’s first article about war tax resisters has gone out over the wires — a little earlier than usual, I think, thanks to Deena Gudzer, of Columbia University’s journalism department.
It’s got some quotes from tax resisters Ed Hedemann, Peter Goldberger, Robin Harper, Karl Meyer, and Dennis Dalton, a dissent from an activist who doesn’t see much point in war tax resistance, and some beside-the-point boilerplate rebuttalizing from an IRS spokesman.
More tax resistance news is trickling in during .
The Brooklyn Eagle quotes war tax resisters Ed Hedemann, Robin Harper, and Karl Meyer.
Hedemann… has not paid any federal income tax and has no intention of starting now.
The 62-year-old, mild-mannered pacifist says he owes the government $70,000. This sum is worth several cluster bombs at $14,000 each and dozens of $9 hand grenades, but instead, he has donated the money to Global Exchange, American Friends Service Committee and other humanitarian efforts. Hedemann says he sleeps better knowing his tax dollars are being redirected to peaceful causes. “I run a risk of getting in trouble for not paying my taxes, but not as big a risk as the people of Iraq will suffer if I do pay,” said Hedemann, the author of War Tax Resistance: A Guide to Withholding Your Support from the Military.
The antiwar activist is so dedicated to his cause that he lives on the brink of poverty; he doesn’t own a home, car or bank account for fear the IRS will seize his assets. “I don’t want to finance this country’s war-making machine,” Hedemann said.
Elsewhere: In South Bend, Indiana, a dozen people held signs and distributed War Resisters League pie charts to last-minute filers at the post office. And in Austin, Texas, the groups Austin Conscientious Objectors to Military Taxation and CodePink Austin joined up at the downtown post office to hold signs and hand out flyers about military spending and taxes.
In Portland, Oregon, CodePink and the War Resisters League were joined by Physicians for Social Responsibility and the American Friends Service Committee to make that much more upsetting for taxpayers.
On in Pittsburgh, the Raging Grannies, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and the American Friends Service Committee “sang and distributed 400 ‘where your tax money really goes’ leaflets outside the Squirrel Hill post office.”
The Occupation Project in St. Louis, Missouri held up large orange “Caution Signs” at the post office on :
The first sign will say: “Caution, War Tax Payment Zone”. The next will read “Pause before you Pay for”. And the then the following signs will read, “House to House Searches”, “Torture”, “Hundreds of Thousand of Refugees”, “Over 3200 U.S. Military Dead”, “Over 600,000 Iraqi Dead”.
Five protesters in sackcloth and ashes were arrested at the Chicago federal building on .
More than thirty protesters were arrested while trying to storm the barricades surrounding the front entrance to the IRS headquarters in Washington, D.C.
“Just as military recruiters supply bodies for the war, the IRS supplies the funding,” stated New York City WRL organizer Ed Hedemann. “So, I’m doing my part in disrupting that relentless flow of money by standing in front of the IRS entrance and by refusing to send my taxes to the IRS.”
Among the organizations sponsoring this part of the protests commemorating were NWTRCC, War Resisters League, United for Peace & Justice, and Code Pink.
And speaking of Code Pink, they continue to draw new tax resisters to sign up for their Don’t Buy Bush’s War campaign. Some of the latest signers gave the following “signing statements:”
From the Afro American:
Tax resisters give money to agency
Philadelphia — Several hundred tax resisters, who have refused to pay their taxes as a protest against government military spending, turned over their tax money to a Roman Catholic agency which runs a soup kitchen for the poor at a ceremony in Philadelphia .
The event at St. John’s Hospice, 13th and Race Sts, is part of a war tax resisters’ witness and rally which started at noon at City Hall West, Philadelphia.
The funds were received by Brother Stanley O’Neil. The hospice is run by the Brothers of the Good Shepherd.
Following the presentation at the Hospice rally participants met with Senators Arlen Specter and John Heinz at their offices in the Federal Building, 6th and Arch Sts, Philadelphia, to petition for the transfer of military taxes to peaceful purposes.
The rally is being organized by the War Tax Concerns Committee of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).
Bill Strong, of the committee staff, said a growing number of Quakers and other Philadelphians are refusing to pay their taxes through a variety of methods including: non-payment of the military portion (34 percent of income taxes goes for current military spending), non-payment of the three per cent “military tax” levied on phone bills, adaptation to a simpler life style below the taxable level, and general protest activities.
