to refuse payment of the federal excise tax on their telephone bills as a gesture of protest against our government’s policy in Vietnam.”
“To refuse to pay the federal excise tax one merely deducts the amount from the telephone bill and sends a note with his bill explaining the action,” according to the Cornell Mobilization statement.
The telephone company has made assurances that phone service will not be interrupted, the statement said.
The Internal Revenue Service sends a bill after three months to a person refusing to pay the tax.
After one more contact, “the IRS attempts to seek out a bank account or salary check from which they can deduct the unpaid amount plus 6 per cent interest, said the committee.
One who “willfully fails to pay” the phone tax could be charged with a misdemeanor under the Internal Revenue Code.
A group of about 70 young and old people joined in a quiet lunch-hour march to New England Telephone and Telegraph’s Boston offices to protest the use of phone taxes to support the war.
At the phone company, they paid their
phone bills-minus the tax. The tax money, which totaled $112, was presented
to Marces Muncis, a New England representative of the United Farm Workers.
The Farm Workers will use the money to help support a clinic in Delanos,
California.
The money was collected in a helmet which symbolized the 101 Americans who died in Southeast Asia during the past week.
The marchers obtained this figure-which represents the highest toll in five-and-a-half months-from the Record American on the way to New England Tel and Tel.
The Roxbury War Tax Scholarship Fund and the Boston Tax Resistance organized
the “tax march.” The Roxbury group, which is about three years old, now has
about $25,500 in unpaid income and phone taxes in its accounts. The principle
is held in escrow, but the interest is donated regularly to community
projects. In , the Roxbury fund gave
$354 to the Storefront Learning Center in Boston.
Boston Tax Resistance, a newer group, has collected about $2500 in unpaid phone taxes.
The Internal Revenue Service now collects about one-and-a-half billion
dollars annually through the phone tax, which was instituted to provide funds
for the war.
“It seems like a small thing when it’s tacked on your phone bill, but this [the $142] shows that it really adds up,” a woman from Boston Tax Resistance said at the phone company rally .
A group of peace activists is calling on Harvard students and Faculty to risk imprisonment and fines by not paying the Federal excise tax on long distance telephone calls in protest against the Indochina war.
Calling itself TaxPax, the group is circulating a petition which urges
members of the Harvard community to refuse to pay the tax, which the group
calls “born in war, and regressive in effect.”
The Harvard Indochina Teach-in Committee is also endorsing the tax strike, and two Faculty members — Everett I. Mendelsohn, professor of the History of Science, and Herbert C. Kelman, Richard Clarke Cabot professor of Social Ethics — will be circulating similar petitions among the Faculty.
“This tax on phone calls raises money directly for the war,” James Henry
, one of the organizers of TaxPax, said
. “It was raised from three to ten
per cent in at the peak of the escalation
of the war, and even Mills [Congressman Wilbur B. Mills (D-Ark.), Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee]
has said that the money is for the war.”
TaxPax organizers estimate the tax raises $1.4 billion annually.
According to Henry, people who refuse to pay this tax are liable to a one
year jail sentence as well as a $10,000 fine. In addition, they could be
charged with attempting “to evade or defeat” the phone tax, which carries a
penalty of five years imprisonment.
“So far,” Henry said, “the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) hasn’t prosecuted anyone over the phone tax.
What they’ve been doing is levying a lien on the person’s bank account to get the money.
They don’t want to put people in jail, they just want the money.”
Henry estimates that following up on tax evaders costs the
IRS
$400 per case, in addition to adding a lot of paperwork and confusion to the
system.
A spokesman for the IRS seemed less than concerned about the proposed tax resistance.
“We respond the same way to people who evade the phone tax as to all other
tax delinquents,” Edward Callanan, Public Information Officer of the Boston
IRS
said . “We send a bill to the
person who hasn’t paid the tax, and if we don’t hear from him in another
month we send another bill. If he still doesn’t pay, then we’ll take the
money from his bank account or any other personal assets.”
TaxPax is following the example of the Boston War Tax Resistance League, a group which has been active for over a year collecting money that would have gone to phone taxes.
The group has raised over $25,000 which has gone to community action projects.
About 1150 Harvard and Radcliffe students have signed an agreement to withhold payment of the tax on their phone bills as a protest against the Indochina war.
TaxPax, an organization of Harvard students and faculty members, started
circulating a petition to withhold the phone tax
. The petition included the
stipulation that the names of the signers would not be made public until 1000
people had signed it. That number was reached on
.
Everett I. Mendelsohn, professor of the History of Science, and Herbert C. Kelman, Cabot Professor of Social Ethics, plan to solicit similar commitments from faculty members.
Mendelsohn is now drafting a letter which he will send to some 800 members of
the Faculty urging them to withhold their phone tax.
TaxPax and similar organizations, including the Boston War Tax Resistance League, oppose the tax on long distance phone calls because its revenues finance the Vietnam war.
“The tax on phone calls makes money directly for the war,” said James S.
Henry , one of the TaxPax organizers. TaxPax
organizers estimate that the phone tax raises some $1.4 billion annually.
Although refusal to pay the tax can result in imprisonment and fines, the Internal Revenue Service normally gets the money by attaching the delinquent taxpayer’s bank account.
Henry said that this method of tax collection is being challenged in the courts.
TaxPax will also encourage the resisters to contribute the tax money to
antiwar or community groups such as day care centers. And TaxPax founders may
try to get people who signed the agreement to participate in non-violent
activity in Washington, D.C. this spring.
War Tax Resistance (WTR) is calling for a boycott of the ten per cent federal telephone excise tax as a means of protesting the war in Viet Nam.
“It is clear,” said
Rep. Wilbur Mills,
chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, “that Vietnam and only the
Vietnam operation makes this bill necessary.”
War Tax Resistance sees the refusal to pay this “war tax” as means of showing the government that people are willing to break the law in their opposition to the war.
It also creates “a thorny collection problem for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS),” according to WTR.
Life Funds
According to Robert Calvert of the New York headquarters “People’s Life
Funds” are being created around the country for people to send the money they
would normally pay in telephone excise taxes to.
Refusal to pay the telephone tax is a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment for up to one year and a fine of up to $10,000.
According to Calvert, nobody has yet been arrested for open tax resistance.
“The government is not willing to publicize it because it may spread.”
Service stop?
The telephone companies as a rule do not interrupt the service of a tax resister if the rest of the phone bill is paid.
They merely contact the IRS and leave it up to them to collect the tax.
The IRS
then contacts the resister by mail with a demand for the unpaid amount and may
pay him a visit. The
IRS
will finally seek out a bank account of or payroll check from which to deduct
the amount, plus up to six per cent interest.
In order to publicly demonstrate resistance to the Federal telephone tax that was instituted to fund the Vietnam war, the Cornell Mobe is sponsoring a demonstration at the Ithaca office of the Telephone Company and at Southside House, a local community center.
People who refuse to pay “the war tax” are urged to assemble at
at the telephone
company office, at 208 E.
Buffalo St. The plan then
calls for a march from the telephone office to Southside House, at 305
S. Plane
St., where demonstrators will
be asked to donate the money they withheld from their phone bills.
According to Douglas Kenyon, the money will be donated to Southside’s Early Childhood Development program, as a demonstration that “people want their money to be used for the development of children here, not the destruction of children in Vietnam.”
“This act compels the participants to examine their own depth of commitment
to help to end this war.”
According to war resistance organizations in New York City, people who refuse to pay the tax could possibly be charged with a misdemeanor, under Section 7203 of the Internal Revenue Code.
They could be imprisoned up to a year and fined up to $10,000.
However, experiences of people who have refused to pay the tax indicate that
the government does not press criminal charges in these cases.
For example, Carl Kukkonen, a Mobe member who has not paid the tax in over a year, stated that the IRS has not threatened him with criminal charges, nor has his telephone service been cut off.
Kukkonen said that he received letters from the IRS, which threatened to “seize property” if he did not pay the $4.32 plus a 13 cents interest charge they claimed he owned them.
About a year after he stopped paying the tax, the IRS deducted that amount from his bank account.
“This is one way to make our point to the government in the most basic terms, and that means money,” said Prof. James Matlack, English, after a War Tax Resistance demonstration at the Ithaca telephone company office .
After meeting at the telephone company office on Buffalo Street, 13 tax
resisters marched to Southside Community Center where they donated $62 that
they withheld from their telephone bills.
The contribution represented the 10 per cent phone tax that was levied to help finance the Vietnam war.
The sum withheld was donated to the Southside Day Care and Child Development
program, in order to demonstrate the belief that tax revenues needed for
health and education programs are instead being spent on war.
“We insist that funds be spent for growth, nurture and healing, not for maiming and destruction — spent for life instead of death,” wrote Matlack in a letter to the Internal Revenue Service.
According to Section 7203 of the Internal Revenue Code, people who refuse to
pay the tax could possibly be imprisoned up to one year and fined up to
$10,000. The telephone company is not responsible for enforcing tax payment
and will not discontinue service.
Tax resistance demonstrations similar to ’s protest are scheduled to be held once a month.
A group of Ithaca residents plans to gather in front of the New York Telephone Company to protest the war in Indochina.
The members of the Telephone War Refusal Group are opposed to the use of the
10 per cent Federal excise tax, which they content is used to support the
war. They plan to give the tax money instead to Ithaca’s Southside Community
Center.
At the Telephone Company offices, the group members plan to pay their telephone bill minus the excise tax.
They will then walk over to the Community Center to donate the tax money.
The group issued a statement to the Internal Revenue Service to explain its
actions.
It said, “To show our opposition to the U.S. involvement in Indochina, we are refusing to pay the Federal excise tax levied on our telephone bills to supply revenues to continue the war… Instead of supporting death, we choose to support life and growth.”
Protesters of the Vietnam War who are refusing to pay their telephone excise tax are sadly misinformed about their efforts, Jerry West, Internal Revenue collector says.
If they wanted to stop paying taxes on the war they would have to stop eating, buying sugar, and driving a car.
And those who have refused to pay are sorry because of the complications involved when the Internal Revenue Service receives the case for collection.
Not so say coordinators of the Columbia War Tax Resistance. Refusing to pay
the telephone tax is an easy and viable protest method because the telephone
excise tax was specifically increased from 3 to 10 per percent to pay for the
strain caused by the Vietnam War. The Internal Revenue Service may attach a
bank account or salary check for the unpaid amount plus 6 per cent interest
but the time and money involved in the collection far outweighs the money
that would be involved in non-payment of the tax.
David Bray, one of the local organizers, suggests that all money ordinarily paid to the excise tax be channeled to an “alternative fund,” a program that uses tax money to finance grants to community groups sponsoring such programs as day-care centers, drug abuse programs, or doctors working with Vietnamese children injured by the war.
The movement is not purely local: it has groups in 179 centers and
alternative fund programs in 23 cities. The importance of the program, Bray
says, is its symbolic value. Tax funds are being used to directly benefit the
people. He cites the historic tradition of American protest against taxes in
the Revolutionary War, specifically the Boston Tea Party and the Stamp Act
Rebellion.
Telephone company officials act only as collectors for the government, alerting them if a subscriber has refused to pay his excise tax.
They cannot discontinue service as long as a customer’s service bill is paid.
A case sent to a federal court in Mississippi was settled in favor of the defendant and service was restored.
Richard Randall, Columbia office manager for the General Telephone
Co., says the local office
forwards all refusals to pay tax to its home office in Grinnell, Iowa. From
there these letters are sent to the Internal Revenue Service and followup
begins.
Bray says the general policy of the telephone company has been to send out a letter saying that you have refused to pay your tax and do you want to reconsider — a type of second chance letter.
After this, the refusals are forwarded.
West and Larry Schreiber of the Internal Revenue Service say that the money
going for the war from excise tax wont won’t even begin to pay for the
expenses involved. They point out that only 8 cents of every tax dollar
represents excise tax and of that amount 37 per cent goes for the war while
63 per cent is channeled into health, education, and welfare. West says
“Every time someone tells me he is refusing to pay his excise tax in protest
of the war, I tell him he is taking food away from a hungry child.”
The 720 Quarterly Federal Excise Tax Return lists the following services as covered by excise tax: Toll telephone service, teletypewriter exchange service, local telephone service, transportation of persons and property by air, use of international air travel facilities, policies issued by foreign insurers, the manufacture of pistols and revolvers, truck, bus, and trailer chassis and bodies, tractors, auto chassis and bodies, parts or accessories for trucks, fishing rods and artificial lures, firearms, shells, and cartridges, sugar, diesel fuel and special motor fuels, gasoline, lubricating oil, tires, inner tubes, tread rubber, and fuel used in non-commercial aviation.
All this money goes into one pot and it is impossible to determine what money
is channeled for which program, West says.
In some cases, Bray says, IRS officers have tried to auction off a subscriber’s car to get the non-paid telephone excise tax money but the publicity has caused more harm than good.
Friends buy the car and then get their money back after the IRS has subtracted the amount of the unpaid bill.
Money collected by alternate programs in Boston and Philadelphia is in the
$25,000 and $50,000 range. Payments are being made off the interest collected
on the money. All money is channeled into a local bank and donors receive a
receipt for their contributions. All participants have a say in deciding to
whom the money is granted.
Locally, organizers hope to be able to make a sizable contribution to a group by , the deadline for filing ’s income tax returns.
They have established offices in the Help Yourself Center, 915 East Broadway.
And, as proof of their beliefs, they quote
Rep. Wilbur Mills,
chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, “that Vietnam and only the
Vietnam operation makes this bill necessary.” (Congressional Record
.)
This is the eighteenth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite.
Today we hit 1971.
A dam seems to have burst in , and any reluctance The Mennonite had about covering war tax resistance washed away.
In the concern was front and center, and readers could not help but be confronted by a variety of opinions on the subject.
A letter from John S. Swarr insisted that Jesus “commands us, as His followers, to bring peace and reconciliation in a world of strife and violence by committing our lives to unconditional love for our fellowmen.
Such a discipleship manifests itself in a radically different life style than that of the rest of the world.”
He asked, in this regard, “Can we, as Christians, responsible for all our neighbors, continue to pay taxes for the means of destruction which are used against our distant (only in physical distance) brothers?
This responsibility is our own, not Caesar’s.”
Christian love shown to a brother will not manifest itself in bombs and napalm, paid for with our money and silently allowed to be used.
It will, rather, manifest itself in actions of love, help, and concern.
It may result in our refusal to pay war taxes or cooperate with the draft, but at any rate it will mean avoiding nationalism for “No man can serve two masters.”
(That edition also announced the resignation of the editor.
The announcement was carefully vague, but subsequent letters to the editor hinted that there was something of a rebellion afoot against the “anti-American propaganda… all politics and sociology” that had replaced anodyne bible studies in the magazine’s pages.
The resignation takes effect in .
We’ll see if it makes a difference in the coverage of war tax resistance.)
A hundred people met to discuss war tax resistance at Bethel College Mennonite Church in at a meeting sponsored by the Western District Conference (which had recently passed a resolution in support of war tax resistance) and the Commission on Home Ministries of the General Conference Mennonite Church.
Don Kaufman gave some thoughts about Christian obedience to state authority, and Bob Calvert from the secular “War Tax Resistance” group spoke about the upcoming “spring offensive” anti-war actions.
Here are some excerpts about other parts of the conference from the report on the workshop in The Mennonite:
A Quaker physician from Denver, Arthur Evans, spoke of his experiences with the Internal Revenue Service spanning more than twenty-five years.
During World War Ⅱ, Evans’ conscience stirred him to withhold part of his taxes.
He said, “The trouble we’re now at is because we as a nation tried to overcome evil with the same methods that we decried of Hitler.
The thought occurred to me was that if I were a Jew in Germany, would I have paid taxes to Hitler to pay for my own crematorium?
Am I not a Jew in the United States perhaps paying taxes to create my own crematorium right now?
This is the burning question in my mind.”
Evans was sent to jail for not turning over to IRS some records which pertained to his income taxes.
He felt that doing so “would have been the first step in a crime against humanity.”
He acted partly upon the principle established in the Nuremberg war crimes trials that individuals have to decide what laws of their nation are just and what laws are unjust.
“I maintain that as I tried to follow my conscience this was the only way I could grow and this is the only way human beings can grow — as they are willing to follow conscience.
You deny conscience here, you deny conscience there, you won’t grow in what it means to be a human being.”
