Miscellaneous tax resisters → individual war tax resisters → J.E. McNeil

War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1988

The third of Friends Journal’s special issues on war tax resistance came in 1988, and the topic came up in several other issues besides.

An article by Mary Bye in the February issue showed how the arguments for war tax resistance were starting to break the bounds of the tax arena and take hold elsewhere. Excerpts:

In March of 1987 a letter from the collection department of Philadelphia Electric Company demanded payment for a backlog of refused rate hikes. I had withheld the 13.7 percent imposed to cover the construction costs of the Salem and Limerick nuclear reactors. Why did I take this stand?

Looking back over the years for the source of my action, I could see it springing from a long-time insistence upon justice, a small but growing willingness to risk, a perennial sense of grief for suffering, and a blossoming love of the Earth. These are the qualities of the spirit which began to unfold into action during the early days of the Vietnam War. Somewhere along the line, I refused to pay the war tax portion of my federal income tax. Later the Vietnam War ground to a halt when legislation ended financial support for it. Was it just a coincidence that our war tax resistance preceded this legislation? Or did citizens modeling the denial of monies not only support the growing disaffection with the war, but also provide a clue to a way to end it? We had perhaps unwittingly slipped into an old Christian strategy of living as if the Kingdom were here now, and, behold, it manifested a brave, new world, or at least the beginning of one.

War tax resistance seemed an appropriate base upon which to build a new witness of caring for the whole Earth.…

…With crystalline clarity I selected my own utility, Philadelphia Electric, and refused the rate hike for Salem and Limerick. After 1½ years of refusal, accompanied by monthly explanations, I received a warning letter from the collection department, threatening an end of service. The initial fright yielded to a decision to continue resisting and move as swiftly as possible to establish my independence from nuclear power forever.

I faced a new, expensive, complicated simplicity: photovoltaic cells, which produce electrical current when exposed to light, and which could free me from bondage not only to nuclear generators but also fossil fuel-fired reactors. As war tax resistance led me to a lower income, so rate hike refusal was pointing the way to lower energy demands. My living standard may drop, but the quality of my life soars. Meanwhile I have discovered that Philadelphia Electric is experimenting with photovoltaics in anticipation of the coming solar age. If the price is right, I could purchase them there. After all, nuclear power is the enemy, not the electric company.

This is the vision, but it is a dream deferred or rather only partially realized. Philadelphia Electric Company and Solarex, which manufactures photovoltaic cells, want to establish a demonstration project at my home that would provide between one-fourth and one-third of the daily demand here for electricity. The stumbling block is the cost, which would possibly necessitate a 35-year pay-back period. So I am circling the photovoltaic issue in a holding pattern like a plane above an airport. I am searching for answers to hard questions: such as what is the equitable balance between the cost of photovoltaics and the wattage generated? What is a reasonable payback time? If the cost is rock bottom right now, how do we gather funds? How do we secure state and government support? Are churches and meetinghouses able to model this kind of caring for God’s creation? How do we dream this dream into reality? I would welcome your suggestions.

an ad in the February 1988 issue of Friends Journal

That issue also announced a February “Conference for Quaker, Mennonite, and Brethren employers, airing ways to deal with war tax resistance by employees. Sponsored by Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns and New Call to Peacemaking.”

That conference was covered in the May issue in an article by Paul Schrag. Excerpts:

The question of how church organizations can help their employees follow their consciences — and how to deal with the risks involved for both employees and employers — were the issues that 36 Mennonites, Brethren, and Quakers struggled with at the meeting. The church leaders, organizational representatives and lawyers affirmed their support for individual military tax resisters and for efforts to seek a legislative solution by working toward passage of the U.S. Peace Tax Fund bill in Congress. They agreed to organize a peace church leadership group to go to Washington, D.C., to support the peace tax bill and to express concerns about tax withholding. They also agreed to help each other by filing friend-of-the-court briefs if tax resisters are prosecuted and by sharing the cost of tax resistance penalties, if necessary.

People from churches that refuse to withhold federal taxes for employees who oppose paying military taxes shared their experiences with people from churches considering adopting such a policy. The General Conference Mennonite Church and two Quaker groups are in the first category. The Mennonite Church is in the second. The meeting, held at Quaker Hill Conference Center, took place in an atmosphere of excitement generated by a gathering of people from different traditions who share a vision. One conference participant said it was frustrating that many members of historic peace churches are unwilling to witness against financial participation in preparing for war, although they are opposed to physical participation in war. Some said it was disappointing that so many people are unwilling to follow their consciences until the government, through the Peace Tax Fund, might allow them to do so legally. One quoted Gandhi: “We have stooped so low that we fancy it our duty to do whatever the law requires.”

When a church or organization decides to honor employees’ requests not to withhold their federal income tax, it assumes serious risks. Theoretically, a person in a responsible position who willfully fails to withhold an employee’s taxes can be punished with a prison sentence and a $250,000 fine. An organization can be fined $500,000. But such penalties have never been imposed on legitimate religious organizations, nor are they likely to be, said two lawyers at the meeting. The usual Internal Revenue Service response to war tax resistance is to take the amount of tax owed, plus a 5 percent penalty and interest, from the employee’s bank account. However, the IRS has not taken even this action against General Conference Mennonite Church employees who are not having their taxes withheld. They pay the nonmilitary portion of their taxes themselves and deposit the 53 percent that would have gone to the military in a designated account. The IRS has not touched that account since it was established after church delegates approved the policy in 1983. All church personnel who could be subject to penalties have agreed to accept the risk.

Friends World Committee for Consultation, which has had a nonwithholding policy since 1982, has had tax money seized, plus interest and penalties, from its resisters’ bank accounts. Friends United Meeting adopted a non withholding policy last October. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends is considering such a policy.

A representative of the Church of the Brethren said he would use input from the meeting to work toward developing a denominational policy on tax resistance.

Lobbying continues for the Peace Tax Fund bill… The bill would allow people opposed to war taxes to put the portion normally given to the military in a separate fund for peaceful purposes. The rest of that person’s tax money also would be designated for nonmilitary use… Whether or not military tax resistance is effective, participants agreed that people’s moral imperative to follow their consciences must be respected. “No conscientious objector ever stopped a conflict,” said William Strong, a Quaker representative [and treasurer of the Friends Journal Board of Directors]. “But they had to explain what they did, and the vision was kept alive, and those ripples, you don’t know where they stop.”

A postscript noted: “ ‘A Manual on Military Tax Withholding for Religious Employers,’ written by Robert Hull, Linda Coffin, Peter Goldberger, and J.E. McNeil, will be available later this year.”

The March issue was the third special issue on war taxes from the Friends Journal.

It was prompted in part by the fact that the Journal itself had received IRS levies on the salary of its editor, Vinton Deming, who had been refusing to pay income tax since 1979. The Treasurer of the Journal, William D. Strong, explained what was going on in the lead editorial:

The Friends Journal Board of Managers has twice been unable to honor the levy against the wages of our editor, Vint Deming, for unpaid federal taxes. In our most recent reply to the Internal Revenue Service we stated that:

It is not possible for us as a board to separate our faith and our practice: we must live out our faith.

Our earlier letter… refers to our 300-year-old Peace Testimony. To more fully describe that part of our beliefs we enclose copies of two sections of Faith and Practice, the book of spiritual discipline of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. [“The Peace Testimony” and “The Individual and the State,” pp. 34–38, were shared.]

Our position of noncompliance to the requests of the Internal Revenue Service is not an easy one. We do not question the laws of the land lightly, but do so under the weight of a genuine religious and moral concern. We know as well that other religious groups — Mennonites, Brethren, and others — are facing this same difficult dilemma. For this reason, many of us support the proposed Peace Tax Fund bill in Congress.

The board agreed at our meeting in November to make known this continuing witness, both individual and corporate, to you, our readers.

