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the danger of “feel-good” protests →
“symbolic” tax protests? →
the “Peace Tax Fund,” legal conscientious objection to military taxation →
defense of
In two messages over at The Peace Tax Seven Message Forum Simon Heywood and Robin Brookes (both members of the Peace Tax Seven) take issue with my recent criticism of “Peace Tax Fund” schemes. Simon Heywood writes:
Peace tax isn’t just diverted away from the military, it’s diverted into a fund for non-military security (NMS), including pro-active conflict resolution and transformation and international development.
When people tick the box, the war fund goes down by X pounds, and the peace fund goes up by X pounds, accountably, funding more development, more expert work with conflict situations, more research, better understanding of the contexts of crises, more intelligent policy-making, more considered, focused and sparing (and/or no) use of military force, and (finally) fewer ruined lives.
Even if a government then compensates by diverting X pounds from (say) the health service to the war fund, the peace fund still benefits by the same amount — and so, consequently, does the world…
[T]his would not be an “accounting gimmick” but an action which would make government accountable for some of the money it spends since the amount diverted would be ring fenced.
It would then be up to activists, perhaps through a “Commission for Peace” cf. ministryforpeace.org.uk, to keep an eye on how it is spent.
I tend to think of the peace tax issue as the thin end of the wedge and if other peace organisations got behind it, the whole peace/non-violent conflict resolution movement could voice their angle.
We could get a more public airing of peace issues and get more people on our side.
I have doubts whether the government would accept a check box on the tax form.
They are more likely to want to set up some tribunal system, perhaps within the county court system.
This would in fact keep the issues alive with news of hearings and their results.
This seems a more effective and thorough “peace tax” than what I had envisioned in my criticism, although I’m skeptical about how “ring-fenced” this fund will be, knowing what I know about how the government treats its other such funds.
However this proposal also seems far less likely to make much headway in the legislature, largely because it requires so much more than a simple checkbox (ministries, watchdogs, etc.) and also because it seems designed to be more effective at doing what its proponents would like it to do.
At this point my criticism changes from “why try to get the government to grant a symbolic victory that won’t mean much” to “if you’re going to ask the government for such an unlikely concession, why not go for something more directly to-the-point (e.g. nuclear disarmament, permanent abolition of the draft, etc.)?”
But everybody’s got their own battles to choose, and I’m sure from many perspectives mine seem no less ridiculous.
After pooh-poohing the Peace Tax Fund proposals, I got to thinking of what sorts of compromises would satisfy me and buy me off.
If a government representative, let’s call him Clyde, came to me and said “how about this: why don’t you pay us all the tax you owe us, but we’ll make sure to spend your tax money on something nice like a cure for cancer or something” — that wouldn’t fool me.
But what if Clyde said “instead of paying your tax money to the IRS like everybody else, we’re gonna let you pay your tax money directly to Amnesty International instead — just fill out your tax forms like everybody else, but when it comes to writing the check, write it to them, not us.”
Well, I think I’d shake Clyde’s hand and say “it’s a deal!”
I don’t really appreciate being forced to give to charity or having the government tell me how much to give, but this would be such an improvement over the current situation that I’d be tempted to declare a truce.
What if Clyde told me that the government was going to set up a brand new cabinet-level Liberty & Peace Department designed to keep the rest of the government in check, fight unconstitutional laws and figure out ways to downsize the military, and that this new department was going to be funded by people who checked off a box on their tax forms redirecting the whole of their tax payments into that department.
Sure I’d be cynical about a government bureaucracy designed to curb government excess, but still… could I resist the temptation?
This is a good criticism which we should not dismiss out of hand.
Peace tax reform is a limited goal with, at most, a highly focused practical impact.
Indeed, from one viewpoint, this is a good reason to adopt it — as we explain to the highly conservative judges, politicians and Treasury officials with whom we deal.
Our view is that the effort is worth it.
This is partly because peace tax is an intrinsic, though a limited, good, and as Burke says (more or less) it is a mistake to do nothing because you can’t do everything.
But it is also worth it because, although it won’t open the floodgates to across-the-board legal recognition of any conceivable point of conscience, it will extend the legal recognition due to the absolute value of human life, and the freedom of the individual conscience to acknowledge it.
Most importantly, it will help to create broad a culture of peace.
If taxpayers know they can object in conscience to military expenditure, and that the UK government will respect this, and put the money instead towards nonviolent programmes which it (the government) regards as worth spending money on, this will add to a cumulative psychological shift, which is hard to measure precisely, but which is the only really decisive force, away from the current consensus, focused on a “common sense of war,” and towards a new consensus focused on a “common sense of peace.”
Or in other words: it will demonstrate to people that mass destruction, applied too late after avoidable crises, is not the best or only means of national and international security: that in any crisis or conflict situation, if you really want to, you can set up a pre-emptive monitoring to spot conflicts and transform them quickly and creatively before they collapse into violence, negotiate, send in third-party mediators and/or peacekeepers, redress economic or political grievances, abandon IMF structural adjustment programmes, regulate corporations, reform and enforce international law, isolate paramilitaries in military terms while including them in political processes, prosecute perpetrators of atrocities, adjust inappropriately-drawn state borders and/or state constitutions, work with and empower peace-tendencies and peace-interest groups in ways which are sensitive to local cultures, recognise, encourage and make international heroes of local nonviolent resistance networks and NGOs undermining tyrants and dictators, isolate and embarrass recalcitrant governments, create incentivised disarmament programmes for all belligerents (including, usually, western backers fomenting proxy wars), name, blame and delegimitise neocolonial empire-building, explore alternative energy sources to replace oil and gas, create symbols in the cultural, artistic, and sporting fields, send in expert community peace workers…
…and all for a fraction of the cost of an aircraft carrier.
For me the “real” point of peace tax law and campaigning is to spread this message.
If it works, it will create interest and feed it into more widespread and wholesale campaigning and activism of the kind you describe.
Against War?
Stop Buying It! says Andy McKenna in today’s AntiWar.com.
He recounts the trials and tribulations of the Austin Conscientious Objectors to Military Taxation and makes a hopeful plea for a Peace Tax law (though he admits that such a law “would increase tax revenues and decrease the IRS’s collection burden… [and] would not reduce the military budget or ‘open the floodgates’ to other taxpayers”).
I doubt that the existence of the Peace Tax Fund decreases people’s interest in war tax resistance.
I would think that, on the whole, our work to educate people on how their taxes are spent would heighten their consciences to this issue and perhaps lead some to resist payment of war taxes.
When I present on the Peace Tax Fund, I always talk about the existing war tax resistance movement, and I refer people to NWTRCC to learn about how to practice war tax resistance.
I am a war tax resister myself.
As in many social movements, there is the more radical, civil disobedience side of things, and there is the safer, legislative side of things.
It seems logical to me to give people a wide range of options for how to be involved.
This seems very speculative to me. I’m reluctant to ask Congress to let us take one step backwards in the hopes that this will encourage them to let us take two steps forwards some time in the future. What do you base this confidence on? How do you distinguish it from mere wishful thinking?
I worry that just the opposite would happen. Rather than being a precedent that war tax resisters could use to their advantage, it would be a cudgel the government could use against war tax resisters: “We gave you the ‘Peace Tax Fund’ you wanted — now you’ve got no more excuses not to pay up.”
There is something a little grating about calling the proposed legislation the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act, at least to those of us whose conscientious objection isn’t religiously-motivated. But this is just marketing, for the most part, hoping to capitalize on Congress’s occasional whim to stand up for religious-based conscientious objection (for instance in ’s “Religious Freedom Restoration Act”). The actual legislation applies to religious and non-religious objectors equally.
The debate about whether or not NWTRCC should endorse the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund bill was interesting.
Supporters of the bill tend to project their hopes for what they think such a bill ought to accomplish onto the actual bill that’s being proposed.
In doing so, they make claims for what the bill would do that are not supported by the bill’s actual substance.
But there was actually much less of this in the current debate than usual.
With one exception, even the supporters of the bill recognized that it is flawed and that it would not accomplish much of substance.
More remarkable to me were the number of people in the debate who said that they don’t support the bill or the “peace tax fund” idea in general, but who think that NWTRCC should go ahead and endorse it anyway so as to better preserve our good ties with the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund.
This issue had come up at our last meeting in Eugene because the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund had asked us to formally endorse this legislation.
We were unable to reach consensus on the endorsement at that meeting and didn’t allot enough time to really discuss the matter in detail, so we planned to readdress the issue and devote more time to discussion this time around.
One of the arguments in favor of us endorsing the bill was that in the NWTRCC “Statement of Purpose” is a section that many people interpreted as a built-in endorsement of the bill.
That section reads:
NWTRCC’s goal is to maintain and build a national movement of conscientious objectors to military taxes by supporting, coordinating and publicizing the WTR actions of groups and individuals.
These actions include: war tax resistance, protest, and refusal; the redirection of military taxes to meet human needs; support of the US Peace Tax Fund Bill; and adjustment of lifestyle to avoid tax liability.
I’ve heard many perspectives about whether this section endorses the bill or merely indicates that support for it is one of many war tax resistance related activities that our affiliate groups engage in.
But in any case, the “US Peace Tax Fund Bill” doesn’t exist as an active piece of legislation anymore.
The currently-proposed legislation is substantially different in content and has a new name.
So this time around, in addition to debating the endorsement question, we were also trying to come up with a satisfactory way to remove or replace the anachronistic language from our statement of purpose.
On , we had a panel presentation on the bill followed by an open discussion.
Bethany Criss, the executive director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, presented the case for why we should endorse.
Ray Gingerich and I each gave statements opposing the endorsement.
Ruth Benn shared some of her insights from being exposed to the variety of international peace tax fund campaigns (some of which are promoting legislation that differs in important ways from the U.S. bill) and also recounted some of the history of the close working relationship of NWTRCC and NCPTF.
After these brief remarks from the panel, other attendees addressed the issue.
The following summary is based on notes I was taking at the time, so is only as good as my attention and note-taking were — caveat emptor:
Bethany Criss started out by noting the similarity between legalized conscientious objection to military service and conscientious objection to military taxation.
She also tried to assuage concerns that the “Religious Freedom” part of the bill’s title meant that the provisions of the bill would not be available to non-religious objectors.
She said that she felt confident that Congress would not raid the peace tax fund to pay for military expenses because the RFPTFA would represent a contract between us and Congress and that we could hold them accountable if they were to violate it.
She acknowledged that the bill was imperfect and would not accomplish as much as many people would like, but hoped that we would see it as an initial step in an incremental process.
I went next.
Here’s more-or-less the argument I gave against endorsement:
War Tax Resisters and Peace Tax Fund advocates agree that the belligerent militarism of the United States is a grave problem, that individuals must act to oppose it, and that our tax dollars are an important way in which we can move from complicity to opposition.
Because of this, we’re natural allies and have much in common.
The RFPTFA currently being pushed by the NCPTF has some significant problems. So much so that although our groups have much in common in our outlook and our interests, I think it would be a mistake for NWTRCC to endorse the RFPTFA.
Indeed, the problems with the bill are so significant that if the bill ever looked as though it might pass, we would be wiser to actively oppose the bill than to endorse it.
The main problems with the bill are two: 1) it’s no good, and 2) it’s bad.
That is, not only would it not deliver any meaningful benefits, but it would have harmful effects that would be damaging to the war tax resistance movement and dangerous to individual war tax resisters.
The reason why I say the bill is no good is this.
If the bill passes, it would give Congress more taxpayer money to spend and would allow Congress to spend as much money as it likes on war and armaments.
Every dollar paid into the “Peace Tax Fund” would increase taxpayer spending on the military.
This sounds like exactly the opposite of what the NCPTF intends, which may be true.
But sometimes good intentions lead to counterproductive laws and policies.
If you read the NCPTF literature, you’ll see that they admit that the bill would increase government revenue without decreasing how much Congress could spend on war:
So Congress would have more taxpayer money than before and could spend as much as it wants on war.
Why on earth would we want this?
Well, we’re supposed to want this because at least our money wouldn’t be spent on war.
But this is just an illusion.
The basic problem has to do with displacement.
If you pay into the Peace Tax Fund and Congress can only spend “your” money on something nice like the National Park Service, Congress can just take some other money that it had been planning to spend on the Park Service and divert it to the Pentagon.
So Congress spends just like it always has, with a little more taxpayer money than it would have had otherwise, but the people who pay into the Peace Tax Fund falsely believe that they aren’t responsible for the results of that increased spending.
It would be as though I were to pour a cup of sand into a mug full of hot coffee and then claim that I wasn’t responsible for the spillover since my sand sank to the bottom of the mug and it was only someone else’s coffee that spilled over the top.
So that’s why the RFPTFA isn’t any good.
Now here’s why it’s bad.
First: it constructs an illusion through which people can be induced to pay for war and militarism while believing that they are not.
The war tax resistance movement should be working hard to tear down illusions like this, not build up new ones.
Second: it would divide the war tax resistance movement between those people who maintain their testimony against paying for war and those who take advantage of the false moral cover of the RFPTFA.
This would also give the IRS fewer targets to pursue, and make the remaining war tax resisters more likely to be targeted by enforcement actions.
If the war tax resistance movement ever does become a powerful force for social change, you can bet that the government will consider passing such a bill — not as a concession to our movement but as a divide-and-conquer technique against it.
Third: it would give a persuasive rhetorical tool to people who oppose war tax resisters.
They would say that war tax resisters should just pay into the Peace Tax Fund like good, law-abiding, conscientious people.
Imagine what the IRS would say to resisters: “We gave you the ‘Peace Tax Fund’ you wanted — now you’ve got no more excuses not to pay up.”
Those three things are harmful effects the bill would have if it ever became law.
I don’t think this is likely, but there’s a fourth reason not to endorse the bill that doesn’t depend on whether or not it is successful in becoming law: advocacy of such a bill sends the message that the war tax resistance movement is naïve and that our conscientious scruples are superficial.
It tells people that war tax resisters:
are not particularly conscientious at all, but can be easily bought-off by symbolic concessions and simple sleight-of-hand
are conscientious enough to check a box on a form, but not conscientious enough to follow through on the ramifications of our actions
are willing enough to fund war if you can give us a way to deny that we’re doing it
would rather have a certificate from the government recognizing our officially certified conscientiousness than to actually be conscientious
These flaws have been pointed out before, and frequently PTF promoters have responded with an argument along these lines: Sure the RFPTFA won’t reduce military spending and it has at best an ambiguous effect on taxpayer complicity, but it has strong symbolic power: it’s a way to get conscientious objection to military taxation officially recognized, to get a foot in the door, to be able to take a census of conscientious objectors every April 15th, to propagandize for peace with every 1040 booklet, and so forth.
These benefits are not very convincing to me, for a number of reasons, but even if you were to acknowledge them — are they sufficient to justify putting any more energy into a 38-year-old campaign that has gone nowhere at all, currently in support of a piece of legislation that, even as watered down as it is, hasn’t had as much as a committee hearing in over a decade?
I feel strongly about this, and I have not pulled my punches.
Some of you may think I’m being uncharitable and unfair.
I’ll end on this note: I think the advocates of the RFPTFA have their hearts in the right place.
They are temperamentally our allies and I hope they continue to think of themselves that way.
I think that to the extent that we agree, we should continue to work closely and warmly together, and to the extent that we disagree we can agree to disagree.
After me, Ray Gingerich spoke, giving what I interpreted as a Thoreauvian argument against the peace tax fund idea: we shouldn’t wait to act conscientiously until the government gives us its permission to do so.
In addition, he feels from his work in trying to reintroduce war tax resistance into the Mennonite churches that the peace tax fund is an obstacle to this — it creates an excuse that people use: they say they’ll resist taxes but only when there’s a peace tax fund that allows them to do it legally.
After these prepared remarks from the panel, and Ruth’s discussion which I mentioned above, we heard from the other attendees.
Before Eugene, I thought of myself as a real outlier in my skepticism about the peace tax fund bill.
Most of what I heard about the bill in war tax resistance circles was positive, and the way people spoke about it made it seem like NWTRCC enthusiasm for the peace tax fund was a foregone conclusion if not a tautological one.
In Eugene I was pleasantly surprised to see that a few other people shared my misgivings about the bill, though I still felt like we were the minority.
In Harrisonburg last Saturday, though, it was clear that the tide had shifted dramatically.
Even with the executive director of the NCPTF there to pitch the bill, most people had little praise for it, and even the ones who were peace tax fund supporters in the abstract expressed that we probably shouldn’t endorse this version.
Gary Erb noted that most of those present probably wouldn’t qualify as conscientious objectors under the bill’s restrictive language, and so wouldn’t be able to legally avail themselves of the RFPTFA even if they cared to.
He also felt the bill would have a divide-and-conquer effect against the WTR movement, and recommended against endorsement.
Geov Parrish felt that the RFPTFA hadn’t a chance of becoming law, so it should be best seen as an educational vehicle.
That being the case, it was a poor idea to have watered it down so much in an attempt to make it palatable enough to pass through Congress.
Also, he noted that he feels excluded from the RFPTFA and its promotional materials because he is not a Christian.
Joffre Stewart said that as an anarchist resister, begging the state for exemptions and favors isn’t his style.
He thinks that conscientious objection to military service was mostly enacted for the state’s benefit, not for the benefit of the COs, and he thinks the same would be true of legalized conscientious objection to military taxation.
From this, he draws the conclusion that the reason we don’t have legal conscientious objection to military taxation is that war tax resisters have not yet become sufficiently inconvenient to the government.
Daniel Woodham thought that though the RFPTFA wasn’t perfect, it might make for a good first step, and once it was enacted we could work to amend it or correct its faults over time.
Bethany Criss said that in her view the “laundry list” of items in the section (§3b) of the bill that defines spending that falls under the “military purpose” category shouldn’t be seen as excluding other spending from that category, but only as examples of spending that fall under that category.
In her view, once the bill passes, a next step will be to ensure that the “military purpose” definition is interpreted inclusively so that it covers all the stuff we’re worried about.
Greg Reagle gave us some perspective on the reasoning behind watering down the bill to permit Congress to spend the money in the RFPTF on anything in the budget other than things in the military purpose category (previous incarnations of the bill had specified more precisely where that money would go).
He said that potential supporters in Congress had balked at having their spending decisions micromanaged by legislation, and so the changes had been made to mollify them.
Erica Weiland wanted to emphasize the positive working relationship between NWTRCC and NCPTF, though she too was opposed to endorsing the bill.
As an anarchist she doesn’t much favor trying to solve problems via legislation, but as an activist she tries to inspire well-intentioned people to be more active in ways that seem most appropriate to them, so she wants to encourage PTF promoters to keep doing their thing.
Robert Randall said he was impressed at the high plane on which the discussion was taking place.
He thought that the results of passing the RFPTFA might not be all that important, but that there might be some benefits to be had from the campaign to pass the bill anyway.
Pam Allee felt that the bill would help to emphasize that “we are the government” and so we can take control of the budget and change spending priorities so as to emphasize things like education, seat belt law enforcement, and other liberal priorities.
She was concerned that the RFPTFA seemed to lack grassroots support.
Larry Bassett paused to wonder whether it was really appropriate to the mission of a group like NWTRCC to be endorsing legislation or the individual projects of the affiliate groups.
Jim Stockwell felt that there might be a contradiction in that for many WTRs, the fact that tax resistance is illegal civil disobedience is an essential part of their WTR, and so legal conscientious objection would not be helpful to them.
He hoped our two groups would continue to work together.
Hiro (whose last name I didn’t catch, and whose first name I may be misspelling) encouraged us to patiently work at incremental approaches and not reject RFPTFA just because it wasn’t everything we wanted.
That said, she also worried that the government would spend the “peace” tax fund on things based on its warped definition of peacemaking work.
She envisioned Blackwater contractors doing their institution-building mopping-up exercises in Iraq (where she is from) and calling it “peacemaking” activities deserving of RFPTFA funding.
Tim Godshall tried to give us some perspective, noting that WTRs are one of the best arguments for the PTF (that is, the existence of WTRs demonstrates that many citizens have a strong conscientious objection that their government needs to accommodate), and also that although the RFPTFA might not have any effect on the military budget, the same could be said of WTRs. He believes that the RFPTFA is one part of a larger campaign to pressure the government to change its spending priorities.
Peter Smith disagreed with the suggestion that if the RFPTFA were to pass it would divide the WTR movement.
He agreed that we should not endorse the legislation, but hoped we would continue to support the PTF campaigners.
Ray Gingerich responded to a comment from Joffre Stewart by insisting that he was not an anarchist and indeed believed that a strong, active government (for example, one capable of implementing single-payer universal health care) was not incompatible with pacifism.
He plugged nonviolent conflict resolution strategies of the The Unconquerable World / A Force More Powerful school.
He also suggested that Marian Franz (the long-time National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund executive director) had been used by people and institutions who wanted to delay their confrontation with taxpayer complicity by putting it off until some distant future in which conscientious objection to military taxation was a legalized option.
Joffre Stewart noted that the U.S. government had no qualms about raiding the Social Security “trust fund” to pay for its military spending, and that it had stacked its “U.S. Institute of Peace” with CIA folk committed to the government’s violent foreign policy.
He therefore sees no reason to trust the government to administer a “peace tax fund.”
Bethany Criss told us that not only is she committed to seeing the RFPTFA enacted into law, but that she is also a war tax resister and has been since .
She said that although there is an associated “Peace Tax Foundation” with an educational mission, there should be no doubt that the Campaign’s goal is to get the legislation passed into law.
She thinks that the bill will be beneficial to war tax resisters and the war tax resistance movement by making WTR more visible.
She says that if the bill were enacted, it would not take away the opportunity to resist or say no; that resisters could continue to resist as before if they wished.
The goal is to bring more people in to a war tax resistance mindset.
She notes that part of the reason the bill was watered down is that their campaign doesn’t yet have enough supporters to bring enough pressure to bear on the legislators; this is another reason why she’d like our support.
Finally, Bill Ramsey felt that we might be better off not concentrating on the (unlikely) endorsement and instead trying to work on ways the two groups can work better together.
was an open-ended discussion without any decisions to be made on either the endorsement or the statement of purpose wording; on , our “business meeting,” we addressed those decisions.
A number of people who could not come to the meeting sent along their opinions about the RFPTFA, and printouts of these were made available to attendees of the business meeting before we took up the issue.
These were on the whole much more positive about the Act and more in favor of endorsement than the attendees had been, with one person recommending endorsement, another recommending “NWTRCC continuing its endorsement” of the bill (though we had a hard time determining which if any version of the bill our group had originally endorsed), and another conveying the results of a discussion about the issue held by Sonoma County Taxes for Peace which led to that group deciding to strongly support NWTRCC endorsing the bill.
Predictably, we did not reach consensus at the business meeting on to endorse the RFPTFA.
I counted about a half-dozen people in favor of endorsement, maybe half again as many against it.
Unfortunately, although a non-endorsement was pretty clearly the inevitable conclusion, it took a while to get there, and we weren’t able to devote as much time as we needed to the stickier question of the Statement of Purpose and its anachronistic reference to the “US Peace Tax Fund Bill.”
The upshot of that discussion was that there were two replacement phrases with a large amount of support:
“…support of peace tax fund legislation…”
“…support of legislation that would legalize conscientious objection to military taxation…”
While there was broad support for both, neither was able to rally a consensus around it.
My proposal to simply scrap the old anachronistic wording for now and perhaps come up with a replacement at a later date also failed to attract consensus support — with many people feeling that by rejecting the endorsement and also eliminating mention of the PTF from our Statement of Purpose it would look too much like we’d conducted a wholesale purge of PTF sympathy from the group.
So when it came down to it, the Statement of Purpose ended up the same way it began in this area: it continues to pledge our support for supporters of the long-gone “US Peace Tax Fund Bill.”
This is a little ridiculous, but seems mostly harmless.
On representatives from
the IRS
testified before a Congressional committee about their efforts to improve
taxpayer compliance, and specifically to get non-filers back in the system.
Two non-filers testified in person — neither of them conscientious tax
resisters, though one went on at length about wasteful government spending,
and although he blamed his own nonfiling on negligence and wastefulness, it
was hard not to believe that resentment didn’t also play a role.
Conscientious objectors to taxation were more or less ignored by the committee
and by those witnesses who appeared before it. Representative Andy Jacobs,
Jr. submitted a statement in
support of legislation he introduced that would have created the United States
Peace Tax Fund and permitted conscientious objectors to military spending to
direct their taxes there. Here is the way he described the bill:
In some real ways, the legislation probably ought to be called The Federal
Revenue Collection Enhancement Act.
Conscientious objectors in many cases are refusing to pay their full tax
obligations because to pay the military portion would violate deeply held
religious or ethical beliefs. Most of us believe that our taxes should cover
national defense. And most of us believe that in time of American war we
should serve in the military if we are capable of doing so. But conscientious
objection has been recognized since before George Washington’s time. He
favored accommodation of the consciences of sincere objectors and recognized
that for the citizens of sincere conscience in opposition to war, there is no
choice.
This bill is a win-win proposition. It would simply allow a bona fide
conscientious objector to be assured that none of his or her taxes would go
to military purposes. Instead those taxes would be earmarked for
WIC,
Head Start, the
U.S. Institute of
Peace and the Peace Corps.
In no way would the bill change the priorities voted by the Congress. The
Defense Department would get exactly as much money as the Congress and the
President determined to be appropriate and the
WIC
Program and others listed in the bill would get no more than the Congress and
the President decided. The bill would simply allow the conscientious
objectors to pay their full taxes in good conscience.
Statements in support of the bill were also submitted by
the American Revolution was portrayed as the culmination of a tax revolt in this educational cartoon short that aired frequently between Saturday morning cartoons in the United States in
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
your humble editor and his little brother in
I was a little too young to be much of an observer of the political scene, but I remember as being something of an orgy of innocent patriotism.
America was sick of being cynical and wanted to go back to being stupid — besides, the Vietnam War was mostly over, at least for most Americans, and we’d given Nixon the heave-ho — and so there were plenty of red-white-and-blue commemorations of the bicentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The Friends Journal wasn’t quite so willing to get with the star-spangled program.
In particular, it intensified its coverage of war tax resistance during the bicentennial year.
The issue was the Friends Journal’s first special issue devoted to war tax resistance.
It starts off with a couple of inspiring quotes on the subject from A.J. Muste and David Dellinger, then opens with a piece by Jennifer S. Tiffany on how she met the challenge of deciding whether to pay or to resist.
Excerpts:
This fall was a time when I was grappling a great deal with the question of war tax resistance.
To start with, I knew and had known for a long time that I could not be clear in paying taxes to any state which would use them to pay for war-making.
Particularly, I could not contribute to the nuclear death race between this nation and the Soviet Union.
Perhaps it goes back to the civil defense tests and simulated nuclear air-raids which had terrified and confused me when I was a child.
Anyway, the imperative, the need to keep clear of war (to use Bruce Baechler’s words), had always been strong.
I had been acting on it, in small ways, for a long while-avoiding earnings beyond the taxable minimum, for example, and claiming six “peace dependents” on my W-4 form when my income did exceed this minimum.
I also corresponded with the IRS concerning my views and actions.
However, a disclarity still existed regarding full resistance, with all the possible ramifications on my life and lifestyle.
The question was, to me, was I strong enough and centered enough to maintain a taxable income level, restructure my life in such a way as to prevent eventual government levies, and go on with my resistance?
Could I face creatively the possibility of putting a good deal of energy into court cases with the eventuality of prison?
I came into meeting for worship one morning at the height of these grapplings.
As I settled in, I was astounded.
Somehow the fears and conflicting leadings within me changed.
They did not fade or diminish, but grew into context.
The spirit of the meeting, the presence of loving Friends, who loved whether or not they agreed with one another’s approach, literally overwhelmed me.
The presence of God wholly covered the gathering, and finally clearness came.
Our God, the Presence in our worship and acts of witness, is a gentle, healing, loving, empowering God, one who speaks strongly and softly from within us.
At the same moment as making demands on our lives, this Presence says, “You need not fear; if you act on this I will sustain and strengthen you throughout the whole process.
I am…” This was a moment of resolution for me.
I was no longer entangled in a negative refusal to pay taxes, but was healed and sustained and led to a positive witness.
I could go on.
It is in this context that tax resistance has its roots and life.
War tax resistance, any resistance to war and to those authorities which bring about war, is not a negative presence: every no implies a yes, and this no to killing and death can be a yes to healing and life.
Within tax resistance dwell seeds which can help a whole new order to grow — seeds which deny fear and powerlessness in the face of death; seeds which lead us to the creation of healing alternatives to structures which sustain death.
As John Woolman puts it, “to turn all we possess into the channel of universal love becomes the whole business of our lives.”
I can speak only of my moment of resolution, the clearness and joy which is liberated in my life through a tax witness.
As I see it, this issue of Friends Journal is not a coercive tool, saying “you must for these reasons refuse to pay your taxes or I will no longer judge you to be a good Friend.”
The point of this issue is not to define terms for judgment, to draw lines of inclusion and exclusion.