While spending ninety days in jail for contempt, he received letters from over a hundred and fifty individuals whom he did not know who supported his actions.
“None of us knows how we strengthen the community by following our own conscience.
I felt a power from the prayers and the loving concern of people who saw me suffering in jail,” he said.
The group discussed methods of withholding or reducing their taxes, but wanted to go beyond simply voicing their beliefs about war.
Participants felt a need to establish a simpler life-style that was a fuller response to the causes of violence.
Discussion centered around setting up voluntary service-type group arrangements and channeling earnings through the church’s voluntary service program.
To strengthen their own witness, participants in the workshop drew up a statement which they all signed.
That statement read:
We the undersigned have agreed together to find ways to end our financial support of America’s military efforts.
We have come from various denominations, occupations, age groups, and parts of the country.
As seekers, we have participated in a Workshop on War Taxes, held at the Bethel College Mennonite Chuch, , sponsored by committees for the Western District and the General Conference Mennonite Church.
Together, our consciences were prodded.
We have heard Christ call us to be peacemakers.
We have examined together the biblical teachings on the matter of paying taxes for war.
We have looked at the historical witness and examples of Anabaptist founders, and men like Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
We have tried to take seriously Christ’s call to love our enemies as He loves all men.
We have seen our guilt in our past payment of blood-money and are now looking for ways to end this involvement.
More vitally, we are seeking ways to make our money serve real human needs.
We realize this may lead to many types of action.
We approve and support all open, conscientious efforts to end war through Christian stewardship.
Specific actions could include any or all of the following: refusal of federal income tax payment, refusal to pay that part which goes for military purposes, refusal of the telephone excise tax, written protest accompanying income-tax returns, witnessing to the consciences of officials and employers who collect and enforce the tax laws, and increasing charitable giving.
We encourage the creation of voluntary-service-style communities which practice a lower level of consumption and present a Christian alternative to the present materialistic and militaristic character of American life.
We plead with the congregations and conferences of which we are members to follow Christ, their consciences, and the needs of their brothers in responding to our concern.
As a witness to our deranged national priorities and how they might be straightened out, I and others will make a public donation during of the money we have withheld from war, and will give it to a local group working for real human needs.
I hope you can see your way to join us.
David Janzen, a pastor and a philosophy instructor at Eastern Mennonite College, wrote an article on the Vietnam War that he’d originally hoped to place in the New York Times.
Instead, The Mennonite picked it up for its edition.
Excerpt:
Our consciences are sorely troubled concerning our tax money, which continues to make this unjust war possible.
The time is ripe for action.
Enough is enough.
Let us not commit violence.
No destruction of property.
No aggression against human beings.
We want to honor our nation.
We can only do so by correcting our mistakes.
The vital point is tax money.
Let us invite a million sensitive Americans to take a stand for conscience’ sake.
Let us tell the government, that unless it starts serious negotiations that lead to peace by , we will withhold our income tax and pay it into a Tax Conscience Fund.
We must organize people with conscience scruples.
I would suggest that concerned groups in universities, churches, and other organizations start registering people for united action.
A federal organization could coordinate the program.
Conscientious individuals would commit themselves to pay their total income tax, or the approximately 80 percent of it that is spent for war, into a tax conscience fund.
The money could be paid into special accounts at local banks.
We would make it available for rehabilitation of the war areas as soon as the war has ended.
A letter to the editor dissented from the recent flood of pro-resistance articles and letters:
Personally, I do not believe that there is such a thing as a war tax in existence.
If there were it would have had to be declared as such by Congress, as they pass all taxes.
This has not been done.
All expenses are paid out of one treasury.
It may be true that there are some Congressmen and politicians who have said that a certain tax is necessary to pay for the war.
This was their excuse for voting for it or working for its passage.
But that does not make it a war tax.
Nor do I believe that there is any individual who with any degree of accuracy can tell us what percent of our taxes goes for war purposes.
Not all the money voted for the Pentagon goes for war… [For instance t]he Coast Guard spends much of its time in saving lives at sea, which has nothing to do with war…
…[I]f I believe war is wrong it becomes my obligation to do what I can to stop it.
My refusing to pay taxes does not stop it, for most people are still paying their tax.
If I disobey a law, especially publicly, I lose my influence over my non-Christian neighbor that I am supposedly trying to win to Christ.
The articles on the war tax workshop and Rensberger’s discussion of loyalty to God vs. country are especially thought-provoking.
Is there interest in having workshops on these subjects in many areas of the conference on the local level?
Would leaders be available from the war tax workshop, the conference, or seminary to help with such workshops where hundreds of lay people could discuss and think together about a united commitment that may make some impact on communities and government?
Another letter in the same issue reported on a silent vigil held before the offices of Bell Telephone Company in Newton Kansas on :
They came to turn over money which they had not been paying on their telephone bill to a community youth organization called Someplace.
They came as concerned Christians to tell others that they were not paying the federal tax portion of their telephone bill because the tax had been levied specifically for war purposes.
Approximately ninety persons accepted a hand-out sheet explaining the federal telephone tax and explaining why many Christians no longer pay that portion.
Seventy-eight dollars was given to Someplace and it is expected that as more Christians hear about this alternative, more money will be turned over to various community organizations.
There is a question of where to get more specific information on war taxes.
Jacob Friesen tells how he is withholding the excise tax on his telephone bill and writing a letter each month to the President with copies going also to his senator and congressional representative.
“I have chosen each month to vote ‘no’ on war.”
Probably, no other living person has spent as much time in Civilian Public Service as I have.
During that time, and since, I associated with many young men who struggled with their conscience.
I argued with some, but only with those who wanted to argue, and usually, it was with some who had conscientiously chosen either noncombatant or full military service.
I also knew quite intimately a few who struggled with an attempt at total separation from all war effort, including nonregistration.
This was at a time when the nation was solidly supporting World War Ⅱ.
Today, the Vietnam war is not popular and the climate for vigorous opposition is utterly different from what it was then.
I deeply respected the convictions of the absolutist then as I do now and have never cared to debate their point of view, even though it did not coincide with mine.
It does seem to me, however, that there has been growing confusion about the payment of taxes during wartime.
There is no doubt a sense in which nonpayment finds it place, in the continuum from all-out participation to suicidal protest.
Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt had some sympathetic appreciation for conscientious objectors.
While visiting one of the camps, she was reported to have remarked that short of living on a desert island, it was impossible to live without being involved in the war to some degree.
Because there is truth in this, it is most difficult to talk about a clearly right or a clearly wrong position.
However, if we believe the way of war is inherently wrong our conscience will push us as far away from participation as possible, consistent with other considerations, human and divine, that we cannot conscientiously ignore.
Just where does nonpayment of taxes belong on this continuum?
We need to distinguish between refusing to participate in war as an immoral act, on the one hand, and the moral compulsion to do what we can to stop an immoral war on the other.
Part of the confusion concerning nonpayment of taxes has to do with failure to distinguish clearly between these two somewhat different moral considerations.
Nonpayment of taxes is not getting much serious consideration from our traditional Mennonite nonresistant believer, because it does not relate with his views on participation as an immoral act.
The “give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” edict of Jesus makes it difficult for him to see a clear immoral act in paying taxes, even though he knows that a large portion is needed for war purposes.
The case becomes clearer for the person whose conscience is also concerned with a moral compulsion to do something about stopping the war.
Today, many of us believe we need to be as much concerned about our moral obligation as citizens of our country to do what we can to stop our country’s immoral war as we are about participation in the immoral act of war.
Is payment of taxes an immoral act? We have already pointed out that, traditionally, Mennonites did not consider payment of taxes immoral, in part, at least, because of Jesus’ edict.
However, when taxes are labeled “war taxes” as the telephone excise tax is, many begin to have second thoughts.
When mustaches were popular among military men, Mennonites shunned mustaches.
Guilt by association becomes a real consideration.
What everyone ought to know is that these taxes all go into the same general treasury.
The “war tax” label on the telephone excise tax has significance only in that it helped ease it through Congress, and none, whatsoever, as to its use.
The use of tax money for war purposes is an entirely separate matter, and is determined by appropriations for this purpose by Congress.
So long as Congress appropriates what the Pentagon asks for with overwhelming majorities, nonpayment of taxes will have absolutely nothing to do with the amount of money available for war purposes.
But, unfortunately, it does have something to do with the availability of funds for less popular but terribly important poverty programs as well as health and education programs. Those who do not pay their taxes must realize that the net effect, if any, is not at all what they have in mind.
Is nonpayment effective politically? Many of those who do not pay taxes are probably more concerned about the political impact this might have, and hope it will help turn our country away from war.
Certainly, this would seem like much more solid ground.
The sheer drama of civil disobedience for the sake of conscience makes an impact that cannot be ignored.
Even though much of the reaction may be negative, this is not necessarily bad.
Jesus’ crucifixion was the result of negative reaction, too.
The point is, let us be clear about what we are doing and why we are doing it.
Apart from the attention-getting quality of nonpayment of taxes, the technique, however, is subject to serious questions.
It is essentially a pitch to the Bureau of Internal Revenue and to the telephone company, neither of which has anything to do with determining policy concerning Vietnam.
Witnessing to Internal Revenue about such matters is about as effective as writing a letter to a computer.
The telephone company has trouble enough giving good telephone service, without being harassed about something for which it has no responsibility and for which it has no competence.
We do all have a direct line to the White House and to Congress.
Here are the people who can do something about it.
If we believe, as literally millions of Americans are now believing, that our presence in Vietnam is a tragic mistake, these are the people to talk to.
I suspect Jesus was more of a tax economist than are some of His spokesmen when He got a bit vague about payment of taxes.
Departing editor Maynard Shelly, in the , reflected on the classic Anabaptist work Martyrs Mirror and on the urge to persecute those who don’t go along with institutions.
He concluded:
I dare you to turn to the Martyrs Mirror and read military service and war taxes where the old book says baptism.
All of a sudden, those words put down on paper in will be more up to date than the news in tomorrow morning’s newspaper.
Raymond Regier wrote a letter in response to Lehman’s article.
Some of his thoughts:
It is extremely difficult to live as we are used to living and not pay taxes, taxes which finance both warfare and many beneficial things.
But just because nonpayment is difficult, because it has not traditionally been done by Mennonites, does not say that the payment of taxes is not an integral part of the waging of modern war.
Modern warfare and especially Vietnamization require sophisticated technology and an enormous sum of money, perhaps even more than it needs drafted manpower.
Is a man any less responsible for the way his money is used than he is for the way his body is used?
The “give unto Caesar” quote, it seems to me, is tragically misused to give the appearance of avoiding complicity in our nation’s war making.
Can anyone seriously imagine that Jesus would be paying taxes to finance our Vietnam war or our nuclear deterrent?
Or that He would be earning enough to pay taxes at all?…
If one is interested in a direct line to the White House and Congress, wouldn’t an announcement by the letter writer that taxes have been withheld lend credibility to the intensity of his feelings and the seriousness with which he regards the matter?
The General Conference considered a statement on “The Way of Peace” at its meeting in Fresno that included a war tax resistance plank.
The version that appeared in the edition of The Mennonite was somewhat mangled, but I found a better version:
The levying of war taxes is another form of conscription which, along with the conscription of manpower, makes war possible.
We are accountable to God for the use of our financial resources and should protest the use of our taxes in the promotion and waging of war.
We stand by those who feel called to resist the payment of that portion of taxes being used for military purposes.
The Conference ratified the statement, with 73.4% of delegates voting in favor of it, though the war tax resistance plank, and another having to do with resistance to the Selective Service system, were the most controversial.
The statement updated previous statements on peace put out by the conference in and .
It was printed up in “a twenty-page illustrated booklet” and distributed to the various churches in the Conference.
The edition included a note about a creative form of tax resistance using a method I haven’t seen before:
In some ways, the government can be involved in redirecting taxes that are withheld in protest of military policies.
An Old Mennonite pastor preferred to use a portion of his taxes for relief work rather than to support the United States military.
His protest took on a positive, creative form.
He wrote two checks to pay his income tax.
One check covered that proportion of his tax dollar which supports government actions that he approves.
This he made out to the federal government.
The portion which would have gone to war was made out to the Mennonite Central Committee.
He sent both checks to the Internal Revenue Service with a letter explaining his actions and requesting that the IRS forward the second check on to MCC headquarters.
A stamped, addressed envelope was enclosed.
The government complied.
Tax Talk, a war-tax-resistance bulletin, commented on the method used: “This action effectively reached three levels.
First, symbolically, it shows nonsupport of war.
Secondly, it personally involves people in the IRS in a protest and in a positive attempt to help those whose lives our tax dollars have helped totally disrupt, while removing tax dollars (at least for the moment) from contributing to that destruction.”
Although the Internal Revenue Service forwarded the check, they soon attached the pastor’s bank account to reclaim that part of the tax which he refused to directly pay.
The Arvada Mennonite Church, Arvada, Colo., has notified Mountain Bell Telephone Company that the congregation has agreed “to cease voluntary payment of the 10 percent federal telephone tax levied against the citizens of this country for the support of the war in Vietnam.”
The money which would have been spent on the federal tax will be contributed to the Mennonite Central Committee for alleviation of suffering in Vietnam.
In its letter to the telephone company, the congregation said, “The decision to refrain from willingly paying a specifically legislated war tax is an expression of the sorrow and protest of the church over the suffering and loss of life in Vietnam, both American and Vietnamese, and the unwillingness of the United States to allow the citizens of that country engaged in civil strife to determine their own destiny and fashion their own future in relation to the world community of nations.”
The letter said the church did not intend “to defraud our nation which we love, or by secret means to deprive it of its claim upon citizens for support in its just and God-given duties.
Rather we openly seek to make this expression a call for justice and peace.”
In such cases, the telephone company does not terminate service or collect the tax, but notifies the Internal Revenue Service.
The Internal Revenue Service eventually takes the required amount plus interest from the bank account of the individual or organization refusing the tax.
Voluntown, Conn. (LNS) —
Twenty cyclists, calling themselves Project Roll, started out
on a 1200-mile caravan to
promote a nationwide resistance to taxes used for military purposes.
Traveling throughout New England and Eastern New York State, the
peddlers — students, Vietnam veterans, and peace workers — plan to picket
several military installations, and to speak at meetings, rallies, and
TV and radio
talk-shows along the way.
Bob Calvert, national coordinator of War Tax Resistance, said that the purpose
of the trip, which is sponsored by the New England Committee for Nonviolent
Action and North Atlantic War Tax Resistance, “is to move people to resist
paying war taxes, chiefly the federal income tax and the 10% excise tax on
telephone bills which was levied in to help
pay for the Vietnam war.”
In addition, the group will provide a focus for alternate use of withheld tax
money in the form of “Funds for Life” which are oriented toward community
needs.
The trip is scheduled to wind up at Andover
Mass. on
for a celebration of “Life
Giving Day — A Day of War Tax Resistance” which will include a rally and other
actions at the Internal Revenue Service regional headquarters there.
For more information contact: Brett Jacobson…
Here are some excerpts from The Catholic News Archive concerning tax resistance, from sources other than Catholic Worker, from the span:
First, a typed news dispatch from “M. Massiani,” Paris Correspondent for the National Catholic Welfare Council (U.S.) News Service, dated :
Priests and People of Vendee, France, Protest Tax on Christian Schools and Refusal of State Aid
Paris, . —
A delegation of 20,000 citizens from various parts of the Department of Vendee, one of the most Catholic regions of France, appeared in the town of La Roche-sur-Yon, where a number of priests were on trial for refusing to pay a tax exacted on entertainments and theatrical productions given to aid in supporting the free Christian schools of the Department.
A large group of priests and directors of Christian schools purposely decided to refuse payment of this tax and made public announcement of the decision in order to protest what is regarded by the people of the Vendee as a highly inequitable situation; the state taxing the people to support unneeded public schools, refusing to grant a subsidy to aid in maintaining the Christian schools, and at the same time taxing entertainments held to raise money for support of the Christian schools.
It is pointed out that in Vendee public schools are practically empty. The Christian schools, on the other hand, are educating the vast majority of the children of the region, saving the state more than 200 million francs in school taxes annually.
Yet whenever Catholics hold a festival to raise funds for support of their schools, the state intervenes to collect part of the receipts.
It is hoped that in refusing to pay this tax, public attention will be called to the injustice and the need of a state subsidy to help support the Christian schools, such as is granted in other countries, including Belgium and Holland.