The dilemma is clearly not the Journal’s alone. Many Quaker institutions in the United States, Canada, and England have faced this challenge. Beyond the historic peace churches are Catholics, Methodists, and others who are considering the whole question of taxes and militarism. In February representatives of some 70 institutions came together at the Quaker Hill Conference Center in Richmond, Indiana, for a New Call to Peacemaking consultation on “Employers and War Taxes.” This followed a December 1986 Quaker conference at Pendle Hill considering the same concern.

The Journal board has worked at and reached unity in this matter. We will continue to seek the light in the months and years ahead. For now, however, we would welcome the support and reactions of our subscribers and readers. If you’d like to share in this witness with your moral support, let us know. If you’d like to add practical support, we would welcome it, as we are establishing a Conscience Fund.

We don’t plan extensive legal undertakings at this time, but we know that there can readily be some fees and costs ahead, as well as possible penalties resulting from our refusal to honor the levies from the IRS.

We look forward to the response of our readers. We feel that we cannot host writings in the issues of the Journal on peace and justice, on our testimonies and faith and practice, without, as an employer, living them out to the best of our God-given abilities.

Another article in the March special issue was an extract from J. William Frost’s Tax Court testimony in the Deming case, in which he explained the Quaker war tax resistance practice:

The peace testimony has been a basic part of Quaker religious belief since the 1660s. The testimony has not been static; it has evolved over time as Friends thought out the implications of what it meant to be a bringer of peace.

Some of the most creative actions of members of the Society of Friends have come from the peace testimony. For example, Friends’ primary contribution to world history is that they began and carried through the antislavery testimony. Friends became antislavery advocates in the 18th century, when they realized that the only way one could obtain a black slave was to take him or her captive in war.

Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn for religious liberty. Penn believed, and so did the early settlers, that to create a Quaker colony meant there would be no militia, no war taxes and no oaths. These were conceived to be part of religious freedom, and in the early years of Pennsylvania, there was no militia, and there were no war taxes and no oaths. At first, the Pennsylvania Assembly refused to levy any taxes for the direct carrying on of war. Instead, after 1690 when the British government requested money because it was already beginning its long series of wars with France, the Crown and the Pennsylvania Assembly worked out a series of arrangements. Those arrangements provided that the Assembly (then composed primarily of Quakers) would provide money for the king’s use or the queen’s use, but the laws also stipulated that that money would not be directly used for military purposes; i.e., there would be almost a noncombat status for Quaker money. It could be used to provide foodstuffs to be used to feed the Indians, or it could purchase grain or relieve sufferings. It would not be used to provide guns and gunpowder.

This policy of no direct war taxes, no militia, and no oaths, was followed in Pennsylvania from its beginning in the 1680s until the crisis broke out in France in the 1750s. In 1755, a group of members of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting began the debate on whether Quakers should pay taxes in time of war. At this time, some of the most devout Quakers refused to pay a war tax levied by the Pennsylvania Assembly. And finally the yearly meeting agreed that those whose consciences would not allow them to pay the taxes, should not. So the heritage of Pennsylvania until 1776 was that government accommodated the religion.

The Federal Constitution allows for an affirmation, because certain religious rights are antecedent to the establishment of the government, and the government can and will accommodate itself to religious scruples of those people who are conscientious good citizens.

During the 19^th century there was less opportunity for tax resistance because there was no direct federal taxation. The federal government was financed by tariffs, and the tariffs were used to carry out the full operations of government. (The major exception came during the Civil War, and here the main issues were military service and Quakers’ refusal to pay a substitution tax.)

The main Quaker response to World War Ⅰ was the creation of the American Friends Service Committee. This organization was designed to allow those young men who did not wish to fight (conscientious objectors) to have an opportunity for constructive service (i.e., to provide relief and reconstruction in the war zone). Friends conducted relief activities in France, and then later in Germany, Serbia, Poland, and in Russia. The War Department accommodated itself to Friends. There was no specific provision in the draft law in World War Ⅰ for conscientious objectors. The War Department allowed those Friends who wished to serve in the American Friends Service Committee to be furloughed so that they could go abroad to participate in relief activities.

A second way in which the authorities accommodated Friends at that time was in relief money raised by the Red Cross for Bonds. Much of the Red Cross effort was for military hospitals, and Friends did not wish to support that effort. Therefore in Philadelphia an agreement was worked out whereby Friends contributed money or bonds which would be earmarked for the American Friends Service Committee or for relief activity rather than for direct war activity.

There were instances in World War Ⅱ of individual Friends refusing to pay war taxes, and the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting officially protested against certain war taxes, but the main movement against war taxes has occurred since 1945. During the Cold War and particularly during Vietnam, war tax resistance has become a major theme in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.

The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, since the 1960s, has regularly put a discussion of war taxes on its agenda. In many ways the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting position on war taxes is like its position was on antislavery before the Civil War: before 1860, virtually all Friends opposed slavery. Today, virtually all Friends oppose military taxation. The difficulty in 1860 and in 1980 is that Friends are searching for a way to make their religious witness effective. What Friends want to do is somehow change the focus of a policy which they see as destructive of what is basic to their value system.

In summary, the position of Friends is that religious freedoms preceded and are incorporated into the federal government. Pennsylvania was founded for religious freedom, and religious freedom meant no taxes for war, no militia service, and the right of affirmation. Friends think that the federal government incorporated part of that understanding in the affirmation clause in the constitution, in the first amendment, and in the religion clauses in the Pennsylvania Constitution. Friends think that the government has in good faith tried to accommodate us in our position on military service, and what Friends are wanting from the government now is a like accommodation on a subject which is the same to us as conscientious objection: the paying of taxes which will be used to create weapons to threaten and to kill.

Deming represented himself next, in an article describing his “journey toward war tax resistance.” Excerpts:

During a difficult moment [in the discussion over the Philadelpha Yearly Meeting’s response to the Vietnam War] a young Friend stood and spoke with deep emotion; and his words went straight to my heart. It didn’t matter, he said, what older Friends might say in support of him and his generation (though support was needed and appreciated, for sure); what really mattered to him was that Friends look personally at their own lives to see how they were connected to warmaking. If they were too old to be drafted (and most of us were) perhaps they could find other ways to resist the war.

About 20 years have gone by and I don’t even remember the name of the young Friend who spoke in meeting that day, but his words had a profound impact on me. As a result of his ministry I decided to begin to seek ways to resist the payment of taxes for warmaking (what another Friend, Colin Bell, would term the “drafting of our tax dollars” for the military).

I should say that there was another motivating force at work on me as well. My work for Friends in the city of Chester was bringing me into daily contact with poor and black people. I was learning firsthand about a community — a microcosm of other urban areas across the country — that suffered the debilitating effects of chronic poverty, high unemployment, deteriorating housing, inadequate health care, and inferior public schools. I was witnessing the insufficient funding of a so-called War on Poverty in Chester while millions of dollars and human lives were being expended in a war against other poor people in Southeast Asia. I knew I had to do something to end my personal complicity in helping to pay for the war and to redirect these dollars to wage a more life-affirming battle against poverty and injustice here at home.

I soon discovered that it is hard to become a tax resister; there are so many basic assumptions about money and taxes that we have learned. We are expected to do certain things in our society: when we work, we must pay taxes — this pretty much goes without question. How else will programs get funded and bills get paid? And those who don’t pay, well… there’s an institution called the IRS that takes care of such people and will make them pay!

There are so many good reasons for not resisting taxes. Some of the ones I wrestled with are these:

• I can’t get away with it. IRS will eventually get the money from me anyway and I’ll just end up paying more in the end.
• It won’t do any good. The government is too powerful and they’ll not change their policies because of my symbolic act.
• There are better ways to work for peace (i.e. writing letters to Congress, going to demonstrations, etc.)
• There will never be a substantial number who will be tax resisters — it’s simply not realistic.