Speakers at the rally included Peggy Hasbrouck, of the Brandywine Peace Community; Robin Harper, of Pendle Hill, a tax refuser for the past 19 years; Lillian Willoughby, a founder of the Movement for a New Society, a social change agency based in Philadelphia; Joe Volk, peace education secretary of the American Friends Service Committee and Father Paul Washington, Episcopal Church of the Advocate, Philadelphia. The program will include music by several high school choral groups.
For a while, it seems, Bill Strong was the Philadelphia go-to guy for quotes about Quaker War Tax Resistance. Here’s another article, from that confusedly refers to war tax resistance as a modern invention among Quakers rather than an old tradition being rediscovered after nearly a century of near-dormancy:
Quakers consider withholding taxes to protest arms
Philadelphia — For three centuries, Quakers have refused to go to war. Now, an increasing number of them are considering whether they also should refuse to help pay the country’s military bills.
Tax resistance — withholding all or part of tax payments as a protest against military spending — will be the central topic of discussion among Quakers gathered at the Friends Meeting House here for the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.
The program for the yearly meeting, which began and concludes , lists tax resistance as a “burning concern” for Quakers to consider.
A grass-roots interest in tax resistance has developed among Quakers in the 100 monthly meetings — local Quaker congregations — in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland that make up the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, according to William Strong of the yearly meeting’s War Tax Concerns Committee.
The issue was one of three main topics of concern suggested by the monthly meetings for this year’s agenda, said Betty Balderston of the yearly meeting’s Committee on Aging.
Some Quakers “never have seen their own financial involvement” in war, even though they might have worked for peace, said Strong, a former bank trust officer.
Historically, the burden of opposing war has fallen on young Quaker men who refuse to fight, Strong said. Tax resistance spreads the responsibility to other Quakers.
And here’s an Associated Press dispatch from :
Quaker-Led Tax Protest Gets Boost from Other Faiths
Philadelphia, (AP) — Quakers are taking the lead in a growing movement that subjects members to a painful dilemma — obeying the law or following their pacifist beliefs by refusing to pay taxes that go to the military.
When most Americans meet the Internal Revenue Service deadline Friday for filing income tax returns, up to 10,000 forms from Quakers will contain adjustments for withholding the “war tax,” said Bill Strong, a member of the Religious Society of Friends’ War Tax Committee.
“I used to think three years ago that this was an off-the-wall, peculiar obsession of a handful of particular Quakers,” said Strong, who has chosen to keep his income below the taxable level for three years.
“But we’re convinced now that this is moving to the center. You’re getting people who are thinking about it for the very first time. That’s exciting,” Strong said.
Other churches are beginning to join the movement, Strong said, adding he’s particularly heartened by support from Roman Catholics.
“We’re 100,000; they’re 50 million. When our concern starts bouncing back as their concern, don’t you think we feel good?”
Some members of the two faiths were preparing to join in protest , when several hundred protesters planned to turn over their tax money to the Catholic hospice Brothers of the Good Shepherd during a Quaker witness and afternoon rally at City Hall.
The protest was among 70 planned across the country, with thousands of Quakers participating, said Strong, 53, who is on leave from his job as a trust officer at a bank to advise tax resisters.
Quakers, who abhor killing and live by the creed of “God in every man,” helped lead the struggle to free American slaves in the early 19th century. Some were imprisoned for refusing to fight in World War Ⅰ; others persuaded Congress in to establish a conscientious objector provision to the draft laws.
The Quakers’ tax resistance has taken many forms.
Some have refused to pay a 3 percent excise tax on their telephone bills, which Strong claims raises $2 billion a year for the military.
Others refuse to pay 36 percent of their income taxes, claiming 28 percent goes to the military and 8 percent represents interest on the Social Security trust fund which they say goes to the military.
And some have also withheld an additional 17 percent of their taxes that they say covers the cost of past wars, including veterans payments and war-related interest on the national debt, Strong said.
“For others, withholding 53 percent isn’t enough because they know that no matter what taxes you put in, they go to the military. And they refuse all taxes, turning in a blank 1040. That’s a criminal offense,” Strong said.
A Quaker in Seattle, Irwin Hogenauer, 70, says he hasn’t paid taxes since .