Bishop Antoine Cazaux of Lucon, who went to La Roche-sur-Yon to testify in behalf of the defendants, stated that his priests are neither rebels nor evaders, and that the court, in order to judge equitably, should take into consideration the unjust situation that exists with regard to education.
Many thousands of people were in the streets outside the courtroom.
Decisions were rendered in only two of the cases, the defendants being acquitted on procedural grounds.
The other cases were postponed. The action of the court caused anti-religious groups and newspapers, particularly in Paris, to demand that new suits be instituted and that the law be applied with severity.
In the Diocese of Lucon, two-thirds of the children attend the 461 primary religious schools. In six large districts, 13,757 children out of 15,183 are enrolled at the Christian schools.
In two other districts, the number of pupils in the public schools is only three per cent of the total.
In 41 settlements in the Department, with a population of 40,000, there are no public schools.
A National Catholic Reporter editorial (signed by editor Robert C.
Hoyt) in the issue recommended that men refuse military service, concluding that in Vietnam, “we are killing people and destroying a culture without adequate justification, without a rationale that meets the minimum requirements of morality.
That imposes obligations on all of us.
We believe that anyone who despairs of a political solution has a right and duty to search for more effective ways, including civil disobedience and tax refusal.
We have a responsibility to the rest of the world, to history, to God that nobody else can bear.”
In its issue, that paper published a lengthy article on the war tax resistance movement:
Protesters turn to taxes to fight against the war
By Gary MacEoin
Special to the National Catholic Reporter, NEW YORK—
Protesters against the Vietnam war are turning to the withholding of taxes as a way of fighting against the war.
A national campaign against the payment of taxes used for the war is being organized and its goal is to involve “tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of people in conscientious tax refusal.”
The campaign is spearheaded by the War Tax Resistance, an organization founded which draws support from a broad spectrum of pacifist groups.
Its headquarters is in New York and it has offices in Philadelphia and Chicago.
Resistance spokesmen say they hope to have “at least a phone, an address and a contact person” in each of the principal 50 to 100 cities in the nation by .
Groups organized around such regional centers are to focus their tax resistance efforts on demonstrations on and .
“We picked the date more or less arbitrarily,” said Bradford Lyttle, clean-shaven and soft-spoken coordinator of War Tax Resistance.
“That’s about the time that thousands of accountants all over the country hang out signs offering to help prepare tax returns.
We want to provide an option for those who want not to pay.”
The choice of is more obvious, he said.
“It is both the final day for filing tax returns and the start of the Spring offensive of the demonstrations against the war in Vietnam.”
Lyttle, 42, works out of an office in Lower Manhattan (339 Lafayette Street).
It is also the home of the New York GI Coffeehouse, the Jewish Peace Fellowship, the Catholic Peace Fellowship, the War Resisters League, Win magazine (hippie-pacifist), and Liberation magazine (David Dellinger’s voice).
Between them, they occupy the two top floors of a three-story cold-water walk-up not far from the Catholic Worker.
Organized resistance to paying war taxes is not new, dating from , Lyttle said.
The War Tax Resistance is trying to give the idea broader appeal by modifying the totally pacifist position that its forerunners had adopted.
Lyttle, who himself is a pacifist, said the new approach was developed by a New York teacher, Norma Becker, who recruited a group of sponsors which included Joan Baez, Noam Chomsky, Tom Cornell, Dorothy Day, Dave Dellinger, Allen Ginsberg, Stewart and Charlotte Meacham, Grace Paley and Dr. Benjamin Spock.
“The result,” says Bradford Lyttle, “was a new emphasis.
Instead of stressing the total pacifist tradition as the others had done, we decided to concentrate on two more immediate and obvious reasons:
the horrors of the war in Vietnam, and the misuse of the taxpayers’ money by the government to the extent that it was neglecting national priorities.
“And instead of calling on sympathizers to pay no taxes whatever, we appealed to them to make a token withholding, if only $5, without of course ceasing to urge those who had the moral courage to go further.”
War Tax Resisters chose as their prime targets the 10 per cent surtax and the 10 per cent federal excise tax on telephone service — two taxes more clearly linked to Vietnam than any others.
Both War Tax Resistance and other organizations distribute literature explaining the various ways — some legal, some doubtful, some illegal — for nonpayment of federal taxes.
The first War Tax Resistance leaflet was prepared for the antiwar demonstration in Washington, D.C., , and 10,000 copies were handed out there.
“The act of war tax resistance creates a confrontation between the government and the conscience of the citizens,” this pamphlet states.
“We believe that the right of conscientious objection to war belongs to all people, not just to those of draft age…
Do whatever makes sense to your conscience. But do it.”
Among the ways to avoid paying taxes, the first is to earn an income so low as not to be taxable.
This means for the single person under 65, an earned income of less than $900 annually.
Yet a considerable number of pacifists choose this method.
Another form of protest is to refuse to pay the percentage of the tax that goes for war.
More than two-thirds of the federal budget pays for wars, past, present and future.
This is the amount some withhold.
Others refuse to pay the proportion of the federal budget (23 per cent) directly allocated to Vietnam, while others hold back a token amount.
According to Internal Revenue Service figures, 73 million Americans paid their income taxes in full , while 1,025 refused to pay all or part in protest against the Vietnam war.
The 1,025 protesters was an increase from 592 .
IRS counted 10,511 cases of refusal to pay the telephone tax in , down from 14,396 in .
Several factors combine to make the telephone tax the attractive target it has become.
For one thing, the American Telephone and Telegraph Co. has handled the situation with kid gloves.
So long as the protester makes it clear to the company with each payment that the amount withheld is the tax portion, it will not cut off a phone.
Printed forms are made available by the resistance groups to facilitate this notification.
What the telephone company does is simply to report to IRS the fact of nonpayment and the amount.
IRS also is anxious to keep the situation as cool as possible, but it wants at the same time to maintain whatever pressure is necessary to dissuade the hesitant from joining the movement.
Back in 1967, the first step was to send the defaulter a “notice of preliminary assessment” which enabled him to demand a hearing.
Because of the number of cases involved and the small amount in each, the IRS quickly eliminated this step and moved immediately to Form 17-A or some other “notice of final assessment.”
This notice contains a threat to seize property to collect a debt.
Ralph Di Gia of War Resisters League is one who has been through this process several times.
Early in , for example, the IRS computer at Andover, Mass., sent him Form 17 demanding payment of $2.25 owed as telephone tax.
Next a New York agent wrote him, then called on him in his New York office.
After checking with Di Gia’s landlord and the building superintendent to establish his political views, the agent tried to place a lien on his salary at the War Resisters League, but the League refused to cooperate.
After another confrontation with Di Gia, which merely established that it was “the principle,” not the $2.25, that was at issue on both sides, the agent located Di Gia’s bank account and collected the $2.25 plus 6 per cent interest.
Under the IRS code, it can take money from a bank account without a court order in payment of taxes due by the account holder.
Apparently the discovered account was then fed into the computer, because another section of IRS moved quickly to seize the entire balance in payment of income tax.
And as of , the IRS located a savings account recently opened by Di Gia in another bank and collected yet another telephone tax bill.
But Di Gia insists that he doesn’t mind.
“The issue isn’t withholding money from the government,” he says.
“They’re going to get it ultimately.
But I made a few collection agents think about what their job’s about, and now IRS is going to have to realize that there are people who aren’t afraid to resist.
They got the tax, but they had to come and get it, like when the agents had to go to the fields in France for collection.”
Unpaid taxes, whether telephone or income, can result not only in seizure from a bank account but also a lien on salary or the attachment and sale by auction of some property, usually an automobile.
In addition, some banks make a service charge — as high as $10, reportedly each time a lien is placed on an account, and the resisters suspect that IRS is pressuring banks to do this as a deterrent.
Such a fee every month would make telephone tax refusal impractical for most people.
But actually, the load on the IRS is such that it usually moves against any given individual only at much longer intervals.
Everyone who refuses to pay any taxes he owes is actually exposing himself to heavy penalties, and the resistance literature spells out this danger very openly.
Simple “willful failure to pay” is punishable by fine up to $10,000 and a year in jail, plus the cost of prosecution.
Similar or greater penalties are available for a variety of related offenses.
Although the offense of counseling or urging others not to pay taxes would seem greater than the simple act of withholding, the law on this point is somewhat ambiguous and apparently has never been tested in the courts.
There are few, if any, cases of conscientious tax refusers being jailed for not paying taxes or filing returns.
Most of the small number of cases on record have resulted from related non-cooperation with the courts, such as ignoring a court order to disclose financial records.
In addition, it would appear that prosecutions have been initiated by local collectors who did not first check with headquarters.
Current IRS policy on this issue apparently stops short of court action.
The most distinguished American to go to jail for refusal to pay taxes was Henry David Thoreau, the essayist, poet and naturalist.
He spent only one night in confinement, because a neighbor paid the tax, but the experience inspired his essay on Civil Disobedience, espousing the doctrine of passive resistance.
It deeply influenced Gandhi and has become the bible of the resistance movement.
One passage is found to be particularly relevant by today’s resisters:
“When… a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize.
What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the Country to overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.”
The reference is to the Mexican War of .
About half a dozen have been jailed in the past 20 years.
Juanita Nelson was arrested in Philadelphia in , threatened with a year in jail and $1,000 fine if she did not disclose certain financial information, but in fact was held only some hours.
Maurice McCrackin, arrested in Cincinnati in , was given a mental test, imprisoned “indefinitely” on a contempt charge, then sentenced to six months and a $250 fine.
James Otsuka got 90 days and a $140 fine in Indianapolis, in .
Eroseanna Robinson, sentenced to a year and a day in Chicago in , was released unconditionally after 93 days.
Walter Gormley got 7 days in Cedar Rapids in .
And in the first such imprisonment in several years, Neil Haworth of New London, Conn., got 60 days in for refusal to produce records.
He had served six months in for “committing civil disobedience at a missile site” near Omaha.
And in , he was a crew member of Everyman Ⅲ, a boat which sailed to Leningrad to protest the Russian nuclear tests.
Those who have refused to pay federal taxes and have got away with it include the Catholic Worker settlement houses and the settlement house of the New England Committee for Non-Violent Action.
“We pay local taxes,” says Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker, “and we let the IRS people examine our records, but we pay them nothing.”
The New England group says that IRS has spent thousands of dollars going through their bills and receipts, without collecting a penny.
War Tax Resistance is now urging citizens “to sue the government to refund all your taxes on the grounds that the taxes have been used for illegal and immoral purposes.”
The main value of such suits to date has been the publicity.
Professor Donald Kalish, chairman of the philosophy department at UCLA, filed a suit to recover his telephone tax but it was dismissed by the District Court.
He appealed, and the appellate court has agreed to hear his appeal.
The most important case to date is that of Walter C. Pietsch, of Rego Park, N.Y., a 33-year-old administrative employee in a hospital.
Last year, he instituted “a class action” for an injunction to enjoin IRS from collecting the 10 per cent surtax and all other taxes used to propagate the war, and also for a declaration that the Vietnam war was unconstitutional.
A class action, if successful, would provide the same remedy for all taxpayers.
Pietsch, who served in Korea, “is not against all wars, just this one.”
The surtax he withheld was $190.84.
“The amount is insignificant,” he said, “It’s the principle I’m fighting for.”
After a preliminary hearing in the Brooklyn federal district court on , written arguments were submitted on , and on the case was dismissed on a motion by the defendants.
An appeal was filed immediately.
Although the Vietnam war is the direct issue on which tax resisters are concentrating, many of them insist that the campaign has escalated into something much bigger — the war mentality behind much of United States foreign policy.
“Maybe it’s a hang-up,” says Ted Webster, administrator of the Roxbury War Tax Scholarship fund, “but I personally have a great feeling of urgency, it seems the logic behind bombing North Vietnam can be so easily applied to China.
The influence of the Pentagon on policy, and the political expediency of yielding to it seems so obvious, I see the need to rapidly escalate resistance, or there will be a greatly expanded war — maybe with China — within one to three years.”
Another National Catholic Reporter article, from the issue, asked “In the name of God, how did Milwaukeeans get so radical?” A section of it covered tax resisters:
One area in which a number of community members are discussing is tax resistance.
Some say they have claimed as many exemptions as were needed to keep from paying any federal taxes used to finance the war.
[Richard W.] Zipfel, who is defense committee chairman for the Chicago 15, Feit and Father Robert W. Dundon, a Jesuit, have sent a letter to the Wisconsin Telephone Co. stating they are refusing to pay the federal telephone tax on their phone bills because “we can no longer tolerate our nation spending more than $75 billion on the military while our cities die.”
The letter, dated , added that “even if the present war ended, our policies would quickly create another Vietnam.”
Their resistance gesture is significant, they said, because the tax was argued through Congress as a specifically Vietnam war tax.
They have reserved a reply from the utility saying their letter was being forwarded to the government.
“I do believe in the legitimacy of the magistrates,” [Michael] Cullen said.
“In paying property taxes, I believe in the state.
“I’ll render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but when Caesar decides to take what is God’s, or if Caesar decides to look like God or act like God, I won’t render to Caesar.
“You only render to what is legitimate and what is human, and what is for the common good.
War destroys humans.”
Milwaukee’s Casa Maria Catholic Worker House still looks to be something like a hotbed of war tax resistance, at least relative to the current national lull.
Lincoln Rice of Casa Maria is the current NWTRCC coordinator.
I recognize the names of war tax resisters Roberta Thurstin and Don Timmerman among their volunteers as well.
From the Pittsburgh Catholic, :
Five say they won’t pay taxes
Five local clergymen handed in their income tax forms at the Federal Bldg. downtown on with the announcement they were withholding a portion in protest to the Vietnam War.
Joining them in the protest at the Internal Revenue Office there were several dozen local lay members of War Tax Resistance, an organization whose members carried out withholding actions in a number of cities , the last day for filing income tax returns.
It is headquartered locally at 3601 Blvd. of the Allies.
The clergymen issued a statement denouncing the Vietnam war as immoral and stating other means of protest had been futile.
“Now we must do more than talk.
The time is now that we must act,” they said.
They included three priests active in civil rights causes here: Fr. Donald C. Fisher of St. Francis de Sales, McKees Rocks; Fr. Donald W. McIlvane, St. Richard’s, Hill District; and Fr. John O’Malley of St. Joseph’s, Manchester.
Also taking part was Fr. Bernard Survil of St. Hedwig in Smock, Greensburg Diocese.
Protestant clergy included Rev. Oscar L. Arnall, a Lutheran, Rev. Thomas Whitcroft, an Episcopalian, and Rev. William S. Richard, a Presbyterian, signed the statement but weren’t present.
The clergymen announced they were withholding 25 per cent of their income tax, the proportion of the national tax that is estimated goes for the Vietnam war, they said.
Some said they would pay the money into local community action programs suffering because of the amounts given to the Vietnam war.
“We are conscious of our obligation to pay taxes, but we are equally conscious of our obligation before God to refuse to cooperate with evil,” the clergymen said.
The National Catholic Reporter, in its issue, printed the following letter from Robert Calvert of War Tax Resistance:
Tax resisters suggest: “Stop paying for it”
To The Editors:
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos… young people by the hundreds of thousands are rebelling in disgust and anger against the squandering of lives and resources in an immoral and illegal war.
They are risking their freedom, careers and often their lives to protest and resist what they see to be wrong.
We, as participants in war tax resistance, are resolved to confront our own complicity in war, waste and callousness.
We resolve to end to the extent possible our cooperation in a federal tax program geared to death more than life.
For every dollar which the administration expects to spend in , 64.8 per cent will go for wars — past, present and future.
Of this amount, 48.4 per cent will go for current military expenditures, including Vietnam.
(The administration has not revealed the exact costs of the Indochina war.)
Another 17 per cent will go to health, education and welfare; 18.2 per cent for other expenditures.
The deadline for paying income taxes is close, .
Many who read this letter will owe the federal government money. Don’t pay.
War tax resistance is being supported by numerous civil rights, anti-poverty and peace organizations in our call to help end the war by widespread tax refusal.
Widespread tax refusal does more than force the government to spend much money to try to collect unpaid taxes.
It confronts the government with the political fact of massive non-cooperation with its war-making policies.
We need to dramatize war tax resistance and to expand it from an act of individual conscience to a nationwide demonstration of collective civil disobedience.
On , the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice — which includes such groups as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Welfare Rights organization, the American Friends Service committee and the Fellowship of Resistance — is calling for a nationwide “Tribute in Action to Martin Luther King.”