Well, there’s truth in all of these statements, but I had to start anyway. Not to do so had simply become an even bigger problem for me. So I began looking at the question of taxes for war and decided to start where I could, with the telephone tax. I learned that the federal tax on my personal phone had been increased specifically to help pay for the war. In talking with others who were refusing to pay this portion of their phone bills I learned that the risk was fairly small. No one I knew about had gone to jail or suffered any severe penalties (beyond having some money taken from a bank account or such). So my wife and I began to withhold these few dollars each month and include a note to the telephone company explaining our reasons. This became an educational experience for me. I started to get used to receiving the impersonal letters from the phone company and later from IRS, and I even came to enjoy the process of writing my own letters in response — I felt good about not paying.

In the early 1970s I began to feel more confident. The IRS had not locked me up, or even taken any money from me, as I recall, so I gathered my courage and decided to take the next step — to resist paying a portion of my income taxes. At first I included a letter with my tax form in April and tried to claim a “war tax deduction” and request a return of some of the money withheld from my salary but with no success. The IRS computers were not impressed with my effort, and they routinely informed me that the tax code did not provide for such a claim. So I came to a decision: it would be better to have IRS asking me for the money each year rather than my asking IRS. So beginning in 1973 I began to seek ways to reduce the amount withheld from my regular paychecks. Though some tax resisters at that time accomplished this by claiming all the world’s children as their dependents (or all the Vietnamese children), I decided to reduce the amount withheld by claiming extra allowances (which were authorized for anticipated medical expenses, etc.) and thus reduce the amount withheld.

Beginning in 1976, when I started to work part-time at Friends Journal, and continuing until this past year, I claimed enough allowances on my W-4 so that no money was withheld from my pay. For several years as a single parent raising a young child, I lived very modestly, working just part-time and sharing living expenses in a communal house. During those years I actually got money back from the government when I had paid nothing. Since 1979, however, after I remarried (and later had two more children) I started to owe money to IRS each year. So each year at tax time I would write a personal letter to the president to be sent with a copy of my tax form (not completely filled out, usually just with my name and address) explaining why I could not in good conscience pay any taxes until our nation’s priorities changed from warmaking to peacemaking. I would usually send copies of my letters as well to IRS, my representative in Congress, and friends. Occasionally I would receive thoughtful responses, once from Congressman William Gray from my district, who is one of the sponsors of Peace Tax Fund legislation in Washington.

After a few years of this, IRS began to make some ominous threats and noises, followed by the first serious efforts to collect back taxes from me. I should say that I redirected some of the unpaid taxes to peace organizations and poor people’s groups, some into an alternative tax fund, some into a credit union account to earn interest — and some was spent. On two occasions — once in 1976, again in 1986 — I went to tax court. Each court appearance provided an opportunity to explain my witness more clearly, and to meet others in the community who were tax resisters or who wanted to be supportive.

My first day in court was in Raleigh, North Carolina, and was particularly meaningful. About 30 of my friends went with me to lend support. A local peace group baked apple pies and served small slices to people entering the courthouse next to a large “pie chart” that graphically showed the disproportionately small share of our federal taxes going to human services and the large piece to the military. A local TV station interviewed me and carried a story on the evening news. A wire service picked up on the story as well, and for several days I received phone calls from people throughout the South.

What occurred inside the courthouse was just as important. The judge was very interested in my pacifist views: At one point he ended the hearing and engaged in an extended discussion right in the courtroom of many of the peace issues I had raised. It became a sort of teach-in on the subject of militarism and peaceful resistance. Later both he and the young government attorney thanked me for what I shared and complimented me for effectively handling my own legal defense. (I had elected not to be represented by counsel.) Though the court eventually ruled against my arguments in the case — which did not surprise me — I feel that the whole experience of going to court was a positive one, as well as an educational experience for others. And though I was ordered to pay the $500 or so owed in back taxes, I never did — and no further efforts were made to collect.

IRS has been more aggressive, however, in recent years. Some funds have been seized from a bank account, an IRA was taken, and such efforts are continuing even as I write this article. Most recently IRS has levied Friends Journal for the tax years 1979–1982 for taxes, interest, and penalties totaling about $23,000. I am grateful that the Journal’s board has declined to accept the levies on my salary… and that the board as a Quaker employer both corporately and as individual members supports my witness.

I don’t know what the future will bring, and frankly I try not to think about it too much. In the past two years I have changed my approach some. My wife and I have decided to file a joint return. Beginning this past summer the Journal started to withhold a little money from my paychecks following my decision to complete the new W-4. It seems appropriate just now that I devote my time to working on the earlier tax years and to finding ways to support others who are more actively resisting. I try to stay open as well to seeking other approaches to resistance from year to year.

What are some things that I have learned from all this? Perhaps I might share these thoughts:

• Tax resistance is a very individual thing. Each of us must find our own way and decide what works best for us.
• Resist openly and joyfully, and seek opportunities to be in the company of others along the way. When you go for an IRS audit, for instance, take some friends with you; when you go to court, make the courtroom a meeting for worship.
• Don’t see IRS agents or government officials as the enemy. Look for opportunities for friendliness, address individuals by name, be open and honest about what you intend to do. The IRS will soon recognize that a conscientious tax refuser is different from a tax evader.
• What might work one year may not the next. Be flexible and remain open to trying different approaches.
• Talking about money is hard, and it is discouraged in our society. I remember how embarrassed the grownups in my family were when one of my children once asked at the dinner table, “How much money do you have, grandpa?” Tax resistance helps us to remove some of these barriers, and this is good.
• Sometimes our children can educate us, I should say, and provide simple insights to seemingly complex problems. Just as I was challenged by a young Friend to consider tax resistance 20 years ago, an IRS agent was once set on his heels by my daughter. During a lull in a long conversation about financial figures, Evelyn (only seven at the time) asked the agent, “Why do you make my daddy pay money for killing people?” The poor man shuffled his papers, turned beet-red, cleared his throat, and ended the meeting.

There were several responses to the March special issue on war tax resistance that were printed as letters-to-the-editor in the June issue:

• Jim Quigley wrote in to express his “admiration for the act of courage and faith represented by the war tax resisters.”
• Karl E. Buff wanted to “encourage Vinton Deming to continue to resist” in the hopes that “[w]ithout easy access to huge sums of money our government would surely have to curtail its war-making propensities.” He also put in a plug for the Tax Resisters Penalty Fund.
• Eddie Boudreau suggested that someone set up a “Conscience Fund” that people could contribute to and that would help defray the legal expenses of folks like Vinton Deming.
• Susan B. Chambers wrote in about her technique, which was to consult with a tax expert in order to get into the “zero tax bracket” and to contribute 30% of her income to charity. “I am pleased not to inconvenience my friends in taking this stand,” she wrote, in what I read as something of a rebuke to those resisters, like Deming, whose resistance becomes an agenda item for their employers (though she didn’t make this explicit).
• Robin Greenler wrote to support the Journal’s resistance to helping the IRS collect from Deming. “The decisions are neither easier nor less important on corporate levels than they are on a personal level.”
• Ben Richmond wrote that, for him, the question of whether a tax resister would just end up paying more in the end (with penalties and interest added to the unpaid tax) was the one he found the most difficult. “I have never found it satisfying to think that the point of the witness was simply to satisfy my personal need for moral purity.” But he looked into the early Quaker resistance to mandatory tithes for the establishment church and found that Quakers were willing to suffer having property seized worth several times the resisted tithes rather than pay voluntarily. He notes also that the Quakers eventually won that battle, which is to say there are no longer government-enforced tithes that everyone must pay to an established church. So, Richmond wrote, “I do not resist military taxes in the expectation or hope that I will succeed in keeping particular dollars from the hands of the military. But I do expect and hope that, insofar as my resistance is in obedience to the leadings of God, it will play its small part in breaking down the legitimacy of the warmaking machinery, as the early Friends broke down the legitimacy of taxation on behalf of the state church. I believe that in the end, Christ’s way is not only right but effective, and will prevail. Our sufferings are small in the overall scheme of things, so I don’t wish to be melodramatic. But, it seems to me that we cannot afford to follow Jesus for the short haul because in the short run, all that appears is the cross (which, after all is simply shorthand for suffering at the hands of a pagan empire). Yet, it is the cross which led to the resurrection.”