Our faith is an experiential one, and your experience of real clarity is as right and valid for you as mine is for me.
The point is to lay ourselves open to what speaks truthfully in us, to really open ourselves to the spirit which utterly denies war, to really grapple with the questions this raises and the demands it makes on our lives.
One of those questions has to do with tax resistance.
This is an invitation to grapple with it, and a reaching out which says there is a great company of people, past and present, who have done so.
There is a process of empowerment, growth and the birth of community among people which can take root through tax resistance.
First comes the knowledge that the authorities of death are not all-powerful, that the laws and structures which sustain any war machine are in fact quite weak.
As Marion Bromley says in her article, “What can they take away that is of real value?”
Second dawns the realization that alternatives are possible: through the flaws in the death order, we glimpse the order of life.
And, although such consequences as possible imprisonment or loss of property, and the inward struggle with fear, are largely borne alone, the vision is shared by a growing company of sisters and brothers.
Isolation is hard to feel when so many glimpse the possibility of a new order — an order beyond war.
Finally and especially, tax resistance often grows as an act of ministry, an act of obedience to the loving and healing spirit.
War tax resistance is one aspect of a community set on fire with the presence of a gentle, empowering God.
Bruce Baechler thought the question of whether Quakers should resist war taxes was a no-brainer.
He wrote in from prison (where he was doing time for draft resistance) with this defense of war tax resistance.
Excerpts:
Do Friends support war?
At one time this could be answered with a “not at all.”
These days, though, it seems to depend on how one defines support.
Friends, generally, denounce war in the strongest terms. Indeed that’s all many people know about us.
But for the most part Friends can no longer claim to renounce, or “utterly deny” war.
Friends today are not compelled to bear arms… instead of fighting with outward weapons ourselves, we are merely asked to buy the weapons through taxation, and leave the dirty work to others.
And most of us do.
Yet we cling to our traditional peace testimony, often expressed as early Friends did in the Declaration of :
We utterly deny all outward wars and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretense whatsoever; this is our testimony to the whole world.
This is strong language.
One cannot, without being hypocritical, utterly deny something and still give it material support.
But most Friends do.
There are many reasons given for paying taxes.
Most of these are quite valid, if one thinks of tax resistance as a protest.
But I see a difference between various types of protests, such as vigils and letters to Congress, and nonsupport, or remaining clear of war, as by tax resistance.
In protesting, one makes her/his views known, but leaves it up to someone else (the government) to make the decision.
Governments are not noted for their receptivity to the pacifist message, and it is unlikely they will be in the near future.
I am not deriding protest — much has been accomplished through it.
I am just saying that it is not enough.
Nonsupport, on the other hand, emphasizes individual responsibility.
To refuse to pay one’s taxes is to accept responsibility for the way they would be spent, and to refuse to allow them to be spent for immoral purposes.
Tax resistance should not mean just withholding taxes from the government.
An integral part of tax resistance is to redirect the money normally spent for taxes into life supporting channels.
In many places this is done through Alternative Funds, where the resisters in a community band together to make most effective use of the money.
Thus not only is money diverted from warmaking, but at the same time it is made available as a resource for peaceful activities.
Perhaps the biggest problem most Friends have with not paying for war is that it is illegal.
One faces the prospect of prison for it, and this alone is enough to make most people give it only superficial consideration.
Hopefully the World Peace Tax Fund, if established by Congress, will alleviate some of this problem in much the same way that the Conscientious Objector provisions in the draft laws gave a legal alternative to the army.
But in the meantime the problem remains.
Friends have often suffered for their beliefs.
Throughout our history large numbers of Friends have been imprisoned, tortured, and killed for preaching and practicing the message of the Inward Light.
Would you stay away from a Meeting for Worship if to go meant certain arrest?
Would you attend but not speak when moved, if that would be dangerous (a situation facing Korean Friends today)?
Would you join the army to avoid prison?
Kill to avoid being killed?
The question is where to draw the line.
When, to you, does the personal suffering involved in a course of action outweigh the reasons for taking that course?
Each person must decide for her/himself.
Another response to the problem of imprisonment is that if any substantial number of Friends did engage in tax resistance, the likelihood of their being imprisoned would be small, and some provision in the law would probably be made for them, thus eliminating the problem and encouraging more people to resist.
Jack Cady shared his long, meandering letter to the Director of the IRS.
Excerpts:
[O]ur first confrontation… will be the examination of my tax return.
I expect the examination is prompted by my refusal last year to pay half of my income tax.
I will refuse. to pay half of the tax again this year, although because of withholding, your agency already has most of the money.
I refuse to pay half of the tax on various grounds, some of which are moral, some of which are legal.
The refusal is prompted by the expenditure by our government of over fifty percent of tax monies on the maintenance and purchase and use of armies and weapons.
Through its agency, Internal Revenue Service, the United States Government seeks my complicity in the violation of twenty centuries of moral teaching.
The government is in further violation of the Constitution of the United States.
It is also in violation of various international treaties and agreements, and is, in fact, engaged in crimes against peace and crimes against humanity.
In requiring that I pay taxes for the support of war, planning for war, offensive weapons and the maintenance of a standing armed force sufficient to engage combat on a worldwide scale, the U.S. Government through its agent IRS is in violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees my religious freedom.
I am a member of the Port Townsend meeting for worship of the Society of Friends (Quaker).
The Quaker belief and effective detachment from war dates from the beginnings of the Society in .
The precedent of refusal to pay war taxes in America dates from when John Woolman, John Churchman, and Anthony Benezet refused to pay for the French and Indian wars.
Nonviolence and refusal to pay or endorse either side in a combat dates in U.S. history from the revolution when Quakers who refused to kill were stoned or beaten under the brand of Tory.
I claim my devout belief in God and the injunction that we may not kill as sufficient reason to refuse this tax.
I would expect that opposition to this view would also have to overcome three hundred years of Quaker nonviolence and two hundred years of U.S. acceptance of Quaker attitudes that insist on nonviolence.
[I]n asking taxes, the U.S.A. through its agent IRS seeks my complicity in crimes against peace and crimes against humanity as defined by the Nuremberg Principles.
These principles hold that citizens of a nation are guilty of crimes committed by that nation if they acquiesce to those crimes when, in fact. a moral choice is open to them.
In requiring that I pay taxes to support a war industry and armed forces capable of contending on a worldwide scale, the U.S. Government is threatening both my moral and my physical existence.
I am not being protected, because the U.S. builds atomic weapons, B-1 bombers, atomic submarines, poison gas, lasers, rocketry, napalm and all of the other expensive paraphernalia of war.
These do not protect me.
They invoke the suspicion and fear of other nations, and they provoke among other nations the building and stockpiling of similar weapons.
[T]he U.S. now gives every indication that it is, in fact, not a nation of laws but a nation of men and corporations.
This, despite the resignation from office of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew.
I charge that the freedom of the citizen is largely illusory, and that the payment of taxes, the keeping of tax records, the invasion of privacy by IRS and other agencies of government, the making of rules by agencies (rules that have the force and effect of law but which are not to be challenged in courts), the maintenance of records or files on the political, religious, economic and moral statements and actions of the individual, the power to levy fines and licenses by agency rule, and the presumption by government that citizens are guilty of any agency charge and must therefore bear the burden of proof of their innocence; all of these show the citizens of the U.S. are no longer free.
I have two main intentions in this tax refusal.
The first is quite clear.
I do not intend to pay for the destruction of other human beings, nor endorse by word or deed the crimes of the United States.
The second intent is a little more nebulous but it is just as strong.
It is strong because I love my country.
In this refusal I intend that the United States will display by its action whether or not a citizen, raised to believe in U.S. principles of freedom, equality, protection under the laws; raised, in fact, under statements like, “With a proper regard for the opinions of mankind,” can indeed trust and believe in the way he has been raised.
Either the Constitution is sound or it is not.
The U.S. will either honor its national and international commitments or it will not.
The courts will either face issues or the courts will duck them.
…If the rules of IRS are bigger than the Constitution, the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Principles and the Christian teaching of two thousand years, then I believe it is time that the U.S. acknowledge this…
The next article came from Marion Bromley.
Excerpts:
Ernest and I began a tax refusers’ newsletter soon after our marriage in .
In all the time since, only a tiny proportion of Friends and other pacifists have become tax refusers, and we sometimes try to understand why.
It has been, for us, more a personal imperative than a carefully reasoned political position, though we have done what we could to expound on all aspects of refusing to allow one’s labor to be taxed for war and weaponry.
Most people, whether they are pacifists or not, seem to respect our “right” to refuse taxes when we have a chance to explain how we feel about it.
In turn we have to accept the “right” of others to continue to pay large sums in taxes, even though the U.S. budget continues to be overwhelmingly devoted to war and the war system.
Before 1800 taxes were levied largely for specific things such as bridges, schools, highways.
A levy for war was as separate as the others.
Quakers, Mennonites and a few others who had strong scruples against paying for the militia or for gunpowder refused to pay and sometimes suffered distraint of goods or imprisonment for their stand.
When all these items began to be lumped together into one, general tax, it was no longer so simple an issue.
Some, with a considerable feeling of relief, began to pay; others paid more out of frustration.
And one of the most potent testimonies against war during became lost.
Now, in , probably no reasonable person believes that the billions to be spent for weapons research, deployment of armies and nuclear weapons, nuclear submarines prowling the ocean floor, planes carrying nuclear bombs, and intercontinental ballistic missiles will be in any sense a “defense” for anyone.
Since such policies and practices will probably lead to a nuclear holocaust at some future time, maybe distant, maybe near, paying for these weapons comes close to being an evil act.
It may be that the reason most Friends do not see it in that light is that they are conscientiously committed to liberalism — to the direction the federal government began in and from which there is now no retreat.
The federal government, in order to ease suffering and to maintain control over its own populace, began to assume some social responsibility.
Possibly most Friends are in the same position as those who began paying the “mixed” taxes in .
But in the whole world has witnessed the kind of horror that a powerful military state can unleash even without resort to the ultimate weapon.
…In an individual such behavior would be deemed madness.
Would a mad individual be permitted to continue such activities because that individual was also performing some useful services?
Another aspect of liberalism that has probably influenced Friends greatly in the past fifty years is the commitment to law.
I cannot explain why most Friends think it is almost a religious principle to honor the law and the courts, while I feel it is very low on my list of loyalties.
My religious instincts are insulted when I observe a judge in the robes of a priest, high above others in the courtroom, the witnesses and observers in pews and the bailiff enforcing a hushed silence.
My view is that this holy-appearing scene is for the purpose of defending the property and the power of the people who have those commodities.
It is the same in a socialist or a capitalist state.
It is certainly an acceptable arrangement for people to agree on certain codes or laws, agreements about property.
I would not disobey laws for frivolous reasons.
But I have no qualms about disobeying laws which would force me to pay for murder and other crimes related to the war system.
Civil disobedience which requires long-term adherence, such as arranging to make one’s living without the withholding system, perhaps is considered impossibly difficult by many conscientious people.
For many Friends, commitment to a service type vocation seems to require “fitting in” with a professional life style.
The scale has not been invented which could balance service that is beneficial to others with the negative effects of supporting warmaking and possibly silencing one’s conscientious stirrings.
The only contribution I can make to such considerations is my testimony that refusing to pay income taxes has proved to be a blessing in many ways.
For one thing, it resulted in our “backing into” a simple life style, consuming less than we otherwise would.
Friends who have valued simplicity know of its blessings — the simple life is more healthful, more joyful, more blessed in every way.
A new friend we met following seizure of Gano Peacemakers’ property, our home for 25 years, wrote us after moving from Cincinnati that he supposed we were having a very sad summer at Gano this year, knowing that we would be evicted in the fall.
This notion was quite contrary to the way we felt.
We were enjoying the time here more than ever before.
The growing season seemed more productive than ever, and the surroundings more beautiful.
We were working very hard, preparing leaflets, signs and press releases, corresponding, thinking of new ways to tell everyone who would listen that the IRS claims were fraudulent and politically motivated.
We expected to be evicted but never had the feeling that we would “lose” in the struggle.
(The following paragraph, concerning the eventual IRS surrender in the Gano Peacemakers case, is largely obscured in the PDF.)
One of the pleasant feelings we have about the reversal of the sale (besides knowing that we can continue to live on these two acres) is that many people have told us they got a real lift when they heard that some “little people” had prevailed in the struggle with the IRS.
We had the feeling that our daily leafleting and constant public statements during the seven months’ campaign had, at the least, the effect of showing that people need not fear this government agency.
People do fear the IRS and that is an unworthy attitude.
What can they take away that is of real value?
Jack Powelson struck a dissenting note, listing war tax resistance among a number of popular Quaker positions that he felt to be sentimentally motivated and economically naive.
Excerpt:
Friends are concerned about paying taxes to a government that allocates a high proportion of its budget to the military.
But we also know that if enough Friends refused to pay taxes so that the government was seriously impeded in its operations, the first items to be cut would be welfare and education, and the poor would suffer.
The Journal then quoted John A. Reiber on his vision for “a cultural revolution with political implications, not a political revolution with cultural implications.”
Excerpt:
The most effective social changes are not going to come from within the system, but without it.
We must realize that the vast, impersonal and powerful institutions are not intrinsic to our survival and well-being, but, in fact, extrinsic and harmful.
What we must do to achieve a cultural (r)evolution is to, first of all, withdraw our support of our unendurable, tyrannical and inefficient institution of the government.
One way of doing this is through tax resistance.
But tax resistance, by itself, is only a part of the solution.
Money, time and energy should be channelled into alternatives to our technological mass consumption/ mass waste society, our irrelevant and oppressive educational institutions and our mass media which don’t meet our informational needs.
Craig Simpson next gave a report on war tax resistance as it was practiced internationally.
Excerpts:
During the Peace Research and Peace Activists Conference in Holland in , I met Susumu Ishitani, a member of the Japanese Conscientious Objectors to War Taxes Movement (COMIT).
The group is the first of its kind in Japanese history and was started in .
It is made up of Christian pacifists — Mennonites, FOR members and Quakers — as well as non-church pacifists.
The group apparently has been growing rather quickly.
They have meetings all over Japan, print articles in newspapers, and hold press conferences.
Their emphasis is on the refusal of the 6.5% of their taxes which goes for the so-called “Self-Defense Forces.”
They have even written a “Song of 6.5% or 6.5% for a Peaceful World” protesting war taxes and expressing the need for money to stop death and the pollution of our environment.
Susumu is a wonderful and gentle member of the group.
Outside of his job as a university professor he is active as a member of the local Friends Meeting in Minato-ku (Tokyo).
He also trains students in nonviolence and works to raise consciousness about the Japanese government’s involvement with the repressive South Korean government.
He clearly sees the importance of not sending his money to the government for destructive purposes.
COMIT was still in operation at least as late as , but I haven’t been able to find much about them on-line.
France… has a long tradition of resistance to war and the military.
The tax refusal movement began in its present state in during the first French atomic tests in the South Pacific when a number of people decided to refuse the 20% of their taxes which would go to the war department.
This money was redistributed to organizations working for peace and developing social alternatives.
Groups soon were organizing in Orleans, Paris, Mulhouse, Lyon, and Tours and by were working in cooperation with one another.
They then made a decision to broaden the movement by asking people to refuse only 3% of their income tax.
They felt this way they would be able to attract more people because of the minimum of risk.
Many of these people decided to redistribute their money to the peasant-worker struggle in Larzac.
Larzac is a plain in Southern France where a group of peasants, farmers and shepherds have been resisting the expansion of an army training base onto land where they have lived and worked for centuries.
The Larzac struggle has become extremely important in France.
It receives broad support from leftists, environmentalists, workers and antimilitarists.
The peasants, who have come to believe strongly in nonviolent struggle, have used some very creative tactics to draw attention to their plight.
For example, they drove their tractors from Southern France onto the streets of Paris.
On the way, they were met in Orleans by 113 tax refusers who gave their tax money to the peasant struggle instead of to the military.
This link between the peasant struggle against the military and the people who refused taxes solidified the movement and both benefited.…
By , 400 French people had become tax refusers and at latest count as many as 4,000 are giving their money to Larzac instead of the government.
Many farmers, workers and pacifists are involved now in the refusal of taxes to support the Larzac struggle.
Most recently in France, pacifists are discussing and organizing for 100% refusal of their taxes as their non-cooperation with the military becomes more consistent with their lifestyles.
the issue also had a list of resources interested Quakers could use to find out more about war tax resistance
There were also several letters to the editor on the subject:
Mary Bye wrote in to explain the rationale behind her tax resistance.
“I believe that my tax dollars go to support a system which perpetuates misery and suffering in large parts of the world.
Here at home we have set up a monstrous military budget while the programs for the poor, the minorities, the disadvantaged and the defenseless are being cut.
I believe that the first step to moral health is to realize the callous role of oppressor we, as a nation, play abroad and at home.
The second step is to act.”
She said tax resistance works for her because “I know of no other way to introduce this concern into the courts, and… I want to commit my money to help meet human needs neglected by the government.
I give voluntarily an amount equal to that computed by IRS regulations to help build a community of caring.”
Ross Roby wrote in to promote the World Peace Tax Fund Act.
“Essentially, this bill would provide conscientious objectors to war (male and female, young and old) an alternative to having their Federal tax payments used to finance government agencies that wage war and those that contribute to the waging of war by our government and by other governments of this world.”
He complained that the proposal hadn’t gotten much Quaker support: “Are we unable to recognize a friendly hand when it does not come in Quaker garb?
Or, has vocal pacifism fallen so irrevocably into the hands of radical resistants that a congressional bill which proposes accommodating conscientious objection to the realities of the Internal Revenue Service (and vice versa) is automatically dismissed?”
He described the mechanism of the Act this way: “It sets up a Fund for Peace to which we, conscientious objectors to war, would automatically contribute as we paid our usual federal income tax.
If the federal budget were determined, by an impartial authority, to contain sixty per cent for military purposes, then sixty cents of each dollar we pay would enhance the treasury of a fund that builds peace…”
Jim Forest wrote about his decision to stop tax withholding from his paycheck by filing a new W-4 form.
“We will be using these moneys for human needs that aren’t being adequately met in the present world: hunger, housing, resistance to militarism, various efforts for impoverished people, etc. We receive fund appeals each day which, had we the means, we would respond to, or respond to more generously.
Now we will.”
Donald Hultgren gave a report of Robin Harper’s talk about war tax resistance and charitable redirection at the Quaker Meeting in Cornwall, New York.
Harold R. Regier, the Peace and Social Concerns secretary of the General Conference Mennonite church, wrote to thank the Journal for its “encouragement in our efforts to work at war tax payment/resistance issues.”
Harold R. Regier, the last letter writer I mentioned, said that: “One of our efforts along this line was to convene a war tax conference to look particularly at the theological and heritage bases for war tax resistance.”
The Journal article that followed concerned this conference.
A note at the top of that article said that “[o]ne hundred twenty persons registered” for a Mennonite/Brethren in Christ sponsored conference to seek theological and practical discernment on war tax issues.”
That conference issued a summary statement, which the Journal reprinted.
Excerpts:
After considering the New Testament texts which speak about the Christian’s payment of taxes, most of us are agreed that we do not have a clear word on the subject of paying taxes used for war.
The New Testament statements on paying taxes (Mark 12:17, Romans 13:6–7) contain either ambiguity in meaning or qualifications on the texts that call the discerning community to decide in light of the life and teachings of Jesus.
Although those in the Anabaptist tradition were generally consistent in their historical stand against individual participation in war, they were not of one mind regarding the payment of taxes for war.
Evidence suggests that most Anabaptists did pay all of their taxes willingly; however, there is the early case of the Hutterite Anabaptists, a sizable minority in the Anabaptist movement, who refused to pay war taxes.
In the later stages of Anabaptist history there is no clear-cut precedent on the question of war taxes.
During the American Revolution most Mennonites did object to paying war taxes, yet in a joint statement with the Brethren they agreed to pay taxes in general to the colonial powers “that we may not offend them.”
The record continued to be mixed until the present day.
Only a small minority chose to demonstrate their allegiance to Christ through a tax witness.
So far most discernment on the war tax issue has been done on an individual level as opposed to a church or congregational level.
Although individuals struggling with the issue have been supported by similarly concerned brothers and sisters, wider church support has been lacking.
While recognizing the need for a growing consensus in these matters, we know that not all in the Mennonite/Brethren in Christ fellowship are agreed on an understanding of scriptural teaching and a faithful response regarding war taxes.
We are ready to acknowledge this disagreement and seek to continue discerning God’s will in this.
But as a church community, we feel we should be conscious of the convictions and struggles of our sisters and brothers and supportive of the steps they have taken and are considering.
And all that’s just from one issue!
The issue included an article by Robin Harper about the Brandywine Alternative Fund, one of “a series of experiments [that] go by various names: fund for humanity, people’s life fund, life priorities fund, war tax resistance alternative fund.”
Excerpts:
As many as forty sprang into existence in as the country’s agony over Vietnam reached a crescendo.
Though each is organized and operated a bit differently, the basic concept is to pool federal war taxes (both telephone and income) conscientiously withheld from the IRS and redistribute them, by loans or grants, to community groups working for peace, social justice, and other areas of social change.
…the Brandywine Alternative Fund serves Delaware and Chester Counties just west of Philadelphia.
Although the greater part of the Brandywine fund comes from “reallocated” federal taxes, we also encourage deposits of personal savings.
This policy has not only enlarged the fund but has also broadened participation to include persons eager to help “reorder our nation’s priorities away from the military” who don’t choose to use the particular method of principled tax resistance.
In addition, seven monthly meetings, churches and civic groups have made deposits or contributions to the alternative fund, following the precedent of London Grove Friends Meeting.
This development of religious and other community groups investing in Brandywine is, I believe, a rather new departure for the alternative fund movement and offers an opportunity for sensitizing even larger numbers of people to issues of war preparations, civilian priorities and tax accountability.
Through the growth of our alternative fund, we have begun to take our central concern to the people of the communities in which we live; we are seeking creative ways to support financially some of those groups which are addressing a range of social and economic problems largely neglected by government; and we have undertaken the task of stripping the mask off one of our most powerful institutions — the IRS — as we portray its grim role in the betrayal of our society’s and world’s ultimate security.
World Peace Tax Fund promoters tried to jump on the bicentennial bandwagon with a bizarre logo they promoted in the issue
The issue had some Revolutionary War-era history lessons.
Nonviolence theorist Gene Sharp wrote an article on “The Power of Nonviolent Action” in which he pointed out (among other things) the usefulness of tax resistance in the struggle for American independence:
During the Townshend resistance, in … for example, a London newspaper reported that because of the refusal of taxes and the refusal to import British goods, only 3,500 pounds sterling of revenue had been produced in the colonies.
The American non-importation and non-consumption campaign was estimated by the same newspaper at that point to have cost British business not a mere 3,500 pounds but 7,250,000 pounds in lost income.
Those figures may not have been accurate, but they are significant of the perceptions of the time.
The attempt to collect the tax against that kind of opposition was not worth the effort, and the futility of trying eventually became apparent.
Finally, Lyle Tatum examined the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s activity around .
Excerpts:
Although the Yearly Meeting was clear that members should not participate in military activities or pay direct war taxes, some areas were more difficult to decide.
Bills of credit, a form of negotiable instrument sanctioned by the colonies, were controversial.
The use of them stood in a similar position to the payment of taxes today.
To those Friends who were trying to get other Friends to stop using bills of credit, the Yearly Meeting minuted a bit of advice:
…we affectionately exhort those who have this religious Scruple, that they do not admit, nor indulge and Censure in their Minds against their Brethren who have not the same, carefully manifesting by the whole tenor of their Conduct, that nothing is done through Strife, or Contention, but by their Meekness, Humility and patient Suffering, that they are the Followers of the Prince of Peace.
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of met in , just a little more than two months after .
As we have seen, pressure on the peaceable testimony had been growing over the previous few years.
In the face of this, the Yearly Meeting minuted:
…we cannot consistent with our Christian peaceable Testimony… be concerned in the promoting of War or Warlike Measures of any kind, we are united in Judgment that such who make religious Profession with us, & do either openly, or by Connivance, pay any Fine, Penalty, or Tax, in lieu of their personal Services for carrying on the War under the prevailing Commotions, or do consent to, and allow their Children, Apprentices, or Servants to act therein do thereby violate our Christian Testimony, and by so doing manifest that they are not in Religious Fellowship with us…
In spite of their many hardships, Friends were holding firm.
Loyalty oaths were going strong in .
It was minuted:
…in some places Fines or Taxes are and have been imposed on those who from Conscientious Scruples, refuse or decline making such declaration of Allegiance and Abjuration, it is the united Sense and Judgment of this Meeting, that no Friend should pay any such Fine or Tax…
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
War tax resistance kept charging on through the early
issues of the Friends
Journal, though there was some indication of post-Vietnam War war tax
resister fatigue.
The issue gave an overview of
how various Friends in various places were meeting the war tax challenge:
“Friends in Illinois and Massachusetts, for example, have shared letters
to the
IRS,
to their elected representatives, to newspapers, and to the meetings in
which they have expressed the wrongness of militarism and their
conscientious refusal to support governmental expenditures for military
purposes.”
In Philadelphia, “when the
IRS
seized a car owned by Margaret (Meg) Bownan… [this] was met by many
members of the meeting and other supporters who went with her down to the
garage where the auction was held. A bouquet of bittersweet was placed on
the car’s hood, cranberry juice and cookies were passed out to everyone
(and graciously accepted by the police and the
IRS
representatives), and meeting members formed a special support corporation
and bought the car so that Meg and others may use it in their travels in
and about the city.”
Robert Anthony was fighting a Tax Court battle from Moylan, Pennsylvania,
with First Amendment freedom-of-religion arguments: “compelling the
payment of that part of the income tax that is used for war or war
preparation makes it impossible for a Quaker to practice his
religion.”
Thomas L. Carter of Santa Barbara, California, quoted Peter J. Ediger in a
parable about the Quaker peace testimony:
The devil took the Quakers to a very high mountain, the mountain of
academic-socio-economic success and showed them all the kingdoms of the
world, and the glory of them; and he said to the Quakers all this will I
give you…
financial security
acceptance in your society
many opportunities for doing good
tax exemption for your worship centers and your service programs
many other benefits too numerous to mention
if you will fall down and worship me…
bless the armies which protect your privileges
pay taxes without question for my armies around the world (a few
words of dissent to support your moral image are OK as long as you
refrain from any form of civil disobedience)
And the Quakers said (multiple choice/check one):
we want to keep our service program going, so…
we’re uneasy with your terms, but we like the benefits…
would you serve as one of our Trustees? We need more practical minds
like yours…
as children of God and members of the Religious Society of Friends
we are under obligation to free ourselves from this complicity.
In the issue, the clerk of the
Nashville (Tennessee) Friends Meeting wrote in about that Meeting’s decision
to disregard the legal exemption on local property taxes for church property
and to go ahead and pay the property tax on its meeting house.
The meeting’s decision had, according to Bob Lough, the clerk, four reasons
behind it:
The sense that churches are just as much the beneficiaries of city
government services (like “fire protection, road maintenance, libraries,
schools, social services, parks,
etc.”) as
anyone else.
That “a position in favor of paying taxes form which we are exempt may
enhance our credibility as tax resisters. we decided to continue refusing to pay the excise tax on
the meeting telephone as symbolic of our opposition to a foreign policy
which we cannot support.”
Being in favor of the separation of church and state, the meeting was
opposed to the implicit government subsidy of religious bodies owning
property that the tax exemption represented.
The meeting also felt that the property tax exemption for religious bodies
had encouraged churches to become property owners — erecting “modern day
‘steeplehouses’ which resemble country clubs more than places of Christian
service.”
The piece concluded by encouraging other meetings to consider following their
lead. “As Quakers we are noted for being conscientious about taxes, and
resistance of taxes for war-related purposes has a long history in our
tradition. Perhaps our tax record should not merely reflect our opposition to
the evils we see in society, but also demonstrate that we have a
responsibility that calls for support as well as dissent.”
an ad from the 1 February 1977 issue of Friends Journal
Ross Roby wrote in again (see ♇ 24 July
2013 for his earlier letter) to express his puzzlement about why Quakers
hadn’t gotten all enthusiastic about the World Peace Tax Fund bill. “[T]he
National Council for a
W.P.T.F. is
still operating on a shoe-string and still being warned by sympathetic
Congressmen that there is little apparent concern about the bill if they can
judge by their mail.”
Has Friends Journal any interest in developments in
the W.P.T.F.
bill…? There have been frequent opportunities in the last year for the
Journal to support and encourage lobbyists for the
W.P.T.F.,
and the chance was again present in the article of
on “Friends and the
IRS.”
For some inexplicable reason, the Journal has again
missed an opportunity to remind us that the tax laws can be changed by
legislative action — that the
W.P.T.F.
bill is a reasonable way to put conscientious objection as an alternative in
every citizen’s form 1040!