The theme is “Freedom from Hunger, War and Oppression”; the event will be observed by hunger marches, fasts, teachins, demonstrations and religious services.
War tax resisters will relate to these events in a real way.
We are asking people to refuse to pay $10 to $50 or more of their federal income taxes, and to publicly turn this money over to a local community group on .
We will thus take our tax money out of the hands of the government and put it into the hands of the people.
If we work hard thousands of dollars can be rechanneled to the people.
We can not wait for the government to change priorities. We must change them ourselves.
Find out what actions are being planned in your city or region and build a demonstration dramatizing the transfer of funds to useful community programs.
A possible action: Rally at the IRS office where people put their tax money into a container of some sort.
The money is then carried to the main event and is turned over to the designated local community group.
There also will be actions at Internal Revenue Service offices across the country on .
We will publicly submit our 1040 forms to the IRS with all or part of our taxes deducted.
This is a simple action and serves as an extension of the observance.
If no action appears to be under way in your community, contact the nearest war tax resistance center or the People’s Coalition office (1029 Vermont avenue, Washington, D.C.).
Information about the WTR center nearest you, and about other forms of tax resistance, may be obtained from War Tax Resistance, 339 Lafayette street, New York, N.Y. 10012; telephone (212) 477‒2970.
Thousands are already engaged in these acts of peaceful, conscientious civil disobedience.
If you engage in any of the above acts of civil disobedience we strongly urge you to write a letter to the IRS setting forth the reasons for the steps you have taken.
Keep a copy.
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 have 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.
We invite all Americans to join us in some form of war tax refusal.
We must now take a stand by refusing to support the governments destructive policies with our bodies, our skills and our money.
Robert Calvert
New York, N.Y.
Editor’s note: The writer is a member of the Working Committee of WTR.
Among sponsors of the organization are Dorothy Day, Joan Baez, David Dellinger, Arthur and Cathy Melville, the Rev. Richard J. Neuhaus, Rabbi Michael A. Robinson, Noam Chomsky, Peter Seeger and Theodore Roszak.
An op-ed from Eugene C. Bianchi, in the National Catholic Reporter:
“Maybe next year…”
To resist or not to resist
Two TV tableaus recently jarred me into fresh appreciation of how my tax money fosters the insanity of Vietnam.
In one film, helicopter gunships swooped down on a truck convoy; thousands of rounds of computer-directed cannon fire pierced the night.
There goes at least one year’s withholding tax, I thought.
But the commentator saw this military exercise as a demonstration of admirable killing efficiency.
It was so orderly and precise; nothing out of place, except perhaps some Vietnamese flesh and bone.
The second scene showed men carefully loading bombs into B52s.
The calm reporter noted how effectively these marvels of American know-how worked.
The big bombs tore open huge craters and sent waves of damaging concussion.
The antipersonnel bombs spewed thousands of body-ripping nails.
As I viewed the distant puffs of smoke, I mused about how many income tax returns it took to accomplish such a feat.
It’s appalling how resigned we are to this insane use of our financial resources.
Yet my and your tax money is closely related to the terrible statistic from the Kennedy subcommittee about 325,000 Indochinese, civilian deaths in recent years.
Many more are maimed and driven from their homes.
When I drop that IRS envelope through the red and blue bomb bay of the mail box, I wonder how many sad faces I’ve put behind the fences of relocation camps, how many children I’ve separated from parents.
If Mr. Nixon is a prime candidate for war crimes according to the Nuremberg principles, we have all in some degree had our hands on the tax trigger.
Yet my courage rarely equals my insights.
I also tell myself that some tax money goes for good causes.
But the spirit of Ammon Hennacy, that holy maverick against war, won’t let me be content with such dodges.
The whole Catholic Worker crowd stares up at me from their penny paper.
I finally summon up the mouselike courage of refusing to pay the telephone war tax.
At least that will cost the government more in time and bother than they’ll eventually get from me.
Maybe next year around income tax time, I’ll be brave enough to risk other concrete gestures.
The words of Thoreau won’t go away:
“If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bill this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure as it would be to pay them and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood.”
War tax resistance, though only a small act before the mighty state, could have broad effects if it became more widespread.
It has the educational effect of conviction in action.
Such tax resistance is illegal; but the war, by an ever-growing consensus, is enormously more illegal and immoral.
Even token refusal to pay war taxes confronts the government with a concrete statement about its brutal policies.
Tax resistance also awakens conscience to active non-complicity, to a new level of sensibility.
For the situation is overwhelmingly clear: Tax money can be as killing as the weaponry it buys.
Since some risk is involved in tax resistance, it is worth reading a brochure or two about it.
These can be easily obtained from a number of peace action groups, such as the War Tax Resistance (339 Lafayette St., New York 10012; or War Resisters League-West, 833 Haight St., San Francisco 94117).
A Catholic group, Ammon’s Tax Associates (Box 1744, Indianapolis, Ind. 46204) is striving to awaken church institutions to their responsibilities for supporting conscientious tax resisters, as an extension of the church’s respect for conscientious objectors.
Perhaps the American church will end its complicity of silence with the warmakers when enough of us try to stop our own complicity in war taxes.
The National Catholic News Service carried this dispatch on :
Episcopal Diocese Pays Protesting Priest’s Tax Bill
By NC News Service, Philadelphia (NC) —
The Episcopal diocese of Philadelphia has decided to pay $545 in income taxes withheld by one of its priests as a protest against the Vietnam War.
After the Rev. David Gracie, an urban missioner here, had refused for 10 months to pay half of his income tax assessment, the Internal Revenue Service went to his employer asking the Episcopal diocese to turn over $545 of the priest’s salary.
Refusing to do so would have made the diocese liable for possible criminal charges for non-payment of the taxes.
Father Gracie appealed to the Episcopal council “to join in a corporate act of resistance against this barbaric, immoral war.”
Paying the bill, he said, “will finish me as a tax resister.”
Voting to pay the tax bill, the council also set up a committee to study the theological implications of conscientious tax resistance and tax exemption.
Tom Cornell reviewed the book Ain’t Gonna Pay for War No More (Robert Calvert, The War Tax Resistance, ) in the issue of Catholic Worker:
Ain’t Gonna Pay No More
This book represents a tremendous contribution to the movement against war and for a more decent society, in itself and in the War Tax Resistance campaign from which it emerges.
Probably the most significant development in The Movement during the past two years has been the growth of organised tax resistance along with its alternate funds.
Tax resistance has long been recognised as a pillar of anti-war activity, at least in theory.
After long incubation since the beginning of the Cold War in , tax resistance is taking its place in the minds of many pacifist activists alongside such stances as conscientious objection and draft resistance.
Ain’t Gonna Pay is an unusual movement publication.
It is pocket size, has a soft cover, is handsomely but modestly produced.
The type is legible and generously spaced.
It is crammed with useful information in a digestible form, and it is sprightly and wryly humorous.
To Bob Calvert is due not only credit for this most useful book, but also for the cohesion and outreach the national tax resistance has attained.
A most extraordinary man, you may read more about him in his own disarming paragraphs “About the Author,” in the comments about him by Bradford Lyttle on the back cover, and in David Dellinger’s Preface.
Karl Meyer
Much of the impetus for the tax resistance movement has come from the writings of Karl Meyer.
Karl has recently been released from Sandstone federal prison where he served 10 months for one of his experiments with tax resistance.
An important new development he has spurred has been the alternate fund.
Basic reasoning behind both tax resistance and the fund is well stated by Karl himself in his CW article. It is well to repeat portions of it:
If we pool all of the tax money that we did not pay in locally administered funds, we can create a model for a future in which men can regain direct control of their common institutions and effectively deny their consent to governmental programs they believe evil.
In each community or region we can set up a common fund. Each contributor will have one vote, as in a cooperative.
The members will meet from time to time to set priorities and guidelines for administering it according to their guidelines.
Assuming that the federal income tax contributions of most people in the movement probably exceed their voluntary political, organizational and charitable contributions, we would expect that the tax alternative funds could become one of the most substantial sources of money for the projects and purposes in which we most strongly believe.
But beyond that we could hope that our experience in mutual aid through these cooperative funds would bear fruit in the development of ashrams and communities for closer economic and social cooperation, for it is when our constructive action and our resistance to evil become for real that we see the need and value of mutual aid and begin to create cooperative alternatives within the competitive society on which we live.
If we ignore or neglect the great potential of tax resistance joined to constructive action, we must be deaf to history and blind to experience.
Do we not know that tax resistance has been one of the greatest sources and strategies of revolutionary movements throughout history?
Has not history shown that taxation is a process requiring the general consent and cooperation of the populace?
Has it not been shown that when numbers of people reject a government by withdrawing their consent from the elaborate bureaucratic process of taxation, that government is in deep trouble?
Did not the French Revolution begin with tax resistance?
Was not tax resistance the slogan and rallying cry of the American Revolution:
“Taxation without representation is tyranny I”?…
Did not Thoreau fashion the cornerstone of American resistance theory out of his own experiences as a tax resister?
Was not Gandhi’s largest and most significant campaign of civil disobedience, the Salt March, based on the strategy of tax resistance?
Can we not see what the IRS knows full well: that even where the public gives general consent to the process of taxation it is always and everywhere a grudging and tentative consent, a resentful and querulous consent, a fragile consent that must always be nursed and safeguarded by positive relations?
There exists among the public at large a great reservoir of grievance, a vast subliminal potential for tax resistance and evasion that only needs to be aroused by news of widespread tax resistance.
Let us learn from the experience of the draft resistance movement and the telephone tax refusal campaign.
A few years ago, many people regarded draft refusal as a personal witness of the solitary conscience.
Today it has taken on the dimension of a social movement.
It is, however, restricted by the narrow age and sex range of those who are subject to conscription, and even more restricted by the narrowness of the draft as a single focus of action.
When we combine real war tax resistance with the tremendous constructive potential of a Fund for Humanity, we will have raised a banner to which all honest and courageous men of conscience can repair.
Penalties
People are always anxious to know the penalties for various forms of tax resistance.
There is a chapter of questions and answers taken from the column by Payno Warbucks in Tax Talk, organ of the WTR ($2 a year subscription).
It is practical and accurate.
Stories of individuals who have dealt with IRS’ and the courts’ attempts to make them pay are told succinctly.
Long-time readers will recall the stories of Wally and Juanita Nelson, Rev. Maurice McCracken, Walter Gormly and Eroseanna Robinson.
Some recent efforts to collect taxes-due through confiscation of property and sale at public auctions are related with hardly suppressed glee.
Here is the story of Bob Marcus:
On , the IRS auctioned the car of Bob Marcus at the National Guard Armory in Boulder, Colorado for $1.25 in phone tax money.
People from the Institute/Mountain West, a branch of the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence and Denver War Tax Resistance decided to make good use of the opportunity.
They sent out a leaflet to the 3500 people in the Institute’s mailing list, telling them what had happened and asking that they contribute to a fund to buy Bob’s car back at the auction.
It was explained that all money bid for the car above the unpaid tax and fees is refunded to the tax (non)payer.
The excess money would be put into the war tax resistance alternative fund.
The auction was promoted as a “joint IRS/Institute for the Study of Nonviolence fund-raiser for war tax resistance.”
About thirty people showed up at the auction, held in a stiff wind outside the armory.
“We passed around cookies in the shape of the resistance omega, tossed balloons of all colors into the air, and held signs which read ‘I ain’t gonna pay for war no more’ and ‘celebrate life — don’t pay war tax.’ ”
Beneath a skull and crossbones “Jolly Roger” kite that went wild in the wind, two revenuers read the IRS ground rules.
They told Bob that he could still redeem the car.
He stepped foreword and said, “But can I redeem my soul?”
The car was sold for $277.00.
It took about twenty minutes to complete the transaction because much of the money was in twenty dollar bills.
After the IRS got its blood money, and the Institute expenses had been paid, the war tax resistance alternative fund had netted $203.35.
Bob donated the car to the community.
He decided that he preferred bicycling to polluting the air.
In addition, all the media covered the story extensively and pretty sympathetically.
It can be stated that the IRS bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of publicity for the idea of war tax resistance.
“A final benefit is that we showed the people of the community that tax resisters will stick together and help each other out.”
How’s that for a bit of nonviolent jujitsu? (pp. 89–90.)
The book ends with a listing of the eighty-nine local War Tax Resistance centers around the country (as of press date ).
There are now almost one hundred more, as well as twenty-three alternate or “Life Funds.”
These centers offer tax-resistance counseling, supply current literature, buttons and bumper stickers, coordinate speakers, produce demonstrations, and administer Life Funds.
I suggest you buy at least five copies of this book to give to friends who might then help you to organise a war resistance center in your locale.
You will get all the help you need from Bob Calvert
The National Catholic Reporter covered Karl Meyer’s war tax resistance in its issue:
An act of “political significance”
Resister urges withholding of taxes
By Jerry De Muth
Special to the National Catholic Reporter — Chicago —
“Tax resistance is now like draft resistance was in ,” Catholic Worker Karl Meyer told 1,000 persons who gathered to greet him on his parole from prison where he had been serving a two-year sentence for falsifying his federal income tax deductions.
“When I tore up my draft card in , it was an act of personal witness,” the 34-year-old Meyer explained.
“Today it has become an act of political significance because so many do it.
“In , eight of us refused to pay the telephone excise tax.
Now at least 100,000 do not pay that ten per cent tax.”
The tax was levied for the expressed purpose of raising funds for the war in Indochina.
Today, Meyer sees the number of income tax resisters as numbering at least 10,000 and perhaps as many as 20,000.
And, he hopes that soon this act of personal witness will also become an act of political significance.
In an interview after his talk, Meyer said, “I like concrete results.
If you don’t send $500 to Washington, you can spend that $500 as you wish on something positive.
That’s concrete, but there’s no other concrete result unless tax resistance becomes organized and grows.
“The first step,” Meyer said, “is nonpayment of the ten per cent telephone tax.
Then there is nonpayment of any balance due or nonpayment of $50, $100 or a significant amount of the income tax.
If many do this it does have political significance.”
The affair for Meyer included a $5-a-plate dinner, with the proceeds going to the Chicago Peace Council, Peoples Coalition for Peace and Justice and the Catholic Worker movement.
Referring to the people who promoted the dinner, he said:
“They should have decided not to send $500 in tax money to Washington and instead sent it to the Peace Council.
But instead they send $500 to Washington and send $5 to the Peace Council, and then they wonder why Washington is strong and the Peace Council is weak.”
Meyer: Tax resistance is like draft resistance was in 1967
Meyer was first exposed to pacifism by his mother, who taught him about Gandhi, and his father, William H. Meyer, a former U.S. representative from Vermont who was a conscientious objector during World War Ⅱ.
, the elder Meyer proposed the abolition of both Selective Service and the manufacture of nuclear weapons.
In , young Meyer became involved in active resistance, joined the Catholic Worker and converted to Catholicism.
Also a believer in such “educational” acts as peace marches, he has participated in many such actions, including a ten-month, 6,000-mile San Francisco to Moscow march in .
Meyer’s frequent protests against the war have resulted in numerous arrests.
In , he was expelled from South Vietnam for antiwar activities and, he says, similar efforts resulted in his being beaten up by delegates to the Lions International convention in Chicago in .
Meyer began his protest against the use of tax money for the military in by having his income tax underwithheld.
In , he progressed to all-out resistance through the influence of a Chicago tax resister, Eroseanna Robinson, an Olympic high jump champion.
So that no income tax would be withheld from her pay, Miss Robinson would change jobs every time her income from a job totaled more than $600.
At the end of the year she did not report any of her income.
She was arrested and while detained in Cook county jail in Chicago began to fast while Meyer and others picketed outside.
Sentenced to a year in prison, she continued to fast.
After 108 days the Bureau of Prisons, Meyer said, asked the judge to release her and the judge complied.
“I said to myself then that I was not going to pay taxes any more,” Meyer said.
“I began by leafletting the IRS IRS offices.”
At the time Meyer was supporting a House of Hospitality in Chicago and legally claimed as exemptions the persons who were living there.
As a result, no taxes were withheld.
“But as I phased out the house,” he added, “I no longer legally had a sufficient number of exemptions.
But in I claimed 12 anyway, and in I claimed 10.”
Meyer was legally entitled to four — for himself; his wife, Jean; a son, William, now eight, and a daughter, Kristin, now four.