In March, the Friends World Committee for Consultation held their annual meeting. They decided to retire their “Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns” and establish in its place a “Committee on Peace Concerns.”

On 1 September 1987 Brian Willson had been run over by a train while blockading the Concord, California Naval Weapons Station in protest against American wars in Central America. A few days later, while recovering from his injuries, which included a fractured skull and the amputation of both of his lower legs, he issued a statement reasserting his continued commitment to nonviolent activism, which was reprinted in part in the March issue, and which included this section:

If we want peace, we can have it, but we’re going to have to pay for it… Our government can only continue its wars with the cooperation of our people, and that cooperation is with our taxes and with our bodies. Our actions and expressions are what are needed, not our whispers and quiet dinner conversation.

In the May issue, Jonathan Lutz gave an overview of the situation of Quakers in Scandinavia that included this parenthetical aside: “(To my knowledge, only one Scandinavian Friend is a war-tax resister, but then, the very different political climate must be taken into account.)”

That issue also included this historical note, which it sourced to “the newsletter of Friends World Committee for Consultation, Section of the Americas”:

According to a Canadian publication, For Conscience Sake, Russia was the first nation to establish legislation exempting pacifists from paying war taxes. “In 1820, thirty British citizens were invited by Czar Alexander Ⅰ to establish a cotton mill in Tamerfors, which is now in Finland. James Finlayson, the manager, submitted a petition to the Czar signed by the employees from Britain, some of whom were members of the Society of Friends. The petition asked for freedom of conscience and religion to practice their own religion, and for exemption from military service, war, church taxes, and the taking of oaths.” The Czar agreed to free Quaker manufacturers from taxes and support of the military.

This is the closest I’ve been able to get to a citation for this claim, and as you see, it’s third-hand and doesn’t refer to an original source. I have seen references to Finlayson’s getting a charter from the Czar to set up his mill that included some tax incentives, but I haven’t gotten any closer to finding a clear and authoritative indication that the Czar explicitly honored the conscientious objection to military taxation of Quakers at this mill.

A note in the June issue read:

John Stoner, executive secretary of Mennonite Central Committee, U.S. Peace Section, writes: “That little Scripture passage on rendering to God and Caesar has been misused for too long, giving people an excuse for going the wrong way on important questions of ultimate loyalty.” So John has created a lovely poster with the following words on it: “We are war tax resisters because we have discovered some doubt as to what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God, and have decided to give the benefit of the doubt to God.” The posters are available for ten cents per copy (a real bargain, Friends, we can learn something from our Mennonite friends about good prices).

An excerpt from Pearl C. Ewald’s letter to the IRS was included in the June issue. Excerpt: “my conscience will no longer allow me to cooperate with any plans by our government to prepare weapons for mass annihilation. I know that such weapons of war are under the condemnation of God. Therefore, I am not sending in an income tax report. I am prepared to accept the penalty for this action, and I will try to maintain a spirit of love and consideration toward you.”

The July issue brought an article by Eleanor Brooks Webb in which she described her family’s telephone tax resistance, and damned it with faint praise. Excerpts:

Since March of 1967, my husband and I have refused to pay the federal tax on our phone bill. This is an unheroic and inconsistent witness to our conviction that participation in war is wrong and that paying for war preparations and for others’ participation is likewise wrong. The singular virtue of this small witness is that it is something we can do.

…The payment of federal taxes was the place where other thinking people could not evade their own complicity. We had long been convinced by such reasoning as Milton Mayer’s: “If you want peace, why pay for war?”

But nonpayment of taxes was difficult. My husband was the breadwinner, and his salary was subject to withholding; the Internal Revenue Service usually owed us money at the end of the income-tax year. Nonpayment of tax was also illegal, and we’re very law-abiding people; we try to stay within the speed limit, and we calculate our income taxes scrupulously.

When I first heard of phone tax resistance, I thought it was a foolish idea. The pennies of the phone tax were so trivial against the amount of the income tax! But discussion in Congress about the re-imposition of the phone tax made it explicit that the reason for this “nuisance” tax was the cost of war — the war in Vietnam — and the tax was all tidily calculated for us on each phone bill. The penalties for so trivial a flouting of the Internal Revenue Service would not likely be unendurable. This was something we could do!

The Webbs wrote a letter to the phone company with each bill (sending a copy to the IRS) explaining their resistance. They tried to redirect the resisted taxes to the UN (but the UN turned down the donations), and then to the Friends Committee on National Legislation. The phone company responded appropriately, by “notifying the Internal Revenue Service of what we are doing and giving us credit for the unpaid tax.”

In the early years of this saga, IRS made some effort to collect the unpaid tax. We received notices of unpaid tax, and replied that we didn’t intend to pay it. We received notices of intent to collect, and several times liens were issued against my husband’s salary (for sums along the order of $4.73). We would get notices from the payroll supervisor that such a lien had been issued and they had no alternative but to pay it; and we would write back saying we were sorry they had been bothered with the matter, but we had no intention of paying the tax voluntarily, and we gave the reasons — it was another opportunity to say what our convictions were. A number of times we received notices of tax due that we couldn’t reconcile with our carefully kept records, and we would write IRS to that effect and ask for an explanation of the assessment. This often stopped them cold. At least once when we were due an income tax refund, a few dollars were deducted from it for “other unpaid taxes,” or something like that, which we assumed was derived from the unpaid phone tax. In the last few years we have heard nothing from IRS except an occasional, apparently random “notice of tax due,” which we wearily ignore.

She complained of the annoyance of all of the letter writing involved — “we have probably eight inches of file folders filled with telephone bills and carbon copies of letters.”

My husband and I aren’t consistent in our witness. We haven’t made the effort to get our MCI [long distance] service arranged so that we have control of paying the tax (instead of American Express, through which we are billed). I can’t handle any more letters!

But if this is all we have energy and grace to do, then I’m glad we’ve followed the leading this far.

The September issue brought news of a new war tax resistance organization — “the Colorado War Tax Information Project” — associated with the Rocky Mountain Peace Center. This project ran an alternative fund that redirected $3,500 in war taxes to social programs between 1986 and 1987. An obituary notice for Louise Benckenstein Griffiths in the same issue noted that she “refused to pay federal income tax toward American military efforts.”

War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1989

There were several references to tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1989, but many of them referred to some other time or country or religious denomination, and those that referred to American Quakers in the here-and-now lacked much urgency or enthusiasm.

Journal editor Vinton Deming marked the passing of Colin Bell in his opening editorial in the February issue, and noted:

One spring at yearly meeting he spoke very movingly in support of young Friends faced with the draft. He challenged some of us over draft age to consider that not only our young people were being drafted; our federal taxes were being conscripted for the war as well!

I visited him once at Davis House in Washington with a friend whose house was threatened with IRS seizure for unpaid war taxes. Colin was keenly interested, shared a generous amount of time from his busy schedule, and was very supportive. As we left he walked us to our car. I still hear the cheerful sound of his words (and see the twinkle in his eye) as he leaned in the car window, shook our hands, and said, “Good bye, Friends. Take care of your spirit!”

In a letter-to-the-editor in the September issue, Carole Hope Depp split hairs over whether or not war tax resistance is civil disobedience — claiming that since the Constitution, the highest law in the land, protects freedom of religion, then a law that purports to force people to violate their religious scruples by paying for war must be void, and so those who resist it are not being disobedient at all.