Again, Roby seemed blind to the real concerns that Quakers and other
conscientious war tax resisters might have with the plan advocated by the
“peace tax fund” advocates.
In the issue, George Lakey shared
his annual letter to the
IRS,
accompanying the letter with a telling comment: “I thought you might like to
print part or all of it to remind your readers that some of us Quaker tax
refusers are still doing it!” Although from my perspective, the
coverage of Quaker war tax resistance in the
Journal seems to be going strong, it seems that from
the perspective of this particular Quaker tax resister the practice had begun
to wane in the post-Vietnam War period. Excerpts:
Again I am asked to pay taxes to support an approach which reduces my actual
security as a human being… for paying taxes to this government means giving a
license for various kinds of international misadventures.
I see no reason, therefore, to change my own policy of refusing federal income
taxes. I very much support the principle of taxation, and encourage the
government to tax at a much higher rate the corporations whose interests it so
faithfully serves. Since it does not serve my interests nearly so well, I
withhold my hard-earned money until I see a basic change in values. I want to
see the government focused on human security, not “national”
security. I want to see the government make a serious commitment to
environmental quality. I want to see in all its policies the government taking
the side of life, not death.
To implement my tax refusal policy, I return the form only partially filled
out, lacking the financial information which would enable you to collect the
tax.
Virginia Snow Mountain and Darrell Bluhm shared their letter to the
IRS in
the same issue. Excerpts:
We have given ourselves a War Crimes Tax Credit for the amount your charts
would otherwise have had us owe and we request that you refund us the money
withheld from our incomes last year.
…Through our involvement with the Religious Society of Friends and our
personal experience of the Divine Spirit we have come to know that all life
is sacred. We are called to live in such a way as to “remove the cause of
war.”
…[O]ur vocations involve the nurture and education of children. Daily we work
to help guide young people to grow up to be peaceful, responsible adults.
They are our joy and our hope for the future. It is unthinkable to us that
any part of the wages that we earn in this work should be used to support
weapons systems or armies whose effect is to injure and kill people, or to
add to the great potential for nuclear holocaust that already exists with our
huge stockpiles of weapons. Knowing that more than half our tax dollar goes
to the death and destruction the American military represents has caused us
to conclude that we will no longer pay our Federal taxes. We cannot support
the military’s protection of corporate profit at the expense of human needs.
That issue also reprinted the text of a “petition” written by R.L. Anthony
(and invited others to sign or use it):
Members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) since the Society’s
beginning have been guided by a belief in the sacredness of life and have
implemented this by seeking ways of peace. This compels in conscience their
refusal to participate in war.
I believe the U.S.
tax laws deny us the constitutional right to religious freedom by
not providing under law an alternative to paying that portion of the income
tax devoted to war preparation.
If I should at present follow my conscience and my religious beliefs by
refusing taxes for war, I would have to face the prospect of forced
collection or legal prosecution and penalties. I believe the
U.S. tax laws
thereby deny me the free exercise of my religious beliefs.
In keeping with my beliefs and conscience, I wish to pay the war portion of
my income tax to a peace fund, such as the World Peace Tax Fund
presently in a committee of Congress, set up as a legal alternative under
U.S. law. I would
make this alternative payment instead of the war portion of my income tax if
the U.S. tax laws
provided such an alternative for all citizens conscientiously opposed to war
and the taking of life.
I wish my position made known to all branches of government concerned,
including the U.S.
Congress, the courts and the
IRS.
In the issue, Allyn Eccleston
compared the reemerging Quaker opposition to paying for war to the emergence
of Quaker abolitionism in American in the
.
Excerpts:
Today we have a different impediment in our relationship with God and we are
called, each one of us, to hold it to the light and test whether we feel at
ease. Our continued commitment to a world-wide arms race not only deprives
the world of comparable expenditures for human service, it enslaves the world
in a struggle for real and symbolic power that engenders hatred, fear and
greed. We are the masters in an arms race that enslaves the people
of this earth.
Do I feel at ease knowing that approximately fifty cents of each of my tax
dollars goes to military expenditures?
Do I feel at ease knowing the United States spends more money on armaments
than any country in the world?
Do I feel at ease knowing United States arms merchants have been peddling
ever more sophisticated weaponry to other nations, totalitarian and
democratic, undeveloped and developed, poor and rich; that in Greece, Turkey,
the Near East, and Latin America we have armed both sides of existing (or
potential) conflicts, as well as equipped and trained some of the most
repressive governments in existence?
Our country’s dependence on military manpower has been reduced even to the
point where conscription is no longer necessary. During the Vietnam conflict
it became the explicit policy of the United States to substitute wealth and
technology for manpower. This policy is directly responsible for more
indiscriminate killing and destructiveness (in ways contrary even to the
international conventions of warfare). We annihilated women, children, old
people and, in designated areas, all living things, and we did this by remote
control, thereby removing and insulating the killers from the acts.
Regardless of who actually handled the equipment, it is you and I and every
other taxpayer who paid for the weapons and are therefore responsible.
It is not as though a madman picks up our sledgehammer or another useful tool
and hits someone over the head with it. When soldiers, hired by us, use our
weapons to kill, it is not misuse-that is what the equipment is designed and
purchased for. And we must presume any future use will be as destructive (at
least) as what we witnessed in Vietnam.
It isn’t necessary to document for Friends why the preparation for conflict
is more likely to lead to war than to peace or how the evils of hatred, greed
and fear can be addressed by practical demonstrations of love, self-sacrifice
and self-confidence. Let us search for steps we might take that would set us
on a new course.
There are approximately 150,000 Friends in the United States. What would
happen if 30,000 Friends felt moved to take some step, however small, to
register their “dis-ease” in a meaningful way?
Suppose you are one of these Friends moved to register public dissent and
dismay by enclosing a personal statement with your tax return. If you owe the
government money, the letter would specify that at least a token amount has
been withheld as a testimony for peace. To be more effective, you would also
send copies of the statement to your senators, to your congressperson and to
your newspaper.
In addition to increasing the effect of your witness, this public declaration
protects you against accusation of intent to defraud the government.
Withholding some portion of your tax does subject you to the seven percent
interest charge plus a possible monthly penalty of one-half of one percent
per month up to twenty-five percent of the amount not paid. Therefore, it is
you who must determine the appropriate amount to withhold for your witness.
Some Friends might feel they should begin with one percent of their total
tax; others might be led to withhold ten percent or the actual percentage of
the budget allocated to military expenses.
If you are moved to witness this year but cannot withhold from the government
(because your money was already collected), you might consider requesting a
refund (form 843) of the amount you would have withheld. Whether you receive
a refund or not, the witness will have been strengthened. In the current tax
year, you can legally assure that you will owe some money to the government
by declaring expected allowances on your W-4 form at a level that takes your
peace witness into account.
If the burden of the witness gets too heavy, you can, and should, stop the
process by making the payment or by allowing the
IRS to
find and take payment from your bank account. (Beyond late-payment penalties,
the IRS
cannot take punitive action once you have paid the assessed tax.) The witness
already made to yourself and your friends, and the strength and truth gained
by this witness, will have moved us that much closer to world peace. We will
have another opportunity to witness next year, and the next and the next.
Each year we will have more knowledge and more strength and, if we are
mindful of the light, more love. And this will sustain us for as many
generations as it may take.
Some Friends will argue that since the government gets the money plus penalty
charges anyway, tax refusal is counterproductive. This is not so. The whole
system of tax collection is computerized and is dependent on voluntary
cooperation. By requiring the system to take special steps to collect your
tax, your message is felt. The message gains weight as the
IRS is
forced to put more and more time and attention on this matter. Friends may
feel easier about the extra money collected if they view it as a contribution
toward the government’s higher administrative costs. (There is no way the
additional money can be diverted into military expense.)
It will concern some Friends that this action is “against the law” or it
isn’t proper to claim a deduction for “peacework” if the money isn’t actually
spent or that there is no item under “Credits” where one could appropriately
list “peace witness.” True enough, the way of the tax refuser is not clean
and simple. We are confronting a system we believe to be immoral and, as
Friends have always done in similar situations, we must compromise, following
the path we believe moves us closer to the ideal.
This is why a tax refuser needs the insight, information and support of other
(Friendly) resisters. We need to discuss the pros and cons of the
alternatives open to us and to help each other in our witness.
IRS
regulations and procedures change. Individual circumstances change. If one is
isolated it can be confusing and lonely. It is important to stay in touch
with others, by mail, if necessary.
Regardless of the impact on the government, our witness will have an
immediate impact on each of us and on our meetings. This impact is likely to
differ from that which we may have experienced in visiting prisons,
counseling conscientious objectors, sorting clothes for AFSC,
or work in other worthwhile programs in which we minister and offer aid to
others. In tax refusal, we are concerned with our own brokenness and are
committed to a healing ministry of ourselves, not by words, but by deeds.
In addition to the most important witness of tax refusal, every Friend should
consider actively supporting the World Peace Tax Fund. If passed, this bill
would grant conscientious objector status to taxpayers in much the same way
as a conscientious objector status was granted to draft resisters and would
allow the military expense portion of a conscientious objector’s tax to be
diverted to a World Peace Trust Fund (for peace education and research, and
humanitarian use).
Those of us who are clear on this issue must act and we must support each
other. We must make our testimony public that others may find clarity and
courage. And when we are given the opportunity, we must lovingly and
patiently labor with other Friends who have not yet been moved to hold this
issue to the light.
The IRS
readily admits the whole tax system is dependent on voluntary cooperation.
Ultimate control is in our hands (not the Pentagon’s)! Whether we want to
acknowledge it or not, we are the masters, the slave masters. We can learn
from the early Quakers. We must seek truth in the light and speak truth to
power.
Finally, the issue gave the
unsurprising news that the “Ann Arbor Monthly Meeting was recently denied a
claim for exemption from payment of war taxes,” which it had asserted on
religious freedom grounds. Cleverly, at least from a propaganda point of
view, “[t]hey supported their claim by citing the
Buckley vs. Valeo
case where the Supreme Court decided it was unconstitutional to limit how much
money of his own a candidate can spend for his campaign, thus establishing
money expenditures as a means of free expression.”
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
There was hardly an issue of the Friends Journal in that did not at least mention war tax resistance, and some issues covered the topic in depth.
In the issue was an article by Scott Benarde about the Quaker community of Monteverde in Costa Rica.
Excerpts:
In , a year after the sentencing [of Marvin Rockwell for draft resistance], Rockwell and the small Quaker community of Fairhope made national news.
In a short article, Time magazine mentioned that “for the first time in history a group of Quakers were planning to leave the U.S. because of their peace-loving convictions.”
Seven Quaker families — including Marvin Rockwell and his parents — twenty-five or thirty people in all, had decided to move to the Central American Republic of Costa Rica.
, Marvin Rockwell recounts why he left the U.S. and what has happened to him since settling 5,000 feet up in the steep, rugged mountains of Costa Rica.
“We had a growing dissatisfaction with what we in Fairhope thought was a military build-up, a wartime economy.
We wanted to be free of paying taxes in a war economy,” Rockwell says in a soft, yet deliberate, voice.
“When the judge sentenced us he said, ‘If you’re not willing to defend your country, you should get out.’
So we began to think seriously of that possibility.”
That issue also brought the news that Quaker Richard Catlett “has been indicted on criminal charges of willful failure to pay income tax for three years” (the indictment was actually for failure to file).
The issue — under the theme “Can the Government Cancel Conscience?”
— had many mentions of war tax resistance.
The opening article, by Ruth Kilpack, began:
Ten years ago, at the height of the Vietnam War, a Friend spoke directly to my condition at Philadelphia Yearly Meeting when he said, “Many of us support our sons’ conscientious objection to serving in the armed forces.
But what about ourselves?
Do those of us who are beyond draft age, or not otherwise subject to the draft, conscientiously object to giving our money for war?”
For me, this struck deep, as did the words, “Two things are needed to fight a war: warm bodies and cold cash.”
For the first, the full flush of youth is required for combat.
For the second, there is no age limit for those who must pay tax funds, over half of which are channeled directly into wars, past, present, and future.
Everyone is involved.
By the payment of taxes, all are required to support the “national defense,” or whatever the current euphemism is.
Kilpack’s article concerned the legal case of Robert Anthony, who was appealing his tax case on religious freedom grounds.
What Bob Anthony’s case was about that day was an effort to break the longstanding precedent set by the case of A.J. Muste, the great peace activist, who in had challenged the U.S. government in the matter of paying taxes for war.
The court had then ruled that the income tax does not interfere with religious practice.
Whatever attempts have been made since that time to break that precedent-and there have been many-have been thwarted, federal judges repeatedly refusing to examine the deep issues involved: the issues of rights of conscience and the First Amendment’s protection of religious belief.
As it turned out, according to Anthony, “the court came up with a complete backing of the government’s right to cancel conscience for the sake of the taxing system.”
The same issue reprinted excerpts from a letter that Media Monthly Meeting had sent to the court that was hearing the Anthony case, in which it said:
As a Meeting, we have consistently backed and encouraged [Anthony’s] position on military taxes.
We believe that any citizen who on the basis of religion or conscience is opposed to paying for armaments or war should not be compelled by the tax laws to pay taxes for these purposes.
Refusal to participate in any way in killing and warfare is a basic principle of the Quaker faith.
…Robert Anthony’s refusal of military taxes constitutes an essential and consistent implementation of Quaker religious principles.… We assert that the free exercise of the Quaker religion entails the avoidance of any participation in war or financial contribution to that part of the national budget used by the military.
In the same issue, Bruce & Ruth Graves wrote of how their war tax resistance had grown out of their conscientious objection to the draft.
[O]ur early married years were largely those of family and professions, years in which we were no longer pressured by government to form external written attestations of belief to satisfy the draft board.
After all, we had done that.
What else could just we two do to alter this evil?
The pacifist ideas could safely rest — or could they?
In retrospect, those beliefs that had been yanked forth from us by society, perhaps too early in our lives, needed more time to mature, to become integrated into our very beings.
Perhaps ten years of integration preceded our realization that a different and subtler written attestation of belief was being required of us by our society.
This attestation was made not once, but every year and it was an attestation of beliefs we did not believe.
It was a lie.
It was our income tax return.
We signed it every year, and thus gave money, without objection, to buy the tools of war, even though we did not believe in killing.
It was subtle because it was money and did not look like death.
But when you put them together, it is a contract.
…All of this occurred during a time when militarism increasingly permeated national policy.
Here, then, we finally reached a point where the idea of our financing the arms race became unbearable.
After all, warfare was becoming more automated, thus relying far more on the expenditure of tax money than on the conscription of lives.
In fact, it now appears that conscientious objection itself may be tending toward irrelevance, unless the concept is expanded beyond the confines of the Selective Service system — especially for those over draft age.
At this point we changed our tax returns into something we could in conscience sign and our remittance checks into contracts for the Internal Revenue Service.
Each year, the item “Foreign Tax Credit” and about fifty percent of our normal tax “due” was entered.
Carrying that credit over to the first page as instructed, we showed each year on our signed returns a credit balance due us from the IRS.
To reduce IRS profit from interest and penalty, we still paid tax “owed” as calculated normally, but our check required the IRS to promise to refund the war tax we claimed by their endorsement because of a restrictive clause we placed on the back of the check.
Rather than our refund, the IRS has usually sent a notice for us to sign, correcting our return.
We have never signed these, because that means agreeing to the original war tax.
Yet the IRS seems to need our agreement to resolve each case legally — that is, unless it should decide to initiate proceedings against us in U.S. Tax Court.
That, in fact, happened to us in for tax year .
From here, the Graveses write about their frustrations with the legal system, which seems eager to latch onto superficial technicalities to avoid having to face head-on the issue of whether the government can force people to violate such core tenets of conscience as “thou shalt not kill” via the tax system.
They also express the need they feel for a stronger and more sustaining national war tax resistance organization:
At present, the community of war tax resistance appears to us to be a loosely-structured communications network of interpersonal contacts, newsletters, and small organizations perhaps not always widely known.
Entrance to this network, we presume, is often gained through need for help by individuals who then grow, gain experience, and are later able to help other newcomers in their various situations.
Whether they do help others or just gradually fade out of the network, however, is crucial to the power of the community.
If we, ourselves, were to fade out as our own tax problems become less immediate, for example, the experience and knowledge we will have gained (even though far from complete) would be lost to the others.
It would seem to be a sad waste to have this process repeated over and again for each member passing through the community.
There are a few organizations emphasizing war tax resistance (e.g., WTR, Peacemakers, etc.), from which a range of handbooks and information is available for individual action.
Some may provide counseling: for example, we have recently learned that CCCO is in liaison currently with the Philadelphia Office of War Tax Resistance (WTR), thus affording the wider range of counseling needed by this more recent form of conscientious objection.
They added:
There are other courses of individual action besides variations on how to fill out a tax return.
One such course is to reduce one’s income to a level of lower — or no — taxation.
For some, this would mean a change in profession, or else a donation of one’s professional services to his or her current employer.
If it is not desirable to put that kind of commitment into that particular employer’s pockets, one can give away up to fifty percent of taxable income to tax deductible organizations, thereby reaching three simultaneous objectives: a) continue one’s profession, b) support human interests of choice, and c) decrease war tax payments.
Tax liability on interest income can also be reduced by buying tax-exempt bonds or shares in exempt bond funds.
Both Individual Retirement Accounts and Deferred Tax Annuities (sometimes available through the employer) enable the postponement of income to retirement years, when, hopefully, the World Peace Tax Fund Act will have become law.
This provides a reasonable chance for legally claiming the exemption on a part of current income, the exempted funds then being redirected to the WPTF Trust Fund for uses more closely aligned with human values.
Also in that issue was an update on the Richard Catlett case, in which he was charged with “willfully and knowingly failing to file income tax returns for ” — he in fact hadn’t filed .
The Brandywine Peace Community wrote in with “some fundamental questions of reality and responsibility” for Quaker taxpayers.
The community ran an alternative fund “comprised of refused war taxes, personal savings, and group deposits, [that] makes interest-free loans to groups working for social change or providing change-oriented services.
Thus, the alternative fund is a small-scale act of beating swords into plowshares and initiating our own peace conversion program.”
Also:
In past January–April tax seasons, the Brandywine group and its supporters have been present at local IRS offices, presenting the option of war tax resistance, and posing the question, “H-bombs or Bread?” with peace tax counseling available.
The issue shared the story of John and Louise Runnings, who…
…have withheld payment of their income taxes in order, as they state, “to resolve the conflict between the spirit that dwells within and the violence implicit in surrendering our substance to the building of the war machine.”
They have submitted a brief to this effect to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Runnings feel that since their action makes them answerable to “those Quakers whose light allows them to pay the federal tax,” they must plead their case before the Society of Friends as well as before the Federal Court.
In doing so, they stress the fact that they share Friends’ testimonies against war but feel that these testimonies will be muted if they are not supported by actions which speak louder than words.
They question how we can “speak truth to power” when so large a part of our income supports that power.
They invite Friends to join them “in taking those uncomfortable actions which put us in conflict with the government rather than with the Spirit.”
That issue also brought the update that Robert Anthony’s appeal to the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals had been rejected.
It also noted that, according to the Albuquerque Monthly Meeting’s newsletter, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and the AFSC were contributing to the legal expenses in the case.
At the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, according to the Journal, “[a] minute on nonpayment of taxes for military purposes was adopted” — but not one that required much explanation, apparently.
A letter from Austin Wattles appeared in the issue in which he encouraged the Journal to continue to cover war tax resistance, saying that to him, “[t]he movement seems to be growing.”
He told of the support he had received from Meetings in his area — specifically the Old Chatham (New York) Monthly Meeting and Worcester (Massachusetts) Meeting.
He concluded:
[T]ax resistance can have its penalties.
You don’t have money to send your kids to college if you change your profession in a way not to pay withholding tax.
I think certainly one reason so few Friends have considered this witness is it can hurt one’s profession so seriously.
It’s not only losing the wages, but Friends enjoy doing a good job where they are working and don’t know how else they can live.
I like Quakers very much.
I’ve always been an active Friend.
But I feel our being part of the world to the degree we are prevents us from following Christ if the price is too high.
Molly Arrison also had a letter in that issue, but she thought war tax resistance “to be a most unrealistic and disrupting idea” because it would lead to a slippery slope of every citizen withholding taxes for whatever items of government spending they disapproved of, leading to “50 million contingencies” that would overwhelm the government’s revenue system.
She recommended that Quakers instead “orchestrate consistent barrages of phone calls, letters, and lectures until the general public has more influence than the Pentagon.”
David Scull considered this same argument in a letter in the issue:
We wish not to pay taxes for what we so strongly disapprove of.
But there are those who equally strongly feel that government contributions to the United Nations, or government money to pay for abortions, violate their principles.
It would not be difficult to compile a long list of purposes objected to; of course we say that our cause is a matter of high principle, but one person’s principle is another’s foible.
Is there some guideline which would make it easier to distinguish between two paramount obligations when they seem to be in conflict, one to support those purposes which our society has determined (no matter how imperfectly) to be for the common good, and the other to obey our consciences?
It seems to me that this can best be judged by our willingness to make some tangible sacrifices on behalf of conscience.
Scull went on to say that this made him skeptical of the World Peace Tax Fund plan: “[I]f I understand it correctly, there is no personal sacrifice involved.
It is just too easy to say to the government, ‘Please send my money where I want it to go instead of where you want it to go.’ ” He suggested improving the World Peace Tax Fund idea by “add[ing] the principle of personal sacrifice”:
Suppose I say, “Instead of $1000 which you say I owe you, here is $1100 as evidence of my sincerity; now will you allocate it in these ways?
That is how much extra I am willing to pay for the privilege of having my money not go to pay for machines of war.”
The inclusion of such a sacrificial element in the WPTF program would make a great deal of difference in my own ability to argue for it, and I think it would make a very convincing argument as we work toward its widespread acceptability.
…When we ask to relieve our consciences because of the way our money is spent, we should be… willing to put a price tag on the privilege.
A letter-to-the-editor in response to Scull’s argument, from Bill Samuel, thought that while the personal-sacrifice angle “has some surface attractiveness…”
Put another way, the proposal amounts to a government tax on conscience, which is quite a different matter from a voluntary personal sacrifice.
Not only is it morally questionable for the government “to put a price tag on” conscience, but some legal authorities believe it would constitute unconstitutional discrimination as well.
The World Peace Tax Fund bill would not be a special privilege.
Rather, the WPTF bill is a practical means of implementing the rights of conscience guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Like women, blacks and homosexuals, pacifists should take the position that we need not earn our rights but that they should be respected as a matter of course in a free and pluralistic society.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with the concept of people of conscience making a sacrifice for their deeply held beliefs.
Rather than impose a ten percent tax on conscience, concerned Friends might send an amount equal to ten percent of their tax payment to the National Council for a World Peace Tax Fund…
Corporately, Friends can also act to support those working to secure the right of pacifists not to pay for war.
One yearly meeting recently agreed to give $1,500 to the NCWPTF and several monthly meetings include the NCWPTF in their budgets.
Mennonites and Brethren each give a full time volunteer service worker to the NCWPTF.
While Friends do not have the kind of organized volunteer service effort that the other historic peace churches have, meetings can do their part by together contributing enough to support a full-time salaried worker.
Ross Roby also had some words to say about Scull’s argument against the World Peace Tax Fund plan.
He first begged for “immediate self-sacrificial labor and giving, on behalf of passage of a WPTF bill” and then wrote:
I would like to remind those who, like David Scull, have “difficulty with the World Peace Tax Fund as presently offered,” that there is nothing sacred and immutable about the present wording.
We can be quite certain that, when Congress takes a serious scrutiny of provisions for an alternative fund for C.O.s, much rewriting will be done.
The final bill. when passed, may look very different from the WPTF bill as now published.
He suggested that conscientious objectors to military spending should “soft pedal” the arguments amongst themselves over the details of the WPTF plan and instead concentrate on trying to convince the government to enact “a change in the income tax laws that will allow ‘free exercise of religion’ and give us the opportunity to build institutions for nonviolent solutions to international conflict with our present war tax dollars.”
His advice seems to have been followed, and the current campaign for “peace tax fund” legislation seems to have become so unwilling to use critical judgment and so eager to pass legislation of any sort that it has ended up backing a bill that would do nothing to help people with genuine conscientious objection to supporting military spending, nothing to reduce the military budget, and indeed nothing to increase spending on nonviolent conflict resolution — and yet even this bill has gone nowhere in Congress.
Such is the cost of “soft pedaling” internal debate.
an ad in the issue of Friends Journal
John J. Runnings confronted Molly Arrison’s argument more head-on in the letters-to-the-editor column of the issue.
Excerpt:
Our actions are determined by the degree of urgency we feel.
When our house is on fire we may exit by way of an upstairs window rather than by the conventional route via the stairs.
Many of us see the arms race as a fire out of control, and we are so adverse to feeding the flames that we are prepared to suffer considerable discomfort rather than do so.
So we break the law and are prepared to suffer the penalty.…
To break the law openly and expose oneself to the wrath of the power structure is to witness to the urgency and depth of one’s convictions.…
The early Quakers started at the places that Molly suggests, in the heart and in the community, but they went further.
They broke the law.
And they got themselves hanged and imprisoned; and they were heard above the contending clamors of their day.
And when the Constitution was written it contained provisions for freedom of religion and freedom of speech.
Modern Quakers continue, as of old, to work from the heart and in the community, but if we are to outshout the Pentagon we will have to use a louder and more urgent voice than we have used heretofore.
Perhaps more and more and more of us will have to break the law.
Franklin Zahn also responded to Arrison’s slippery-slope argument: “In practice, the portion of federal income tax for the military is far greater than for any other item.
Currently thirty-six percent goes for present costs and another estimated seventeen percent for past wars.
Objectors to smaller items would not find withholding worth the bother… [W]ords alone eventually lose all effect if no one ever acts.
But if a few other than war objectors choose to refuse, I see no objection to their doing so.”
Sally Primm interviewed Lucy Perkins Carner for the issue.
Among other topics, Carner addressed her war tax resistance:
[Q:] “Did you ever consider not paying part of your tax?”
[A:] “Oh yes, for years I’ve taken out of my income tax payment a portion that the Friends Committee on National Legislation says is equal to what the Pentagon gets.
Then I write a letter to the income tax people.
It’s good propaganda.
I send copies to my representatives in Congress and the President.
“I know my failure to pay isn’t going to impoverish the Pentagon, but it’s good propaganda.
They go to your bank and get the money.
I send them a copy of the letter, too.
Some people have refused to give them the information and go to jail as a result, but I’m not heroic.
They get it out of my bank every year.
“The bank has a right to charge for that, a service charge.
Well, in the last few years, believe it or not, I’ve received a letter from the bank saying they won’t make the charge any more.[”]
[Q:] “Why did they say that?”
[A:] “Well, that just shows you what good propaganda will do.
They know why I’m doing it.”
[Q:] “And how long have you done this?”
[A:] “I don’t know; when I became a pacifist, whenever that was [around the end of World War Ⅰ, according to another part of the article —♇].
I don’t even know when the income tax started.”
The issue covered the “New Call to Peacemaking” in which representatives from the three historic “peace churches” (Quakers, Mennonites, and Brethren) got together to try to put some oomph behind their peacebuilding efforts.
There was actually less about war tax resistance in this article than in much of the mainstream media coverage of the Call — perhaps because the civil disobedience angle was thought to be more newsworthy or attention-catching.
Here is where taxes were mentioned in the Friends Journal coverage:
The Friends Committee on National Legislation points out that all the federal income taxes withheld from your paycheck from January 1 to June 23 go for military purposes.
Not until June 24 do you begin to support any other part of the budget.
Especially in recent years — in light of increasing military budgets and the trend toward fewer soldiers and more expensive weapons systems — many conscientious objectors have chosen to witness against war by refusal to pay voluntarily those federal taxes that will be used to fund present, past, and future wars.
Some have done this by lowering their income below the taxable level; others who owe taxes have refused to pay the portion that would go for the military.
In the same issue, Robert C. Johansen wrote about the challenge of putting forward a pacifist alternative to mainstream political thinking.
In the course of that, he wrote:
Even though their goals are radical in the sense of seeking fundamental system change, political moderates will feel most comfortable using conventional means of education, consciousness-raising, lobbying, campaigning, organizing, and personal witness.
Those people who have tried such means and found them weak and insufficiently penetrating politically will search for other actions, such as tax resistance and civil disobedience, that convey a seriousness and urgency more equivalent to the threat of planetary militarization.
Maynard Shelly gave the Mennonite perspective in the wake of the New Call conference, and claimed that “[r]esistance to the payment of war taxes is becoming the witness of choice for a growing number of Mennonites.”
Charles C. Walker wrote in to the issue to suggest a token $1 resistance to the Pennsylvania state income tax as a way of protesting against its anticipated adoption of capital punishment.
The issue noted in its calendar that the Media Pennsylvania Friends Meetinghouse would be hosting a “National Military Tax Resistance Workshop” that would be “[i]ntroducing the program and services of the newly organized Center on Law and Pacifism.”