“I’ve lived a life of principle and I’ll continue to stand by it,” he said.
Hogenauer was the subject of my Picket Line entry. A different version of the above article continues as follows:
Hogenauer, who is now retired, managed for most of his working life to keep his income below the taxable level.
“People who are conscientious objectors often mold their lifestyles so they don’t have any taxes to pay,” said Helen Provost-Kees, an IRS spokeswoman in Seattle.
Single people who earn $5,400 or less a year or couples who earn under $7,400 owe no taxes, she said.
Still, the decision to break the tax law is difficult for many.
“It troubles us to find ourselves in conflict with what we judge to be a fair obligation to pay the taxes,” said Joe Volk, secretary of the American Friends Service Committee’s Peace Education branch and a tax resister since .
Robin Harper is still an active tax resister. Lilian Willoughby remained a dedicated activist into her 90s, and died in . Joe Volk is now the executive secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation. Paul Washington died in after a long career of shaking things up in Philadelphia.
Over at the liberal blogger site Daily Kos, one “teacherken” reflects a bit on war tax resistance in the course of writing about the 80th anniversary celebration of the founding of the Pendle Hill retreat, where he met Robin Harper. Excerpts:
Robin Harper is a man of principle. He is a War Tax Resister. Now 82, he began his resistance during the Korean War.
The idea of resisting war taxes has a noble American origin — that of Henry David Thoreau who refused to pay his taxes for the Mexican War, an aggressive action by the United States to seize territory primarily for the expansion of slavery. I might note that a young Illinois Whig Congressman named Abraham Lincoln also opposed that war and it cost him his House seat. In Thoreau’s case, he was arrested for failure to pay his taxes. While incarcerated he was visited by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson and we are told the following exchange occurred:
Emerson asked Thoreau, “Why are you here?”
Thoreau answered Emerson, “Why are you not here?”
Emerson paid the money owed by Thoreau, who was therefore released after one night in jail.
Robin Harper decided he was not willing to pay taxes to support the Korean War. Since then he has refused to pay taxes to support America’s military machine in any fashion. This has meant working at such low income as to not have federal income tax liability. It also means finding an employer willing not to withhold taxes other than payroll taxes from even that meager income. For many years Robin worked on the grounds here at Pendle Hill. He received a quite nominal salary plus room and board, a salary equal to that of any one else — the director or the cook, the dean of studies or the person in the mailroom.
Our principle speaker, the well-known teacher and writer Parker Palmer, honored Robin’s commitment during his address last night. As he himself wrestled with his own opposition to war Robin taught him in a very Quaker fashion, to do what he could within his own life.
The history is a little skewed (it probably wasn’t Emerson who paid Thoreau’s poll tax, and the exchange between them is more legend than fact), and “teacherken” is maddeningly vague about how he has taken up Thoreau’s and Harper’s challenge (he’s evidently honoring differences, and holding “an awareness of touching and affirming, of offering one’s own life as a means of witness, of confronting in oneself the paradoxes that can perplex us” and being “attentive and aware” and such, but I couldn’t find anything more concrete than that in the essay, and he explicitly says he hasn’t become a war tax resister). But I’m glad he found Harper inspiring.
It may sound like a long shot, but have you considered trying to make friends with the tax collector? It’s a strategy that’s so crazy it just might work!
Here are some examples of where tax resisters or their allies have tried it:
Dorothy Day wrote of this:The Peacemakers were resolute that their confrontation with the government would be on their terms. Believing that the legal system is an instrument of oppression and exists to protect the state and the property of the powerful, they refused to take their case into the courts. Instead they worked to make the truth known through personal meetings with IRS officials, through continuous leafletting, through appealing to their supporters country-wide to demand justice.… They put enormous energy into building relationships with IRS officials that would allow for honest dialogue. And always, they challenged and responded to the bureaucracy in a highly personal manner.
Initially it appeared that IRS’ reversal had been an act of faith in the Peacemakers; that it had been touched by the group’s philosophy of truth and their consistent methods. It wasn’t that complete a victory. The Commissioner had been sufficiently impressed by these people to where he called for a special investigation — which verified the Peacemakers’ statement.