In the October issue, Paul Zorn took issue with “some traditional Quaker attiudes and institutions,” including war tax resistance, as representing “an attitude that somehow Quakers are different from the bulk of society, and that much of our institutional effort should go to maintaining that difference… [and] that maintaining certain aspects of our uniqueness is more important than finding a larger consensus in society.” Excerpt:

…Philadelphia Yearly Meeting is resisting an IRS levy on salaries of two employees to recover unpaid federal taxes because those funds would be used for military purposes. The more I have talked with individuals and attended large and small groups, both in my monthly meeting and in the yearly meeting’s Representative Meeting, the more troubled I am with the policy, although I realize it has been fashioned with much care and concern for the Spirit over 15 years or more.

As I understand it, a tax refusal contest with the federal government usually ends with the government getting the money. The main result of refusing taxes is to make a public witness, and to ease a conscience that is troubled by voluntarily supporting the military. I am troubled that part of the public witness consists of breaking the law and attempting to justify it, especially when tax refusal is as likely to reduce funds for low-cost housing, etc., as it is to reduce funds for the military. Regarding voluntary support of the military, I think it is part of the irony, tragedy, or reality of modern life that despite our best efforts, institutions to which we belong act on our behalf in ways that we consider wrong, evil, or disastrous. At the present time, we cannot effectively separate ourselves from all such institutions, and we would lose some of our humanity if we did.

He suggested that Friends consider “rethinking how much corporate energy we should put into tax refusal as an aspect of our peace testimony” and instead “trying to deal directly with some of the major problems of society rather than trying to insulate ourselves from them.”

The October issue also described the war tax resistance of Sharon Bienert, who wrote letters to the IRS, agitated for a legal peace tax fund, and meanwhile split her resisted taxes between a Quaker-run peace tax fund and an escrow account. That issue also mentioned that war tax resistance was “strongly supported” by the Lafayette, Indiana, Mennonite Fellowship. Fellowship member Ken Nagele redirected a military-percentage of his income taxes to a low-income loan program; Mary Ann Zoeller redirected hers to Amnesty International; other families have donated income to the church to keep their income low and resist taxes that way.

That issue also brought news of a peace tax fund legalization campaign in Australia which “would allow conscientious objectors to pay 10 percent of their income taxes into a fund to be used for nonmilitary purposes” but which had only gained the support of eight of the 76 Australian Senators thus far.

In the November issue, Carolyn Stevens reviewed two books published by the Friends World Committee for Consultation’s Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns: Handbook on Military Taxes & Conscience and Fear God & Honor the Emperor which were collaborative efforts edited by Linda Coffin, Peter Goldberger, Robert Hull, and J.E. McNeil.

The first of these books concerned “the history of military tax refusal among Friends and biblical teachings on the subject[,]… personal stories of military tax resisters, one about international war tax refusal campaigns, and another that chronicles efforts to enact Peace Tax Fund legislation. The book concludes with a series of study questions and a resource list.”

The second “tackles the difficult question of how religious employers may be called to corporate witness of military tax refusal, either organizationally or in support of staff members who are conscientious objectors. There is a survey of minutes, resolutions, and guidelines adopted by church bodies, Quaker and otherwise. A chapter on legalities, co-authored by Peter Goldberger and J.E. McNeil, calmly raises and responds to difficulties, real and imagined, that employers face when supporting a witness against military taxes. Robert Hull’s chapter on discernment blends a secular management perspective with traditional religious concerns.”

Stevens was enthusiastic about the first book (a “high level of sincerity and scholarship [that] gives us wonderful assistance”), less so about the second, which she described as “awkward,” “clumsy,” and “defensive” though “rich in necessary information.”

The December issue brought an update on Canadian war tax resister Jerilynn Prior’s test case in which she was trying to get conscientious objection to military taxation legalized under the freedom of conscience portion of the (relatively) new Canadian Constitution. She wasn’t having any luck in the courts. The article claimed that “[m]ore than 500 Canadians withhold the portion of their federal taxes that would otherwise go toward military expenditures. Many instead allocate the money to Conscience Canada’s Peace Tax Fund.”

Beit Sahour

The story of the nonviolent tax resistance campaign against the Israeli military occupation of Palestine in Beit Sahour got some coverage in the Journal. Editor Vinton Deming wrote an article for the July issue that was hopefully subtitled: “Nonviolent strategies may help to bring an end to the Israeli occupation.” It was based on his conversations with Mubarak Awad and Nancy Nye.

Awad founded the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence in 1985 and published a blueprint for nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation. “At first, people thought we were a bit crazy, that perhaps I had come back from my time in the U.S. with some strange notions. We started with just five people. We would sometimes go to a public place and carry a sign that said ‘Down With the Occupation,’ or, ‘Don’t Pay Taxes.’ People at first would laugh and make fun of us.”

The Center later advocated a set of tactics, including “a boycott among the Arab population of all Israeli-made products; refusal to pay taxes or to work for Israelis; insistence that all mail be addressed to people by using the Palestinian language, not Hebrew; and the initiation of many self-help projects.”

Beit Sahour was an example of where Palestinians decided to try out some of these ideas in service of the intifada. “People there,” said Mubarak, “to show their support for the uprising, decided they would refuse to pay taxes to Israeli authorities — no taxes at all. The Israelis wanted to punish them so they came and confiscated the ID cards of a number of the business men.”

So what was the community’s response? “Well,” Mubarak continues, “without your ID card you are stuck, you cannot go any place. When people in the village heard about this, they said, ‘If they are going to take the ID cards of these businessmen, we are going to turn in our ID cards too.’ And they did. So the Israelis called a curfew in the village and they said, ‘Here, please take your ID cards;’ they gave them all back!”

And the news of this incident spread to other communities? “Yes,” Mubarak says, “everybody began thinking it was a good idea to do it. You say, ‘OK, I’m not going to hurt the Israelis, but this is what I’m going to do.’ And people will get together and say, ‘Let’s do it.’ Palestinians are what I would call ‘trial and error’ in their approach. Like, if this works, well, we’ll try it and continue to do it; if it doesn’t, it’s all right, we’ll do something else!”

This is the thirty-fourth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today we enter the late 1980s.

The 25 February 1988 edition again announced the “Taxes for Peace” fund that had been established by the MCC Peace Section (U.S.) to coordinate war tax redirection.

In 1988 the fund would be redirecting taxes to “the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund… [which] seeks to enact the U.S. Peace Tax Fund Bill… to give those conscientiously opposed to war a way to pay 100 percent of their taxes, with the military percentage going to a separate fund for peace-enhancing programs.”

In 1987 about $4,000 was contributed to the U.S. Peace Section Taxes for Peace fund. Those monies helped support the Lancaster County Peacework Alternatives project. In other years peace-related projects in places such as Laos and Guatemala have received funds.

MCC U.S. Peace Section is also offering an information packet on military tax opposition that contains varying theological positions on the war tax issue, and materials about tax laws and legal concerns for the tax resister.

The 8 March 1988 issue brought this news:

The General Board of Friends United Meeting has adopted a policy of not withholding the federal withholding tax of employees who are conscientious objectors to paying taxes used for military purposes. The General Conference Mennonite Church adopted a similar policy in 1983. On the current staff, said general secretary Steven Main, are three conscientious objectors to paying war taxes. The policy requires employees who want to participate in the witness of military tax refusal to first go through a “clearness process” with their Meeting or church community.

That issue also reprinted excerpts from the letter Ethel S. and Henry A. Fast sent to the IRS:

I was a conscientious objector to war in World War Ⅰ. So I reported this to the military camp office, informing them I could not participate in regular military training. I asked them to assign me to service in a base hospital designed for overseas patients. They respected my claim of conscience and gave me an opportunity to serve face and stomach victims of war. Later… they handed me an “honorable discharge” card. I still have this card.