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
1984 brought the Friends Journal’s second special issue on war taxes, at a time when even its critics acknowledged war tax resistance as a mainstream practice in the Society of Friends.
In a letter-to-the-editor in a issue of the Journal, Tim Deniger, a supporter of the World Peace Tax Fund legislation, had pointed out some of its flaws, for instance that it “does not address the problem of spending for defense versus social welfare; it is simply a bookkeeping proposition which would ease the consciences of pacifists.”
(See ♇ .)
Bill Strong wrote back, and, in a letter that appeared in the issue, defended the bill against its critics.
Excerpts:
[T]he World Peace Tax Fund Bill…[’]s enactment won’t lessen defense spending; Congress will still need to do that.
What it will do is establish a Peace Trust Fund (like the eminently successful highway trust fund), enabling our society to make a striking (i.e., dollar-worthy) commitment to seeking peace (via, for example, funding a peace academy, U.N. peacekeeping forces, the use of mediation, negotiation, and reconciliation techniques — none of which are currently part of U.S. commitments).
As to alternative service for war tax dollars being but an “accounting illusion” or only easing the consciences of pacifists, the same applies to the now-established alternative service of C.O.s. Although men choose alternative service, our government has never lacked the bodies to pursue any conflict any place, any time; but the C.O.’s personal witness still stands for what it is, a man’s conscientious decision not to be a part of the war system.
If we could have C.O. status for men over 20 and all women, allowing them not to pay for war but to have their tax dollars go toward peacemaking, our society would make a new and totally different kind of statement to this violence-weary world.
There’s a little bit of sleight-of-hand here in comparing people who would pay their taxes into a government-run alternative fund with only those conscientious objectors who would be willing to enter government-run “alternative service” in lieu of combat roles (as opposed to the many conscientious objectors who refused to be conscripted into any service whatsoever).
But it’s also important to note that these earlier versions of the “peace tax” scheme were much more conscientious about segregating the “peace tax” payments so that they would pay for new, additional, nonviolent, peace-seeking measures.
This enabled promoters to make a much stronger case in favor of the bill than today’s poor “Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund” promoters — who have to somehow defend the idea that “peace tax” payers’ dollars will somehow magically get routed just toward the non-military portions of the government’s usual budget.
the cover of the issue of Friends Jounal
The issue of Friends Journal was dedicated to “Our Taxes and Peace” — the second such issue devoted to the war tax issue that I found in the archives.
Vinton Deming, a war tax resister and now the Editor-Manager of the Journal, introduced the issue.
Excerpts:
[W]hat can we do, many of us are asking, to stop the flow of our tax money to the Pentagon?
It feels as if the Society of Friends has come more under the weight of this concern in the past year.
My yearly meeting (Philadelphia) wrestled with the question of tax resistance a year ago, and monthly meetings have been asked to consider the question further as they prepare for yearly meeting sessions this month.
Within my own monthly meeting I have attended clearness meetings this year for members seeking direction and support on the issue.
And I have seen a marked increase in the number of members taking tentative steps to withhold at least a portion of their taxes.
Reports from abroad include London Yearly Meeting’s minute of support this past summer for its employees who seek to hold back the military portion of their taxes.
Robert F. Tatman proposed a Minute on the subject, confidently presenting a target that was well in front of what any meeting had been prepared to accept thus far.
Excerpts:
[W]e are led to declare for ourselves that all participation in war and preparation for war — in any form — is contrary to the Spirit and teachings of Christ.
By this, we mean that membership in the armed forces of the United States or of any country, whether under arms or as a noncombatant; participation in, including registration under, a system of military conscription; acceptance of the privilege of alternative service as a conscientious objector; payment through taxes, both direct and indirect, for wars past, present, and future; and all other forms of participation in the war system, which now holds the world in such deep oppression, are in direct opposition to the Peace Testimony of the Religious Society of Friends.
Friends are advised to examine themselves, their finances, their possessions, and all of their associations to discover whether they are clear of such participation in war and preparation for war, and if they are not, to seek guidance and support from their monthly meetings in their efforts to attain clearness.
We accept that this search for clearness will inevitably bring us, both individually and corporately, into conflict with the laws of the United States and of other countries, and we pledge our full moral, spiritual, and financial support to any Friend or meeting in need of such support as a result of this minute.
We realize that there are many Friends who will not be in full unity with this minute at present, who will feel it is their duty as U.S. citizens to continue paying the taxes demanded of them by the federal government, and to support and counsel cooperation with military conscription.
We recognize the depth of their convictions but stand in loving disagreement with them, and we pledge them, too, our full moral, spiritual, and financial support as they struggle to reach clearness on this concern laid upon us by the Lord.
We are indeed loyal citizens of the United States, but first we are citizens of the Kingdom of God, and the higher law must always take precedence over the lower.
Kingdon W. Swayne went the opposite direction, feeling that Friends had gotten too carried away with war tax resistance and ought to reconsider.
Excerpts:
Most of the current discussion of “war” taxes within the Society of Friends is based on the implicit assumption that those who don’t pay them are morally superior to those who do.
The charge of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to that of is to come up with a “stronger minute” on war tax concerns than the one currently on the books, clearly implying that greater “strength” in this area must be morally superior.
In a discussion several months ago at Representative Meeting in Philadelphia, those who obey the law were compared to the Quaker slaveholders of , and not a dissenting voice was raised.
As a member of the substantial majority of Friends who are dutiful taxpayers, I have felt intuitively that my position has every bit as good a moral claim as the contrary view.
I have sought to examine that intuition in two ways: first, to identify the moral assumptions that underlie it and, second, to identify the moral ambiguities in the tax refuser position that render it unattractive to me on moral grounds.
Swayne argued:
It is important to him to be a vigorous participant in the various “circles of community” that he finds himself in, and only to be a disruptive force in those circles in the most extreme circumstances, when productive participation is no longer possible.
He feels that the national circle in the United States has not reached such a stage, and so it’s better to play by the rules.
Friends overemphasize “the dramatic, large-scale evils associated with the national security system” while remaining indifferent to other man-made sources of suffering, for instance “our transportation system [which] has brought more death and injury to U.S. citizens than all the wars of .”
The national security establishment is just a large-scale version of such thoroughly moral defenses as “police forces and locks on houses” — they are not evil in and of themselves, though they can be used in evil ways or can become aggrandized in an evil way.
But war tax resistance treats them as pure evil.
He then described the varieties of resister: the one who reduces his or her income below the tax line (the “most admirable” variety, according to Swayne), the one who tries “limiting but not eliminating federal income tax liability, and paying the required tax” (Swayne considers himself one of these, saying he “does so from prudential rather than pacifist motives” because “I think I give money away more wisely than does Uncle Sam”), and the one who refuses a symbolic “military” percentage of the federal income tax (this, he calls the “mainstream” variety).
He sees problems with this third variety:
It actually means the government gets more money in the end.
The calculation of the “military” percentage is flawed.
“It requires one to assert unequivocally that one’s own reading of the will of God is superior to that of others, not only with respect to goals but with respect to the tactics needed to achieve those goals.”
By filing legal cases contesting government actions against resisters, these resisters undermine their moral position, becoming not civilly disobedient martyrs but mere plaintiffs.
Such war tax resisters incorrectly deny that their position sets a precedent for tax resisters of all sorts.
Law-breaking reflects poorly on the peace movement in the court of public opinion.
But, he concluded:
As for the tax refusers, I hope other Quaker taxpayers will join me in accepting their position, despite its ambiguities, as being in the mainstream of Quaker thought, and therefore entitled to support from Quaker bodies.
I will support them not out of a sense that theirs is the morally superior position, but only because they are taking a greater risk.
Following that, Franklin Zahn promoted phone tax resistance as “a simple way of continuing Friends’ tradition of witnessing for peace.”
He first wrote about why resistance was important (indeed, he felt, as a regressive tax at a time of reduced social welfare spending and tax cuts for the rich, resisting this particular tax could be justified even without reference to military spending), and then explained the mechanics of how to resist and how the phone company is likely to respond.
No one has ever been jailed for refusing the telephone war tax.
Although the tax is small, its refusal by thousands of Friends could be a significant force for peace.
Gandhi, for instance, made good use of a very small salt tax.
Being “effective,” however, need not be the main motive in refusals.
A draft-aged person refuses induction not primarily to be effective but because it is immoral to support war.
The same motivation can apply for tax refusers.
There was also a brief note in that issue about a new “study document” from the National Council of the Churches of Christ on “The Churches and War Tax Resistance,” but it didn’t give much indication about the content or the context in which it had been produced.
The issue brought the news that a group of “peace tax fund” promoters in Canada had incorporated and were planning to pursue a test case in the courts that they hoped would establish a right to conscientious objection to military taxation under the new Canadian Constitution.
Kingdon Swayne’s challenge to what he identified as the orthodox Quaker position in favor of war tax resistance drew some responses that were printed in the issue.
Roland Smith, “a rather recent tax refuser,” thought Swayne’s criticism was “helpful” but not always correct.
In particular, he didn’t think that it was true that war tax resistance always would mean the government would come out ahead in the end, and he felt that the difficult (Swayne called it “arbitrary”) practice of trying to discern the military portion of your tax bill represented “not a drawback but… an opportunity for the refuser to exercise his or her conscience in deciding which percentage of which budget figure to use.”
More troubling, he thought, was the threat to democracy embodied in the idea that people could conscientiously choose to support some decisions of their elected representatives and not others.
Irving Hollingshead denied that “self-righteousness” was behind war tax resistance.
“The moral point is that war and the preparation for mass killing are wrong, and most Friends feel a moral obligation to oppose it.
Tax resistance is merely one tactic consistent with this moral position.”
Tor J.S. Bejnar looked at Swayne’s three varieties of resister and decided that the second variety, to which Swayne (and until recently, Bejnar) belonged, “barely connects spiritual and earthly matters” and so he has decided to move into the first category, which he termed “deliberate poverty.”
Alan Eccleston was glad to see that Friends were “open[ing] ourselves to the question” rather than evading it.
He felt that framing the issue as being about “moral superiority” was counter-productive and judgmental.
And he also felt that more important than strong Minutes from Meetings about war tax resistance was “the continuous witness of those who, under a concern, constantly hold the question before us through their own loving commitment.”
My personal experience suggests that we feel most anxious when we are in a stage of determined avoidance, when, intuitively, we sense something stirring within us for which we believe we are not ready.
All of our defenses are mobilized and we shut ourselves off from that inner stirring — but at a price!
Scott Crom questioned the consequentialism implicit in Swayne’s critique.
“[S]ometimes we are called upon to act in certain ways, or refrain from acting, regardless of the consequences.
Here one does not judge the morality of a choice by its results or its impact, but by something else.
This approach is the one I prefer, and I believe it has ample precedent, both in the Bible and in Quaker history.
The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount do not say, ‘Thou shalt accomplish such-and-such,’ but speak directly to actions and to attitudes.”
Ben Norris wrote that “Some Quakers are motivated especially towards striving to keep their own lives pure, simple, or consistent, and this inner spiritual state is the focus.
Others note that it is quite impossible to exist outside of some sort of economic and social system… and therefore, such an action as war tax refusal is part of a vastly complex involvement in responsible citizenship, the right ordering of our economic and social systems. Both motivations may exist in the same person.
But to concentrate on which person’s actions, public or private, are ‘more moral’ than someone else’s usurps a judgment not given to mortals, and trivializes both the spiritual and political motivations of rational change in our lives.”
Karl Meyer wrote in to promote his “cabbage patch” method of tax resistance:
the Internal Revenue Service began using a special $500 penalty against people who make protest claims on income tax returns.
This “frivolous tax return” penalty is a significant and intolerable assault on the inalienable rights of freedom of speech and religion.
It seems to me both a challenge and an opportunity for mass civil disobedience by people of conscience.
The only act needed is to assert the rights of conscience on an income tax form.
As an experiment in showing the way, I have begun to file daily protest returns for each day of .
My net income from my work as a carpenter in will be reported and distributed on 365 tax returns, at an average of about $38 per day.
Each return will be addressed to a different employee or office of IRS.
A copy of the daily return will be sent each day to a different newspaper, magazine, public officeholder, or peace organization.
If the IRS imposes penalties for all of my returns, the total assessment may rise to more than $180,000. I have already received notice of one penalty for $500. Of course I don’t intend to pay or allow collection.
I invite Friends to join with me in resisting war taxes and this penalty on the expression of conscience.
This is a good project for people like me, who feel able to protect their income and assets from seizure by IRS.
Some others, whose assets are more vulnerable to collection, may participate by filing protest statements on tax return forms, in the names of some of the victims of U.S. militarism worldwide.
G.M. Smith trotted out the argument that paying taxes is no more of a moral issue because of how the government will spend the money, than handing your wallet over to a violent mugger is because of how he might spend the loot.
He suggested instead of tax resistance that people donate (in a tax-deductible way) to charity.
“Thus, through contributions one could reduce his or her tax liability legally and at the same time be contributing to good in the world.
It is important, however, not to make one’s contributions in a tax-supported area.
There’s nothing government would like better than to dump the entire burden of social services on the private sector and have all those extra tax dollars for bombs.”
Robert R. Schutz questions Swayne’s casual assumption that because the national security apparatus is something like the local police apparatus writ large (and the police are something like the locks on our doors anthropomorphized and handed pistols) that there’s nothing inherently wrong with a military.
Schutz agrees with the theory but denies Swayne’s conclusion.
Rather: “The use of police power may be even less morally defensible than war because it is deliberate, pre-planned, cold-blooded, and because it is entirely mercenary — we hire other people to do our killing for us.”
A report on the annual Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in the same issue noted that “[m]uch of Saturday was taken up with Friends’ wrestling with war tax concerns.”
The minute which finally resulted said, in part, that “Friends are uneasy in conscience that a substantial portion of their tax dollars goes for military purposes”; that we “are ready to support a wide variety of approaches to war tax witness in accord with individual circumstances and leadings”; that “while Friends do not urge one another to undertake civil disobedience, Friends are ready to give strong support to members led to refuse payment of taxes for military purposes”; and that “most Friends strongly endorse passage of the World Peace Tax Fund legislation.”
The minute concluded, “We realize that we have no single or simple answer to the dilemma of praying for peace and paying for war.
We ask for Divine Guidance as we proceed in struggling with the issue of taxes levied for war-related purposes.”
The issue will be considered again at the sessions.
In the issue was a letter from Donna and Jerome Gorman in which they explained how they had extended tax resistance-like techniques to a State-level battle against capital punishment.
They held back a symbolic 1¢ from their electric bill to protest against the Virginia Electric and Power Company’s complicity with the state’s electrocution method of executing prisoners, and later began to also withhold 1¢ from their phone bills in a similar protest because of a state excise tax on phone service.
They saw this largely as a method of getting the attention of people to whom they could then direct anti-death-penalty outreach.
We refer to this economic and tax resistance as “penny resistance.”
Multiple innovations in economic and tax and other forms of resistance are most urgently needed to impede the various methods of carrying out capital punishment.
We pray and we hope that many others will consider joining in this resistance.
Jeff Hunn promoted the War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund in the issue.
He described it this way:
The Tax Resisters’ Penalty Fund is a sort of “mutual aid fund” for war tax resisters.
Formed in , the Penalty Fund is supported by people who contribute small amounts of money periodically to help war tax resisters pay fines and interest levied by the IRS.
Funds contributed are used to help pay not the resister’s original tax burden but what the IRS terms “statutory additions”: interest, penalties, and fines imposed because of war tax resistance.
When each supporter contributes his or her small amount, the total becomes enough to reimburse the resister for the additional cost of his or her witness.
For example, 200 supporters contributing $2.50 each could cover the aforementioned $500 “frivolous” penalty.
The Tax Resisters’ Penalty Fund has grown from 85 supporters in to 400 supporters .
The larger we grow, the bigger an impact we can make and the smaller each supporter’s contribution will need to be.
Finally, in the issue, Dan Merritt reminded people that phone tax resistance was still a good option, and noted that the Claremont, California, Friends Meeting had been refusing to pay the phone tax since the Vietnam War.
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
There was lots about war tax resistance in the Friends Journal in , including an active debate about the worth of the World Peace Tax Fund legislation.
In the issue Jill Penberthy shared how a “committee on clearness” organized by the Middlebury (Vermont) Friends Meeting helped her decide how to use an anticipated IRS levy as an outreach opportunity.
Excerpts:
…I struggled to figure out how to respond to an Internal Revenue Service computer’s $1,800 bill for taxes, penalties, and interest on my account withheld as a war tax protest.
I also remembered a tai chi class in which we were taught to yield with the aggressor, using his or her energy and our own creativity to change the process.
I was puzzled about how to use these concepts with the IRS.
The computer was not listening to my numerous letters explaining my position as a war tax resister.
I was unable to contact anyone within the IRS with whom I could share my witness.
I brought my quandary to Middlebury Friends Meeting in Vermont and asked for a committee on clearness.
We gathered at my home and in the silence were moved to initiate a Peace Witness Fund under the care of the meeting that would be transferred to a local bank for seizure by the IRS.
The process became one of grace among us and within the Middlebury community.
The committee asked to share the penalty and commitment to peace represented by the withheld taxes.
Quaker history bears witness to conscientious objection through tax resistance.
We struggled to move beyond resistance to “yielding and overcoming,” and this we did with the guidance of the Spirit.
Letters of purpose were sent to Friends and sympathetic supporters requesting acknowledgment of the commitment to peace and offering a share in the assessed penalty.
They were asked to send copies of the purpose to elected officials and the IRS, and to join us on the Green in the center of Middlebury for singing and dancing before depositing the Peace Witness Fund in the bank.
We announced the peace gathering in the local papers — “Everyone is welcome.”
At the gathering we distributed leaflets explaining our concern about the present military escalation and preparation for nuclear war.
Babies and siblings, parents and grandparents, and retired military men all joined hands on the Green in a dance of peace, recognizing the Light within each of us.
“We are all one planet, all one people on earth,” sang a myriad of voices.
During the silence that followed, a professor from France said, “There are people you don’t even know about who are supporting you.
Let that be your strength.”
Another witness said, “This isn’t happening in my home state.
I’ll take it home with me.”…
…Our group proceeded up the hill and into the local bank where tellers and customers witnessed our Peace Fund deposit.
A brief note in the same issue said that “[s]ignatures of war tax resisters are being collected by the War Tax Resistance National Ad Campaign for placement in newspaper ads in ” and gave an address for the campaign.
A second brief announcement read:
A Peace Tax Fund has been established by Friends United Meeting.
The FUM general board established an escrow account this past fall into which war tax resisters who belong to FUM may deposit taxes withheld from the government.
Should the IRS take action against the depositor, the money may be withdrawn later.
Income generated from the fund will be used to finance FUM peace and justice programs. For more information…
The issue brought news that the Palo Alto (California) Meeting had endorsed phone tax resistance: “In keeping with our Peace Testimony,” a minute from the Meeting read, “Friends are encouraged to refuse payment of taxes which would otherwise be used primarily for killing and war preparation.”
The Meeting suggested redirecting resisted taxes to an alternative fund set up by the Pacific Yearly Meeting in .
At the Friends World Committee for Consultation meeting in , the group formed a new committee: “Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns.”
According to a Journal article on the meeting:
Sponsorship of the FCWTC followed two broad-based consultations the FWCC initiated in on questions of conscience raised by the use of Friends’ taxes for war and war preparations.
Drawing upon decades of experience with conscientious objection to conscription, representatives of all Quaker organizations formed the FCWTC to prepare a series of papers for discussion and to organize regional conferences and a conference for Quaker employers on the complex issues involved.
A later issue mentioned Wallace T. Collett as the new Committee’s clerk and Linda Coffin as “staff.”
It reported:
The FCWTC initially is focusing on three areas of work.
The first will be publication of educational materials, with the hope of reaching a broader understanding among Friends of the concern about war taxes.
The pamphlets will cover such topics as the biblical guidance for war tax refusal; Quaker history and recent Quaker statements on war tax concerns; recent experiences of individual Friends; positions of other churches and Christian denominations on the payment of war taxes; legal issues, IRS codes, and alternatives for those with war tax concerns; spiritual and rational bases for war tax concerns; possible legislative remedies for conscientious objectors; and a general annotated bibliography.
The second area is consultative services to Quaker employers who are involved in the issue through the actions of their employees and through their own role in the collection of taxes.
A conference for Quaker employers is being planned for or .
The third area is facilitating consultation and study throughout the Society of Friends through a series of regional conferences.
The first of these conferences, “Paying for War; Paying for Peace,” was held in Washington D.C., , under FWCC auspices.
The FCWTC also hopes to develop informal ties with other groups working on the issue of conscience and war taxes, including both those of other denominations and those outside the United States.
Barbara Harrison mentioned in a letter-to-the-editor in the issue that as her husband has an income that “meets most of our needs (wants, though, are beyond us), and as I wish to limit the amount of money we pay in taxes that goes for military expenses, I avoid most paid employment” and that this has freed up her time to volunteer to help at a local elementary school.
The issue brought an update on Karl Meyer’s “cabbage patch resistance” technique:
The Internal Revenue Service seized a trailer and a station wagon from Karl Meyer of Chicago during the night of .
Early two IRS officers came to his door and served him with a levy for $20,160 in frivolous tax return penalties and a “Notice of Seizure” for the vehicles they had already removed.
In , Karl Meyer, a long-time peace activist and pacifist, filed a daily protest tax return to the IRS — 365 in all.
On the day after the seizure, about 30 supporters joined him in a protest demonstration at the Chicago IRS office.
Meanwhile, he has been taking public transportation to his work as a carpenter.
The same issue also mentioned a sort of round-about form of tax resistance being pursued by Lucy & Sheldon Clark and Dorothy & Edward Snyder, Quakers from Baltimore, who were filing a lawsuit against the government for the return of that portion of their taxes that they believed had been spent on illegal acts of military aggression in Central America.
The issue noted that the suit was dismissed.
That issue also mentioned a seminar on war tax resistance would be among those offered at “The Rise of Christian Conscience, a national conference of Christian nonviolence and civil disobedience sponsored by Sojourners Peace Ministry.”
It also noted a quarterly newsletter from a General Conference Mennonite Church-associated group called “God and Caesar” concerning conscientious objection to military taxes.
The Lake Erie Yearly Meeting in approved a minute that “suggested that Friends General Conference set up a fund for Friends who wish to withhold the military portion of their taxes.”
an ad from the issue of Friends Journal
In a weekend retreat was planned in Voluntown, Connecticut to discuss “the Philosophy of War Tax Resistance”.
Bob Bady appears to have been an (the?) organizer.
The issue noted that NWTRCC had published some brochures on topics like “Your Taxes Pay for the War in Central America,” “Your Taxes Pay for the Nuclear Arms Race,” and “Your Telephone Tax Pays for War” as well as “a Telephone War Tax Resistance Poster Kit.”
The issue noted that the IRS had seized an alternative fund from a Meeting to collect a tax debt:
Four IRS agents seized Craig MacDonald’s pickup truck on in Wappingers Falls, N.Y., in lieu of his federal income taxes.
Craig MacDonald, a member of Purchase (N.Y.) Meeting, attends Cornwall (N.Y.) Meeting, where he is clerk of the Peace Committee.
The IRS had ordered Craig to pay $1,440.85, which includes interest and penalty charges.
The original amount of taxes owed, $1,159.90, was put into the Stamford-Greenwich Friends Meeting Peace Tax Fund.
The IRS seized this money in addition to the truck.
The IRS explained in a letter that it did not know about the account until after seizure of the truck.
Neither truck nor money has been returned to Craig.
To pay the additional IRS charges, Cornwall Meeting has set up a fund for suffering for Craig.
The same issue noted that the Quaker Council for European Affairs had published a second edition of its pamphlet, Paying for Peace containing “facts for Friends concerned about conscientious objection to military taxation,” and that Conscience Canada had published a booklet called The First Freedom: Freedom of Conscience and Religion in Canada to promote the Maple Leaf State’s version of the peace tax fund proposal.
The “Peace Tax Fund” Debate
In the issue was an article by Christopher Hodgkin entitled “Second Thoughts on the World Peace Tax Fund.”
Excerpts:
The World Peace Tax Fund ranks almost as a motherhood-and-apple pie issue for Friends.… [It] now offers a legal basis for conscientious objection to taxation along with the chance to support a national, tax-supported peace fund.
Indeed, a multitude of pacifist organizations have endorsed the fund, including such Friends organizations as the American Friends Service Committee, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Friends United Meeting, Friends General Conference, and various monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings.
Such heavyweight support is impressive.
It is also, however, a nagging cause for concern.
Quakers have historically, and with good reason, been religious “contrarians.”
Often the proposals with the widest support need the closest scrutiny.
Truth most often comes on tiptoe and alone.
Is there something in this well-regarded and well-supported measure that needs to be more carefully examined?
[Proponents argue that] Conscientious objection to conscription of the body is recognized; why shouldn’t conscientious objection to conscription of the dollar be recognized equally?
Unfortunately, they are not parallel for two principal reasons.
First, one’s person and one’s dollars are not the same thing.
One’s person is a creation of God; one’s dollars are a creation of the state.
Jesus dealt with the different responsibilities for the two quite succinctly; I do not need to add to his teaching.
Second, military conscription and taxation have completely different scopes.
The draft is a single-purpose instrument.
It conscripts U.S. men for military duty.
It has no other dimension.
It is relatively simple to say that one accepts or rejects military service, and therefore accepts or rejects conscription.…
The income tax, on the other hand, is a multipurpose vehicle that supports the entire range of programs and activities of our government.…
Assume for a moment that our government conscripted people, as it conscripts dollars, to perform the complete range of government activities.
Does anyone doubt that the equivalent of C.O. status would be granted to, say, Catholics to exempt them from performing Medicare abortions?
If we conscripted people to teach the theory of evolution as truth in our schools, does anyone doubt that fundamentalist Christians would become conscientious objectors to that service?
If we conscripted people to perform death sentence executions, would all citizens perform such duty, or would some seek exemption?
Conscientious objection to war is the only conscientious objection currently sanctioned by our government not because there is something special about war resisters but because military service is the only bodily conscription now sanctioned by the government.
He later extends this point into the familiar slippery-slope argument in which if conscientious objectors to military taxes are granted a legal exemption from paying such taxes, the government would be acting inconsistently if it did not offer similar exemptions to people who have conscientious objections to other aspects of government spending.
[The promoters’ statement that war taxes mean “conscientious objectors must either violate their beliefs or violate the law”] is, of course, not true.
A number of individuals who object to paying taxes for war arrange their incomes and live so that they are not subject to taxation and therefore pay no taxes for war.
No law is violated.
What this argument really says is that conscientious objectors who are unwilling to undergo economic discomfort in support of their beliefs must either violate their beliefs or violate the law.
These objectors would not be likely to impress those early (and not so early) Friends who over the years have suffered a great deal more than economic discomfort in their commitment to Truth.
The simple fact is that any person who objects to paying taxes for war can legally avoid paying them.
What they may not be able to do is avoid paying taxes for war without making some sacrifices.
It is not the exercise of conscience that is at stake, but convenience.
Are Friends ready to endorse a major change in national policy and in the principles of shared representative government to support those whose principles may be less important to them than their comfort?
Those who would ask for the crown without the cross?
Perhaps the greatest irony in this issue is that the bill diverts attention from the real issue of peacemaking.
The World Peace Tax Fund bill is a special interest bill for a special interest minority.
If we truly believe in the need for a national peace effort — and I believe that many individuals who are not conscientious objectors recognize the urgent need for serious new approaches to peacemaking — we should be supporting legislation to add a serious commitment to peacemaking to the budget, legislation supported by all taxpayers, not just conscientious objectors.
Many U.S. citizens not yet ready to reject all defense spending are desperately afraid of nuclear war and would strongly support an active national peacemaking program.
But the World Peace Tax Fund allows no role to such individuals.
It demands that its supporters renounce all military spending at whatever level as a condition for participating in a tax-supported peace effort.
This exclusionary approach reduces the funds and personal commitments that could be available to a nationally supported peace program.
The World Peace Tax Fund claims to protect conscientious objectors to war from having their dollars conscripted for military purposes.
But that right already exists.
This proposal does not create the right; it makes its exercise painless.
The World Peace Tax Fund seeks special privileges for one religious minority that will inevitably lead to special privileges for a multitude of other religious minorities, quite possibly doing serious damage to programs that the fund’s supporters consider most important.
The World Peace Tax Fund seeks to provide taxpayer support for a national peacemaking effort, but ironically the approach taken may actually reduce the funds that could be made available if such an effort were undertaken as a normal part of our national budget.
As you might expect, this led to some debate in subsequent issues:
Brandt Chamberlain thought that Hodgkin’s slippery slope didn’t have anything very frightening at the end of it: “Laws permitting the diversion of tax dollars from programs felt to be morally objectionable could meet the demands of individual conscience while increasing our democratic influence on setting government priorities.”