(They since have had a third child, Eric, now one year old.)
It was for those extra exemptions that Meyer received a maximum two-year sentence plus a $1,000 fine last .
He was released from the federal prison at Sandstone, Minn. — where Joe Mulligan and Ed Hoffmans of the Chicago 15 are also imprisoned — on and will remain on parole until .
Meyer has frequently changed jobs to avoid a lien on his wages.
Once, the government got $46.60 before he quit one job.
It is the only income tax he has paid in the past 11 years, he says.
He has also avoided paying all but $8 of the federal excise tax on phone service.
“My jobs were determined by my radical pattern of life,” he explained.
“I was in jail a lot.
I was not thinking of building a career, which was good because, as soon as you stop living as the poor live and stop working as the poor work, you stop caring about their needs.”
A simple lifestyle is a very important part of tax resistance for the Meyers.
“There are essential principles more important than tax resistance,” Meyer emphasized.
“They are the idea of voluntary poverty and simplicity of life which we have done through our House of Hospitality, sharing our income with others.
“The other major principle is the refusal to do harm to others, especially to claim control of our own productivity and not pay for the killing of others.
We can claim control of our lives through tax resistance.”
Meyer said there is only one reason why more persons, even if they strongly oppose the war, do not refuse to pay part or all of their income taxes — “They’re afraid.”
“But the first time it’s done, there’s certainly no risk,” he said confidently.
Partly for this reason he backs mass tax resistance as a national antiwar action.
“The question,” he said, “is how do you tell people about their own strengths.
They mistakenly think that Karl Meyer is stronger then they.”
Meyer, who frequently delves into history with a preference for the writings of Thomas Paine, fondly points out that the American Revolution, the French Revolution and Gandhi’s movement for Indian independence all had their roots in tax resistance.
The step of tax resistance, he feels, is important for those who have unsuccessfully urged their senators to vote against military appropriations.
“When the time comes for us to vote against appropriations — and that day comes April 15 — do we vote against appropriations?” he asked.
“The courage we ask of our representatives should not be greater than the courage we ask of ourselves.”
Meyer: “voluntary poverty and simplicity of life”
As for the Meyers’ future, Meyer said that they will not pay the $2,000 in taxes owed for , will not pay the telephone tax and will not pay his $1,000 fine.
“But in order that we may be allowed to remain together and not be separated by imprisonment,” he added, “we will limit our income to an amount that will not be taxable, to about $4,800.
It’s easy to live on this.
In fact, I think we can live on $4,000 by the simplification of our life.
We will then be in a position to share the surplus with others not so fortunate as us.”
Meyer was working at a hospital when he was arrested a year ago and now is employed by “an association,” working with the mentally retarded.
“We will continue to do productive work for the good of society,” he vowed.
“We will continue to oppose this war and all other wars and all militarism by the testimony of our lives and the witness of our actions.”
From the The Catholic Advocate:
Promotes “Tax Resistance” to War
A 27-year-old priest refuses to pay the “war share” of his federal income tax.
Rev. Thomas McKenna, assistant pastor at St. Luke’s, St. Paul, Minn., in a letter to more than 100 priests inviting them to discuss possible tax resistance, said: “No matter how we vote, no matter what we say, no matter how many statements, marches and demonstrations we endorse, we still support the war (and the weekly death toll) with a large portion of every dollar we pay in federal income and telephone excise taxes.”
A follow-up on this from the National Catholic Reporter, :
17 clergy to withhold tax
Special to the National Catholic Reporter — St. Paul, Minn. —
Seventeen Twin Cities’ area priests, ministers and seminarians have announced that they will refuse to pay a portion of their federal income tax to protest the Vietnam war.
Among the group are five priests of the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese.
“We cannot before God support or finance this unjustifiable killing of fellow human beings whether American or Southeast Asian,” said Father Thomas McKenna, a leader of the group, in a statement read at the federal building here. “Therefore, we feel that we must in conscience refuse to pay that portion of our federal income tax that goes to support this inhuman, ungodly war.”
Father McKenna, an assistant pastor at St. Luke’s Catholic church in St. Paul, said that 25 priests of the archdiocese had indicated to him that they might join in the tax resistance.
The 20 who did not join, he said, are still considering other forms of protest, such as withholding the federal telephone tax.
The tax resisters’ statement came at the conclusion of a peaceful demonstration by more than 200 clergy, seminarians and laymen who marched from St. Paul’s Dayton Avenue Presbyterian church to the St. Paul cathedral and then to the federal building.
The march was organized by the Ecumenical Witness for Peace.
A skeptical reporter for the Pittsburgh Catholic penned this for its edition:
Most pay little attention
Peace marchers get mixed reaction
By William McClinton
A procession of 25 people, even when escorting a black coffin and led by a man with a cross, doesn’t make much of a ripple in the hurrying crowds in downtown Pittsburgh at lunch time.
So it was with the 25 clergy and laity — mostly Catholic — who marched some 10 blocks to the Federal Bldg. to protest the escalation of the Vietnam war and the use of their tax money to finance the war.
Their sidewalk procession drew attention in some less busy areas, but in the main blocks was separated and absorbed by the crowd.
Nevertheless, the war headlines at every newsstand illustrated the relevancy of their concern, and the news media was present, almost as numerous as the marchers.
The 25 were members or friends of the recently opened Thomas Merton Peace and Justice Center, an interfaith but predominately Catholic effort on the South Side.
Larry Kessler, director of the Center, said the cross was to illustrate the religious motivation of the protesters who cannot “in conscience” support “this atrocity we call the Indochina war.”
Asked if the escalation wasn’t the result of North Vietnam’s attack, several responded in essence:
“What do you expect? We’ve had plenty of time to get out. We shouldn’t be there in the first place.”
The demonstrators chose the front of the Diocese of Pittsburgh Bldg. to form, unknown to diocesan officials.
As they filed through town they passed out handbills signed by 45 persons, including 12 diocesan priests and three nuns, announcing the undersigned were withholding part of their federal tax payment or the 10 per cent phone excise tax to protest the war.
The handbills urged others to “conscientiously object” the same way.
Many people took the bills and read them impassively.
The procession stopped at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral on Sixth St. for a brief prayer service and again at the Methodist Bldg. on Smithfield at Seventh where the closest thing to an incident occurred.
The ground floor of the building houses a bank branch, and Fr. Donald Fisher had hardly begun paraphrasing a psalm through a portable mike when the building manager rushed out and announced that “You can’t do that here.”
It was private property, the manager said tensely and when the demonstrators tried to discuss it, he hurried off to call the police.
By the time he returned, however, the demonstration had moved on.
At the Federal Bldg. on Liberty Ave. where several more demonstrators were waiting, the group set the wooden coffin down in the outdoor plaza, and after Kessler read from one of Fr. Daniel Berrigan’s writings, they tossed into the coffin some old phone bills and income tax forms as a symbolic gesture.
Several dozen persons who gathered to watch included four or five young men preparing to enlist at Armed Forces offices inside the building.
“It’s a shame.” said Robert DeRose Jr., 18, from Gallitzin in Cambria County, a sturdy, dark-haired youth who said — looking at his watch — he was to be sworn into the Navy “in 10 minutes.”
“All they’re doing is letting Communism spread around the world,” he said heatedly.
“Yet they’ll be the first to scream when Communism comes in.”
There was a humorous moment when five of the priests went inside to pay their self-reduced income tax and — even as any hapless taxpayer — were unwittingly directed by a solicitous Internal Revenue guide to the wrong line.
“I don’t take any money here,” the official told them after they had worked their way up to his desk and Fr. Donald McIlvane had introduced everyone all around and explained their purpose. “You have to give it to the cashier.”
The cashier proved to be an attractive redhead at the other end of the room who listened politely to the priests’ explanations, smiled and said, “Thank you,” as she accepted each payment.
The procession’s religious aura commanded respect — the prayers, the obvious concern for peaceful protest, the appeal to Christian principles, as the marchers see those principles.
But the intensity of the division this war has generated was reflected by the reaction of a stumpy, graying man on one streetcorner.
“They’re a bunch of Communists,” he told a companion contemptuously.
“They wouldn’t do that in Russia.”
“Not in East Germany either,” his friend replied in a strong foreign accent.
The National Catholic News Service carried this dispatch on :
Tax Problems Dog Catholic Worker Movement
By NC News Service New York (NC) —
“My little case is to explain to the court that performing the corporal works of mercy is indeed charitable even under the standards imposed by our government, and I refuse to apply for tax exemption.”
With those words Dorothy Day, the 74-year-old founder of the Catholic Worker movement, has summarized what she expects to say when she appears in a federal court in Lewisburg, Pa.
Miss Day will have to explain why the Catholic Worker movement has not paid $296,359 in fines, penalties and back income taxes to the Internal Revenue Service for the past six years.
A confirmed pacifist, Miss Day has opposed the theory of a just war, a theory that has been foremost in her decision not to apply for federal tax exemption.
“Our refusal to apply for exemption status in our practice of the works of mercy is part of our protest against war and the present social ‘order’ which brings on wars today,” she said.
“One of the most costly protests against war in the way of long enduring personal sacrifice is to refuse to pay income taxes for war,” she wrote recently in the Catholic Worker newspaper.
She argues that the Catholic Worker organization has never paid salaries.
Its volunteer workers are given room, board, clothing and free instruction in the Catholic Worker movement.
“So we do not need to pay federal income taxes,” she contends.
“I’m sure that many will think me a fool indeed, almost criminally negligent for not taking more care to safeguard, not just the bank account, but the welfare of all the lame, halt, and blind — deserving or undeserving poor — who come to us.”
Miss Day told NC News Service she considers the tax investigations a “harassment by the federal government” because the Catholic Worker movement is against all war.
The Catholic Worker is not incorporated as a religious organization and therefore is not exempt from paying federal income taxes.
She said the Catholic Worker does not incorporate because it is a principal of the movement to avoid all ties with the state.
She says the Catholic Worker did not set up a defense committee to campaign for Catholic funds.
“I can only trust that this crisis will pass,” she said.
“I am sure that some way will be found either to avert the disaster, or for us to continue to care for our old, sick, helpless, hungry and homeless if it happens,” she said.
The National Catholic Reporter reported that the “peace tax fund” idea had captured Catholic attention as well:
Applying papal suggestions
From tax dollars to peace fund
By Phil Haslanger
Special to the National Catholic Reporter, Madison, Wis.—
Trying to apply papal suggestions to political realities is not the easiest job in the world.
Take, for example, Pope Paul’s suggestion in his encyclical Populorum Progressio that a world fund be established “to be made up of part of the money spent on arms, to relieve the most destitute of this world.”
For Dr. Daniel J. Guilfoil, a 39-year-old philosophy professor at Edgewood college here, that suggestion provided the key to his dream of having part of his tax money be deferred from military expenses to help the poor.
With the introduction of a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives which would enable citizens to avoid paying war taxes on grounds of conscience (N.C.R., ), Guilfoil saw his dream moving closer to reality.
Although Guilfoil had worked for about two years to have his congressman, Rep. Robert Kastenmeier (D-Wis.), introduce such a bill, the push which finally got the bill introduced came from a citizens group in Ann Arbor, Mich. under the leadership of Dr. David Bassett, a physician.
Neither Guilfoil nor the Ann Arbor group had any knowledge about each other — a fact Guilfoil interprets as both a weakness in the tactical effort and a sign that the bill embodies an idea whose time has come.
The path Guilfoil followed which led him to work for such legislation was not dissimilar from that followed by other liberal Catholics in the wake of Vatican Ⅱ.
As enthusiasm for the declarations of the council yielded to frustration over the pace of change, Guilfoil, his wife, Barbara (“She’s probably more activist than I am”) and their nine children became a part of Madison’s John ⅩⅩⅢ experimental community.
With the community, they worked on civil rights and open housing legislation and, in Guilfoil’s words, “moved into the peace movement, if you will, as a connected issue.”
Working with the social action committee of Madison Area Community of Churches to establish a draft counseling center, Guilfoil became sensitive to the witness offered by conscientious objectors and he began to think that “the principle of alternative service should be extended to all people,” not just to draftable young men.
At the same time, he was aware of the growing tax resistance movement to protest the war and he was considering the implications of Populorum Progressio.
The various threads were woven together by Guilfoil and other members of John ⅩⅩⅢ into a petition, signatures were gathered and a resolution was adopted by the social action committee of the diocesan priests’ senate urging “legislation to create an alternate fund to administer to the needs of people.”
From there, more signatures were collected and on , Guilfoil talked with Kastenmeier about the possibility of having legislation to that effect introduced.
The congressman responded favorably and suggested the petitions and information be sent to his administrative assistant.
Kastenmeier’s office considered the proposal, but decided that the time was not yet ripe for such a bill.
Some time later the idea of just such a bill was stirring in Ann Arbor.
By fall the World Peace Tax Fund steering committee had been established.
According to Arthur Mack, the committee’s corresponding secretary, a second committee was established in Washington to lobby towards such legislation.
Rep. Ronald Dellums (D-Cal.) liked the idea and put his office to work on rounding up cosponsors.
In , he and the other nine congressmen introduced the “bill and saw it referred to the House Ways and Means committee.
, Guilfoil prodded the faculty of Edgewood college to “go on record as supporting the right of all citizens to the privilege of the status of ‘conscientious objector.’ ”
, he convinced the social action commission of Blessed Sacrament parish in Madison to unanimously adopt a resolution asking the parish council to educate the parish “on the theology of alternate service.”
Resolutions written by Guilfoil supporting the passage of the World Peace Tax Fund act the bill pending in the House were adopted by both the Second District caucus of the Democratic party (Madison) and, most significantly of all, by the State Democratic party as a part of its platform.
Guilfoil sees his efforts on the local level as part of the push to draw national attention to the bill.
He said he hopes the National Conference of Catholic Bishops will consider supporting the legislation, and he would like to see other national groups support the bill.
As for the realistic chances of getting the bill out of committee and passed into law, Guilfoil admits, “I’m not optimistic.
But if you told me two years ago it would even be a bill now. I wouldn’t have believed you.”
He sees lobbying combined with education as the lever to getting the bill moving.
“There’s enough sentiment today that taxes are being directed foolishly,” he says.
“It’s a matter of getting people aware that straight people can think about these things.”
For Catholic groups, he added, the concepts of the bill “must be tied to the pacifist and just war traditions of the church — the doctrine of the church is surely important.”
As for Guilfoil himself, he is not waiting for the government to pass legislation which will make that papal suggestion a political reality.
He has joined with others in the state to form a Wisconsin Peace Fund.
The specifics of the group haven’t been worked out yet, but basically, members will put a part of their tax money into the fund and the group will disperse it to local causes.
What Guilfoil and the people in Ann Arbor hope is that someday that peace fund will be on a national or even international level.
The World Peace Tax Fund act has helped sustain that hope.
The issue of National Catholic Reporter reported on a national war tax resistance conference and included a sidebar on “How tax resisters resist taxes.” From the opening paragraphs, it appears that a political endorsement was on the agenda, suggesting that the conference was much more mainstream-liberal then than it is now (I doubt such an endorsement would be seriously considered by a NWTRCC conference these days):
War tax resisters
Can’t quite “endorse” McGovern
Jim Castelli, Associate Editor
Kansas City, Mo. —
The second National War Tax Resistance Conference, attended by about 40 persons from around the country, gave what amounted to a qualified endorsement to the presidential candidacy of Senator George McGovern.
The tax resisters approved a statement praising McGovern for his promises to end the war, cut military spending, restudy the entire tax system and support a guaranteed annual income.
The statement also said the political climate in the country would substantially improve with McGovern as president and that he would end “repressive” actions by the government.
But the tax resisters also said they saw a negative side to McGovern, saying he “completely believes in maintaining United States power in the world” and that providing more arms for Israel, as McGovern has said he would do, is not the way to end the crisis in the Middle East.
Despite such criticisms, the statement said that most of the participants would probably vote for McGovern.
Discussion indicated that those at the conference not voting for McGovern would either vote for Dr. Benjamin Spock, the People’s Party candidate, or not vote at all.
One participant suggested that applying pressure on McGovern from the left would let voters see him as a moderate, and therefore more acceptable.
Another noted that because War Tax Resistance has strong anarchistic tendencies, a statement in support of McGovern might induce some anarchists to vote in this election.
The conference was held at St. Mark’s church, an unusual church in that it is staffed by Protestant and Catholic clergy.