Can you now extend to me, as a person of 92 years, and to my spouse, the same sensitive respect for our claims of conscience? We love our country and we respect our government. And we do not hesitate to pay taxes for orderly affairs and services of government.

But we have become deeply troubled over the vastly disproportionate part of our federal income tax being allocated to the building up of a military force and arsenal. This is entirely out of proportion to the huge debt and the staggering needs among the poor, the sick, the aged and the unemployed.

Our conscience can no longer endure this. So we have decided to withhold 37 percent of this year’s (1986) federal income tax liability (namely, the 37 percent used in the present military build-up program). We want to send this as a donation to the Commission on Home Ministries… [which reaches out] to the poor, the unemployed, the underprivileged and the many people hurt and adrift by wars…

In World War Ⅰ the government recognized my concern of conscience. Can you grant us this kind of courtesy for our older years?

The 12 April 1988 edition noted:

Six Mennonite pastors who have refused to pay some or all of their military taxes were interviewed in the November 1987 issue of ACTS (Another Church Tries Something), published by the Commission on Home Ministries. Donald Kaufman of Bethel College Church, North Newton, Kan., John Gaeddert of First Church, Halstead, Kan., S. Roy Kaufman of Science Ridge Church, Sterling, Ill., Ronald Krehbiel of Salem Church, Freeman, S.D., Mark Weidner of First Church, Bluffton, Ohio, and Dorothy Nickel Friesen of Manhattan (Kan.) Fellowship told of how they decided to resist war taxes, how they involved church members in the decision and how their action has affected others.

The New Call to Peacemaking initiative and the Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns sponsored a gathering of leaders from the traditional peace churches in February 1988 to discuss what to do about the dilemma of such churches withholding taxes for the government from the salaries of their employees who wanted to resist paying war taxes. Paul Schrag wrote up an article on the meeting that was reprinted in the 24 May 1988 edition of The Mennonite. Excerpts:

The question of how church organizations can help their employees follow their consciences — and how to deal with the risks involved for both employees and employers — were the issues that the 36 Mennonites, Brethren and Quakers struggled with.

The church leaders, organizational representatives and lawyers affirmed their support for individual military tax resisters and for efforts to seek a legislative solution by working toward passage of the U.S. Peace Tax Fund bill in Congress.

They agreed to organize a peace church leadership group to go to Washington sometime in the future to support the peace tax bill and to express concerns about tax withholding. They also agreed to help each other by filing friend-of-the-court briefs if tax resisters are prosecuted and by sharing the cost of tax resistance penalties.

“You may think the world will little note nor long remember what has happened here,” said Marian Franz, director of the U.S. Peace Tax Fund. “But I regard it as a historic meeting.

“The decision to end the human race does not belong to Caesar. Therefore, tax dollars that wrestle that decision out of the hands of God do not either.”

Participants in the meeting included both military tax resisters and people who would not engage in tax resistance themselves but support those who do.

People from churches that have policies of breaking the law by not withholding the federal taxes of employees who oppose paying military taxes shared their experiences with people from churches considering adopting such a policy. The General Conference Mennonite Church and two Quaker groups are in the first category. The Mennonite Church is in the second.

MC leaders, including moderator James Lapp and moderator-elect George Brunk Ⅲ, came to the meeting to explore church policy options on military tax withholding. MC general assembly delegates asked the church last July to develop a policy recommendation on the issue for consideration at Normal ’89.

“This roots us in a larger movement,” Lapp said of the meeting. “It gives us ideas and handles about how other people have addressed it. We don’t have to start from ground zero.”

The MC General Board plans to formulate questions about tax withholding for congregations to discuss. It will prepare a recommendation next year based on congregations’ responses.

Robert Hull, GC secretary for peace and justice, said it was frustrating that many members of historic peace churches are not willing to witness against financial participation in preparing for war, although they are opposed to physical participation in war.

Some said it was disappointing that so many people are unwilling to follow their consciences until the government, through the Peace Tax Fund, might allow them to do so legally.

One quoted Gandhi: “We have stooped so low that we fancy it our duty to do whatever the law requires.”

“Do we want our righteousness without a price?” asked Ray Gingerich, a professor at Eastern Mennonite College, Harrisonburg, Va.

When a church or organization decides to honor employees’ requests not to withhold their federal income tax, it assumes serious risks. Any “responsible person” who willfully fails to withhold an employee’s taxes theoretically could be punished with a prison sentence and a $250,000 fine. An organization could be fined $500,000.

But such penalties have never been imposed on legitimate religious organizations, nor are they likely to be, said two lawyers at the meeting. The usual Internal Revenue Service response to war tax resistance is to take the amount of tax owed, plus a 5 percent penalty and interest, from the employee’s bank account.

The IRS has not taken even this action against the four GC employees who are not having their taxes withheld. All GC personnel who could be subject to penalties have agreed to accept the risk.

The Friends World Committee for Consultation, which has had a non-withholding policy since 1982, has had tax money seized, plus interest and penalties, from its resisters’ bank accounts. The Friends United Meeting adopted a non-withholding policy last October. The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends will decide in March whether it should have such a policy.

Charles Boyer of the Church of the Brethren said he would use the input from the meeting to work toward helping develop a denominational policy on tax resistance.

An even more basic issue than war tax resistance arose concerning tax-withholding laws. Some compared the church’s tax-collecting role to that of the biblical publicans.

“I have a growing dis-ease that the church is a tax collector for the government, regardless of what the money is used for,” said Vern Preheim, GC general secretary.

Participants made suggestions for improvements on a draft of “A Manual on Military Tax Withholding for Religious Employers,” written by Hull, Linda Coffin of the Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns and lawyers Peter Goldberger and J.E. McNeil, who both gave legal advice at the meeting. The manual is expected to be available later this year.

That book’s availability would be announced in the 22 November edition.

Another concern I have with promotion of the Peace Tax Fund law is that in order to tempt legislators to support it, there is a tendency to defang war tax objection and make it less threatening to the government. Take for example this description of Marian Franz’s testimony before a House committee reviewing the tax code: “Franz said that the U.S. Peace Tax Fund Bill would alleviate a persistent burden on the IRS and permit these citizens [conscientious objectors] to pay their full share of tax without violation of religious conscience.” All we want to do is pay our taxes and not cause any trouble for the IRS — is that really the best way to speak truth to power and challenge militarism?

The 27 September 1988 edition brought this news:

The Internal Revenue Service filed two suits against a Quaker group in Pennsylvania because the organization refused to attach the wages of two employees who have withheld part of their income taxes as a conscientious protest against military spending, Religious News Service reported. The lawsuits against the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends seek $16,836 in connection with federal taxes not paid by William V. Grassie and David A. Falls. The Quakers sent a letter to the IRS saying neither Grassie nor Falls is “a tax evader but a conscientious taxpayer who is conscientiously refusing payment of the military portion of his taxes.”

This is the twenty-ninth 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 1988 the Mennonite Church danced right up to the brink of committing to corporate war tax resistance, as other church bodies around them considered their own similar actions.

The traditionalists were increasingly restive, though. For example, in the 12 January 1988 issue, a letter to the editor from Robert L. Beiler took the traditional Romans 13 line and then went on to pointedly ask why war tax resisting Mennonites don’t seem to make any noise about taxpayer-funded abortions — and anyway the United States is a great country and we should be happy to pay taxes here.

The 19 January 1988 issue reported on how another Christian group was dealing with war tax resisters in the fold:

Quaker denomination supports staff war-tax witness

The General Board of Friends United Meeting — a Quaker denomination based in Richmond, Ind. — has adopted a policy of not withholding the federal taxes of employees who are conscientious objectors to paying taxes used for military purposes. This means the denomination is willing to violate Internal Revenue Service tax regulations in order to support the conscience of its employees.