He also is skeptical that resisting taxes by lowering income is such a great idea, as “economic disengagement in this manner could limit us in our efforts to help define and meet the material needs of our society.”
Wallace T. Collett wrote in to say that he is on the whole supportive of the federal income tax system as “the most equitable way to raise the funds needed for necessary government services,” and regrets that an overwhelming conscientious imperative forces him to noncooperate with it.
“But… we cannot separate the collection process from the use of the funds that are collected… military policies that lead toward the death of all life on earth.”
He hoped that once “a million” Americans either refused to pay war taxes or chose to pay into the World Peace Tax Fund, “then the dominance of the military on our nation’s policies will be overcome and our country and the world will be set on a new course.”
Robert Hull, then chairperson of the National Campaign for a World Peace Tax Fund, also wrote in.
He disagreed with Hodgkin’s scriptural interpretation of money as being a creature of the State, and therefore the State’s to do with as it will.
Conscripting a person’s money is tantamount to conscripting the time they took to earn that money.
When such large proportions of the exchange value of one’s labor (i.e., money) is confiscated through the federal treasury for military purposes, I believe there is a strong case for speaking of “military conscription.”
And if “military conscription” is operating, then conscientious objection is appropriate.
In our technological age, the young few have at times been conscripted for military duty; the many older are continually being conscripted through their labor.
Hull also had no fear of Hodgkin’s slippery slope.
…Hodgkin’s fear [is] that if we are allowed to divert our taxes away from military expenditures, the floodgates will open to every group with a conscientious dissent.
So be it!
Let each of them go to Congress and make their case, as we are doing.
We trust our representatives to sort out the true grievance of conscience from the false greed of opportunism.
Alan Eccleston defended the World Peace Tax Fund bill this way (excerpts):
…[A]t either a symbolic or substantial level, we can refuse voluntary compliance with a tax system that has God’s priorities turned upside down.
The institutional wheels of government start grinding and, in time, the IRS will collect the money withheld plus interest and penalties.
What has been accomplished?
Is this just an act of self-righteousness?
Has the world changed?
Yes, it has changed!
I know this experientially.
Praying for peace is powerful in itself.
When the prayer is made manifest in one’s daily life its power multiplies.
There are many ways for the manifestation to be expressed, and each of us must listen to our inner guide for direction.
Those of us who, through love, are led to say no to war taxes announce we trust God, not armaments, for our security.
In addition to creating a new ethical choice for most of the adult population, the World Peace Tax Fund bill establishes a separate trust fund that will disburse over one billion dollars a year for programs of health, education, and welfare.
I know of no other peace initiative that has this potential.
James B. Eblin wrote that the option of lowering his income below the tax line was not available to him as “I am morally and legally obliged to support my children.”
He therefore sees the World Peace Tax Fund as his only possible relief.
Lissa Field also criticized Hodgkin’s stark distinction between conscription of bodies and taxation of earnings.
“[W]e are responsible for both… as my taxes pay for the destruction of other humans and that of God within them, I am responsible for responding on the level of God’s rules, not Caesar’s.” She also, as someone who had faced a $5,000 fine for her resistance, found “particularly tedious” Hodgkin’s casting of tax resisters as unwilling to sacrifice.
Joe Marinello also thought that since income is the fruit of his labor, his person is very much wrapped up in his income, and so Hodgkin’s distinction does not hold.
“My labor (directly represented by my earned income) is the fruit of my being in this world.
I will not let my actions, my labors, be used to create weapons of mass destruction.
Nor will I allow my labor to be used by others to kill our neighbors.”
And he reminded Hodgkin of the sorts of sacrifices above-the-line resisters have to make so “that the government does not steal my labor.
I am self-employed, have no savings accounts, no property in my name, and I give away most of my income.
I have no desire to go to jail, but I will go to jail before I willingly pay any war taxes.”
Linda Coffin prefers the World Peace Tax Fund to living below a taxable income because the latter “would be shirking our responsibility to support the life-affirming programs of our government.
I could not take that option because it would mean ceasing my support for public schools, federal programs for the poor, health assistance programs, U.S. contributions to the United Nations and international aid agencies, and so on.”
In contrast, “The Peace Tax Fund bill… uniquely demonstrates the depth and sincerity of our concern for the moral use of our tax dollars.”
Ira Byock felt that conscientious objection wasn’t really what the World Peace Tax Fund was about.
“The real value of the Peace Tax Fund — like so much of what we do in peace work — lies in its symbolism, in its potential for heightening general public awareness of the percentage of our tax money spent on the military.
We bear witness to the morally objectionable so that others may pause to notice.”
That said, “the issue of conscience remains real.
To write one’s elected representatives, contribute to peace campaigns and organizations, take part in public peace activities, and then send in money for guns, subs, missiles, and bombs is inconsistent.”
And this is true even for people not willing to live below the tax line.
Anne Friend agreed with Hodgkin in his opposition to the World Peace Tax Fund.
Weirdly, though she was most persuaded by Hodgkin’s argument “that having a witness made easy dilutes its power and will probably deflect it from its ultimate goal,” she didn’t see this as a call for her to make a difficult witness instead, but rather to wait and meanwhile do nothing: “I am not yet ready to refuse the military portion of my income taxes.
But when that becomes an option [?], I expect the action required of me will be noncooperation, even if special status is available.”
Historical Notes
Margaret Hope Bacon penned an article on “Effective Peacemaking” in the issue that discussed the history of war tax resistance in the Society of Friends:
[T]he Quaker testimony against paying war taxes began with a few individuals who felt an opening and a “stop in my mind.”
Theirs was an even more difficult path than that of C.O.s, for the Society itself was not always behind them.
Friends have always refused to pay purely military tithes, but when the taxes are “in the mixture,” that is, war taxes and civilian taxes mixed together, or when the tax is not publicly stated as being for war, they have urged members to pay.
In , London Yearly Meeting disciplined a woman member who was advocating that Friends refuse to pay a new tax that she thought was clearly for war purposes.
She was told that for the past 1600 years Christians have always paid their taxes.
In this case the individual was trying to respond to the dictates of conscience (religion) while the group was concerned to prevent further persecution (politics).
This uneasy balance continued for years, until today, at last, monthly and yearly meetings are beginning to give more support to tax objectors, and some believe we will eventually have legal provision for the conscientious objection for our tax dollars as well as ourselves — a political result of a religious impulse.
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
The issues of Friends Journal had a few mentions of war tax resistance and an extensive debate about the wisdom of supporting the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund act.
The issue mentioned that J.E. McNeil had been named the head of the National Interreligious Service Board for Conscientious Objectors, and that her legal experience had included “cases involving war tax refusers and conscientious objectors to military service.”
The issue included an article about the Monteverde community in Costa Rica, which was founded by American Quakers who fled the United States in part to avoid paying military taxes there.
Excerpts:
Many Friends know about Monteverde, the Quaker community established in Costa Rica in .
“They came here to be free to practice religion in the way they felt was important.”
They wanted no military taxes.
They wanted to send their children to Quaker schools and to bring them up with a good sense of priorities, away from materialism and militarism.
Some came out of a sense of adventure.
Four of them had just spent time in prison for their beliefs.
They wrote: “We hope to discover through Divine Guidance a way of life which would seek the good of each member of the community and live in a way that will naturally lead to peace rather than war.”
[At the trial of four Quaker conscientious objectors to draft registration], the judge said, “If you are not willing to defend this country, you should leave.”
They decided to do just that but had to wait until their jail sentences were over.
One couple in the meeting had visited Costa Rica, and several families had already been thinking of moving there.
Besides being a fairly prosperous and democratic country, and not very crowded, Costa Rica abolished its army in .
Forty-one people from the meeting eventually moved there, including the teacher of the meeting’s private school.
“We were looking for a peaceful place to raise our families without being involved in the military preparedness of the United States,” recalls Marvin Rockwell.
Marvin Rockwell ran the Flor Mar Pension, a simple hostel-like bed-and-breakfast with a pleasant restaurant serving delicious food.
He says he was never disappointed in the hopes he had when he moved to Costa Rica.
“Costa Ricans are a friendly, helpful people.”
He smiles, “And I do not feel bad at all paying taxes in Costa Rica.
The largest item in the tax budget is for education.”
In the same issue, Chuck Hosking (in the course of a larger article on ethical investing), said: “If I hadn’t had to start an IRA to lower my income below the taxable minimum (to avoid financing U.S. militarism), I would have put these retirement savings in the same place we’ve put most of our contingency savings — into no-interest loans to American Friends Service Committee and Right Sharing of World Resources.”
In there was a “Religion & Social Issues Forum” titled “Building a Culture of Peace” at the Pendle Hill Quaker conference center.
Among the speakers at the conference was Gordon Browne, who “told of his experiences as a ‘military tax refuser’ for over thirty years” during “a session on how Friends can make a personal difference today.”
The issue commented on the Rosa Packard legal case:
The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear a Quaker appeal of Internal Revenue Service penalties on religious practice.
Rosa Packard, a Greenwich, Conn., Quaker, had challenged the authority of the IRS to penalize her for religiously based non-payment of war-related federal income raxes.
For the last 18 years Packard has filed her income tax return, notifying the IRS by an attached letter that her core religious beliefs prevent her from paying a tax if any part of the money collected from her is used to fund war or preparation for war.
Every year she has placed the full amount of her taxes, as her letter to the IRS states, in trust for the government in an escrow account maintained by Purchase (N.Y.) Quarterly Meeting.
In Packard requested that the federal government waive the discretionary penalties imposed by the IRS for late payment and failure to pay estimated taxes.
Packard appealed the lower court’s dismissal of this request to the Supreme Court.
An obituary notice for Richard R. Catlett in the same issue noted that “Richard was a founding member of Columbia Meeting and an active war rax resister, for which he was imprisoned briefly about 25 years ago.
In his war tax resistance, he was supported by both Illinois Yearly Meeting and Columbia Meeting, which held an open meeting for worship at the prison where he was held.”
The “Peace Tax Fund” debate
The last issue of had included an op-ed by Spencer Coxe in which he cast a skeptical eye on the Peace Tax Fund idea (see ♇ ).
Boiled down, his complaints were these:
The Peace Tax Fund bill would ostensibly allow conscientious objectors to earmark their taxes for non-military government spending, but this will not in fact make any practical difference whatsoever in how Congress spends tax money.
Conscientious objectors could have more practical effect on actual military spending through such mundane political activities as lobbying, demonstrating, attempting to influence elections, and the like; and attempts to get a Peace Tax Fund bill passed distract from this.
The idea behind the Peace Tax Fund concept — that individual taxpayers can override the spending priorities of their elected representatives with their own conscientious imperatives — is corrosive of democracy, which requires people to compromise and accept the decisions of their representatives rather than engaging in a free-for-all.
If it were enacted, the Peace Tax Fund would make conscientious objectors to military taxation legal, and therefore mundane and unworthy of attention.
In contrast to the war tax resister of today, whose sacrifices evoke admiration and controversy and government inconvenience, the Peace Tax Fund payer would just be another citizen checking a box on a form — which would “[channel] a potentially effective resistance movement into a harmless backwater.”
I have less faith in the democratic process and in democracy in general than does Coxe, but his criticisms are sound, and, from my perspective, way overdue.
A sentimental, blinkered, panglossian take on the Peace Tax Fund bill had become part of the Quaker canon, and, disturbingly, had crowded out other discussion of the dilemma of paying for war with your taxes.
But now that the criticisms had finally been aired, how would the scheme’s supporters respond?
Voiciferously, as future letters columns showed:
Edward F. Snyder partially conceded the point.
“The aim [of the Bill] is not to reduce the military budget… The main purpose of the bill is to honor and respect the conscientious objections of those citizens who are opposed to war in any form, including the financing through their tax dollars…” He compared it to draftees who do “alternative service” rather than serving in the military.
“If I thought the primary purpose of the Peace Tax Fund were to reduce the military budget as Spencer Coxe does, I’d be hard pressed to give the proposal the time of day, and for many of the reasons he cites.
There are many more direct and effective ways to challenge military spending and the policies on which it rests.”
But he believes that since this isn’t the purpose, the bill is still worthwhile.
He also thinks that the fact that war is such a clear violation of a bedrock conscientious value, and because it is such a large part of the budget, it holds a unique place, and carving out an exemption for conscientious objectors here will not necessarily open the floodgates for vast numbers of objectors to every little this and that in the budget.
Joe Volk wrote an extensive op-ed in response (which, alas, is partially obscured in the PDF I have).
He said that he had shared Coxe’s letter with the Friends Committee on National Legislation’s Policy Committee (Volk was the FCNL executive secretary) as a way of provoking a discussion as to whether that group ought to change its policy of supporting the Peace Tax Fund bill (they decided to continue supporting it).
Volk shares Snyder’s views that the slippery slope is not so slippery in this case, and that one can support the bill without believing that it would reduce military spending (“On the contrary, another argument for the Peace Tax Fund is that it would not alter Congress’s control of the purse strings” and “Of course, federal funds are fungible.
Thus, whatever the Peace Tax Fund pays for simply frees other funds for the military.”)
Volk asserted that were the Peace Tax Fund passed into law, rather than defanging conscientious objectors, it might free them from their current troubles in tax court to take up more productive struggles.
Besides “the absence of the Peace Tax Fund does not seem to be generating the waves of protest and tension that Spencer Coxe fears we would lose were it enacted.”
He also felt that rather than being corrosive of democracy, it was supportive of that essential element of democratic legitimacy that requires respect for minority opinions.
And besides, Congress is carving out deductions and exemptions and other things all the time — it seems petty to pick out our own concern as the only one that’s corrosive of this manifestly imperfect democracy.
Volk concluded:
My wife, Beth, and I have refused to pay our war taxes voluntarily .
We want to pay our entire tax bill, but we won’t pay for weapons and the salaries of the people who use them.
Having seen so much war and its effects, we could not voluntarily pay that portion of our tax that goes for war.
So, we pay only that portion of our tax bill that does not pay for war.
Every few years the IRS levies our bank account, wages, or savings.
They take the principle, interest, and penalties on what we have refused to pay.
We end up paying more to the government than had we paid the war tax.
Once they took and auctioned our car.
We no longer park it at our residence.
We have never been able to own real estate; it would be confiscated.
In the U.S. owning real estate has been a principal way for poor and middle-class people to accumulate wealth.
Many of our friends could borrow on their land and property to put their children through school.
We have not had that option.
We are not complaining.
We are happy following our conscience on this matter.
We consider that these consequences of our war tax refusal are aspects of the voluntary self-suffering that nonviolent action uses to reveal truth to ourselves and to others.
But we think the government should recognize our conscientious objection to paying war taxes so that we voluntarily can pay our entire tax bill.
Today, we feel that we are being punished for our religious beliefs, a violation of the U.S. Constitution and of our human rights.
Recognition of our claim to conscientious objection will not cut the military budget, will not end war, will not bring the Kingdom of Heaven.
It will allow us to practice our faith without being punished for it.
That’s a fairly radical idea still.
It’s a dangerous thing too, but it can work without leading to anarchy.
Richard N. Reichley thought that Coxe was missing the point — that the Peace Tax Fund was not meant to put a dent in the military complex, but to permit certain taxpayers to follow their consciences.
It might, he suggested, help spread the idea of conscientious objection to military spending: “Once the Peace Tax Fund Bill is passed, every taxpayer will know that it is law.
IRS instructions will include the option to file as a conscientious objector.
Perhaps we will be pleasantly surprised to learn how many Americans do not want to pay for war.”
Silas Weeks shared his frustrating experience with war tax resistance: “Eventually, the IRS invades our bank account and recovers [the] amount, plus interest and penalties.
We end up paying more tax than we would otherwise have to, plus our income is reduced by whatever we have put in the local [alternative] fund.”
He says that while “[i]t is extremely unlikely that the U.S. Congress will ever establish a legal peace tax alternative” it is “an improper judgment of others” to insist, as he says Coxe did, “that effort on behalf of a Peace Tax Fund wastes time and is a balm to individual conscience.”
Bruce Hawkins thought the Peace Tax Fund was not meant as an ultimate goal but as “an organizational and educational tool” for outreach and lobbying, and one that helps keep pacifist ideas on the agendas of legislators.
“Don’t think for a moment that any of us will heave a sigh of relief and cease all political activity if the Peace Tax Fund passes!
We would continue in the same political activity that we are in now, including support of sensible candidates for office.
And we would encourage everyone we know to consider using the fund.
One of our next goals would be to get enough people to use it so that it would make a difference.
It will only be ‘low-key’ if we let it be low-key.”
Ben Tousley thought that while paying into a Peace Tax Fund might indeed have no practical effect on the military budget, the same could be said for many respected acts of “witnessing” — these things aren’t meant to be immediately, directly effective, but to have an eventual “transforming effect on both individuals and the larger society.”
Rosa Covington Packard echoed the idea that the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund bill was never meant “to influence the military budget” but instead “to acknowledge the inalienable right of conscientious objection to paying taxes for war and preparations for war and to accommodate it as a matter of religious freedom.”
She also asserted that those who would take advantage of the Peace Tax Fund were not thereby engaging in a risk-free and invisible act:
When the bill passes, the option will be described in the tax forms everyone receives.
Reports of numbers of conscientious objectors and amounts of taxes redirected to nonmilitary purposes will be published in the Congressional Record.
The conscientious objector will affirm a statement of belief and ille it with his or her tax form.
Even if conscientious objectors to paying for war are given legal status and accommodated, they will continue to suffer many forms of discrimination from the public and the military.
Making slavery illegal did not end racial discrimination.
Recognizing and accommodating conscientious objection to paying for war will not end religious discrimination.
Conscientious objectors were among the first to go to the gas chambers under Hitler.
When we study the Holocaust, we mourn the atrocities against Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies — and “others” — our memories of the victims of war rarely even name conscientious objectors.
Risk free indeed!
We who choose a visible legal status may be more vulnerable to hostility.
Finally: “Without visible legal status, without acknowledgment that it is indeed legal to act upon our beliefs, our ‘democracy’ will continue to confuse and seduce each generation into thinking that war is honorable or necessary and that there are no other options.”
Mary Moulton addressed only the idea that the Peace Tax Fund would “ease the conscience of pacifists and [thereby] deflect them from hard work.”
She said: “This prediction certainly would not apply to any of the peace activists I have known over the years.”
Samuel R. Tyson wrote in with his own set of objections:
Conscientious objection laws discriminate in favor of members of historical “peace churches” which has the effect of adding a religious bias to the law.
Such laws also (because they require objectors to convincingly testify to their conscientious beliefs) discriminate against people with less verbal or reasoning capabilities (a class bias).
Such laws also, for the same reason, favor people with a paper trail in the “historically dominant white paper-based culture” which leads to a racial bias.
He concluded: “A Peace Tax Fund will make it easier for the few, without a full explanation in tax forms. Do we really want another federal bureaucracy to sit in judgment on conscience?”
Coxe wrote back, and in a letter that appeared in the issue.
Excerpts:
The letters convince me that I overlooked two considerations, first that passage of the bill would signal a reaffirmation of our country’s respect for religious dissent (though in symbolic fashion), and second, that legislation would relieve the personal distress of pacifists.
I am surprised that no correspondent pointed out that logically my position is an attack on the legal recognition of conscientious refusal of military service.
As a matter of fact, I have come to the conviction (in my old age) that the pacifist movement might be strengthened if the government offered no alternative to military service except prison.
Then the issue raised by the resister would be the government’s claimed power to conscript.
In my view, conscription is the basic evil.
The government’s recognition of religious objection to military service blunts resistance to conscription.
Those who during the Viemam War said “Hell no we won’t go” were on the right track and did more co bring the war to an end than did the COs.
Debate aside, the issue noted that the Radnor, Pennsylvania, Meeting had approved a minute endorsing the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Bill, and considered this a way by which the Meeting “expresses its commitment to our historic Peace Testimony.”
If limiting government power by constitutional restraints doesn’t work, and if trying to influence elections to keep evil people out of office doesn’t work, what is left?
Some would argue nothing.
But, in reality the people can go on strike and refuse to finance or to fight in wars that have no legitimacy.
If the authoritarians continue to abuse power in spite of constitutional and moral limits, the only recourse left is for the people to go on strike and refuse to sanction the wars and thefts.
Deny the dictators your money and your bodies.
If enough people do this, the time will come when the dictators’ power will dissipate.
This month marks the 250th anniversary of the Stamp Act Riots that crushed Britain’s attempt to subject American colonists to a variety of taxes, that demonstrated the power of mass noncompliance, and that led the way to the American Revolution.
Jennifer Carr has penned a paper on how to improve the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act for the University of St. Thomas Law Journal.
It is… strange.
It puts some effort into tracing the history of conscientious objection to military taxation and the various legal arguments that have been put forward in its support.
And then it makes some suggestions for how to make “Peace Tax Fund” legislation more effective, suggesting that this moment of history is especially ripe for such a bill since politicians are sensitive to issues of conscience that showed themselves during and after the drafting of Obamacare.
But the paper doesn’t address the most glaring flaws of the current Peace Tax Fund legislation, and its proposals don’t really make the bill any better.
Still, there’s some satisfaction in seeing someone try to take all of this seriously and as worthy of some scholarship.
This is the thirteenth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite.
Today we continue our trek into the 1960s.
The issue included an article by Leo Driedger titled “The Taxes that Go to War”.
We met Driedger in our last episode as he was answering a query about the General Conference Mennonite Church’s guidance regarding war taxes on behalf of the Peace and Social Concerns Committee.
In this new article, Driedger begins by methodically explaining how much of the federal budget is military spending, and how the government gets that money to spend.
Then he explores the options for avoiding complicity:
Some think we should work out some alternative to paying taxes.
In the past some Mennonites paid for other people to go to war in their place.
We thought this was wrong so we sought alternative service.
But we are still paying for war with our taxes.
In order to discuss our taxes intelligently we need to know where we are paying taxes, and how it is spent.
Can we escape paying taxes for military use?
It is hard to be consistent.
To illustrate, let us examine the excise taxes.
Most of us do not buy alcohol and tobacco which eliminates half of the excise tax problem.
The other half we pay on such items as gas and oil, telephone, transportation tickets, and sugar (which we can hardly do without).
Not to pay any excise tax on anything would result in doing without a lot of things we think are necessary.
Furthermore, we might find ourselves spending much time trying to decide when we are or aren’t paying excise taxes.
Would this be good stewardship of time?
The twenty-six per cent that the government receives from corporate income taxes could be largely evaded if we did not buy stocks and bonds in corporations.
Many of our people however invest in stocks, although a large percentage don’t. But we would still be involved in a small way in that our money in savings accounts in banks and loans we make involved the investment of some money in corporations and these pay taxes.
True, our involvement here is small.
Most of the government’s money comes from personal income taxes.
In the United States a single person can earn $600 and a childless couple $1200 per year before they have to pay income tax.
In Canada this is $1000 and $2000 respectively.
We would find it hard to live on so little, although I know of one Mennonite who has done this for years.
Reducing our income that much would leave little for tithes to the church.
Is this good stewardship of our money?
For some a large family solves the problem.
In the United States tax exemptions permit a man to earn at least $6,000 before he has to pay taxes.
Not too many, however, are following that solution.
The Christian also has the positive option of giving thirty per cent of his income to the church and tax-deductible charities.
Many of us should consider this possibility seriously.
I know of some Christians who give that much and more to the church every year.
Each year a number of Mennonites include a letter of protest with their tax returns.
They often ask for an alternative.
Some members of the Society of Friends have actually worked on a bill to present to the government asking for the opportunity to pay their taxes to
UNICEF,
a welfare organ of the United Nations.
Securing an alternative will be difficult.
Quite a few actually refuse to pay, and are imprisoned; others don’t pay and get away with it.
This is a complex problem, for even if we were granted an alternative on personal income tax, there is still the other forty-five per cent corporation and excise taxes which are not covered.
The Gospels (Mark 12:17, Matt. 22:21, Luke 10:25 [sic.]) cite the well-known saying of Christ: “Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s.” Did Christ mean we should pay our tax money to the government and ask no further questions?
Although the coin had the inscription of Caesar on it, did Christ not mean that all we have and own is God’s, whose purpose is much greater?
Did he mean that taxes for roads, health, welfare, should be paid to Caesar to administer these, but not money for war because this does not serve mankind and God?
Or did Christ actually mean that His disciples should help pay for Roman conquest and military persecution?
Can we work out a perfect plan that will provide an alternative to military taxation?
That seems nigh impossible if we still want to be a part of society.
But, aware of our involvement, do we confess to it and seek truly to make the best witness we can against this evil use of our tax money?
Without giving any glib answer I leave a few questions for discussion:
Is it wrong to pay our taxes to government even though we know seventy per cent of this goes for the preparation of war?
What does the Bible say about this question of involvement?
Is it really possible to withdraw from any involvement, by either paying our taxes and forgetting about it, or attempting to do without those things that involve payment of taxes?
Is this the best witness we can make?
Is there some way in which we can make a Christian witness against programs of military spending?
How?
Should we invest our time and efforts in working for an alternative to paying taxes as we have done in military service?
A letter from Walter M. Philipp printed in the issue took Driedger to task, saying his article was an example of those “which are poorly written, factually incorrect, and show lack of intelligence.”
For starters, he took issue with Driedger’s account of how bank deposits or the purchase of stocks & bonds make individuals complicit in corporate income taxes.
Would not the purchase of products manufactured by corporations tie in more to one’s responsibility for corporate income tax, inasmuch as sales produce the income that is taxed, and a definable proportion of the sales dollar goes for income tax?
Then he asks, “why did [Driedger] not mention investment in municipal bonds, from which the income is tax exempt?”
Municipal bonds do provide funds for some very peaceful, humane, and worthwhile purposes.
Why did he not mention the tax credit applicable to dividend income, the lower tax rate on capital gains, or the lower tax rate applicable to corporation income?
These are just a few examples that contributed to making a poor article.
But interestingly, the criticism is entirely about the technical details.
I didn’t notice any letters attacking the substance of the idea that Mennonites should examine how their taxes make them complicit in military spending and that they need to do something about it.
John Howard Yoder, the controversial and influential Mennonite theologian, chimed in on the subject in the issue:
As I grew, in my late teens and early twenties, into my earliest understandings of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, one of the deeply significant aspects of this discipleship which I sought to understand was what my teachers called nonresistance.
I came to understand this word as pointing to one of the ways in which personal fellowship with Jesus Christ through His Spirit will normally work itself out in the life of the believer.
Two things stood out in this understanding of discipleship in nonresistance.
First of all, to follow Christ on this path involved being enough different from the surrounding world to be considered unlikable or undesirable by certain powerful people and groups in the world.
As a result of this opposition, the way of nonresistance may be called the way of the cross; it involves suffering.
Secondly this position should be a witness.
A witness should show the world that the way it operates, through an interplay of selfishness against selfishness and violence against violence, is subject to the condemnation of God and destined, even in this age, to ultimate judgment.
One other thing my teachers told me was that, according to God’s will, the assignment of civil government is to keep the peace.
The Apostle Paul instructs Christians to offer “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings… for all men, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life…” (1 Tim. 2:1f., RSV).
Obviously, we pray for a “quiet and peaceable life” not because we wish to be left alone but in order that the church may carry on her ministry, so that all men should find salvation and “come to the knowledge of the truth” (verse 4).
The church’s task is to bring men to know the truth; just as clearly, the place of the state in God’s purposes is that disorder be kept to a minimum and peace maintained.
Now when I went out into life with these convictions I was increasingly struck by the fact that there was precious little in my own experience or that of the church that I knew to correspond to this description.
The governments under which I lived were making a major contribution to the terror which threatens all the nations of the world.
They were taking the greatest initiative in poisoning the outer atmosphere of the globe and the inmost springs of heredity with nuclear tests.
Statesmen were making their bids for election primarily on the basis of how “firm” they were prepared to be in threatening the other half of the world with nuclear destruction.
Not only Christians, but even intelligent unbelievers in other parts of the world, asked me what testimony was being given in America by nonresistant Christians, and at the cost of what suffering, in order to proclaim the judgment of God upon this development of weapons which can be used only to break and not to defend the peace.
It is a growing conviction of many that it is an insufficient answer to say that many young men of nonresistant conviction refuse military service and render some other useful service to society in its place.
The position of the conscientious objector is right for the young man to whom it applies.
But in the western nations where military authorities have found a convenient way of shunting such objectors into inconspicuous alternative service, the Christian testimony to the state requires more than this if it is to be an adequate testimony against war.
Alternative service says clearly that the Christian cannot wage war, and that he does desire to serve his fellow men in a useful way.
It does not say that the task of the state is to make peace.
And for the great bulk of Christians of nonresistant conviction, conscientious objection and alternative civilian service involve no suffering and little sacrifice.
These were my thoughts when I was reminded that there is one point at which almost every citizen, or at least every family, once a year does make a personal contribution to the moral and financial support of the military monster.
This gesture of support is carried out each spring when almost every wage earner forwards to the federal government a share of his earnings, more than half of which will not be used to keep the peace.