The participants, for the most part, wore sandals, well-worn jeans and long hair but weren’t all young.
They came from both coasts and such cities as Denver, Chicago and Ann Arbor, Mich.
Also coming out of the conference was an agreement to draw up a statement on what the focus of the war tax resistance movement should be when the war ends.
It was agreed tax resisters should continue to oppose the domination of the federal budget by the military and the centralization of power in the hands of governmental and corporate structures.
This opposition, the participants said, should include presenting alternatives, such as a nonviolent peace-keeping force and a blueprint for converting to an economy based on peace — for example, an analysis of how to shift the emphasis at Boeing Aircraft to building mass transportation facilities.
The conference expressed opposition to key segments of the World Peace Fund Tax Act, a measure introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Congressman Ron Dellums (D-Calif.) and nine other legislators.
The bill would allow taxpayers who qualified for conscientious objector status under Selective Service standards to divert the percentage of their taxes slated for the military to a “world peace tax board,” which would study peaceful alternatives to international conflict.
The major objections to the bill were the screening process to obtain the conscientious objector status and the fact that the alternative funds would still be controlled at the national level, preventing tax money from being used in the community from which it was paid.
No specific action was taken at the conference on the bill, but Robert Calvert, coordinator of War Tax Resistance, said he expects a new national working committee to try to rework the bill in .
Calvert, in an interview, said the number of Americans withholding taxes because of the war is growing.
He estimated that between 100,000 and 200,000 are either refusing to page the 10 per cent federal telephone excise tax, which is used for the war, or refusing to pay all or part of their income tax.
At present, he said, there are 192 war tax resistance centers in the U.S.
He added that each regional office of the Internal Revenue Service now has a person or department dealing with taxpayers protesting the war.
“We’d love to get our hands on the IRS list,” he said.
“They have many more names of resisters than we have because many people resist on their own without working with a local center.”
The two main purposes of the conference were organizational: the creation of a working committee, and the question of whether or not to move the national office from New York to Kansas City.
The proposal to move the office was approved, partly because of expected lower operating costs, but mostly because War Tax Resistance wants to be closer to “middle America.”
The move is expected to be made by the end of the year.
The working committee, now being assembled, will consist of representatives of national regions and the seven state area around Kansas City.
The committee is to meet every two months beginning in .
How tax resisters resist taxes
Special to the National Catholic Reporter, Kansas City, Mo.—
How do you resist paying taxes as a protest against the war, and what happens when you do?
Interviews conducted at the second annual National War Tax Resistance Conference and materials put out by the movement provide these answers:
There are a variety of ways to resist taxes:
Withholding the federal telephone excise tax, withholding all or part of the federal income tax, not filing a tax return at all, paying taxes under protest and keeping one’s earnings below a taxable level.
All have a different set of consequences.
The most common form of resistance is withholding the telephone tax, says Robert Calvert, coordinator of the War Tax Resistance organization.
The telephone tax, which helps finance the war, currently is 10 per cent.
To withhold it, resisters simply deduct the tax when they pay their phone bills, explaining that it is a protest against the war, not against the phone company.
Members of War Tax Resistance say that telephone companies have told resisters that their service will not be interrupted, and that they regard the protest as a matter between the individual and the government.
They point out, however, that phone companies do provide the Internal Revenue Service with the names of resisters.
The experience of resisters is that, after several written demands for payment, IRS can usually secure payment by attaching the resister’s bank account, taking the amount of the unpaid tax, plus up to six per cent interest.
Technically, a person who resists the telephone tax is liable to a year’s imprisonment and a $10,000 fine, but so far the government has been satisfied with collection, resisters say.
In Calvert’s opinion, the government might still decide to arrest telephone tax resisters.
But, he adds, it has been the history of movements such as tax resistance that they are strengthened by governmental crackdowns.
Resisting income taxes is more difficult because taxes are withheld from most people’s wages during the year.
Thus, resisters who owe money at the end of the year can refuse to pay it or, through the use of such tactics as claiming more dependents than they actually have, file for a refund.
Income tax resistance is viewed more seriously by the government; resisters have been jailed, but penalties are greater for falsification of income tax returns or failure to file than for refusal to pay.
(Any tax returns indicating resistance should be accompanied by a letter explaining the nature of the protest.)
So far, however, either because their returns have been accepted by IRS computers, or because appeals proceedings can take years, most resisters have still not had to pay taxes.
Tax resisters advise against keeping withheld tax money, however.
The organization instead advises putting the money into alternate funds which may be used to assist tax resisters who are challenged by the government.
The government can seize personal property such as cars and houses for public auction to bring in the owed taxes.
(Whatever money is brought in over and above the taxes and auction fees is returned to the resister.)
These auctions have become occasions for peace demonstrations.
An auction for a car that had been seized from a Kansas man for tax resistance heard bids of Vietnamese tears, coffins, and napalmed babies.
Also, a resister can often arrange to have friends or a resistance center make the actual purchase at the auction.
The use of withholding allowances as a means of tax resistance was devised by John Egnal, a lawyer from Philadelphia representing resister Jack Malinowski.
Malinowski was charged with supplying “false information” on his tax status; he had claimed 14 dependents (the number of other people in the Philadelphia tax resistance center), an amount which negated his tax for the year.
He was found guilty, but has not as yet been sentenced.
The problem with past methods of tax resistance is that they are all technically illegal because they hinge on a yes or no answer to questions regarding certain parts of the internal revenue code.
The use of withholding allowances, however, seems to avoid this situation.
An employee fills out IRS form W-4 to indicate to his employer the number of deductions he will claim for the coming year; form W-4E indicates that no tax liability has been incurred for the year, usually because of income below the taxable level.
People who expect to have a large number of itemized deductions can enter a number of withholding allowances — converted from dollar figures by a chart on the back of the W-4 form — which will reduce tax payments; this way, higher taxes are not paid and then refunded at the end of the year.
Egnal holds that “the withholding allowance claim would be applicable to any tax resister who believed that, as a result of the illegal and immoral conduct of the U.S. government, some or all of the federal taxes claimed could not lawfully be collected.
“If one held such a belief… it would be necessary to improvise some basis for preparing one’s income tax returns, since IRS has not, as yet, seen fit to follow the law of this country, which includes not only the Internal Revenue code, but also numerous principles of international law to which the U.S. has subscribed.”
This improvisation, according to Egnal, would be a “war crimes deduction” for which a withholding allowance could be entered.
Egnal, claims that if the government were to prosecute such a resister, “the only false statement they could point to would be ‘I am entitled to a war crimes deduction because…’
Such a statement reflects a legal conclusion which has never been ruled upon by any court, and which… enjoys the support of many noted scholars.”
Even if the courts eventually rule that such deductions are illegal, Egnal points out that past rulings would not allow prosecution because the fact that the legal question was in doubt erases the possibility of “willfully” breaking the law.
A similar situation exists with form W-4E, which states “Under penalties of perjury, I certify that I incurred no liability for federal income tax for and that I anticipate that I will incur no liability for federal income tax for .”
A resister could, according to Egnal, use the “war crimes deduction” to justify the claim that he was not liable for any taxes.
(A follow-up brief in the issue read: “There was some discussion at the annual conference of War Tax Resistance that if McGovern lost the election, his followers would make a prime target for the tax resistance movement.
He lost, and the war is still going on; if it drags on until income tax time, it will be interesting to see if there is an increase in tax resistance.”
Another, in the issue read: “The war tax resistance movement has found a new home in Mid-America — Kansas City.
The organization moved from New York to save money and to be physically closer to ‘middle Americans.’
Nearby Independence, Mo. is the national headquarters of the paramilitary Minutemen, but tax resistance members don’t expect any hassles.
One resister joked, ‘Maybe we can learn something from them about grassroots organization.’
The new address will be 912 E. 31st St., Kansas City, Mo.”)
The same issue included this opinion piece:
War taxes and conscience
“It is the issue of coresponsibility and complicity that will become salient”
By Roderick Hindery
Even if United States military forces in Indochina should be reduced to a residual element or less before or after the election, the war will remain an issue crucial for the conscience and morale of those who led it and those who were coresponsible.
It is particularly the issue of coresponsibility or complicity that will become salient.
The fact that the Indochina war was explicitly rejected by millions who simultaneously supported it by taxes and other forms of cooperation may make the judgment of Nuremberg the question of the present era:
“that a person acted pursuant to the order of his government or a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”
One of the more constructive expressions of an emerging consciousness of coresponsibility for military action is the World Peace Tax Fund Act (N.C.R. ).
Although the bill may never escape committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, as one attempt to legislate an alternative to economic participation in war for those conscientiously opposed, it is enormously important.
The rationale attached to the bill argues that since compulsory significant participation in war against one’s religious conscience is opposed to the original spirit of the First Amendment, the law should allow a realistic alternative such as contributions to qualified peace-related activities — for example, research toward non-military solutions of conflict.
The compatibility of alternate contributions with responsible citizenship is defended by reference to Christian tradition, the traditions of the United States, judicial interpretations and legal precedents.
In a survey of some of the bill’s ramifications, the authors assure their readers that tried and proven standards for determining authentic conscientious objector status can also be applied to military tax objectors.
As for other possible abuses, it is alleged that the Peace Tax Fund’s passage would not open the floodgates to earmarking tax dollars because opposition to war involves a right of conscience that is uniquely fundamental.
In a concluding section entitled “Effectiveness,” the Peace Tax Fund proposal realistically admits that the military budget would not decrease unless Congress were persuaded by the fund’s growth to reduce the priority of military spending.
Tax exemption is primarily a means to that end.
In noting that the bill would “force” taxpayers to decide whether they can support military spending, the authors underline the thesis with which we began — the importance of an emerging consciousness about coresponsibility for war through military spending.
The Peace Tax Fund, of course, is not the only path of dissent being explored.
An increasing body of tax resisters (192 listed groups in the United States) have experimented with alternatives ranging from individual protests to communal resistance and harassment of the Internal Revenue Service.
Taxes are withheld totally or in amounts proportionate to military spending by the government.
Equivalent sums are donated to social and charitable causes.
However, if the citizen takes steps to insure that military taxes are not confiscated from his salary or property, he is liable to legal sanction.
While refusal to work for taxable wages and emigration are further options, emigration alone may offer the only route toward a “pure non-cooperation.”
When economic systems can support war by deficit spending and by the transfer of non-military funds to military budgets, even participation in a future World Peace Tax Fund would not neutralize the fact that living within a military economy is itself a kind of cooperation in war.
The option most commonly followed is to justify support of military spending as a means of buying time and freedom to work toward a less militaristic administration.
None of these options to economic military support necessarily presuppose a totally pacifistic position.
In principle they also apply to citizens concerned with the justice of supporting particular wars, revolutions, counterrevolutions, or exorbitantly massive forms of national defense.
In each of these instances it is maintained that money becomes power and weaponry which kills against one’s conscience.
What was always true is becoming increasingly obvious.
Conscientious objection is a problem not only for draftees but for all taxpayers and their dependents.
The fact that the problem is not yet widely recognized is partly grounded in a profound dilemma never resolved in the history of theoretical ethics and only tenuously confronted by national constitutions and international law.
The dilemma can be expressed in two questions:
1) Is there not a basic and inalienable human right/duty not to kill against one’s conscience?
2) If this right/duty is inalienable, how can the right/duty of national defense override it?
Within the legal dimension the dilemma is not yet totally resolved.
The Russian Constitution, for instance, legislates that the duty of defense supersedes freedom of conscience.
The United States Constitution refers to no such priority, only to a religious freedom which implicitly presupposes a prior freedom of conscience in matters so basic as killing.
No subsequent legislation has inverted that valuation, and judicial decisions consistently interpret the Constitution in favor of the primacy of conscience (at least in reference to opposition to war in general).
This priority of conscience was explicitly confirmed by the principles of Nuremberg, which were approved by the United States and promulgated as international law by the United Nations in .
In principle the United States accepts international law as an authority which obliges its own citizens.
In the United States the priority of conscience still needs clearer and more explicit legislation.
The unconstitutionality of compulsory war tax may be argued from the perspective of the written Constitution (intentions or actual practice of the framers or citizens who first ratified it) or from the viewpoint of the living constitution (manifested in judicial decisions or people’s referendums).
From either or both of these methodological perspectives the priority of conscience may be argued more cogently than it has in the past.
In other words, whatever may be said for or against other freedoms of conscience, the liberty not to kill, when killing is judged immoral, is unique.
It is so basic to the freedom of conscience which the Constitution presupposes, that there is need of an explicit amendment or other legislation to guide courts in deciding all cases involved.
A bill like the World Peace Tax Fund, while not as irreversible or desirable as a constitutional amendment, is needed to help explicate what is already implicit at the legal level.
Within the ambit of theoretical ethics which operate autonomously outside or within various world religions, the priority of the right not to kill against one’s conscience is in jeopardy due to two as yet unsolved theoretical controversies.
The first controversy is the one engendered by classic utilitarianism’s principle that morality is always determined by whatever serves the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people.
As recently as John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard U. Press, ; cf. The New York Times Book Review, ), philosophers have joined in continued debate about the adequacy of the greatest happiness principle and have argued the pragmatic need to supplement it by postulating an equal and, in some ways, prior principle of justice:
Since certain individual rights of life or liberty are inalienable, their inviolability necessarily, if sometimes invisibly, brings about the greatest happiness.
This principle is not acceptable to everyone since it seems verifiable only in the future.
The second controversy has been sharpened by analysis of ethical language.
Are rights something people merely feel about and confer or bestow on one another?
If rights are dependent on what others think of us or what they contract with us, how can rights be inalienable?
Or, if some rights are inalienable, what is the source of human certitude in specifying them, intuition or what?
Ethical thought which is not rooted in heteronomous religious authority continues to founder on these two controversies and lacks the ringing certitude about inalienable rights proclaimed by the United States Declaration of Independence and the Founding Fathers, by the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or by the international principles of Nuremberg.
Consequently, the sources of national and international laws manifest a greater unanimity and authority than do conflicting approaches in theoretical ethics.
Whoever does not immediately perceive the self-evidence of the liberty not to kill against one’s conscience will apparently function best when he appeals not to a universal authority in reasoned ethics but to the legal authority and presuppositions of constitutions or international law.
As mentioned previously, those who are convinced of conscientious objection’s legality should work for its logical extension into the economic sphere.
Not all wars or military spending appear so clearly immoral to so many people as does the war in Vietnam.
There are other issues on which progressives or conservatives may be divided among their own groups, e.g., future support of military operations in the Near East or Latin America, nuclear defense programs powerful enough to destroy the planet many times over, or foreign aid programs thought to be gravely exploitative and imperialistic.
The authors of the World Peace Tax Fund Act give assurances that exemption from war taxes would not open the floodgates for citizens who wish to earmark their tax dollars in other programs.
On the contrary, this concern may be offset with the judgment that, given a plurality of fundamental human rights, there may be many other crucial moral issues on which citizens should vote with their dollars.
The lasting merit of the growing war tax resistance movement may not be that it helped end the war in Indochina, but that it raised the question of citizens’ coresponsibility to the moral priority it deserves, not only in matters of war and peace, but in every matter of life and death.
The issue of citizens’ coresponsible decision-making entails more than the purity and liberty of individual consciences.
If free and informed decisions by greater numbers have anything to do with the effectiveness of democracy, the future of democracy itself may be involved.
Roderick Hindery teaches religious ethics at Temple university in Philadelphia.
Today, some excerpts from The Catholic News Archive concerning tax resistance in .
First, from the Catholic Worker:
“Peacemaker” Refuses Taxes
By Ernest Bromley et al.
The federal government’s Internal Revenue Service on began proceedings against Gano Peacemakers, Inc. and against Ernest and Marion Bromley for taxes and penalties amounting to over $30,000, for .
The address for both is 10206 Sylvan Ave., Cincinnati, Ohio.
The locality is on the map as Gano.
As many people are aware, Gano Peacemakers, Inc. is a nonprofit corporation established by the Bromleys and others soon after they went to Gano as a community in .
It has held property, but has never operated a program, had any income from work or contributions, or had a treasury.
In , the mailing address of the Movement of Peacemakers, together with its organ, The Peacemaker, was brought to Gano, as Ernest Bromley had accepted responsibility for circulation and editing.
The Peacemaker files were brought from Yellow Springs, the financial records were brought from the former business address in Cleveland, and the sharing fund from Oberlin.