The policy requires employees who desire to participate in the witness of military tax refusal to first participate in a “clearness process” with their local congregation. They are encouraged to compute the military percentage of their income tax, using the figures of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, and voluntarily deposit that sum in a special denominational account held for that purpose. The remainder would be submitted to the IRS.

In taking this action. Friends United Meeting is pursuing a long Quaker tradition of recognizing all outward warfare to be inconsistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ. It joins one other denomination in taking this action — the General Conference Mennonite Church. Friends United Meeting is also seeking legislative remedy through the U.S. Peace Tax Fund bill in Congress. This legislation would permit tax payers morally opposed to war to have the military part of their taxes allocated to peacemaking.

Representatives of several “traditional peace church” denominations met to try to swap ideas about how to cope with the war tax resistance issue (Paul Schrag reporting):

Historic peace churches tackle thorny issue of tax withholding

Praying for peace while paying for war is a contradiction that historic peace churches must oppose by speaking out and taking action, representatives of those churches agreed at a consultation Feb. 15–17 in Richmond, Ind. For some people, war tax resistance — refusing to pay the portion of one’s taxes that goes to the military — is a moral imperative. Their consciences will not allow them to help pay for machine guns and nuclear bombs.

The question of how church organizations can help their employees follow their consciences — and how to deal with the risks involved for both employees and employers — were the issues that nearly 40 Mennonites, Brethren, and Quakers struggled with at the meeting.

The church leaders, agency representatives, and lawyers affirmed their support for individual military tax resisters and for efforts to seek a legislative solution by working toward passage of the Peace Tax Fund Bill in the U.S. Congress.

They agreed to organize a peace church leadership group to go to Washington sometime in the future to support the peace tax bill and to express concerns about tax withholding. They also agreed to help each other by filing friend-of-the-court briefs if tax resisters are prosecuted and by sharing the cost of tax resistance penalties, if necessary.

“You may think the world will little note nor long remember what has happened here,” said Marian Franz, a Mennonite who is executive director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund. “But I regard it as a historic meeting.”

People from churches that have policies of breaking the law by not withholding the federal taxes of employees who oppose paying military taxes shared their experiences with people from churches considering adopting such a policy. The General Conference Mennonite Church and two Quaker groups are in the first category. The Mennonite Church is in the second.

Mennonite Church leaders, including Executive Secretary James Lapp and Moderator-Elect George Brunk Ⅲ, came to the meeting to explore church policy options on military tax withholding. The General Assembly of the Mennonite Church asked the General Board last July to develop a recommendation on the issue for consideration at the next General Assembly in 1989.

“This roots us in a larger movement,” Lapp said of the meeting. “It gives us ideas and handles about how other people have addressed it. We don’t have to start from ground zero.” General Board plans to formulate questions about tax withholding for congregations to discuss. It will prepare its 1989 recommendation based on congregations’ responses.

The meeting, held at Quaker Hill Conference Center, took place in an atmosphere of excitement generated by a gathering of people from different traditions who share a vision. In the long and lively discussions, participants challenged each other and their churches to recommit themselves to active peacemaking and prophetic witnessing on the war tax issue.

Robert Hull, peace/justice secretary for the General Conference Mennonite Church, said it was frustrating that many members of historic peace churches are not willing to witness against financial participation in preparing for war although they are opposed to physical participation in war.

When a church or organization decides to honor employees’ requests not to withhold their federal income tax, it assumes serious risks. Any “responsible person” who willfully fails to withhold an employee’s taxes theoretically could be punished with a prison sentence and a $250,000 fine. An organization could be fined $500,000.

But such penalties have never been imposed on legitimate religious organizations, nor are they likely to be, said two lawyers at the meeting. The usual Internal Revenue Service response to war tax resistance is to take the amount of tax owed, plus a 5 percent penalty and interest, from the employee’s bank account.

IRS has not taken even this action against the four GC employees who are not having their taxes withheld. They pay the nonmilitary portion of their taxes themselves and deposit the 53 percent that would have gone to the military in a designated account. IRS has not touched that account since it was established after GC delegates approved the policy in 1983. All GC personnel who could be subject to penalties have agreed to accept the risk.

The Friends World Committee for Consultation, which has had a nonwithholding policy since 1982, has had tax money seized, plus interest and penalties, from its resisters’ bank accounts. The Friends United Meeting adopted a nonwithholding policy last October. The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends will decide in March whether it should have such a policy. Charles Boyer of the Church of the Brethren said he would use the input from the meeting to work toward helping his denomination develop a policy on tax resistance.

Participants made suggestions for improvements on a draft of “A Manual on Military Tax Withholding for Religious Employers” written by Hull, Linda Coffin of the Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns, and lawyers Peter Goldberger and J.E. McNeil. The manual is expected to be available later this year.

The consultation was sponsored by the Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns and New Call to Peacemaking. The latter is a cooperative peace organization of the historic peace churches. New Call to Peacemaking plans to sponsor a military tax withholding meeting for a wider range of church groups sometime in the future.

Whether or not military tax resistance “works,” participants agreed that people’s moral imperative to follow their consciences must be respected. “No conscientious objector ever stopped a conflict,” said William Strong, a Quaker representative. “But they had to explain what they did, and the vision was kept alive, and those ripples — you don’t know where they stop.

The Mennonite Church was playing catch up with their cousins the General Conference Mennonite Church when it came to deciding how to react to employees who were conscientious objectors to military taxation, but now it was their turn to begin the process. From the 1 March 1988 issue:

General Board considers issue of church agency tax withholding

As the result of a General Assembly mandate last July at Purdue 87, Mennonite Church General Board has initiated a plan to consider church agency tax withholding. The General Assembly action calls for General Board to bring to the 1989 assembly a proposal for how the church should respond to questions of conscientious objection to the payment of military taxes and the institutional withholding of the military portion of employees’ income taxes.

Steps in the consideration process, as approved at the board’s November meeting, began in February with participation in the interdenominational Employers Tax Withholding Consultation in Richmond, Ind. Then a working document, clarifying the issues and enumerating possible responses, will be prepared for General Board study.

Board members will devote a day to the issue prior to their regular April meeting. The discernment process will continue as revised copies of the working document are available for conference and congregational study between April 1988 and March 1989.

A summary of conference responses will be included in the General Board docket in April 1989, when the board will develop a recommendation to be presented for General Assembly action in August 1989.

The 29 March 1988 issue noted that the “first major public event” of the Peace and Justice Center at Stirling Ave. Mennonite Church in Kitchener, Ont. “was a… seminar to explore alternatives to paying taxes for military purposes.”

In a letter to the editor in the 22 March 1988 issue, Jurgen Brauer wrote that after reading Tolstoy he came to feel that “it is high time that the issue of tax withholding (or redirecting) becomes the major issue of the church.”

The “Taxes for Peace” fund gave its annual update in the 29 March 1988 issue. They’d decided to donate all of the taxes redirected through the fund to the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund that year, and announced that the previous year they’d redirected about $4,000 to “the Lancaster County, Pa., Peacework Alternatives project.”

A note in the 5 April 1988 issue:

Poster on war tax resistance from Mennonite Central Committee. The words on the poster are by John Stoner: “We are war tax resisters because we have discovered some doubt as to what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God, and have decided to give the benefit of the doubt to God.” It is available from MCC at…

The General Board of the Mennonite Church met in April 1988:

General Board takes step in non-withholding of war taxes

In a decision that will lead to breaking the law if approved by the General Assembly next year, the General Board of the Mennonite Church has recommended that war taxes not be withheld from the paychecks of denominational employees who request that. The 32-member board passed the recommendation unanimously, with a few abstentions.