For a number of years, I had not chance to exercise responsibility over this use of a share of my income, since my employer withheld the amount involved from my earnings.
In , for the first time, it fell to my personal responsibility and initiative to forward to the United States government’s Internal Revenue Service an additional amount, going beyond what had been withheld.
This additional amount due was significantly less than the proportion of my total taxes which I knew were being used for non-peaceful purposes.
I therefore submitted to the Director of Internal Revenue a full and conscientious report of my income, but wrote that I could not take the moral responsibility of forwarding to the government funds which I knew would be used for a purpose contrary to that which government is supposed to be serving.
I told him that I had no intention of profiting personally from my “tax objection.”
I was therefore forwarding an equivalent payment to the Mennonite Central Committee for use in overseas war sufferers’ relief.
In the course of time, I received an answer to this letter in the form of a conversation with a local Internal Revenue Service inspector.
In a very polite and gentlemanly way he informed me that he could not consider this as acceptable in lieu of payment to the Director of Internal Revenue.
He therefore drew from my bank account the amount which I had not forwarded in the routine way.
This much is my story; what remains is to ward off mistaken interpretation of what I did and what I meant.
The point is not to keep the government from getting the money. Not only would this be legally impossible; the New Testament is clear that the Christian will respond to any kind of coercion, legal or illegal, by giving not only his shirt but also his coat.
(See Matt. 5:40.) Since it was clear that the Internal Revenue Service inspector was disposed to take upon himself the responsibility for forcefully collecting the funds, as a “second mile” gesture I told him where he could find the money with the least difficulty.
The idea is not to avoid involvement in the evils of this fallen world, to “keep my hands clean” morally.
Involvement in one form or another is avoided by no one, and I would not be avoiding it if I had no taxes to pay.
My concern is not to be morally immaculate by making absolutely no contribution to the war effort, but to give a testimony to government concerning its own obligation before God.
This is not tax evasion. I filed at the proper time a full and conscientiously accurate report on my income, and when further information came to light I amended my report accordingly.
There is no intention to defraud and no liability to criminal prosecution.
This is not obstructionism. Numerous Christian and non-Christian pacifists express their disapproval of militarism by such symbolic gestures as illegally entering a missile base, sailing a boat into a restricted part of the Pacific just before bomb tests, or in other ways seeking dramatically to catch the attention of the public or of government administrators with their objection.
The action I am describing here differs from theirs in a number of ways.
In the first place, I made clear, not only in my letter to the Director of Internal Revenue, but also in my conversation with the local inspector, that I now have and wish to maintain a healthy respect for the legitimate functions of government and for the persons who carry them out.
I do not express my objection by getting in the way of some military sentinel or civilian truck driver whom I thus put in the embarrassing position of either being disobedient to his superiors or harming me, nor by becoming a problem for some judge who has no choice but to apply the law.
I witness rather by writing and talking calmly to responsible civil servants who are my most direct contact with the process of government.
The only cost of this witness was paid in the form of a gift for relief. The actual amount of tax collected was increased by only a few cents’ interest covering the time elapsed between and the date of collection.
If the equivalent amount I had given for relief had been accepted by Internal Revenue Service in lieu of tax payment, I would have considered it as such in the next year’s reporting.
However, since that payment was not accepted, I shall report it as a deductible contribution.
The way present tax laws operate, this approach would cost the most (in the form of relief contributions) to those who are most able to bear it because of their greater income.
This is significant in contrast to the fact that the brunt of the sacrifice involved in being a conscientious objector, especially in time of war, is laid upon teenagers who are not chosen with a view to their being most qualified to bear it.
If action something like my own were taken by a significant number of mature Mennonite wage earners, this would be the first time in the history of our nation that the testimony to nonresistance was given primarily through the initiative of and at a certain cost to the most mature and responsible people in the church.
One question remains, which both the Internal Revenue Service inspector and my Christian brethren have already asked:
Does not the New Testament instruct us to pay our taxes? Certainly it does; and I want to pay my taxes, and to pay them willingly as far as the functions of the United States government resemble what Jesus and Paul and Peter were talking about.
The lesson of the entire New Testament is that Christians should be subject to political authority because in the providence of God the function of these authorities is to maintain peace.
This is what I, in accordance with the instruction of the New Testament, am asking the American government to do.
I am in fact even willing to pay for a certain amount of waste and fraud and incompetence, as well as for welfare services going beyond what Jesus and the apostles had in mind.
But the one thing I am not prepared to support voluntarily is something which Jesus and Paul did not have in mind because it did not exist in the time of the New Testament.
The government of Rome was not spending more than half of its resources on preparations to destroy the rest of the world.
The authority which Jesus and Paul recognized was an authority within a given empire, an authority which in spite of its violence and corruption and the fraudulent procedures of its tax collectors did effectively maintain peace within the entire known world at the time the New Testament was written.
We know very little, nor does the New Testament attempt to inform us, about significant political powers outside the Roman Empire.
But we can say with certainly that there were no such powers, in any way comparable in importance to Rome itself, which Rome was preparing to destroy.
There is thus in this teaching of the New Testament no easy discharge from the duty to test which of the demands of “Caesar” are really “the things that are Caesar’s” and when what he asks for is not his rightful due.
It is not my purpose at present to agitate for others to follow my example.
I am rather asking counsel from, my Christian brethren concerning the way I have been led.
At the same time I am asking whether others have found more appropriate ways to render a worthwhile testimony against their nation’s trust in the sword.
A Mrs. M. Wiebe took Yoder up on that challenge, in a letter published in the issue.
She was “appalled at the hypocrisy expressed in [Yoder’s] article.”
Excerpt:
What virtue is there in not paying your income tax willingly instead forcing the Revenue Inspector to collect it himself from the author’s bank account?
… To quote: “I am willing to pay for a certain amount of waste, fraud and incompetence” but not for something that did not exist in the time of the New Testament.
Don’t fraud and corruption lead to war?
He describes Rome as a government that didn’t spend as much on war as our government and that Rome “maintained peace” certainly it maintained peace but how?
With terrible brutality and with the sword.
The Romans had a horrible slave system.
Their birthday parties were illumined with flaming crosses of burning Christians.
It was a totally pagan government.
That’s the kind of a government to which Jesus and Paul paid willing taxes.
They had more important things to do than to picket the government and complain about the taxes.
Don’t we as Mennonites have anything more important to think about than how we can draw attention to ourselves by being very odd so that others might notice how pious we are?
Other than that, I don’t see much evidence that Yoder’s article raised much controversy or discussion.
A letter from Don Kaufman, published in the issue, promoted a new “Civilian Income Tax Act” being drawn up by the Pacific Yearly Meeting of Friends.
This was one of the early attempts at “peace tax fund” legislation.
These plans would frustrate and bedevil the conversation about war tax resistance to the present day, and would eventually almost completely displace discussion of war tax resistance itself.
In this way the peace tax fund plans are similar to the “civilian bonds” of World War Ⅱ — they allow ostensibly conscientious people to continue to pay for war by giving their payments a pleasant name.
This is the thirty-third in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite.
Today we continue through the middle-1980s.
War tax resistance grew to be a front-and-center concern of the General Conference Mennonite Church in the 1970s, but by the mid-1980s interest in the topic began to suddenly decline.
I noticed a similar thing when I looked at how war tax resistance rose and fell in the Society of Friends.
Perhaps the topic had been talked-out and people felt there was little more to add to the arguments that had already been made: everybody had the chance to learn about the issue and take their stand, and there wasn’t much left to talk about.
Or perhaps the topic had left the pages of The Mennonite for other publications — like God and Caesar (a specialty publication for war tax resisters put out by a Mennonite group), or the newsletter of the recently-founded National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.
The energy Mennonites were putting into the fools’ errand of World Peace Tax Fund legislation was certainly a distraction.
Certainly there were Mennonites who would have contemplated conscientious war tax resistance or argued for it, but who were instead content to lobby Congress to give them a box to check.
John R. Dyck wrote in with concern about this lapse of interest:
Thank you for picking up this important issue [military taxes] again (see issue) at a time when many of our people hoped it was a thing of the past.
Must we look to other denominations or people than our own to take a bolder leadership position when it comes to dealing with governments?
We have almost fallen asleep in the quietness and relative peace in our country, and the fairly consistent drop of dollars into our coffers has been an effective tranquilizer.
One of the articles in that issue was Edith Adamson (of Conscience Canada) and Marian Franz (of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund) promoting the Peace Tax Fund law idea.
Such a law, they said “would remove the agonizing dilemma that forces conscientious objectors to either disregard their deepest beliefs or disobey the laws of their country.”
They claimed the proposed law would “rechannel[] some tax dollars away from the military and into human needs programs,” and would raise awareness of “nations’ misplaced priorities.”
The Tax Court of Canada, in a recent 28-page ruling, held that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not permit taxpayers to withhold the “military portion” of their taxes.
Jerilyn Prior, a Vancouver physician of Quaker faith who brought the case, had withheld 10.5 percent of her taxes and sent them instead to a peace fund.
The court concluded, “Even if the assessment were objectively and in reality an infringement upon the appellant’s freedom of conscience and religion… the Canadian tax system… would be a reasonable limit which must be imposed in a free and democratic society…”
taxes for peace fund
Titus and Linda Peachey are directing a Pennsylvania project supported by Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Peace Section.
Taxes for Peace is for those wishing to designate a portion of their tax dollars for a peaceful purpose.
The section is also offering a packet of information about military tax opposition.
This year’s Taxes for Peace fund supports the Lancaster County Peacework Alternatives Project, addressing peace and militarism issues in Lancaster County, where 50 companies held prime military contracts worth $150 million with U.S. military agencies in .
The Peacheys hope to raise public awareness of the nature and extent of militarism in the Lancaster area and to work with local churches and groups about the theological and ethical questions of militarism.
They also want to help defense employees deal with the ethical dilemmas posed by defense-related jobs and begin a dialogue with managers of local military-related industries.
Peace Section hopes that this one-year pilot project will serve as a model and inspiration for other peace groups interested in initiating similar projects in their communities.
In more than 40 people contributed $4,645.85 to the Taxes for Peace fund.
This money was forwarded to a project in Guatemala that aided victims of violence.
European Mennonites: “as important as conscription”
Tubingen, West Germany (MCC)—
Green party parliamentarian Petra Kelly called on governments to heed the example of Christian communities and churches during the opening address at the First International Conference of Military Tax Resisters and Peace Tax Campaigns held here .
In particular she lauded the decision of the General Conference Mennonite Church not to force its employees to pay war taxes against their conscience.
Over 80 people representing most Western European countries, Australia, Japan, Canada and the United States attended.
Most of those at the conference were tax resisters.
Some redirect the military part of their income tax to peace-making purposes, others live below a taxable income level, and others symbolically withhold some of their taxes.
In West Germany and the Netherlands, for example, many take a first step by redirecting 5.72 German marks or Dutch guilders as a sign of their opposition to the deployment of the 572 U.S. Pershing and cruise missiles in Western Europe.
They believe that the conscription of their money is as important as the conscription of young men in preparing for and fighting war.
Several participants shared their experiences with tax resistance.
Arthur Windsor, a white-haired and mild-mannered Quaker from Gloucester, England, told how he could not reconcile his faith in Christ with paying tax monies that built nuclear and traditional weapons for oppressive Third World regimes.
He smiled when he remembered the remark of the constable who came to take him to jail, “The law is not the same as justice.”
Work groups met on to discuss “Law and Conscience,” “Symbolic Actions and Publicity” and “International Cooperation.”
Susumu Ishitiani, a Quaker from Japan, preached the final sermon in the Stepahanus Church, which hosted the conference.
Sponsors of the event included the German Mennonite Peace Committee, the German Quaker Peace Committee and the German Branch of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation.
Mennonite participants included Marian Franz, executive director of the U.S.-based National Campaign for a World Peace Tax fund, Wolfgang Krauss of the German Mennonite Peace Committee and Andre Gingerich of Mennonite Central Committee in West Germany.
In there had been something of a purge of gay Mennonites from leadership positions, after a resolution at the Saskatoon conference unambiguously condemned homosexuality.
Robert Hull wondered why Mennonite institutions were being so selective about which sins they were going to condemn in this manner:
I… pointed out that the GC triennial sessions at Fresno, Calif. in declared that “all war and all that contributes to war is a sin.”
Yet some GC congregations accept as members people who have served in the military and not publicly repented, who work in defense industries, who pay federal taxes.
A new video program on war tax resistance is available for free loan from the Mennonite Central Committee Resource Library… War Tax Resistance Seminar includes a lecture and panel discussion presented in in Lancaster County, Pa.
The General Assembly of the Mennonite Church (confusingly not the General Conference Mennonite Church) took place in .
According to The Mennonite:
“Nearly all 260 delegates representing 22 conferences in the United States and Canada encouraged the church’s governing body to find a way for church institutions to respond to the consciences of employees who object to paying that portion of their taxes destined for military use, even if such action involves civil disobedience.”
Marian Franz wrote in the edition that in her experience war tax resistance and work on peace tax fund lobbying was a good form of outreach for the anti-war message.
Excerpts:
In the national capitals.
When you in the local areas and we in Washington and Ottawa continue to press the issue of conscience, our single acts have widespread reverberations.
Often members of government and their legislative assistants feel compelled to examine their consciences.
In my experience, as we explain why people cannot pay the military portion of their taxes, the member of government or the aide feels compelled to explain why their conscience does not agree with ours (something we did not come there to ask) or to admit that our witness has caused them to listen to their conscience in a new way.
Among religious bodies.
The fact that a sincere expression of conscientious conviction is infectious is demonstrated by the burgeoning examples of conscientious statements among religious bodies.
In North America a new “peace church” is emerging that spans virtually every denomination, confession and constituency.
Most of the major church bodies and bishops’ conferences have made statements, many surprisingly forceful, against nuclear weapons and the spiraling arms race.
At the congregational and parish level, Bible study, prayer and discussion around the nuclear question is occurring across Canada and the United States.
Old distinctions between pacifists and just-war proponents are breaking down.
The threat of nuclear war has raised, for an increasing number of Christians, a crisis of conscience.
At the corporate level.
Until now in our history, conscientious objection was considered only an individual matter.
Conscientious objection to paying taxes for military force was a matter between the individual and God, the individual and conscience, the individual and the courts, the individual and revenue collection agencies.
Now another dimension has been added to the picture.
It is called corporate military tax resistance.
Even in the face of large maximum penalties ($25,000 fine for each person and/or 10 years in prison), religious bodies are beginning to ask if they as corporate entities can any longer in good conscience withhold taxes from the salaries of those employees who ask for reasons of conscience that they not be withheld.
To date such corporate action has been taken only by small groups in historic peace churches (e.g. the General Conference Mennonite Church; Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, a six-state region of Quakers; and the Friends World Committee on Consultation).
But that action is now under consideration by some of the largest denominations.
When we mention such corporate actions and considerations in Congressional offices, new interest is sparked.
Conscientious objection as a matter of individual conscience is one thing, but when it occurs on a corporate level it draws a different quality of attention.
At an international level.
The Canadian and U.S. Peace Tax Fund efforts are a small campaign as lobbies go.
Yet small seeds continue to sprout and blossom.
The exact wording of the U.S. Peace Tax Fund Bill now appears in legislation introduced in the parliaments of several nations.
How could David Bassett, a Quaker physician from Ann Arbor, Mich., who drafted the U.S. peace tax legislation with law faculty, have dreamed that one day he would attend an international conference of peace tax campaigns?
After five years as executive director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund in the United States, I was thrilled to attend the first international conference of peace tax campaigns and war tax resisters in Tubingen .
One hundred participants from 15 countries gathered for the conference.
They came together at the invitation of five German groups, including the Deutsches Mennonitisches Friedens Komitee (German Mennonite Peace Committee).
In workshops, panel discussions, and plenary sessions many participants expressed openly and in moving ways the Christian basis for their beliefs and actions.
While the religious and political backgrounds of the participants varied, there was little diversity in their conviction of conscience.
All found it a clear violation of conscience to pay the military portion of their taxes.
All saw the connection between the 4 million people who starve each year and swollen military budgets.
All noted that what the world spends in just 10 days for military expenditures could not only feed all the hungry on earth for a year but also provide them with clean water, housing and education.
Even the setting for the conference was a reminder of why we had gathered.
From the Tubingen church where we met, we could see a hospital for brain-damaged people from World War Ⅱ, now under conversion into a training center for the triage method of treating the victims of the next war.
I was struck by how many of the participants had known the trauma of war firsthand.
The majority were Europeans and had lived under bombs and/or had grown up with family members missing because of World War Ⅱ.
Antje Spannenberg was one of the generation of children who had plagued their parents with the question, “How could you have allowed Hitler to come into and remain in power?
Why didn’t you stop him?”
Now Antje’s children are asking her, “How can you allow a world full of weapons so dreadful and dangerous?”
Ursula Windsor, a refugee from Nazi Germany now living in England and married to Britisher Arthur Windsor, admits, “I know if enough of us had resisted we could have stopped Hitler.
For some it would not have been difficult; for others, a great sacrifice.
Whether simple or difficult, there came a time when it was too late.”
Ursula knew that truth from experience.
“I have watched my favorite possessions being taken out of my home as the British Inland Revenue Service claimed them in lieu of taxes we have not paid because we believe that Jesus forbids us to pay for war.”
Her husband, Arthur, went to prison for three weeks.
On the day of Arthur’s release he was met at the prison gate by a member of the British Parliament who escorted him to the British House of Commons.
With Arthur in the gallery, the member of Parliament introduced the British Peace Tax Fund into Parliament.
On that day, for the first time, it received 10 minutes of official debate.
She also briefly profiled conference attendees Wolfgang Krauss of West Germany and Susumu Ishitani of Japan.
Military tax resistance.
Are there conscientious objectors to taxes for military purposes in other countries, and do some refuse to pay the military portion of their taxes to their governments?
Yes.
Some withhold all, some the military portion and some a symbolic portion from their taxes.
For some these actions are a political strategy; for many they are based on religious commitment.
Reports from the various countries echoed a refrain.
In the Netherlands 5.72 guilders is a symbolic amount withheld by many.
In Germany 5.72 Deutsche Marks is a symbolic amount.
The number represents the 572 Pershing Ⅱ and cruise missiles on European soil and expresses abhorrence for the fact that they shorten the nuclear fuse to six minutes.
Legislative efforts.
Has any country succeeded in passing peace tax legislation that would make it legal to have the military portion of their citizens’ taxes go into a separate fund?
Not yet.
Countries working for legislation are the Federal Republic of Germany, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Finland, Australia and the United States.
Switzerland and Spain have no organized effort for legal recognition of conscientious objection to military taxes.
France has a fund in which tax-resisted dollars are collected, as does Italy.
The Peace Tax campaigns of Canada and Japan, rather than promoting peace tax legislation, are challenging their governments in the courts based on constitutional guarantees of freedom of conscience (Canada) and constitutional stipulations that not more than 1 percent of the gross national product be used for military force (Japan).
Other judicial efforts.
Attempts to establish through the courts the legal right to redirect taxes from military purposes have been pursued in many countries.
Except in Italy, these efforts have been without success.
The standard response of governments to non-payment of the military portion of taxes (if they respond at all) includes trials, confiscation of property, fines and interest fees, and — in rare instances — prison.
The standard response of the courts to tax resisters who are brought to trial is that the issues raised present a “political question” that the courts cannot address or that constitutional guarantees of freedom of conscience and/or religion do not outweigh the duty of a citizen to pay taxes.
The greatest success and surprise story was that de facto recognition of conscientious objection to military taxes exists in Italy.
Fifty war tax resisters have been prosecuted in six legal cases and have been acquitted in every case.
They based their case on the fact that freedom of conscience is guaranteed in the Italian constitution.
Participants from Italy reported at Tubingen that four years ago they knew of only 20 who did not pay the military portion of their taxes for reasons of conscience.
That number is now 3,500 and growing.
War tax resisters are no longer prosecuted in Italy.
I listened with anticipation to the featured speaker, Petra Kelly, founder of the Green party, and member of the West German Bundestag (Parliament).
Referring to the Hitler years, she said, “Because we can recall the painful experiences of fascism in this country, especially when it comes to military violence, we cannot retreat into obedience by our citizens in relation to the state.
In the domain of conscience there is a higher duty.
The special status of human conscience and the fundamental right not to kill is set apart from other issues.
Therefore governments should make allowance for tax redirection that they would make in no other cases.”
Then came the surprise.
Kelly said that in searching for signs of some way out of the dark morass of military expenditures, she finds an example in the Mennonites.
She said, “An example for me is the [General Conference] Mennonite Church.
A group of members decided the following:
‘The employees of the church administration are given the power to be true to the high demands of Christ’s Law of Love, in that they can resist withholding taxes from employees that have requested it and therefore open up the possibility to resist for reasons of conscience to pay for the preparation of war.’ ”
She continued, “This example should give us all courage, but it is also a clear signal of that which happens in many Christian churches and can give us hope.”
I thought back to the long struggle of conscience that culminated in the conference decision cited by Kelly.
At the time we were not thinking of what the rest of the world would think of us, but only whether our action was consistent with obedience to Christ.
I certainly did not expect to hear it quoted three years later by a member of a foreign parliament, at a conference of 15 countries.
Conscience is contagious.
This is the fourteenth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of Gospel Herald, journal of the (Old) Mennonite Church.
War tax resistance really picked up steam in the Mennonite Church in , as the coverage in Gospel Herald shows.
In a “workshop on war taxes” was held “at the Hively Mennonite Church, Elkhart, Ind. Resource persons are Al Meyer, John Howard Yoder, David Habegger, Art Gise, and Carl Landes…” Gospel Herald’s report on the conference noted:
Christian response to war taxes was discussed by about 100 participants in a workshop in Elkhart, Ind.
The weekend was sponsored by the Elkhart Peace Fellowship, the General Conference Mennonite Central District Peace and Service Committee, and other regional church peace and service committees.
Michael Friedmann of the Elkhart Peace Fellowship said many of the participants felt the war tax question involved a shift in life-style to reduce involvement in the military-industrial complex.
Al Meyer, a research physicist at Goshen College, Goshen, Ind., suggested to the group that one does not start by changing the laws to provide legal alternatives to payment of war taxes, but by refusing to pay taxes.
We need to give a clear witness, he said.
Meyer did not oppose payment of war taxes because he was opposed to government as such, but because he did not give his total allegiance to government.
He felt it was his responsibility to refuse to pay the immoral demands of government.
“No alternative will be provided by the federal government until a significant number of citizens refuse war taxes,” he said.
The annual tax collection time is at hand.
How do you respond to the 1040 and other tax forms?
An increasing number of Mennonites are asking what it means to render to Caesar what belongs to him and in particular to render to God what belongs to Him.
Two seminars are planned to study this question: , Akron Mennonite Church; Bally Mennonite Church.
The purpose will be (1) to learn what the Bible says for and against paying taxes, (2) to share with and support each other as the Spirit leads, and (3) to examine what choices are available in nonpayment of taxes used for war purposes.
The schedule allows for considerable discussion time.
Howard Charles, Goshen Biblical Seminary, will be the resource person.…
War Tax Meeting Set
A meeting for people who are disturbed by American policy in Southeast Asia and who question payment of war taxes is planned for at Hebron Mennonite Church, Buhler, Kan. The meeting, sponsored by the Western District Peace and Social Concerns Committee of the General Mennonite Church, will be a time to exchange ideas and tell of actions already taken.
Two seminars on taxes, “Jesus and the 1040 Form” seminars, were held at the Akron Mennonite Church and the Bally Mennonite Church, respectively.
Approximately 70 persons participated.
Howard Charles, Goshen Biblical Seminary, was the resource teacher on biblical passages dealing with taxes.
Other input was given by Melvin Gingerich and Grant Stoltzfus on examples of tax refusal from history.
Wesley Mast presented options in payment and nonpayment of taxes.
Walton Hackman gave a breakdown of the present use of tax dollars, 75 percent of which go toward war-related purposes.
War taxes also would come up at another Mennonite forum, as announced in the issue:
On the Swiss Farm at Bluffton College, Bluffton, Ohio, Mennonite collegians will meet.
, to “rap” about the kind of life-style they want to adopt.
Intentional communities, ways to avoid American materialism and consumerism, how to avoid complicity with militarism through paying taxes that support past, present, and future wars, and the role of women will be ingredients in the discussions of the conference.
Rudolf Gnaegi, Swiss defense minister, has announced that 32 Protestant and Roman Catholic clergy will be prosecuted if they persist in their refusal to perform military service or to pay “defense taxes.”
In Switzerland, all males over 20 — including the clergy — are subject to military service and annual retraining service periods.
Conscientious objection is not recognized.
Those who refuse to serve in the military are liable to prison terms.
The 32 clergymen, all from French-speaking cantons, announced in a joint letter to the Defense Ministry that they would not report for military service nor pay taxes earmarked for defense because they felt the Army served only “economic and financial interests.”
The letter charged further that whenever the Army was used in the country, it was used “against workers, peasants, and young people.”
Mr. Gnaegi, chief of the Military Department, told newsmen it was “incredible” that “in a free and evolving society like Switzerland’s,” clergymen should refuse completely “to share the difficult task of national defense.”
A second issue brought to the Council was that of payment of war taxes.
After extensive discussion, the Council agreed to ask Walton Hackman, secretary-elect of MCC Peace Section, to serve as resource person in further discussion of the issue in the meeting of the Council.
Meanwhile, Council members will take their homework seriously by continued study in preparation for carrying the question to the church.
In “What Belongs to Caesar” (), Robert E. Dickinson explained how he had come around to the war tax resistance position:
Although I was a conscientious objector to war in the Second World War, I have justified the paying of war taxes to myself with the quote from Jesus, “Render unto Caesar…” As violence has escalated in our world I have become increasingly uneasy with this concept.
With the reading of What Belongs to Caesar? a discussion on the Christians’ response to the payment of war taxes by Donald D. Kaufman, I realized that Christ’s statement was not to be taken too literally but needed to be placed in context.
It has become increasingly clear to me that my own reasons for paying war taxes was one of protecting property and job, neither of which are ultimate Christian values.
The now well-documented illegality of the war as substantiated by the publication of the Pentagon Papers and the fact that the individual citizen is to be held responsible for his acts as established in the Nuremberg Trials are further factors in my decision.
As an architect I do not wish to emulate the German architect, Albert Speer, who sold his soul to the state for professional advancement.
It seems to me that Christians who refuse to serve in the military but at the same time pay for war put themselves in the unenviable position of paying someone else to fight their wars for them.
With God’s leading I will do my best not to do this.
Meanwhile, other Mennonites were refusing to pay their war taxes while redirecting them to alternative funds.
The telephone excise tax was a popular target for anti-war activists.
This account comes from the edition:
An increasing number of people are sending war tax monies to Mennonite Central Committee, instead of paying them to the United States Government for military use, said Calvin Britsch, MCC assistant treasurer.
Contributions of tax money are of two kinds, Britsch said.
More people are refusing to pay the federal tax levied on the use of telephones.
This 10 percent tax is seen as a direct source for military expenditures.
People who refuse this tax simply subtract the 10 percent from their telephone bill and send it instead to MCC.
Ron Meyer tried to relax the hold that the traditional Render-unto-Caesar interpretation had on many Mennonites, in his article “Reflections on Paying War Taxes.” This was also the first mention I found in Gospel Herald of peace-tax-fund legislation:
[Render-unto-Caesar summary omitted] When He answers, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s,” he doesn’t make a solid commitment one way or the other.
Instead, Jesus makes it apparent that His follower should decide what of his belongs to the government and what to God.
He does not tell the Christian that his tax money should be given without thought to the government, an interpretation that seems to be quite prevalent today.
In contrast to this interpretation, some American Christians now are questioning the morality of voluntarily paying taxes which support the U.S. government’s military policies.
The income tax is the main source of revenue for warfare: 60 to 75 percent of it is used for military purposes.
The 800-member Goshen College Mennonite Church determined that the amount of money its members “gave” for military purposes through the income tax was almost twice as much as church giving in that congregation.
Though Christ’s work cannot be measured by dollars alone, the thought of paying twice as much for war as for the church and its mission of peace is disturbing.
It is almost impossible not to support the war in Vietnam, however indirectly, if one lives in U.S. today.
Even a small purchase may be supporting a company which has been awarded government contracts for war materials.
If one does refuse to pay war taxes, the government will take the amount from his bank account or personal possessions.
The question then arises, “Why resist the tax if you end up supporting the war effort anyway?”
Tax resisters answer this by saying that one’s intention must be more than just trying to “keep his hands clean.”
The real purpose of war tax resistance is to provide a witness against the war and the ways in which tax money is being used for military purposes.
There are various approaches to war tax resistance for one who decides upon this type of peace witness.
Many tax resisters refuse to pay the 10 percent telephone tax that is to be used expressly for war.
The telephone company usually regards this as a matter between the government and the individual (if notified of the reason for the refusal) and will not cut off phone service.
IRS may take the money from a bank account or send men to the home.