As is well known by all volunteers who have kept the records and everyone close to the Peacemaker Movement, The Peacemaker finances have continued entirely apart from the finances of the people at the house in Gano.
False Information
IRS arrived at this figure through the assertion that the Peacemaker Movement and its organ, The Peacemaker, housed at that address, are synonymous with Gano Peacemakers, Inc., which holds title to the house where the Bromleys live.
The erroneous claim, expressed in notations and figures on numerous IRS forms, is that the finances of the Peacemaker Movement are one and the same as the corporation holding title to the property.
Figures on these forms claim that all subscriptions to The Peacemaker and contributions to the Movement are income to Gano Peacemakers, Inc.
These IRS tables and figures, received at the house in Gano, go so far as to assert that all recipients of checks from The Peacemaker bank account are employees of Gano Peacemakers, Inc., and assessments are listed for FUTA, FICA and payroll income tax which they claim Peacemakers should have withheld from all those receiving checks.
People said to be employees are named in the documents; most are the families of imprisoned war objectors who received monthly checks for their period of need.
Apparently, IRS took these from copies of canceled checks kept by the Farmers and Citizens Bank, Trotwood, Ohio.
Whether IRS has made this move with the calculated intention of disrupting and diminishing the Peacemaker Movement and The Peacemaker is, of course, not known.
It should be stated that the Bromleys and others who refuse taxes for war have consistently refused to give IRS any information—partly because they wanted to make collection as difficult as possible, even though the amount might be very small—and partly because they wanted to offer total noncooperation with the machinery of a racist and murdering government apparatus.
Having gathered information which is totally-false as the basis for a claim, IRS should not be permitted to proceed in ignorance of the total misrepresentation they have made with regard to activities at Gano.
If IRS does proceed on the basis it has claimed, no assets called Peacemaker will be immune to its seizure at any time, be it a checking account where subscriptions are deposited or funds contributed for aid to imprisoned war objectors’ families.
Anything considered to be the Movement’s can be grabbed.
If that should happen, Peacemaker would find other ways to continue to communicate with each other and meet their obligations to families of imprisoned war objectors.
Claim Against the Bromleys
Ernest and Marion Bromley’s nonpayment of taxes for war antedates the founding of Peacemakers.
They have for many years made public their stand against paying taxes for war, and have refused to give IRS any information.
It is rather ironic that after making the house at Gano available without charge for The Peacemaker editing and circulation work, they are now being accused of receiving income from the operation of the Peacemaker Movement.
What Response to Make?
It is not likely that either individual refusers or any persons acting for Peacemakers will begin to fill out tax forms, open its mailing lists to IRS, show names of contributors and do any of the things people do who are merely looking for a better deal from IRS.
Even if such cooperation were acceptable to Peacemakers, it is no guarantee that IRS would accept the explanations.
And one thing quite repugnant to Peacemakers is the thought of applying to IRS for a right to continue.
There is the possibility that IRS is proceeding without knowledge of how far-fetched their claims are.
Those who know the principles on which Peacemaker finances are handled may wish to write to the IRS accountant who signed the papers.
He is Samuel T. Lay, IRS, P.O. Box 476, Cincinnati, OH, 45201.
Such a communication would be for the purpose of informing the IRS that their claims against the Peacemaker Movement are erroneous.
It would be particularly helpful if those knowing how the sharing fund operates would inform the IRS that those receiving checks are not employees either of Peacemakers or Gano Peacemakers, Inc.; that they have not performed any services for Peacemakers; and that they may have never had any other connection with Peacemakers than receiving financial aid during a resister’s prison sentence.
There is no true basis for a collection in the material IRS has assembled.
It may be that they will acknowledge this fact if they receive information from those who know how incorrect their assumptions are.
If letters go to IRS, it would be helpful if copies are sent to The Peacemaker.
Chuck Matthei reports that the Peacemakers’ winter continuation meeting in Indianapolis discussed mounting an educational campaign about tax refusal in the Cincinnati area.
They also foresee a non-violent, direct action response to the war-tax machine if an eviction or auction takes place.
Chuck stressed that the action would involve a no bail/no fine commitment from participants.
Although the Peacemakers wish to make refusal to support war, not concern to protect property, the issue in their tax case, they are collecting pledges of assistance for the Bromleys, should the need arise.
For more information, or to participate, contact:
The Peacemaker
10208 Sylvan Av.
Cincinnati, Ohio 45241
The National Catholic Reporter reported in its issue:
American Telephone and Telegraph reports that 22,000 people refused to pay the telephone excise tax in protest against the Vietnam war in , up from 17,000 and 12,000 in .
The Internal Revenue Service wants AT&T to disconnect all those phones, but AT&T says tax problems are IRS’ business.
Apparently, IRS wants as little to do with 22,000 prosecutions as AT&T wants to do with the $200,000 a month It would cost to disconnect protesters’ phones.
The issue of that paper, toward the end of a larger article about peace movement retooling toward the tail end of the Vietnam War, noted:
Bob Calvert of War Tax Resistance said his organization will continue to urge tax resistance in protest against the large amount of the federal budget — more than half — which goes into the military.
He said local tax resistance centers are preparing reports describing the amount of federal taxes taken out of each state, the amount returned through revenue sharing, the real needs of the state and the amount of money from the state which goes into the military.
Mike DeGregory penned an argument for war tax resistance for the issue of Catholic Worker:
Render to God: The Imperative to Resist
By Mike DeGregory
“There are two things I’ve got to do in this world — die and pay taxes.”
This sentiment presents a serious theological problem for the modern world: equating the demands of the nation state with those of God.
Given the violence and militarism of our times, the problem becomes a question of idolatry.
As such, the payment of taxes must be examined with all its implications.
God and State
Since biblical times there has existed a tension between allegiance to God and allegiance to the state.
Periodically, acts of resistance were made as a witness affirming God as the source of life in opposition to the state.
Recently this tension has been manifested in this country when hundreds of thousands of Americans, motivated by belief in a higher authority, refused allegiance to the state.
Draft resistance to the Vietnam war was widespread, and the war tax resistance movement reached a high point.
Now, however, that the ceasefire accords have been signed and American troops will be withdrawn from Vietnam, many consider war tax refusal an inappropriate anachronism.
Such a view is a misunderstanding of the nature of war and tax resistance.
Mr. Nixon has repeatedly said, “Peace, peace with honor,” but there is no peace.
The Vietnam war continues with intense fighting.
It is the Vietnamese people who suffer.
Over 200,000 refugees have been created since the ceasefire began, while American planes daily bomb Cambodia, and frequently bomb Laos.
Outside Indochina, a similar “peace” prevails.
America continues to arm other smaller nations for fratricidal wars, most recently in a $2 billion agreement with Iran.
And America’s nuclear overkill continues to increase, as does the military budget.
This is peace only in an Orwellian sense.
William James has described the true nature of this “peace” in his The Moral Equivalent of War:
“Peace” in military mouths is a synonym for “war expected”…
Every up-to-date dictionary should say that “peace” and “war” mean the same thing, now in posse, now in actu.
It may even be reasonably said that the intensely sharp competitive preparation for war by the nations is the real war, permanent, unceasing; and that the battles are only a sort of public verification of the mastery gained during the “peace” interval.
No Mere Protest
The existence of perpetual war makes war tax resistance relevant and necessary.
Tax resistance is not just another form of protest.
It is a refusal to participate in something, namely war.
It involves a change of worldviews, a conversion.
It demands a commitment to a new way of living.
It can be a truly religious response, stemming from moral obligation rather than expediency.
In this moral sense, it is for everyone, not just the courageous few.
For in modern society, how we use our money and how we relate to money determines what kind of lives we lead and the kind of persons we are.
For many Christians, this decision of how to relate to the issue of taxes is easily answered: pay them, for Christ said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
The spirit of the Gospel is peace and nonviolence.
A biblical response to the “Render to Caesar” passage does not mean blind obedience to the state.
Rather, it suggests the responsibility to judge the “things” of Caesar in light of the “things” of God.
The essential part of the passage is the latter clause: “Render to God the things that are God’s.” Jesus intended no equality between God and Caesar.
Therefore, before rendering to Caesar one must judge if the things of Caesar are compatible with the things of God.
More specifically, today we must ask: is the payment of an income tax of which more than 50% finances the works of war, compatible with the things of God who desires from us the works of mercy?
We are faced with the moral imperative of examining war and our role in it as taxpayers.
In conscience we must decide whether to pay or not.
The New C.O.
In the modern process of violence, our technological society increasingly replaces men with machines.
The “big business” of modem war relies more and more on citizens’ money than on their bodies.
In light of this, it becomes essential that tax resisters be seen as the new conscientious objectors to war, withholding their financial as well as their bodily resources.
In the past, draft resistance has been seen as the refusal to place the pinch of incense on the altar of a false god.
Tax resistance deals more fundamentally with this same idolatry.
For tax money is the very gold of which the false idols of war are made.
War tax resistance is an alternative to this idolatry.
Some will object that war tax resistance, even with its corresponding alternate life funds, is ineffective.
This is perhaps correct, but as I see it, irrelevant.
Too often actions are undertaken simply for effect.
The words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer sum up the effectiveness of war tax resistance: “One asks, what is to come?
Another, what is right?
And that is the difference between the slave and the free man.”
“When it becomes the ‘sacred duty’ of a man to commit sin, one no longer knows how he should live,” said Reinhold Schneider.
“There remains nothing else for him to do but bear individual witness alone.
And where such witness is, there is the Kingdom of God.”
In this is the effectiveness of war tax resistance.
One of the best (and shortest) rationales for war tax resistance is Peter Maurin’s statement, “The future will be different if we make the present different.” If we continue to pay for war and the instruments of war, will we ever have peace?
(Ed. Note: For more information about tax resistance, write War Tax Resistance, 912 E. 31st St., Kansas City, Mo. 64109.)
The National Catholic News Service included this among its dispatches on :
Five Anti-War Priests Refuse to Pay Part of Income Tax
Pittsburgh (NC)—
Five priests of the Pittsburgh diocese have filed income tax returns but deducted 20 percent from their taxes which they contend would go to support a “totally immoral war” in Southeast Asia.
“The bombing in Cambodia going on right now is without any foundation in law — let alone morality,” said Father Jack O’Malley, spokesman for the group.
“The Thieu government in South Vietnam holds five of our brother priests as political prisoners because they have dared to speak out against the immoral actions of their government.
It is our taxes which is keeping Thieu in power,” Father O’Malley said.
The five priests waited until the deadline day of to file their tax returns at the Internal Revenue Service office here at .
Father O’Malley said the priests recognize that wrong is also being done by the North Vietnamese government. “But that country is not our ally,” he said.
“It is a privilege and duty to pay taxes,” the priest said.
“It is likewise a duty to resist evil in conscience.
When that evil is done by one’s own government, the duty is no less.”
During Holy Week the five priests prayed for an end to the bombing in Cambodia and an end to fighting and violence by all parties in Southeast Asia.
The other priests taking part in the tax resistance were:
Fathers Mark Glasgow, Patrick Fenton, Warren Metzler and Donald McIlvane.
A letter-to-the-editor in the Catholic Worker, signed by “Ammon Hennacy House” (Grand Rapids, Michigan), included this paragraph:
At this writing we have just ended a week-end tax resistance conference with about twenty-five people from around the state.
We have been promoting tax and draft resistance as part of our nonviolence workshop group Life Force.
With the beginnings of a tax resisters’ fund we are seeking an alternative to the violence and exploitation of banking.
Also, we are exploring possibilities of an insurance fund.
With four active children, we feel the need to be providing them with assurance of medical care in emergencies.
The National Catholic News Service included this among its dispatches on :
War Resister Gets Tax Refund
Altamont, N.Y. (NC)—
Mark Brockley of St. Lucy’s Parish here received a refund check from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for $250.50 for , which was the total amount IRS had withheld from Mark’s wages for .
The unusual aspect of Brockley’s case is that he received the refund after claiming his infant niece as a dependent on his 1040 form, knowing that she would not qualify as his dependent under the IRS definition.
Brockley explained in a letter to IRS officials that his niece, who was born the day of the Vietnam cease-fire, “represents all children, whether they be Mexican-American babies born in a migrant farm worker’s tent or Cambodian youths huddled in a village under American attack, who depend on each of us to create a livable world for them to grow up in and inherit.”
An IRS official said that if an audit showed that Brockley had claimed a dependent to which he was not entitled, any tax owed would be subject to normal IRS collection procedures.
Brockley is among a small but growing number of people who resist payment of federal taxes because of conscientious objection to government policies, especially to the large portion of the budget which supports the military.
He is 22 and single and describes himself as having been “gung ho for the war” (in Indo-China) until about his junior year in high school when his feelings began to change.
His feelings continued to grow until he was arrested in for protesting the mining of North Vietnamese harbors.
After a demonstration in support for the Berrigans during their trial for conspiracy, Brockley learned about the war tax resistance.
He then took steps to prevent the withholding of taxes from his wages, which is illegal.
“But since the government already had taken over $200 of my money for the year,” he said, “I thought in conscience I should get it back.”
To emphasize that his action was not meant to evade or defraud IRS, Brockley sent the letter explaining his irregular 1040 form.
He stated in part, “I intend that the government you represent shall not receive one penny more of my tax money while it continues policies to which I cannot in conscience lend my support.”
Brockley reconciled his duties as a citizen and his tax actions by noting that “people forget that Jesus did not simply answer, yes, when they asked him if you should pay Caesar’s tax.
It is well established that when you see a clash between Caesar’s law and the Gospel, the Christian’s allegiance is owed to the Gospel.”
The refunded money, Brockley said, is being donated to the Life Giving Fund.
This fund is used to support “groups we consider alternatives to the government’s priorities,” he added. “None of us is interested in tax evasion for personal gain.
We’ve given out over $1000 so far.
“Someday maybe I could get some land and be as self-sufficient as possible — so I could keep my income below the taxable level,” he said.
“That way I could follow my conscience without having to break the law.”
Mike Cullen, who had come to the United States from Ireland twelve years before, and had founded the Casa Maria Catholic Worker hospitality house in Milwaukee, was deported in .
Press reports (e.g. National Catholic Reporter, ) noted that the judge in the deportation case had “listed the cause of deportation as burning of draft files, interfering with administration of the selective service law, counseling others on conscientious objection, tax resistance, and burning his own draft card.”
The Catholic Worker published a letter announcing a shake-up in leadership at the national War Tax Resistance office, and what sounds like flagging enthusiasm for war tax resistance as American involvement in the Vietnam War wound down:
War Tax Resistance
War Tax Resistance 912 E. 31 St. Kansas City, Mo. 64109
Dear Friends,
We want to ask you, at the beginning of this letter, to read it carefully and to respond to it as soon as possible.
Some major questions are raised and the answers depend on each of you.
First, as of , both of us will resign our positions on the National Staff.
However, we will stay on as volunteers as long as is needed to help whoever takes over the National Office and until the present debt is paid.
We have decided this after quite a bit of thought and after talking to a lot of people.
The National Office needs some fresh thought and different ideas.
We became convinced of this when only three Centers responded to our last mailing, which we felt was a rather important one.
We too need a change.
Neither of us has lost our commitment to WTR, in fact both of us feel its importance is greater now than before.
So we will not stop urging people to take up war tax resistance, but we would like to couple that with a broader non-violent program.
We have already started a mail order book store dealing solely with non-violence.
After Bob stops working to pay off our WTR debts he will move full time into working with the Non-Violent Studies Institute of which the book store is a part.
Angie will spend her time helping to start a Catholic Worker House, and will also help with the non-violence program.
Although Bob will continue to work until the present debts are paid, whoever takes over the national office will be responsible for programs they initiate and their ongoing expenses.
It seems that this decision on our part in turn calls for some decisions on your part.
Who will become the National Staff?
Is a National Office necessary?
What about Tax Talk and the printing of literature?
What about those people who will need a place to turn to when IRS decides to come down on them for their resistance?
These issues have to be decided soon and therefore we are calling a Working Committee Meeting for .
It is becoming clear that IRS feels much safer in “coming down” on war tax resisters now than they did a number of months ago.
Apparently they feel there is no united movement to cause them any serious trouble.
Are they right?
If ever we needed to show a united group of people it is now.
Well, that’s about all.
Please let us hear from you so we can have all needed arrangements made for the Working Committee Meeting.
Also, please be thinking of people who could take on the responsibility of the National Office.