The action, which came during the board’s Apr. 6–9 meeting in Kitchener, Ont., was a long-awaited response to several people at church agencies and schools who, because of conscience, do not want to pay the portion of their taxes — about 50 percent in the United States — that goes to the military. It was also a response to an impatient 1987 General Assembly that instructed General Board to take a stand on the issue.

“This has been an area we have been reluctant to move in,” said General Board executive secretary Jim Lapp in introducing the matter. Ed Metzler, the denomination’s peace and social concerns secretary, said the main reasons for taking the non-withholding action are to allow individual expressions of conscience and to witness against militarism. “But is this the best way to witness against militarism?” asked Tim Burkholder of Northwest Conference. Other board members wondered if the church corporately should break the law to satisfy the consciences of a few individuals.

The board members, meeting at Pioneer Park Christian Fellowship, gathered a day earlier than usual to take up the war tax matter. Metzler arranged for a variety of speakers to address the subject, including two persons who have requested non-withholding — Chris Longenecker of Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions and Carman Albrecht of Mennonite Central Committee Ontario.

John Stoner, executive secretary of Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Peace Section, delivered a ringing “call for courage” based on the book of Revelation. “It is unthinkable that John the Revelator would not see, in our time and place, the war tax demands of Western democratic militaristic capitalism as a challenge to our faithfulness to the witness of Jesus,” he said.

Bob Hull, peace/justice secretary for the General Conference Mennonite Church, explained the lengthy process that led to his denomination’s 1983 decision to honor requests for non-withholding. It included a four-year effort to explore all legal channels — legislative, judicial, administrative — for avoiding the payment of war taxes. Finally, at their convention in Bethlehem, Pa., 72 percent of the GC delegates voted to defy the law — the first denomination to do so. (Several Quaker groups have since done the same.) To date, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service has not moved against the GC Church.

In the discussion that followed, several people argued that consistent conscientious objection to war should include a refusal to fight as well as to pay for fighting. Others wondered why the Mennonite Church — and other denominations — agreed so easily to a 1943 law in the U.S. (and earlier in Canada) that required them to withhold taxes from employees’ wages, thus putting the church in the role of tax collector for the government.

For a while it looked like the board members might postpone action on the issue or pass the buck to the 22 conferences of the Mennonite Church. But Moderator Ralph Lebold reminded them of their instructions from General Assembly, and Dean Swartzendruber of Iowa-Nebraska Conference urged the board to “decide here today.”

In the end, the decision was made after much deliberation and considerable rewriting of the proposed action. In addition to honoring requests for non-withholding, it includes support for the Peace Tax Fund bill in the U.S. Congress that would provide conscientious objection to war taxes and a call for “serious attention” to the question of the church as tax collector.

The recommendation will now go to the conferences for review. A year from now, General Board will take the responses from the conferences and shape a final recommendation for submission to the 1989 General Assembly. The board members agreed that the recommendation will be introduced in person to the leaders of each conference by a denominational staff person.

Gospel Herald kept readers up on the news of other denominations struggling with the same issue (26 April 1988):

Quakers agree to aid workers who refuse to pay “military” taxes

Philadelphia-area Quakers took a historic step recently to aid employees who were opposed to paying taxes for war purposes. The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, in its 308^th annual session, agreed to withhold but not forward to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service the estimated military portion of its employees’ federal income taxes. This money will be set aside in a special fund and paid to IRS with interest when there is assurance the money will not go for military spending.

Currently the organization has 42 employees, of which an average of seven are tax resisters at any time. The decision to establish the set-aside fund for war tax resisters augments the 1975 decision to refuse cooperation with IRS levies on salaries of war tax resisters employed by the Yearly Meeting. The policies could make the group liable for sizable fines and penalties for breaking federal law. The Yearly Meeting also could incur liability for employees’ unpaid taxes.

And some Mennonite congregations were taking stands on their own (31 May 1988, Cindy Hines Kurfman reporting):

Indiana congregation supports its members who don’t pay “war taxes”

War-tax resistance is an important subject at Lafayette (Ind.) Mennonite Fellowship — important enough that members commit themselves to “support for those who, for reason of conscience, resist ‘war tax’ payment.”

To Ken Nagele, who began refusing to pay a portion of his taxes in 1982, war-tax resistance originally meant not paying “the percentage associated with nuclear weapons.” He now refuses to pay for “all current and past military spending,” but still pays the portion that benefits veterans in the belief that he is “helping those scarred by killing.”

Nagele uses a Friends Committee on National Legislation document each year to determine how much he will withhold. This year the figure is 53.1 percent. The refused portion will be deposited in the Near Eastside Community Federal Credit Union of Indianapolis. This community-development credit union makes loans to low-income persons and small businesses in an economically depressed portion of the city.

Another member, Mary Ann Zoeller, is refusing to pay war taxes for the first time. “As a Christian, I knew I could not, in good conscience, support the killing of others,” she says. “Yet the existing tax laws require me to do just this, by asking me to pay taxes that finance military services. Following Christ’s teachings of love of his persecutors, even to the loss of life, I have been led to question my support of our military.” Zoeller sends the war-tax portion to Amnesty International, a human rights organization.

Alternative methods of war-tax resistance are also demonstrated by several families in the Lafayette congregation. One family, whose income is below the taxable level, has written a letter to their tax commissioner since 1980 which explains their belief that paying for war is a sin. Another couple keeps their payment to a minimum by following the example of their parents; live simply and give a large percentage of income to the church.

Another example (7 June 1988):

A Virginia congregation has decided to officially support its members who refuse to pay the military portion of their taxes. Community Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg, Va., has 20 members who illegally withhold some of their tax money as an act of conscientious objection to war taxes or are seriously considering it. “The congregation’s decision grew out of the desire and concern of a few of us that our action be more than the isolated action of individual conscience,” said Orval Gingrich, one of the 20. The congregation is encouraging all its members to include letters of protest with their income tax returns and has notified Internal Revenue Service that it fully supports its members who don’t pay war taxes.

By June 1988 it was time for another backlash letter to the editor. Titus Martin hit the predictable Romans 13 notes and warned readers against relying on their consciences when conscience and scripture disagree. As a compromise he suggested that readers use charitable deductions rather than civil disobedience to lower their taxes.

Even the Presbyterians were getting in on the tax resistance act, according to this 19 July 1988 news brief:

The document describes obedience to civil authority as normative for Christians but asks the denomination to set up a special fund to support Presbyterians who suffer financial losses because of a stance of resistance. The paper argues that withholding taxes to protest U.S. military policy is proper under certain circumstances. Such activists are entitled to emotional support from the church, the paper says.

The IRS went on the offensive against the Philadelphia Yearly meeting, which may have been frightening news for a Mennonite Church which was contemplating taking a similar stand (18 October 1988):

Employees’ tax protest prompts IRS lawsuit against Quakers

The Internal Revenue Service has filed two suits against a Quaker group in Pennsylvania because the organization has refused to attach the wages of two employees who have withheld part of their income taxes as a conscientious protest against military spending. The lawsuits against the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends seek $17,000 in connection with federal taxes that were not paid by William Grassie and David Falls. IRS said it takes such action against the employer of anyone who fails to pay taxes on the ground that salaries are property that can be levied by the government in such cases.

Finally, a note in the 20 December 1988 issue read:

A new resource is available on the war-tax issue for Mennonite Church conferences — and others — that are currently considering whether church institutions should be instructed to not withhold taxes from the wages of employees who express conscientious objection to the military portion of their taxes. Conferences are to submit their counsel to General Board before April in preparation for a proposal to General Assembly at Normal 89. The resource is a just-published book called Fear God and Honor the Emperor: A Manual on Military Tax Withholding for Religious Employers. Each purchaser of the book will be on a mailing list to receive future updates on the subject. The book is available at a special price of $11 from Mennonite Board of Congregational Ministries…