Telephone tax resisters have found that talking to IRS men gives them an excellent chance to witness.
Because of the tax-withholding policy of most employers, nonpayment of income taxes is more difficult.
In this case, if there is any extra tax due each year, the resister may refuse to pay this as a token gesture.
Letters of protest sent in with tax forms are also indicative of the taxpayer’s stance for peace.
Some resisters earn less than the taxable income level for their number of dependents.
This level starts at $1724.99 per year for no dependents.
Those resisting in this way pay no income tax at all.
If one is self-employed, it is a relatively simple matter not to pay the 60 to 75 percent of the income tax used for war.
The tax resister simply deducts this percentage from the amount he must give.
This is not to say that the government won’t take the amount eventually from the individual’s personal property.
An alternative to the war tax system, presently under discussion by various groups, is the World Peace Tax Fund.
This proposal, drawn up by a group of University of Michigan law students, suggests that an individual’s tax money that would go for war purposes could be channeled into a world peace fund if he so wished.
This is similar to the Selective Service Conscientious Objector provision in which an alternative to compulsory military service is provided.
If this proposal is put through Congress, it will provide a peace witness that is within the law.
Its inherent danger is that people may become less bothered by the killing if they aren’t paying for it.
Total noncooperation with the Internal Revenue Service, similar to noncooperation with the Selective Service, is not extensive, since IRS is set up for peaceful purposes as well as channeling money for war.
The consequences of war tax resistance have not proven severe so far, yet the decision is weighty, since legally one could be fined and imprisoned for tax evasion.
Most Christian tax resisters hold that if one decides to take this stand, he must remember that his real object cannot be to “keep his hands clean.”
He must be led by a desire to witness for peace and against violence and war.
Even a simple refusal to pay a telephone tax may influence someone to follow Christ’s way of peace.
There are many Christians who are sincerely opposed to resisting the government in the ways that have been discussed here.
And there are many also who feel that by paying war taxes, they are giving to Caesar what is God’s. Whatever a believer’s decision about the war tax issue, it should be carefully and prayerfully considered with the way of Christ firmly in mind.
The Gospel Herald editor, “D.” (John M. Drescher) endorsed this in a editorial: “When approximately 70 percent of the tax dollar is going to war, a foremost frontier of faith may well be the kind of witness we bear in refusing to finance killing.”
He followed this up with a second editorial in the issue — “Taxes for War”:
Approximately 70 percent of income taxes go to pay for war and all of the 10 percent telephone tax goes to pay for war.
What is the responsibility of those who believe that war is contrary to the Spirit and teaching of Christ?
Should we not seek an alternative in paying taxes when the government’s primary need is for our money, just as hard as we sought an alternative service when the government needed our bodies?
Those who understand what is happening in the automated war and have a concern for life are asking questions like the above with growing seriousness.
Some simply dismiss the whole question by saying, “Render to Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and to God the things which are God’s.” Could this be a cop out?
Might Christ not be laying upon us the obligation to decide what is Caesar’s and what is God’s?
Or was He saying that we will need to decide whether we are Caesar’s person or God’s person?
Isn’t it strange that, over the years, many of those who used this Scripture to say that we should pay our taxes without question, did not render unto God even what was required under the Old Testament?
As a church we are even today much more obedient in rendering to Caesar what he demands than to God what is His.
Look at it this way.
Suppose Caesar should demand a 10 percent telephone tax to wipe out Jews or Indians or blacks in the United States.
What would be our reaction?
Would we willingly and without question render it to Caesar?
How would that be different than demanding a 10 percent tax to wipe out Vietnamese?
What would we say if it were levied to bomb Lancaster, Goshen, or Hesston?
Or to bring it closer.
Suppose Caesar would level a 10 percent tax to pay for the extermination of Mennonites.
Would we encourage everyone to “render unto Caesar what he asks for”?
Would such a 10 percent tax be any different than paying a 10 percent tax for killing Vietnamese?
If so, what is the difference?
Since Caesar receives all his rights from God, does not he forfeit these rights when he violates them?
What is our duty to use money to restrain injustice and to advance right?
For additional study help and discussion, order and study the paperback, What Belongs to Caesar, by Donald D. Kaufman, Herald Press.
As a church, we are at the point where we must somehow come to grips with what we will do about giving our money to support war.
Dealing with a problem of this proportion will be costly.
It may demand a different life-style, the loss of property and institutions.
We can be assured, however, that the way of obedience, even though it leads through the wilderness and death, is the way of Christ.
Out of death we believe there is always a resurrection.
And how our world needs resurrection life!
Sixteen years ago, the country told me I had to join the army.
I told them I was a Christian and I could not do it.
Now, the country tells me I must give it money so it can pay other people to fight and kill.
Once again, I must say I cannot, because I am a Christian.
A very large portion of the taxes we pay, as well as a number of special taxes, go directly to help fight the war.
I have told the government that because Jesus said I should not kill, I cannot pay these, and that instead I give that amount to the church to use in helping people our country makes homeless.
At least one speaker brought up war tax resistance at “Mission ” ():
One speaker took the open mike to make a statement on the war in Vietnam.
He felt that the government is not leveling with us.
Therefore, we should find some way to disengage ourselves as a people — perhaps through nonpayment of certain taxes.
Resolutions urging Unitarian Universalists to refuse payment of the telephone excise tax, and calling for strong gun control laws were approved by delegates to the 11th annual Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly.
Action on the controversial issues was taken by 678 delegates, the smallest number of delegates in the history of the Association.
Stating that the telephone excise tax “was levied specifically by Congress in to finance the war in Vietnam,” the resolution calls on “all Unitarian Universalists to refuse payment of the telephone excise tax” and urges the UU Association “to refuse such payments also.”
Legal counsel for the 375,000-member Association told delegates that refusal to pay the tax is considered a criminal offense carrying a one-year jail sentence or $10,000 fine or both.
Some feedback from Gospel Herald readers followed:
I want to commend your courage in writing the editorial, “Taxes for War” ( issue).
Your words seem clearly to be in the spirit of Jesus.
Asking the question, “Suppose Caesar would level a 10 percent tax to pay for the extermination of Mennonites.
Would we encourage everyone to ‘render unto Caesar what he asks for’?” brings the argument for nonpayment of war taxes home with blunt but true force.
We are personally searching for the Christian way with regard to the payment of our taxes.
Your editorial shed additional light to our pilgrimage.
Thanks for your two editorials recently (“We Merely Pay to Kill” and “Taxes for War”).
They, along with Maynard Shirk’s “Plea from Saigon” and Don Blosser’s "But, Daddy,” point out our silent complicity in financing the destruction, rather than Jesus’ call to love, of our Vietnamese neighbors.
Our silence indicates the complacent neglect of our individual responsibility as Christians and our corporate responsibility as the church to be God’s reconciling community in this world.
We cannot be silent or complacent in our militarized society and still name Jesus our Lord!
Paul said, "And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom. 12:2).
It appears that our renewal has not yet occurred.
Our churches have not become God’s liberated zones.
As an ex-VS-er I recently learned that MCC paid about $1,500 in federal telephone tax during alone, a tax that "Vietnam and only the Vietnam operation makes this bill (federal phone tax) necessary,” according to Rep. Wilbur Mills of the House Ways and Means Committee (Congressional Record of ).
Our other church agencies and our churches are no different from MCC in this respect.
As John A. Lapp wrote in the MCC Peace Section Newsletter, , “Each institution has wittingly or unwittingly developed its program not simply because this is what the Lord or the brotherhood wants us to do but also because this is what IRS allows us to do” (italics mine).
Yes, Brother Drescher, we do not have to worry about rendering to Caesar his due, for he collects by force.
But God only receives voluntary service, which we continually cut short because of submission to government or some other reason.
Our fruits indicate what kind of trees we Mennonites are — comfortable, quiet, complacent.
As Jesus’ disciples we must say no to paying for others or machines to destroy our neighbors, just as the Mennonite Church has said no to participating actively in such destruction, as Jesus said no to Peter fighting enemies with a sword.
As we say no individually we must encourage our churches and agencies to also say no to war taxes as corporate bodies, even if it costs something such as the tax exemption privilege, or property, or social status.
Being “renewed of mind” in witnessing to Jesus’ way of reconciling love for all people.
For as disciples we can value nothing more.
In the name of Christianity, let’s keep balanced on this idea of withholding “war taxes.”
Every person that works in any industry or food production, helps to produce commodities that are used by the army.
So why not talk about laying off from work so many days or withholding so many head of cattle?
Even if we did that the army would still get its share of what did go on the market.
And if we hold back part of our taxes, the army will get what it needs out of what we do pay.
In the days when Paul lived, Rome was just as corrupt as America has been, and still Paul says in Romans 13 that we should pay to “all their dues.”
Alcohol is a much worse killer than war is, why not start doing something about it?
Remembering Paul was living under one of the most cruel and bloody governments of all time and he knew that much of the tax money went to pay the Roman army, which not only put wicked people to death but many, many Christians as well, yet admonished the Roman Christians, “Pay your tax” without any strings attached.
In the editorial, “Taxes for War,” () you quote, “Render to Caesar…” and you say, “Might Christ not be laying upon us the obligation to decide what is Caesar’s and what is God’s?”
You are not suggesting that each of us should decide for himself how much tax he ought to pay and what he wants his tax money used for, are you?
That is getting pretty far out it seems to me.
I think Paul is telling us in Romans 13 that the government as ordered by God is responsible, (1) to provide for our needs, v. 3, (2) to protect us, v. 4, and we in turn shall pay the government the taxes that are laid upon us, with no strings attached as to how they should use our money.
The government is not accountable to us but to God and He will hold them responsible for their actions.
Romans 12:19.
May I express appreciation for the good articles in the issue of Gospel Herald which dealt with our response to war.
I was especially glad for the editorial, “Taxes for War,” and for the “Testimony on Taxes.”
My husband and I have been part of a group in our congregation which studied Donald D. Kaufman’s book, What Belongs to Caesar? and as a result we and others have been seeking to live an altered life-style which will proclaim our commitment to Christ’s way of love.
We too have felt that the way of obedience may be costly.
Reading such testimonies in the Gospel Herald gives us courage to continue to learn what discipleship in this area means.
I am glad to hear that you are concerned about war taxes.
I’m sure that a lot of people share this same concern.
However, I must say that your concern is probably little more than the academic cloak worn by the average “pious Christian."
Why do I say this?
There is a very simple answer to the problem of war taxes for the person who is truly concerned.
I’m not talking about the “Oh, isn’t that a shame” set.
I’m talking about those who see the sadness and weep.
Those who lock themselves in their rooms and beat on their mattresses in anguish.
The answer is simply don’t earn enough money to have to pay taxes.
It is the only legal recourse we have at the present time.
Some say they cannot live on that amount of money, and I say hogwash!
Who is your God?
Did He tell you that you need a six-room house?
Did He tell you that you need a new car, a television, or an air conditioner?
Did He even tell you that you need electricity, running water, or a living-room rug?
My God didn’t. My God said, “Love Me more than you love anything in this world.
Love your neighbor more than you love yourself.
Remember the rich man who would not give up his riches to follow Christ.
I say that every one of us is rich, and anyone who cannot part with his riches cannot love the Lord, for we cannot serve two gods.
We can continue with our present stewardship (pittance that it is) and still not have to pay taxes.
I am not suggesting that we quit working, but I am suggesting that we refuse salaries which cause us to have to pay taxes.
A married couple can now earn $2,300 and be exempt from taxes.
A family with children, even more.
I don’t expect very many people to take this seriously, for God only opens the eyes of a few However, I want to express my love to those of you who will think I am a little crazy.
After reading D.D. Kauffman’s book What Belongs to Caesar?, listening to and reading testimonies from tax protesters, and thinking about the subject, I had arrived at about the same conclusions that Bro. Mason presents.
I suppose it is to my discredit that I am unwilling to act on these conclusions as he apparently has done.
It has been said that the entire science of economics is summarized in the statement, “There is no such thing as free lunch.”
And I would like to suggest that our tax liabilities represent that which we owe unto Caesar in return for the material blessings and luxuries that we enjoy under Caesar’s system.
Remember that the Pharisees, who were admonished to "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” had confessed their involvement in the Roman economic system by their possession of Caesar’s coinage.
As Bro. Mason has so ably pointed out, it is within our power to arrange our affairs in such a way that Caesar is also willing to reduce our tax liability if we are willing to give the money unto God.
Unfortunately, it costs us 100 cents to give a dollar unto God through the church, and only 20 cents if we elect to pay the tax and keep the dollar for ourselves.
The issue brought news that the Central Conference of American Rabbis had decided to resist the phone tax corporately:
In protest against the war in Vietnam, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) has instructed its executive vice-president to withhold payment of the federal telephone excise tax which, it said, supports the Vietnam war.
The CCAR said it is the first Jewish organization to approve this act of civil disobedience in protest of the Vietnam war.
The action was taken after consultation with lawyers.
At the same time, the Reform rabbis urged in a resolution the movement’s sister institutions — the Hebrew Union College — Jewish Institute of Religion and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations — to follow a similar course of action.
Individual members of the conference were called upon “as an act of personal moral responsibility” to withhold the telephone tax.
The CCAR has protested the Vietnam war .
A report on the “Lamb’s War” camp meeting noted that a war tax resistance break-out group had formed.
A pseudonymous “Letter to My Home Church” reprinted in the issue mentioned how uncomfortable the churchgoer was with the casual taxpaying and patriotism encountered in the (also pseudonymous) congregation:
I have heard comments from you people like “I’m glad to pay my taxes for the privilege of living in a ‘free’ country.”
Oh yes, Cherrydale has certainly become patriotic.
We pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to IRS each year knowing that 60 percent goes to pay for killing.
The killers rest at ease knowing that they have allowed us an alternative.
We can be conscientious objectors.
There were objections to the “peace tax fund” legislation idea almost from the very beginning, as Richard Malishchak’s “Some Thoughts on Peace Taxes” () shows.
He makes a good effort at rebutting those objections, but it’s interesting to note how few of his defenses still apply to the pathetically watered-down Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act that promoters are pushing today:
Should it be legal to pay for peace?
Some Thoughts on Peace Taxes
by Richard Malishchak
From The Reporter for Conscience Sake
The World Peace Tax Fund Act, which was introduced several months ago in the House of Representatives, has spawned controversy, strangely enough, among the very people and groups who are most in sympathy with the desired goals of the Act.
The Tax Fund Act would permit taxpayers to claim status as Conscientious Objectors to taxation for military purposes.
Small segments of the peace movement which have no interest in tax resistance/objection have naturally been cool to the proposed legislation.
But doubts have been raised even in the tax resistance movement.
The national War Tax Resistance office is deciding this month whether to throw their support behind the Tax Fund Act, and local WTR groups have been encouraging reader responses in their newsletters.
Being a human creation, the World Peace Tax Fund Act is flawed.
Some of the doubts expressed about the Act do have merit.
Yes, there is the danger that individuals would use a Conscientious Objector tax provision simply to soothe their own consciences, while taxes for military expenditures are collected from other people and the killing continues.
But has war tax resistance done any better on this point?
The tax resistance movement has yet to demonstrate that resistance alone is an effective tool.
The money is frequently collected anyway from the resister and used in the general fund, and the resister is liable to become an unwilling war-taxpayer.
Nor is a large-scale prison witness, large enough to effect a change in national consciousness by itself, a realistic possibility.
As important as acts of individual witness are, the military budget remains monstrous.
Ironically the military budget is likely to increase in the coming fiscal year (see the July Tax Talk from WTR, 339 Lafayette St., New York 10012).
It may also be true that legal channels for tax objection would siphon off some potential resisters into the “system.”
But would this number be significant in relation to the new objectors who would otherwise shy away from “illegitimate” protest?
Furthermore, if the government is still getting the money to buy death and suffering, what is the difference whether an individual protester is called a “resister” or an “objector”?
There is naturally a palpable personal difference between the witness of the objector and that of the resister.
But the World Peace Tax Fund Act is no threat at all to those who would continue to choose resistance.
Those who resist war taxation, like those who resist the draft, are in the vanguard of the peace movement and so must be especially careful to avoid the snare of moral elitism, a “more-resistant-than-thou” attitude that may obscure the common goal.
In the case of taxes, the common goal would seem to be to spend more on life and less on death.
And in addition to its overall importance, the Tax Fund Act contains two especially significant provisions toward this end.
First of all, the bill would provide for positive peace expenditures: the objector’s allotted “peace taxes” would not go into the general fund but into the World Peace Tax Fund and from there into designated peaceful activities.
Second, the Secretary of the Treasury would be obligated to inform every taxpayer, on the tax return instruction booklet, of the existence of the Peace Tax Fund and the qualifications for participation.
This provision could be momentous.
Combined with a vigorous tax counseling network, which is already beginning, it could become an effective consciousness-raising instrument.
In recent years, for example, the percentage of Conscientious Objectors recognized by the Selective Service System has been between one and two percent of the total number of registrants.
The vast majority of these men became Conscientious Objectors or recognized they were Conscientious Objectors after being confronted with an actual choice between morally opposite courses of action.
Most taxpayers, however, write their annual check to IRS or claim their refund with a minimum of decision-making.
If informed every year by the government in the official IRS publication that paying war taxes is not an inevitability, would one or two out of every 100 taxpayers choose to pay for peace instead?
If yes, the impact would be far beyond what tax resistance alone can achieve.
Admittedly a hopeful answer to this question assumes a basic “good will” on the part of most Americans, and that lack of information is the best ally of the war makers.
Yet how many of today’s draft Conscientious Objectors knew that they were Conscientious Objectors before they registered for the draft or before they became “draft-eligible”?
Not even a local draft board would deny a Conscientious Objector claim on the grounds that the registrant was not born a Conscientious Objector.
In the words of Joan Baez’ new album, which she dedicates in part to war tax refusal, more and more people must be encouraged to “come from the shadows.”
This is exactly what a Conscientious Objector tax provision would do.
(A recent Detroit poll, incidentally, showed support for the war tax refusal of Jane Hart, wife of the Michigan Senator, by 55 percent of the survey sample.)
If the Tax Fund Act does not cut the military budget directly, it would at least be likely to help produce an awareness of government expenditures that will cause people to think about, and consciously choose, to buy either peace or war, rather than passively “permitting” the government to buy war on their behalf.
This public awareness of where their dollars are going is, in turn, bound to be reflected in the actions of voter-conscious legislators.
If the people truly want peace, it will be easier for them to have it.
The World Peace Tax Fund Act is an important piece of legislation.
It will need all the help it can get, first to be taken seriously by “old guard” Congressmen, and later to be pushed through the wall of opposition that will form.
Draft resisters, military Conscientious Objectors, draft Conscientious Objectors, and tax resisters must begin to form the wedge of support behind this bill.
No one else will.
In “Thankful for What, When You Have All You Need?” (), Atlee Beechy wrote, “We may not be able to do too much about our governments’ (U.S. and Canada) priorities but we should be able to make a frontal attack on our priorities as Christians.
Is it my responsibility that my tax dollars go for military purposes?”
Finally, a report on the MCC Peace Assembly noted that there was a break-out group to discuss war tax resistance.
And “Stan Hostetter publicly declared his objection to war taxes and presented a check to the MCC Peace Section in lieu of tax payments which would be used for war.”
This is the twentieth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was
reported in back issues of Gospel Herald, journal
of the (Old) Mennonite Church.
In , the Mennonite Church had the luxury of
being by-standers as the General Conference Mennonite Church wrestled with the
war tax issue, and in particular about whether to continue to withhold income
taxes from the salaries of their employees who were conscientious objectors to
military taxation (the Mennonite Church would get its own chance to wrestle
with these issues a bit later on), at a special mid-triennium conference on the
issue. Meanwhile, disgruntled conservative Mennonites met at the Smoketown
Consultation, Peace Tax Fund advocates ramped up their campaign, and the New
Call to Peacemaking pushed the Peace Churches to step up their game.
As a result, there was a plethora of war tax resistance-related content in
Gospel Herald that year.
“The federal income tax is the chief link connecting each individual’s daily labor with the tremendous buildup for war,” Donald D. Kaufman observes in his new book, The Tax Dilemma: Praying for Peace, Paying for War (Herald Press: ).
“Preoccupied as some citizens are with paying too much tax, I suggest that the crucial issue has to do with the purpose for which tax monies are used,” Kaufman maintains.
“While a young person can be exempted from personally serving in the Armed
Forces, no one is easily exempted from making contributions to the military
leviathan.” In his book, Kaufman considers issue of the two kingdoms. After a
brief examination of the biblical background, he traces the history of
conscientious objection to war taxes. He discusses a dozen viable options
which concerned Christians can use “to register our faithfulness to Jesus
Christ as Lord and our opposition to corporate war making by the state within
which we live.”
[W]hat words can we say to our brother in his new responsibilities? Lawrence
Burkholder in the consultation on
taxes and war initiated an intriguing discussion on the manager (or the
administrator) and the prophet and corporate responsibility. He observed that
with only a few incidental references, "the Bible is almost solidly against
those who assumed responsibility for institutional life" (a distressing word
for a biblical scholar on his inauguration).
Ray Horst reported that two staff members have said they would want to
consider a personal response on war taxes should Mennonite Board of Missions
seek alternatives to such withholdings. The directors acted to continue
discussions with other Mennonite groups and Mennonite Church agencies on the
war tax question.
There has been much discussion about the appropriateness of paying for war as
we pray for peace. Some have sought ways in which they can refuse to pay
federal income taxes and thus give a concrete witness against the militarism
which plagues the
U.S. and many other
countries of the world — even, alas, poor countries.
The focus on income taxes may obscure the fact that there are many other
federal taxes which are also used to support the national defense
establishment. In fact, in the personal income tax provided only about one half of the
non-trust fund U.S.
federal revenue. The other half came from a variety of sources such as the
corporation income tax, excise taxes (on many items such as telephone service,
air travel, automobile tires, gasoline, and especially alcohol and tobacco),
estate and gift taxes, and customs duties.
Can we avoid paying these taxes? Not completely, but we can reduce the amount
we pay by the simple device of not buying at all the things which are harmful
and by reducing our expenditures for all other items by holding down our
standard of living. The United States tax law is very generous in allowing
deductions for making contributions to churches and charitable institutions.
(The Canadian law is less generous.) Up to 50 percent of income may be
deducted.
These charitable gifts will first of all reduce sharply the amount of federal
income tax we pay — in some cases even avoiding the tax completely. But in the
second place, since the gift to charity will reduce our remaining disposable
income we will have reduced our standard of living and thus will have to pay
less of the hidden taxes which also support the defense establishment. The
corporation income tax, for example, is one third the size of the personal
income tax.
Although the check to pay the corporation income tax is sent to the government
by the corporation, rest assured the corporation will, if they possibly can,
pass on the tax to the consumer in the form of higher prices for the things
the corporation sells. If we don’t buy the product, we aren’t paying this tax.
Reducing our standard of living as a means of avoiding federal taxes has an
important additional benefit. It is a powerful witness that we are disturbed
by the disparities in wealth and income throughout the world. Our lives should
demonstrate that we can get along without buying the multitude of things an
affluent America deems important.
A report on an protest at Titan Ⅱ missile base
noted that “Also scheduled for the same day will be a nonviolent protest at the
Wichita offices of the Internal Revenue Service, designed to draw attention to
tax money being used for military expenditures…” And
a separate report on a protest at Rocky Flats said that
“On ,
tax resisters made statements about their refusal to pay for war in a press
conference outside the
IRS
office.”
The issue brought news of the
Quaker war tax resisters Bruce & Ruth Graves’ court battle:
A Quaker couple from Ypsilanti, Michigan, attempted to claim a “war tax”
credit on federal income tax returns, but has lost an unusual case before the
U.S. Supreme Court,
the Associated Press reports. The court left intact lower court rulings that
Bruce and Ruth Graves, as conscientious objectors, may not claim such a
credit. The couple had sought a refund of the portion of their taxes used for
war materials.
, the Graves have converted the
“foreign tax credit” on their federal tax forms to a “war tax credit” and
entered only 50 percent to the income tax otherwise due. Each year they have
asked a refund but not received it. So after failing to get the couple to sign
corrected tax statements, the government initiated action to collect the
“deficiency” even though it had already collected the correct amount. The
appeal argued that the government’ s action violated the Graves’
constitutional right to freedom of religion.
Catholic priest John M. Garvey also fought the law and the law won, a bit. The
Gospel
Herald had the scoop:
Father John M. Garvey gave up his car for Lent. Actually, the Internal Revenue
Service hauled it away on Ash Wednesday. It now sits amid big, drab army
trucks behind a fence topped with barbed wire 20 miles away in Mobridge,
S.D. It is there
because the Roman Catholic priest has not paid income taxes as a protest
against military spending and the federal government’s treatment of Indian
people.
Without a car on the South Dakota prairie, the priest has been walking more,
hitchhiking, and riding buses. “It’s been inconvenient,” he said, and when he
does he gets some puzzled looks. “But it’s no big dramatic thing. I’m not
standing out there shivering to death.”
John K. Stoner, in the issue,
imagined
the conversation
between a taxpayer and his or her Maker in the aftermath of a nuclear
holocaust:
There was a blinding flash of light, an explosion like the bursting of a
million bombs, and in an instant everything was burning in a huge ball of
fire.
The first time it was the Flood.
But next time the fire… It was the End.
Afterward a prominent evangelical leader was being quizzed by his Maker.
“You say you were taken by surprise. But didn’t you know it might happen?”
“Well, yes, Sir. I guess I did, Sir. But You see, Sir, they…”
“Wasn’t anybody talking about the fantastic risks involved? But not risks
really. It was a certainty. As predictable as death and taxes.”
“Well, Sir, I can see it now. But hindsight is always better…”
“What do you mean, hindsight? Couldn’t you discern the signs of the times?”
“Well, Sir, we were kind of busy…”
“Doing what?”
“Well, Sir, some of us were searching for remnants of Noah’s Ark. We thought
if we found it maybe they would believe in You…”
“But surely you weren’t all hunting Noah’s Ark?”
“Well, Sir, not exactly. But a lot of people who weren’t hunting it were
watching movies about the search. And then we were busy defending the Bible.”
“Why didn’t you know it was going to happen? Surely there were people warning
you. In fact, I had assigned a few Myself to sound the alarm.”
“Well, Sir, You see, Sir, those people… I don’t know quite how to say this…
er… they didn’t believe the way we… er… I mean I…”
“Did you think you could go on building three more bombs a day forever and not
blow things up?
“Well, Sir, You see, I thought You would look after those things. I didn’t
think it would happen unless You wanted.
“Women nursing infant babies? Children swinging on the side porch, playing in
the lawn sprinkler? An old man reading his Bible? Millions of people, burned
up?”
“Well, sir, in retrospect it does look rather overwhelming. I’m not sure it
was really fair. But then, things were getting rather bad, what with
communism, homosexuality, welfare, big government, pollution…”
“And capitalism, national security, the good life, nuclear deterrence.”
“Well, Sir, I hadn’t thought of those things as…”
“Why not?”
“Well, Sir, You see, the people who talked about those things were not… er…
Bible believing. As an example, they talked about resisting war taxes, even
though the Bible says, ‘Render unto Caesar…’. Things like that…”
“You paid your taxes?”
“Well, Sir, yes, Sir, I did.”
“Every penny?”
“I think so, Sir.”
“Are you saying that I am responsible for this fire and your tax dollars were
not?”
“Well, Sir, I… er…”
“Next!”
Allan W. Smith responded in a
letter to the editor,
saying that Christians should beware of inadvertently putting themselves under
an Antichrist who promises worldly peace at the expense of abandoning Biblical
truth:
In Stoner’s depiction of the scene of judgment day, it is to be observed that
Jesus dictum, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s,” is
contradicted. It is not to be supposed that Jesus and Paul, who both told
people to pay their taxes, were ignorant of the way that Rome got and held its
power. Taxes are, after all, not freewill gifts to the state, and we may well
be grieved with the way the state uses them. However, we must all live by our
Word-enlightened consciences.
A proposed Mennonite Church statement on militarism and conscription,
originally drafted by MBCM
staff members Hubert Schwartzentruber and Gordon Zook in consultation with
several other persons, was presented. The Board gave the statement extensive
discussion and some refinement, and unanimously approved the document for
submission as a recommendation from MBCM
to the General Board for presentation to the
Mennonite Church General Assembly. The statement contains sections on peace
and obedience, use of material resources, Christian service and conscription,
and militarism and taxation.
That article also noted that the Mennonite Board of Congregational Ministries
met and approved a “task force to represent the Mennonite Church in cooperation
with the General Conference Mennonite Church committee on conscientious
objection and tax exemption.”
Sensing the radical nature of his comments on the theme, “The Way of Peace,”
Schwartzentruber said that he could be taken to jail if he put into action his
beliefs on such issues as war taxes and conscription. If he had to go to jail,
he said, it would be easier to go with brothers and sisters in the faith.
Peacemaking is the way of Jesus, but it has to be the work of the church and
not of individuals alone, he said.