Chuck Matthei had told me the story of his interviews with the head of the Internal Revenue Service, the almost daily dialogue that went on between them, and the frank and “manly” admission, made finally by the IRS chief, that a mistake had been made, that the Peacemakers had Truth on their side. I felt a great sense of joy and thanksgiving, a sense of hope too, that our officials in Washington D.C. could be approached in this way — with dignity and perseverance, with courtesy, with the recognition that we are all, each one of us, whether government official or radical (one who gets to the roots of things), children of God. We do believe that we are all brothers and sisters. We believe, too, that we can only show our love for God by our love for our brothers and sisters. So we share our joy with you, our readers, and hope we all have a sense of renewed strength and energy to continue our opposition to all violence, to all wars.
Ernest and Marion Bromley pose in front of their home.
But the wife of the prisoner had a warm friend in the landlady of the inn at Newtown; and when was woman’s kindness ever invoked for the relief of suffering, or woman’s tact required in vain? She was advised not to apply in person for the release of her husband. The landlady had learned Lord Sterling’s fondness for the creaturely comforts of life; and knew that wine had the effect to soften the severity of his temper. To take advantage of this disposition, she invited him to a sumptuous dinner. He did full justice to the delicacies of the table, and willingly partook of the generous old wine, which had been reserved for special occasions. As the wine warmed the General’s good-nature and disposed him to kindlier feelings, she cautiously introduced the case of the condemned; pitied his condition, cold, and in irons; regarded his treatment as needlessly severe; and at length requested that his fetters might be removed and his clothes restored to him. He could not resist this appeal of his hostess; and a note was sent to the guard in answer to her request.
The good woman continued her entreaties, and still plied the wine; when, at the proper moment, the wife was introduced. She fell on her knees before him, burst into a flood of tears, and told him who she was, and, with all the earnestness, feeling, and eloquence of a loving wife pleading for the one she loved best on earth, begged him to spare her husband’s life. Her entreaties were of a nature hard to be withstood. He remained some time silent; then, raising her to her feet, he said, “Madam, you have conquered. I must relent at the tears and supplications of so noble and so good a woman as you. Your husband is saved.” He immediately wrote a pardon for the prisoner, and ordered his discharge. The happy pair now returned to their homes rejoicing.
Paxson kindly treats [the tax collector] with best he had, and when he had filled his wem, and drank plentifully of good cider, he distrains the plates he had eaten on, and the tankard he so freely toped out of, but the wife begged the tankard, and bid him take something in lieu of it.
[We] had opportunity of laying before them the reasons and grounds of our refusal to comply with several requisitions, made for the support of, or that have near connection with, war; and to open our principles, and the consistency thereof with the doctrines of the Gospel, as set forth in the New Testament and pointed out by the prophets, and the inconsistency of Christians oppressing one another for conscience sake.
They generally appeared friendly, and to receive our visit kindly, some of them particularly so; and most of them acknowledged that the prophecies concerning the disuse of carnal weapons, pointed to the Gospel dispensation, and was much to be desired.
We had good satisfaction in the performance of this service, believing truth owned it, and that there is encouragement for Friends to use further endeavors of this kind.
The gate-keeper begged of them not to destroy the furniture, as it was his own; and his wife and child were in bed, but they might do as they liked with the gate and toll-house. Rebecca went to the door, and ordered her [Rebecca’s] daughters not to touch anything but the gate and the roof of the toll-house, and not to break the ceiling for fear the rain would harm the woman and child in bed. In their hurry, however, to unroof the house, one of them slipped between the rafters, and his foot got through the ceiling. Rebecca expressed her sorrow at the accident, as it might cause inconvenience to the gate-keeper.
They behaved remarkably well to the gate-keeper, and frequently desired him and his wife not to be alarmed, as they would not injure them in the least; but at parting Rebecca desired him not to exact tolls at that gate any more.
Miss Kellems stresses that she holds no animosity toward the officials who enforce the tax laws. When IRS Commissioner Johnnie M. Walker took office earlier she sent him a note outlining their differences but congratulating him on his appointment. “He sent back a nice thank you note,” she said.
When Kate Raleigh’s property was seized by the tax collector:…the auctioneer opened the proceedings by declaring himself a convinced Suffragist, which attitude of mind he attributed largely to a constant contact with women householders in his capacity as tax collector.
Miss Raleigh naturally made use of the occasion for propaganda purposes, conversing with the tax collector for some time on the subject of Woman Suffrage, and presenting him with Suffrage literature, which he accepted. Before taking his leave he expressed himself as, on the whole, in favour of women’s claims to enfranchisement.