Hope to hear from you soon.
In peace, Angie O’Gorman Bob Calvert
The National Catholic News Service carried this dispatch on :
Abortion Opponent Loses in Tax Protest on Abortion Decision
Bethlehem, Ohio (NC)—
A farmer who refused to pay his income tax in protest against the U.S. Supreme Court’s abortion decision, has found the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) unsympathetic to him.
The IRS has ordered withdrawal of $490 from the bank checking account of Brendan Finnegan, a Richland County farmer who filed his tax return but withheld what he owed.
Instead of enclosing a check, Finnegan attached a letter and some pictures of aborted babies.
He told the IRS that he would withhold his taxes “until our government passes and enforces law to protect the unborn from abortion.”
His protracted battles with the IRS have been reported in the Catholic Chronicle, the Toledo diocesan newspaper.
Finnegan, his wife Betty, and their three children live on a 500-acre farm.
The IRS action has not discouraged Finnegan.
He says he will withhold payment again this year, and there should be more money involved.
“We had a pretty good year on the farm,” he explained.
A National Catholic News Service dispatch from began with what sounded like it was going to be an exciting tale of tax resistance, but then petered out into a dry article about private school financing and teachers’ union negotiation.
Excerpt:
Cleveland Monsignor Still Potential Tax Resister
By John Maher
Cleveland (NC)—
The word “dapper" fits Msgr. William N. Novicky, superintendent of education for the diocese of Cleveland, as well as it can any man wearing clerical black.
The 52-year-old priest doesn't conform to the image of your average tax resister, but that is what he says he will be if state and federal courts continue to oppose government aid to nonpublic schools as extensively as they have.
“I'm committed to the concept that if the prejudice that is evident in the courts continues against anything that is Catholic,” he said in an interview.
“I think we'll have to resort to nonviolent civil disobedience.
For me, that means withholding taxes.”
Catholic school officials in Ohio are awaiting the decision of a three-judge federal court on a state law that would make more than $81 million in auxiliary services and materials available to nonpublic schools.
In , the same three-judge court ruled unconstitutional a tuition refund law and in the panel struck down a tax credit law that had been passed to replace the refund law.
“I don’t think we’re going to get justice,” Msgr. Novicky said.
“If we had all the money in the world for our schools, I’d still be fighting for equitable treatment on the distribution of tax dollars.
We won’t get it without fighting.
“It’s going to take a long time to undo the damage done by the present (U.S.) Supreme Court justices.
They have done some legal gerrymandering to rule out aid to nonpublic school children.”
Msgr. Novicky contended that the Supreme Court had set up criteria governing aid to nonpublic schools in one decision, and then, after legislation had been drawn up to provide aid under those criteria, made another decision setting up another set of norms.
From the Catholic Worker:
Tax Resistance Notes
On , the East Coast Regional Meeting of War Tax Resistance was held in New York.
The gathering brought out several pressing questions: First, the acute need for a National Office or co-ordinating body to distribute information on War Tax Resistance.
(Bob Calvert, the inspiration and editor of Tax Talk, is no longer able to devote his energy to the newsletter.)
It was decided that WIN Magazine should be approached with the idea of carrying a weekly column devoted to War Tax Resistance.
Second, a resolution was passed calling for a National Conference on to be held at 339 Lafayette St., New York City.
The meeting will discuss proposed changes and make plans for confronting the I.R.S. on .
In a related matter, the “World Peace Tax Fund” has been formed to work for legal statutes which would provide for the withholding of war taxes on the basis of conscientious objection.
The plan calls for alternative uses of the money, ideally peace-related research and the like.
If you are interested, write Kathy Maloney, WPTF, Box 1447, Ann Arbor, Mich. 48104.
Jersey City — Rev. John P. Egan has again notified the Internal Revenue Service that he will not fill out a tax form this year in protest against “the diabolic ways in which the U.S. government spends so much of the money given to it by its citizenry.”
This is the second year that Father Egan has not cooperated with the income tax program even to the extent of sending in a form.
For several years before that, he paid no taxes because “I gave away whatever surplus earning might be subject to tax.”
The only response the activist priest got from his protest last year was a form letter notifying him that he had not filed an income tax form.
“I sent that one back with the notation that I had already told them I was not going to file one,” he said.
“I haven’t heard from them since then.”
In his letter , Father Egan says that “It is hard to think of a better way to celebrate the bicentennial than by tax resistance.
The first protests against the tyranny of the British government were in the form of non-payment of unjust taxes.”
Father Egan protests against the “clear policy of the present administration to keep millions unemployed, supposedly to slow down the rate of inflation,” the “development of the B-1 nuclear bomber at a cost ultimately of more than $1,000 to every average U.S. working person” and use of “food as a weapon to force people to follow the will of a particular government.”
The Catholic Worker reprinted this Peacemaker pamphlet in its issue:
No Money for War
(The following article is from a Peacemaker leaflet updated to figures.
This leaflet is contained in a more complete booklet, The Handbook for Non Payment of Taxes, published by Peacemakers, 1255 Paddock Hills Av., Cincinnati OH 45229, who also publish an outstanding newsletter of nonviolent alternatives and responses.
For more information on tax resistance, contact Mandy Carter, War Tax Resistance National Office, 629 South Hill St., Rm. 915, Los Angeles, CA 90014.
Other literature on tax resistance is available from Angie and Bob Calvert, Nonviolent Studies Institute, 912 East 31st St., Kansas City, Mo. 64109. Eds. note.)
The Peacemaker Movement’s position statement on tax nonpayment says:
“The federal income tax is not only the chief source of monetary support of the war system but it is the chief link connecting each individual’s daily labor with the tremendous buildup for war.
A breaking of this link is important both as a stoppage of war supplies and as a real, personal commitment to peace.
To break this link it is necessary for an individual to withdraw totally from the taxing of incomes federally.
This means that one does not pay taxes either directly or through the withholding system, nor turn over the taxes of workers in his/her employ.
Only after settling the withholding matter can a person be in command of his/her income and choose where the money goes.
Therefore, the Peacemaker position is one of nonpayment of federal taxes, including excise taxes such as the telephone tax.
Ways to participate in nonpayment of federal taxes are (1) Refuse to pay taxes legally owed, (2) Live on an income low enough to be nontaxable.”
Limiting Income
One person can earn up to $2350 a year before owing income tax.
A person with one dependent can earn up to $3100.
Three exemptions allow one to earn up to $3850; four, $4600; five, $5350; ten $9100.
A person over 65 years of age is allowed an extra exemption; so a married couple over 65 can earn $4600 before owing tax.
Some people would rather not put a self-limit on their income, as they feel this would be taking on a standard of living dictated by government.
Others would rather limit their income than break tax laws; some welcome an opportunity to live more simply, withdrawing further from the war economy.
A religious calling to voluntary poverty impels many more.
Those who follow this intentional low income form of nonpayment often find living collectively is more economical and usually seek part time work, short term jobs or limited self-employment.
Declining to Pay
Some people prefer to live at least a little above a no-tax level so they can add an act of open refusal to their position of nonpayment.
Others find, after totaling their yearly income, that they are inadvertently above the no-tax level; and then go ahead with an open refusal also.
Many earn more money and have larger amounts to refuse the government.
Any money legally due the government at tax deadline can be openly refused, the refuser deciding whether or not to file a tax return.
Some people prefer, when making their refusals, to write IRS or the President; others prefer to write their local papers and to hand out their own prepared leaflets.
Withholding-Free Income
People wanting to refuse war taxes are often hampered by the withholding tax, as almost everyone works for an employer who takes out tax money from each paycheck.
Unless a person corrects this situation, nonpayment of taxes cannot take place.
Either the taking-out must cease, or the employee must quit.
Withholding Form W-4E may be signed by any employee who had no tax liability for the previous year and expects to have no tax liability for the current year.
This form authorizes the employer to pay the full salary or wage without withholding taxes.
It is meant for students or others who work only part-time.
It must be signed anew in each calendar year of employment.
Some people notify their employer that they object to paying such taxes — having them withheld.
In lieu of other possibilities, one can request that each paycheck be just below the figure where withholding starts.
That figure is $39.99 weekly for one exemption, such as a husband and wife can each claim when both are employed.
The withholding Form W-4 permits two exemptions for a single person or a married person whose spouse is not also employed.
Such an employee can earn $53.99 weekly without having any taxes withheld.
A married person whose spouse is not employed, by claiming the spouse as a dependent, for example, can thus take three exemptions, and be paid $67.99 per week without withholding.
Four exemptions brings the figure to $83.99 weekly.
Six exemptions permits the withholding-free weekly wage to be $109.99; ten exemptions brings the withholding-free weekly wage to $169.99.
Concerned employers have sometimes found creative ways to make up the monetary loss to the employee.
After lowering their weekly pay in this fashion, some people have raised their hourly rate by working three or four days, instead of five; this also opens possibilities for other income.
People are legally entitled to claim as exemptions any persons who are members of the household for the entire year, who earn less than $750 a year and who receive more than half support from the wage earner — relatives need not be members of the household to qualify.
A parent may claim as dependent a child who earns above $750, provided the child is a full-time student or is under 19, and is given more than half support.
Jobs Outside Withholding
Agricultural labor, domestic service, newspaper delivery, and services performed by a minister in the exercise of his ministry are three types of work which do not come under the withholding rule.
Some people pick apples, for instance, or do caretaker-type maintenance, without withholding.
(Although exempted from withholding, such jobs are not exempted from tax, so people in these jobs have prime opportunity to refuse to pay.)
Some people find it possible to work for an employer and still not be on that employer’s payroll.
They are, instead, on the payroll of an “employment service” of their own which supplies their services along with a weekly bill, and receives paychecks made out to the employment service.
This Manpower-type employer then pays the employee the full earning with nothing withheld.
Some have felt it important to make this service a partnership — every member a partner.
There is then no legal obligation to withhold tax.
Doctors, dentists, lawyers, music teachers, tutors, therapists, counselors, and others who have a private practice do not get involved in the withholding system.
Self-employment can also be found in the arts: writing, illustrating, performing as musician, entertainer or lecturer.
People with duplicating skills have opened their own print shops, binderies, mimeograph and addressing services.
Messenger services and parcel delivery services are also in this category of personally-owned and operated businesses.
People with skills as decorators, hairdressers, barbers, bakers, woodworkers, upholsterers can open small businesses where they are self employed and/or work as partners.
House builders have found self-employment by taking on the responsibility of constructing the entire building.
In the same way, house painters, plumbers, electricians have gone out after their own jobs.
Mechanics, engineers, architects, and people with other skills have become consultants in their fields.
They have a practice, work for customers, go out on special jobs for these customers.
People with mechanical skills have opened fix-it shops, garages, paint and body shops.
Nurses have taken private cases in hospitals and homes, thus becoming their own employers.
Taxicab drivers and truck drivers who own or rent their vehicles are self-employed.
Likewise those who own or rent power machinery (tractors, mowers, tree saws).
Some have sold articles on commission and escaped the withholding system.
Some have sold insurance without withholding.
Others have established routes for fresh eggs, or some other repeatedly-purchased food items.
Alternative Funds
Any money held out of government use can, of course, be devoted to something else — notably to something which encourages life and counteracts war.
In several areas, people refusing payment of income and telephone taxes have formed alternative fund groups, pooling the money and deflecting it into constructive uses:
to reimburse members from whom the government has collected refused taxes; to give financial help to members who have become unemployed, imprisoned or otherwise dislocated because of nonpayment.
Some groups have used these funds for supporting or initiating agreed-upon peace actions, or for their community.
Some people will have to make a change in job, life style, place of living.
Some people feel that making such changes has been difficult, at least at first; and that they have made sacrifices for their beliefs.
Others find such changes relatively easy, and seem pleased with having had to make the changes.
Both those who limit their incomes to a nontaxable amount and those who refuse legally-owed taxes have found that their situations lead to conversations with neighbors, friends, strangers — to dialogue on war.
This personal interaction is felt at times to be more significant than the act itself of denying a few dollars to the war machine.
That issue also included this note:
War Tax Resistance is starting an outreach project to counter the American war budget.
To help raise funds for this project, W.T.R. is selling Edmond Wilson’s “The Cold War and the Income Tax,” for $2.95.
Order through War Tax Resistance/NYC, 339 Lafavette St., NYC 10012.
, The Catholic Worker published a letter to the editor from Chuck Quilty regarding his criminal tax case (one I hadn’t encountered before in war tax resistance literature — he’s not listed at NWTRCC’s War Tax Resisters Taken to Court list, for instance.):
Tax Case
2733 8½ Ave.
Rock Island, Ill. 61201
Dear Dorothy,
Here is the latest information on my trial () and my sentencing ().
The charge was two counts of filing false information (i.e. W-4E withholding form).
The trial lasted only one day with Judge Morgan, in effect, denying me a trial by jury.
The judge, in his instructions to the jury, told them that the only fact they had to decide was whether I had signed the W-4E, something I had already admitted.
All personal motivation and beliefs, questions of international law, and constitutional issues were considered irrelevant.
At the sentencing Judge Morgan surprised everyone by reading a prepared speech which was very complimentary, and stated that he wasn’t even going to fine me because I freely gave of my time and money to help those less fortunate than myself.
He gave me 3 years probation on each count to be served concurrently.
We have decided to appeal the decision, not because the sentence was unacceptable, but because of the issues we feel can still be raised.
One remote possibility is that the appellate court would overturn the decision.
More likely, they could rule a mistrial, and we would start over again.
The government might then drop the charges or they could try me again.
This time my personal convictions would be considered relevant and testimony to support my contentions on international and constitutional law would have to be allowed.
Both my lawyer and I were forbidden to mention these during the trial.
The points we feel can be raised by the appeal and/or another trial are:
Signing a W-4E form represents making a legal judgment as to tax liability.
People should not be made criminals for making a legal judgment.
International law. i.e. U.N. Charter, S.E.A.T.O., Geneva, Nuremburg, is binding on U.S. citizens via article six of the U.S. constitution.
The right to practice religious conviction includes tax refusal.
My lawyer has been very generous with his time and is charging me much less than he is entitled to.
Still the expenses come to slightly over $3000 for the trial and appeal.
If any groups can help a little with the expenses it would be greatly appreciated.
We expect Appellate Court decision by .
Love to all!
Chuck Quilty
A National Catholic News Service dispatch dated mentioned in passing “Dr. John Kelly, a Chicago physician who with his family moved to Ireland to protest tax supported welfare programs providing abortions.”
The Catholic Worker printed another letter-to-the-editor from the Ammon Hennacy House in Portland, Oregon, in its issue (this one signed “Mufti McNassar et al.”).
Excerpts:
After years of doing family hospitality, tax resistance and piece-work peace work we’ve finally got a kitchen going as of .
The House of Hospitality still consists mainly of Patrick, myself and our three children.
has proved somewhat of a watershed for us.
A brief but sweet reunion with Daniel Berrigan on was a gift.
And with the babies weaned and the kitchen going well, the signs seem to point to a more concerted and visible resistance on our part.
I can speak only for us now, but tax resistance seems to have grown organically out of war and draft resistance as the mandate for these times.
We said as much to Mr. Short of the IRS in a tax day statement .
In the eight years we’ve been together, Patrick and I have lived below a taxable income, refused to file (but once) and refused to pay social security.
We have not incurred a tax debt, partly as our commitment to voluntary poverty, but mostly to keep our means consistent with our ends: if you make the money, it seems to us, the IRS will get it somehow, and it’s always been our first consideration that they get as little of our money as possible.
We support ourselves mostly by manual labor — 11% of which the government claims as social security.
Even this money is not set aside for the elderly and disabled, but filtered through the general fund.
Legally to work — a natural right and an integral part of being human — one must pay into the death machine.
And so we’ve begun to say no more loudly than before.
It’s always been our belief and an essential part of any small witness that we’ve given, that two people with small children can choose to be poor, can open their home to strangers, can resist openly.
There are times when one is forced to seemingly “hide and watch" — e.g. when the actual survival of another is totally dependent on one’s body or one’s time.
And even tho’ it may seem that we’re not “doing" anything then, the sheer vulnerability of the position forces one to come face to face with fear and with the future: the nuclear family as paradigm for humankind.
The Pacific Northwest is dotted with monuments to death.
To refuse to worship at the idol of nuclear power means risking some comfort in the present to offer the world a future.
We own nothing and therefore have little to lose.