Representatives of the Mennonite Church gathered in Waterloo,
, and
war tax resistance was on the agenda
but was overshadowed by other concerns about draft registration:
Debate over the proposed statement on militarism and conscription was centered
in two subpoints. One counseled Mennonites not to comply with any military
registration law that might be passed by the
U.S. Congress if
the Department of Defense and not civilians would be responsible for the
registration program. The other point counseled administrators of church
schools not to comply with any legislation which might be passed that would
require them to provide information about their students for purposes of
registration.
Noting that passage of any such registration bill is very much in doubt,
Linden Wenger, Harrisonburg,
Va., told fellow delegates,
“It seems to me we’re being a bit premature in making an issue of these two
items.” Wenger also said that he “will not hinge my decision” on whether to
support compliance with a registration law on whether it is administered by
civilian or military personnel.
Other delegates, including John E. Lapp of Souderton,
Pa., responded that it
was important that the items in question not be deleted.
In the amended statement which was finally approved, the two items were
combined and weakened slightly, but were retained. A subpoint urging “careful
biblical study” on the issue of war tax payment was added. In addition, the
statement was upgraded from “guidelines” to a full statement of position.
The eventual statement on militarism and conscription that came out of the
Waterloo conference on was
reprinted in Gospel Herald. It included the following
section:
We recognize that today’s militarism expresses itself more and more through
expensive and highly technical weaponry and that such equipment is dependent
upon financial resources conscripted from citizens through taxation.
Therefore,
We encourage our members to pursue a lifestyle which minimizes such tax
liability through reduction of taxable income and/or increase of tax
deductible contributions for the advancement of the gospel and the relief
of human suffering.
We endorse efforts in support of legislation which would provide
alternative uses for taxes, paid by conscientious objectors to war, which
would otherwise be devoted to military purposes.
We encourage our congregations to engage in careful biblical study
regarding Christian responsibility to civil authorities including issues
of conscience in relation to payment of taxes.
We recognize as a valid witness the conscientious refusal to pay a portion
of taxes required for war and military efforts. Such refusal, however, may
not be pursued in a spirit of lawlessness nor for personal advantage but
may be an occasion for constructive response to human need.
We encourage our congregations and institutions to seek relief from the
current legal requirement of collecting taxes through the withholding of
income taxes of employees, especially those taxes which may be used for
war purposes. In this effort we endorse cooperation with the General
Conference Mennonite Church in the current search for judicial,
legislative, and administrative alternatives to the collection of
military-related taxes. In the meantime if congregational or institutional
employers are led to noncompliance with the requirement to withhold such
taxes, we pledge our support for those representatives of the church who
may be called to account for such a witness.
On ,
Robert C. Johansen
(“president of the Institute for World Order”) spoke at Goshen College and
boosted war tax resistance:
Johansen encouraged his listeners to become part of a “new breed of
abolitionists,” to take a more active stance, even if this included refusing
to pay war taxes and refusing to be drafted. He reminded his audience that
those in opposition to slavery had also defied the law in order to bring about
change.
Gordon Zook, in the issue,
wrote that the whole economy was distorted towards militarism, and took a
sort of sideways look at tax resistance in that context:
One current issue of obedience is the militaristic mentality which keeps
producing new weapons systems at the expense of basic human needs. So much of
North American “abundance” results from the distorted values and priorities of
our militaristic economy. Many are wondering, how to repent of such
involvements including questions of responsibility for the use of tax
revenues.
In the same issue, John K. Stoner was back to urge
conscientious objection to nuclear deterrence
which necessarily meant action before the nuclear war, not just
options to be held in reserve for after the war started:
Mennonites who believe that the Bible teaches conscientious objection to
military service should also be conscientious objectors to the concept and
practice of nuclear deterrence. We have expressed conscientious objection to
military service by refusing military service, whether by refusing to put on
the military uniform, going to prison, doing alternate service, or emigrating.
We should express our Conscientious objection to the concept and practice of
nuclear deterrence by publicly rejecting the myth of nuclear deterrence,
denouncing the idolatry of nuclear weapons, refusing to pay war taxes, and
identifying with resistance to the nuclear madness.
Mennonites should do this because the concept and practice of nuclear
deterrence is a form of military service in which the entire population has
been conscripted. The concept of nuclear deterrence epitomizes the spirit of
war. The practice of nuclear deterrence is to war what lust is to adultery,
and whoever engages freely in lust should not consider himself innocent of
adultery. As E.I. Watkin has said, it cannot “be morally right to threaten
immoral conduct.” To plan and prepare for the annihilation of millions of
people is a culpable act in the extreme, and whoever does not deliberately and
explicitly repudiate the concept and practice of nuclear deterrence
participates in the act.
The U.S. branch of
the international Roman Catholic peace movement, Pax Christi
USA,
initiated informal contacts with General Conference Mennonite peace
spokespersons .
Rural Benedictine College at Atchison,
Kan., provided the setting for
the sixth annual convention of Pax Christi
USA,
at which Mennonites Bob Hull and Don Kaufman of Newton,
Kan., led a workshop on tax
resistance and the World Peace Tax Fund Act. Interest in this was strong.
About 40 persons, including some tax resisters, participated. In a private
meeting with Sister Man Evelyn Jegen, executive secretary of Pax Christi
USA, and
Gordon Zahn, a Catholic conscientious objector in World War Ⅱ, Hull, Kaufman,
and William Keeney of Bethel College, North Newton,
Kan., explained the General
Conference Mennonite Church resolution on war taxes. Mennonite Central
Committee Peace Section’s Christian Peacemaker Registration form received
active interest at the convention, particularly during a workshop on
“Militarism in Education.” The possible resumption of registration and perhaps
the draft in the
U.S. is stimulating
regional Pax Christi groups to promote conscientious objection to war by
Catholic youth.
Resolutions concerning the
Iranian-U.S. crisis,
SALT
Ⅱ, and the proposed World Peace Tax Fund were passed at the fall meeting of
Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section
(U.S.),
Nov.
30–Dec. 1 at Akron,
Pa.
Section members also agreed to postpone a decision on a resolution to support
war tax resistance campaign until they could have further dialogue with
constituent members…
The World Peace Tax Fund
(WPTF) bill
now before Congress also received an endorsement from the Peace section group.
The bill would provide a legal means for conscientious objectors to channel
the portion of their tax dollar which now goes for the military budget to be
used in a special fund for projects to promote world peace.
The section said in resolution “that it is conscious that the
WPTF
legislation might not in itself force a significant reduction in military
spending, but it recognizes that it would provide funds for peacemaking
efforts and would be a witness against military spending. The section
continues to support other forms of witness against military spending,
including persons who refuse to pay war taxes.”
Although Peace Section has given staff time to the promotion of a better
understanding of
WPTF in its
constituency, it had not before been a formal sponsor of the bill.
Peace Section has also established a bureau of Christian speakers available to
address congregations and other groups concerning
WPTF.
Federal court convicts Mennonite in Illinois war tax resistance case
Bruce Chrisman, 30-year-old General Conference Mennonite, was convicted on
by U.S. District
Court in Springfield, Ill.,
of federal income tax evasion.
Chrisman, who lives in Ava in southern Illinois, was charged with failing to
file a tax return in . Actually Chrisman did
file a return in and other years for which
the government said he failed to file. But the returns did not contain the
financial data the Internal Revenue Service contends constitutes a legal tax
return.
Chrisman attached letters to his returns saying he objected on religious and
moral grounds to paying taxes that support the
U.S. military. His
defense lawyers said the government had to prove that he “willfully” failed to
file a return — that he knew what the statute required and purposefully
decided not to comply.
At a three-day criminal trial Chrisman said, “The returns I filed with the
IRS were
in accordance with the dictates of my conscience and religious beliefs and the
IRS
code.”
He testified that his father never hit him and that “guns, even cap guns, were
never allowed in our home.”
The prosecuting attorney read Romans 13, Luke 20:20–26, and Matthew 17:24–27
and asked Chrisman, “Don’t you believe in the Bible? Doesn’t it state here you
should pay taxes?”
Chrisman said, “The government is not the supreme authority in my life, but
Jesus Christ is.”
In the closing arguments to the jury the prosecution said Chrisman’s “joy” and
“peaceful composure” exposed his lack of deeply held religious beliefs.
James Dunn, Mennonite pastor in Urbana,
Ill., observed the trial. He
said evidence of Chrisman’s character and of his pacifism were not allowed as
testimony by the judge, J. Waldo Ackerman.
During the pretrial hearings, Ackerman allowed Robert Hull, secretary for
peace and social concerns of the General Conference Mennonite Church, and
Peter Ediger, director of Mennonite Voluntary Service, to testify about
Mennonite witness against war and conscription of persons and money for war
purposes. But the testimony was disallowed at the trial.
One of Chrisman’s attorneys, Jeffrey Weiss, in addressing the 12-member jury,
argued that Chrisman’s religious beliefs and his conscientious objector status
during the Vietnam War should exempt him from paying that portion of his
federal income tax that supports the military. “He did not try to hide behind
the shield of religion to rip off the government but honestly believes he is
exercising his constitutional rights to religion.” he said.
Chrisman, married, with a two-year-old daughter, faces up to one year in
prison and a $10,000 fine The verdict will be appealed to the
U.S. Court of
Appeals in Chicago.
A pair of articles advertised seminar on war tax resistance that would be held
at Laurelville Mennonite Church Center in
:
Does Caesar ask for only what belongs to him?
Should there be a Mennonite consensus on paying or not paying war taxes? These
and related questions will be the agenda for a seminar at Laurelville Church
Center, .
The seminar is entitled “War Taxes: to Pay or Not to Pay?” It is jointly
sponsored by the Church Center and Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section.
Persons on both sides of the issue are encouraged to participate. More
information is available from Laurelville Mennonite Church Center…
“War Taxes: To Pay or Not to Pay?”
is the title of a seminar cosponsored by
MCC
Peace Section and Laurelville Mennonite Church Center. Persons on all sides of
the issue are encouraged to participate as such questions will be raised as:
What belongs to Caesar and what to God? What are these taxes buying? What are
the alternatives? More information is available from Laurelville Mennonite
Church Center…
The GCMC Mid-Triennium
This was the first Gospel Herald report from the
General Conference Mennonite Church special mid-triennium conference on war
taxes:
Debate was vigorous and heated as more than 500 delegates from the General
Conference Mennonite Church and some 200 visitors met
to discuss how Christians should respond to the nuclear threat and to massive
expenditures for defense. War tax resistance, or the refusal to pay for the
military portion of the federal budget, was among possible responses discussed
at the meeting, held in Minneapolis.
A few delegates present at the first day of the conference said the church
should not act as tax collector for the state through withholding taxes from
employees’ paychecks. But most of the delegates present the first day said
that while they were troubled by worldwide military expenditures of over one
billion dollars daily, the church as a corporate body should not engage in
illegal activity in its witness against war preparations. Instead, speakers
urged alternatives such as pressuring congressional representatives to reduce
defense expenditures, eliminate the arms trade, and to increase aid and trade
to Third World countries. A few observed that Mennonites contribute to the
disparity in living standards around the world through their affluent
lifestyle.
A sentiment often expressed, however, was that the church, while avoiding
illegal actions, should actively support its members who engage in civil
disobedience on the basis of conscience.
Roy Vogt, economics professor from Winnipeg, Manitoba, berated the assembly
for loading the responsibility for witness upon isolated individuals. “It is
morally reprehensible,” he said, “to give only moral support. We must provide
financial and legal support for those prophets who have arisen from our
middle-class ranks.”
In contrast to the social activists at the conference are Mennonites like Dan
Dalke, pastor from Bluffton, Ohio, who castigated the social activists for
making pacifism a religion. “We will never create a Utopia,” he said. “Jesus
didn’t come to clean up social issues. Our job is to evangelize the world. A
peace witness is secondary.”
Some of the statements were personal. A businessman confessed that while he
could easily withhold paying military taxes on the basis of conscience, he was
frightened. “I am scared of being different, of being embarrassed, of being
alienated from my community. Unless I get support from the Mennonite church, I
will keep paying taxes.”
Alvin Beachy of Newton, Kan.,
said the church seemed to be shifting from a quest to being faithful to the
gospel to being legal before the government. Echoing this view, J.R.
Burkholder of Goshen, Ind.,
said, “The question is not who is most faithful, but what does it mean to be
faithful?”
A follow-up article in the
issue filled in some blanks:
General Conference Mennonites voted
to launch a vigorous campaign to exempt the church from acting as a tax
collector for the state.
Five-hundred delegates, representing 60,000 Mennonites in Canada and the
U.S. passed the
resolution by a nine to one margin. Charged with responsibility to implement
the decision is the highest policy-making body of the General Conference
Mennonite Church, the General Board.
Heinz Janzen, executive secretary for the denomination, said the decision will
increase political activism among Mennonites, a group which has traditionally
kept distant from legislative activities.
Delegates met
in a special conference to discern the will of God for Christians in their
response to militarism and the worldwide arms race.
Some Mennonites are practicing war tax resistance — the refusal to pay the
military portion of federal income tax. This was a central focus of debate
during because one of the
employees of the General Conference has asked the church to stop withholding
war taxes from her wages. In , Cornelia Lehn,
who is director of children’s education, made the request on grounds of
conscience. Her request was refused by the General Board because it would be
illegal for an employer to not act as a tax collector for the Internal Revenue
Service.
Although delegates to this convention affirmed that decision, they instructed
the General Board to vigorously search for legal avenues to exempt the church
from collecting taxes. In that way individuals employed by the church would be
free to follow their own conscience.
The campaign to obtain legal conscientious objection to war taxes will last
three years. If fruitless the question is to be brought back to another
meeting of the church.
Activists in the church were not completely satisfied with the decision. They
would prefer that Cornelia Lehn’s request be granted. These delegates spoke
for an early First Amendment test of the constitutionality of the church being
compelled to act as a tax collector.
Nevertheless, Donovan Smucker, vice-president of the General Conference and
from Kitchener, Ont., said of
the decision, “Something wonderful is happening. We are beginning to bring our
witness to the political order.”
Vernon Lohrenz, a delegate from South Dakota, observed, “We must proceed in
faith, and not in fear. If this is the right thing to do, God will take care
of us.”
From the discussions on taxation, it seemed the issue will not easily be
resolved.
Implementing the decision of the General Conference Mennonite Church “war tax”
conference in Minneapolis has
not been easy.
The Minneapolis resolution mandated a task force on taxes to seek “all legal,
legislative, and administrative avenues for achieving a conscientious objector
exemption” for the General Conference Mennonite Church from the withholding of
federal income taxes from its employees. (About 46 percent of
U.S.
federal taxes are used for the military.)
Two meetings of the task force have been held. The task force has been
expanded to include representation from the Church of the Brethren, the
Friends, and the Mennonite Church. This group of 11 is expected by the
participating churches to establish the legal, legislative, and administrative
agenda of a corporate discipleship response to military taxes.
At their second meeting () the
task force members rejected administrative avenues. Within the scope of
U.S. Internal
Revenue Service or Revenue Canada regulations, this would involve extending
ordination, commissioning, or licensing status to all employees of church
institutions. It was a consensus of the task force that this would be an
administrative loophole. It would not develop a conscientious objector
position in response to military taxes.
However, both the judicial and legislative options will be pursued
simultaneously. Plans for the legislative option are the more developed.
For the legislative route to work, says Delton Franz, director of the
Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section office in Washington,
D.C., the
problem of conscience and taxes will have to be defined carefully. Currently a
paper focusing on the reasons the General Conference has a major problem of
conscience with collecting taxes from its employees is being drafted. After it
has been reviewed, it will be sent along with cover letters by leaders of the
historic peace churches to members of Congress who represent major
constituency concentrations or sit on key subcommittees. Later on, church
members will also be asked to write letters. It is important, says Franz, to
define the problem of conscience in such a way that it will motivate Senators
and Representatives to work vigorously for the bill.
Another follow-up to these initiatives will be a visit to Washington of the
most influential peace church leaders to solicit support from selected members
of Congress and to obtain a sponsor for an exemption bill.
There is a possibility that a parallel task force will emerge in Canada. Ernie
Regehr, director of Project Ploughshares, Waterloo,
Ont., notes the necessity of
defining the question of militarism in Canadian terms for Canadians; for
example, arms export revenues. Regehr in attempting to gather a Canadian task
force. Heinz Janzen, general secretary of the General Conference Mennonite
Church, is convener of the war tax expanded task force. Mennonite Church
members are Winifred Beechy, secretary for peace and social concerns under the
Board of Congregational Ministries; Janet Reedy, member of the Mennonite
Church committee on tax concerns; and Gordon Zook, executive secretary of the
Board of Congregational Ministries.
A New Call to Peacemaking
The “New Call to Peacemaking” campaign continued.
Another conference
was announced for :
workshops will deal with conflict
resolution, tax resistance and the World Peace Tax Fund, economic conversion
and the arms race, and resources for peace education.
Campaign organizers assert that interest in the “issue of conscience and war
taxes” has been growing recently. It was given a “high priority” by the New
Call to Peacemaking national conference in Wisconsin.
Results of the conference
(which had apparently been pushed back a few weeks) were reported by Winifred
N. Beechy:
More war-tax opposition
A group of 30 to 40 church people met on , at City Church
of the Brethren, Goshen, Ind.,
to consider the moral dilemma faced by Christians who are opposed to war as a
method of settling disputes but who involuntarily contribute to war by payment
of taxes.
Participants in the one-day seminar came from 12 area congregations and
represented four denominations. The focus of the meeting was on that portion
of the federal income tax which goes to support the military and weapons
production. This group felt that the increasing militarization of our society,
the escalation of the arms race, and production of highly technological
weapons of destruction posed the problem of priorities and stewardship, and
the contradiction of “paying for war while praying for peace.”
Willard Swartley, professor of New Testament at Associated Mennonite Biblical
Seminaries in Elkhart, spoke on “Biblical imperatives,” emphasizing the
Christian’s mandate for responsible use of the earth’s resources. Cliff Kindy
of Goshen then outlined what we pay for war, giving a breakdown of the federal
budget with percentages of expenditures going to current and past military and
war-related items. He computed current military spending as roughly 25 to 30
percent, while a more comprehensive figure, taking into account veterans’
expenses and interest on the war-related portion of the national debt, reaches
as high as 50 percent of the national budget. Kindy also estimated that
members of Mennonite and Church of the Brethren churches in Elkhart County pay
more for war taxes than they contribute to their churches.
A survey of the history of war tax resistance among the historic peace
churches since the Reformation was presented by Leonard Gross, archivist of
the Mennonite Church. Current responses to the problem of war taxes were given
by a number of people. Janet Reedy of Elkhart and Jim Sweigart of Goshen
discussed possible options such as refusal to pay that portion of the income
tax which goes to support war, payment made with an accompanying letter or
protest, or voluntarily limiting income below the level of tax liability.
Following the presentations the group broke up into three workshops for
further discussion. From these emerged a consensus on the need for a
continuing support group such as this. Participants expect to draft a
statement which can be presented to their respective congregations for
consideration.
The seminar was planned by a New Call to Peacemaking Committee made up of
members from six Church of the Brethren and Mennonite Churches in Goshen, with
Virgil Brenneman from The Assembly (Mennonite) serving as chairman.
Bruce Chrisman told a New Call to Peacemaking Workshop of his war tax resistance.
The workshop on national service and voluntary service discussed a proposal by
members of Rainbow Boulevard Mennonite Church, Kansas City,
Kan., regarding a legal tax
alternative which would involve cooperating with a national service plan.
In the workshop on conscription of wealth Bob Hull, secretary for peace and
social concerns of the General Conference Mennonite Church, suggested
alternatives to paying war taxes. Others offered their own suggestions.
Several persons expressed the desire to pay taxes only for nonmilitary
programs, and said they wished there was legal provision for this, such as the
World Peace Tax Fund. McSorley, who has had contacts on Capitol Hill,
responded by saying that until there is a large grass-roots movement of tax
resistance the
WPTF doesn’t
stand a chance.
The latter half of the workshop included sharing by Bruce Chrisman,
Carbondale, Ill., who is
involved in a federal criminal case, one of two in the
U.S. involving tax
resistance. His case is significant because it will provide a precedent either
for or against tax refusal on the basis of conscience and religious
convictions.
In Chrisman received draft counseling from
James Dunn, pastor of the Champaign-Urbana
(Ill.) Mennonite Church. He
made a covenant with God to only pay taxes for humanitarian purposes. Since
that time he has paid no federal income taxes.
It wasn’t until this year, however, that the government prosecuted him,
charging that he willfully failed to disclose his gross income in
. “Willful” is the key term, because Chrisman
claims he conscientiously chose not to disclose his income. He feels the
government has purposely waited to build its case.
In the conclusion to his talk Chrisman said that when he first appeared in
court on
this year he was “scared to death.” “Today,” he said, “I have no fear in me.
God has given me an inner peace. I know I’m doing what He wants me to do.”
The Smoketown Consultation
The Gospel Herald covered
“the Smoketown Consultation”
of , in which conservative
Mennonites organized against innovations like war tax resistance. It noted that
“All 25 persons invited were white males,” but also reproduced the statement
that came out of the conference.
Several letters to the editor reacted to this news:
“I… wondered about the inclusion of the specific war tax issue. Were
individuals who sincerely hold to an alternate point of view asked to take
part in the discussion? Again, I am not questioning the conclusions of the
group so much as to ask whether any ‘by-invitation-only’ meeting can speak
for the church with any more integrity than can existing boards and
commissions of the church.”
“It is very easy to pick a Scripture verse to use to prove or disprove
almost anything. The group at one point (Statement #2) speaks about total
commitment to Jesus Christ but then uses quotations from the Apostle Paul
(Statement #5) to validify payment of all taxes. If Jesus Christ is
central, let’s use His example and specific words to guide us! I can
imagine the Pentagon people jumping for joy upon hearing such a statement
about taxes. I’m sure they are glad for this voluntary assurance (from
‘peace church’ members) that money will continue to roll in so that the
military can increase its nuclear arsenal. Because of the apparent
unquestioning payment of taxes by German Christians, Hitler was able to
annihilate millions of persons. We
(U.S.) will be
able to do it with nuclear weapons Neat, eh?”
“At Smoketown Ⅱ, when we assume the sisters of the church will take the
opportunity to share their thoughts, we suggest that a fuller range of
statements be reported. Issues, the unavoidable places where doctrine
meets practical decisions, should be identified and addressed to give
definition to the positive reaffirmation of the authority of Scripture and
a renewed zeal for personal and church evangelism. And, for the grass
roots, a minority report on the nonpayment of war taxes could be
included.”
Verburg didn’t think much of all this talk about war taxes, saying that
the peace witness was about more than opposition to military, so the war
tax emphasis was sign of an imbalance. “We are not the flower children of
the sixties. We are Jesus people and there is a big difference.”
[Gordon] Zook [executive secretary of the Board of Congregational Ministries]
noted the difference between the Smoketown statement “that we should pay all
taxes” and the statement on peacemaking passed by the General Assembly at
Waterloo. The Waterloo statement recognizes the withholding of war taxes as a
valid option. Which statement represents the church? he asked.
Peace Tax Fund Legislation
The edition included an
article by Dan Slabaugh laying out the case for the World Peace Tax Fund bill.
An editor’s note in that issue mentioned that “The
U.S. copies of the
issue of the
Gospel Herald carried a center insert with cards that
may be used by readers to encourage
U.S. lawmakers to
support the World Peace Tax Fund. The following article provides the author’s
rationale for support of the Fund legislation. Readers who care to are
encouraged to make use of these cards or to write their own leaders on its
behalf.”
Any collection of taxes for military purposes has created problems of
conscience for those committed to the peaceful resolution of conflict. Many
members of the “historic peace churches” have viewed war taxes as a denial of
religious freedom since such payments forced them to engage in personal sin.
The question has been put this way: “How can I, as a follower of the Prince of
Peace, willingly provide the government with money that’s needed to pay for
war?”
The most recent war tax in the United States, aside from the income tax, has
been the federal telephone tax. This levy was initiated originally to support
the Vietnam War, but is still continuing for a few more years. Many people
have refused to pay this tax to the federal government. Instead, they have
been sending the equivalent amount to the [“]Special Fund for Tax Resisters”
of Mennonite Central Committee’s Peace Section, or to similar designated
organizations.
To a smaller percentage of individuals the payment of the federal income tax
(approximately 50 percent of which they know goes to support wars and military
activity) also has been considered a matter of personal sin. They therefore
have informed the government that in good conscience they cannot voluntarily
pay that portion of their tax. In some cases persons have deposited the amount
in a local bank where the Internal Revenue Service comes and “steals” it from
them. By so doing these persons are freeing themselves of personal
responsibility for the money’s eventual use and also providing a visible
protest against the evil.
To most of these law-abiding, peace-loving people continual confrontation with
their own government has been an unhappy prospect. So nearly a decade ago a
small group of Christians at Ann Arbor, Michigan — with considerable faith in
the American legislative process — came to believe that it might be possible
to draft a bill and eventually convince the federal government to legalize
“peace” for those citizens so inclined.
A faculty member and a few graduate students at the University of Michigan’s
Law School drafted such a proposal. It provides, for the individual requesting
it, a setting aside of that percentage of the federal income tax which the
U.S. Attorney
General would determine to be earmarked for military purposes. This amount
would then be placed in a trust fund to be administered by a board of trustees
to fund peaceful activities, as approved by the
U.S. Congress.
This legislation, which has become known as the World Peace Tax Fund bill, was
introduced into the
U.S. House of
Representatives by Ronald Dellums of California in
. In the
National Council for a
WPTF was
invited to present its case in the House Ways and Means Committee. The bill
was introduced into the Senate in by Senator
Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon. In the last Congress it had 25 sponsors in the
House of Representatives and the three in the Senate (The legislation was not
enacted and so must be reintroduced to be considered by the present Congress.)
The World Peace Tax Fund bill is often misunderstood. It does not call for any
tax relief or special favors benefiting anyone financially. The bill, if
passed, probably will not affect the
U.S. government’s
military activities. In all likelihood it will not cut the military budget, or
of itself, stop wars. And it will not diminish the need to continue peace
teaching or peace activities.
But it will allow a citizen to legally refrain from contributing to the cost
of war and violence. It will provide a fund to finance peace programs and
support efforts to eliminate the causes of violent conflict.
The biggest obstacle to getting this bill passed in the
U.S. Congress is
the large number of people who say they are committed to peace, but who
seemingly feel no responsibility regarding the government’s use of their tax
money. As a result, legislators tell us that they can’t see the payment of war
taxes as much of a problem because they get very few letters expressing
concern about the matter.
To a large degree, Congress is “problem-oriented.” An alert young Congressman
told us personally that “this bill probably will not be passed until enough of
you refuse to pay war taxes — even if it means going to jail. In other words,”
he was saying, “create a problem that Congress must deal with.”
I am convinced that the conscientious objector provision of the Selective
Service act of never would have been
included had it not been for the “problem” created by
C.O.’s who
refused induction during World War Ⅰ. As the
U.S. was mobilizing
for World War Ⅱ the government did not want another “problem” on its hands, so
it agreed to make provisions for the C.O.’s — not
necessarily out of concern for religious liberty, but in order to keep the
boat from rocking too much.
We should remember that God’s prophets and even His own Son were seen as
“problems” in terms of natural human tendencies toward power, selfishness and
greed. Few of us like to “cause problems” for others. We like to work at
solving them — and be successful in our efforts. But in matters of conscience,
we haven’t been called to be successful, we have been called to be faithful.
“Conscience and War Taxes” is the title of a slide set produced by the
National Council for a World Peace Tax Fund. A resources packet accompanies
the 78 color slides, 20-minute cassette. “Conscience and War Taxes” can be
obtained from MBCM Audiovisuals…
The first issue the class tackled was the payment of war taxes. In
U.S.
Rep. Edward Mezvinsky
was invited to church for Sunday lunch and a discussion of the war tax issue.
“He sidestepped every issue,” said Jim Yoder. Mezvinsky promised to vote for
the World Peace Tax Fund Act if it ever made it to the floor of the House, but
declined to help the bill out of committee.
“He spent most of his time expounding upon his efforts to kill the
B-1 bomber,” recalled Nyle.
When the Fourth of July rolled around that Bicentennial year, the class
sponsored an alternate celebration for the church. Guy Hershberger was asked
to chair the meeting. He interviewed some of the local
“veterans” — conscientious objectors Henry Miller, Henry Brenneman, and Sol
Ropp — who had been badly mistreated by the
U.S. Army during
World War Ⅱ. He also discussed the war tax issue.
Later in the year the class presented a proposal to the congregation, asking
the church to lend moral support to people who did not pay the portion of
their taxes going for war. After initial misunderstandings and further
discussion, the congregation approved the proposal.
Nyle [Kauffman] and Jim were the only class members making enough to have to
worry about paying any taxes at all in . Both
withheld 33 percent of their estimated tax and sent a check for the amount to
Mennonite Central Committee.