I quickly assured them that an accurate accounting should of course be established, but that in no way could I alter my refusal to deliver my tax dollars into the U.S. military machine. Earlier I had described how my Conscientious Objection was rooted in our Quaker Peace Testimony and how I had performed two years of civilian alternative service with a self-help housing project during the Korean War.
With his defensive posture evaporating, Mr. Means [the “frivolous tax coordinator”] told us that his father fought in the Korean War and came home tormented by post traumatic stress disorder. Thereafter he would have nothing more to do with guns, “because he had seen what guns can do.” That gave my supporter, who had lived through World War Two in Germany, an opening. Drawing a parallel with my war tax refusal, she pointed out how German income taxes funded the governmental atrocities of the Third Reich.
…
At one point, when I was describing how the International Center has been installing solar water purification units in Central American villages, Mr. Means broadened our discussion, noting that the scarcity of safe water is becoming a global problem. In my followup letter to our interview, I sent him a copy of an eye-opening article from the Resist newsletter discussing this issue in depth.
Near the end I took the opportunity to unfurl the large chart which chronicles my war tax redirection these past forty-one years and to describe how I was first propelled into war tax protest by U.S. nuclear atmospheric bomb testing in Nevada and the Pacific.
After more than three hours (and well past normal lunchtime), the two finally closed the interview with smiles and friendly handshakes. Mr. Means even admitted that his title of “Frivolous Tax Coordinator” was really a substitute for “Tax Protester Coordinator,” an internal administrative category which Congress had abolished in recent Taxpayer Bill of Rights legislation.
Despite their training to be suspicious (all taxpayers are trying to get away with something), IRS folk, like all human beings, can be positively affected by openness, honesty and sincerity. Transparency can often trump suspicion.
I have learned how we all hunger for caring, person-to-person exchanges. Look how a one hour audit stretched into more than three hours, much of which involved genuine sharing far beyond the scope of the audit!
As our discussion rose above tax details, Mr. Means, the tax protester “sheriff,” was led to cast aside some of his official person and let his personal feelings and thoughts come through. He also became increasingly interested in discerning what makes war tax refusers tick. I am sure he came to understand that our witness is anything but “frivolous.”
War tax resistance continued to come up frequently in the pages of the Friends Journal in .
In the issue, Clifford Neal Smith examined radical, communal economic restructuring as one potential Quaker approach worth considering — not state Communism, but something along the lines of Hutterite communities that took their inspiration from Acts 2:45–46: “All that believed were together, and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.” Smith suggested “that Friends give thought to the possible restructuring of our Meetings into communes” along these lines.
In particular, he thought, “the communal way will recommend itself to Friends who with to resist the payment of war taxes, for, as the Hutterites have found, there is a considerable tax saving to the communal way, particularly as practiced by a religious organization.” He also anticipated that “in the event that Friendly testimony against the military-industrial complex should become effective enough to be recognized by the establishment as the real foe of the present system,” communes would help Quakers be more resilient against the persecution that would inevitably follow.
In the same issue was a letter-to-the-editor by Philip van der Goes in which he made the hopeful suggestion that the government allow taxpayers to designate on their tax forms which federal agencies they want to fund.
In the following issue, Betty Gulick wrote a piece in which she expressed that Quakers, by “personally lending support to the most violent of societies (our own) by our taxes, our jobs, our investments, by silence and by our merely going along with things as they are,” lose the credibility they need to have to recommend nonviolence to the “aggressive victims of aggressive prejudice and poverty.”
In that issue also was an article about activists in Puerto Rico who had constructed a chapel in a U.S. Navy firing range on the island of Culebra, in defiance of a Federal injunction. One of those arrested was Dan Balderston. The article reprinted his statement, from which I take the following excerpt:
My people, the Quakers, have always insisted that God is to be obeyed and not men, and that we are neither to be satisfied with the state of things, nor with a promise of salvation in the hereafter, but live as though the Kingdom were already here — without doing violence or harming our brother. They refused to own their brothers as slaves, refused to kill or to pay taxes to kill — for example, my great-great-grandfather, Lloyd Balderston, refused to pay war taxes during the Civil War and the government expropriated several of his hogs. The Quakers have fallen with the rest of the Babylonians, but there is a remnant which seeks to recall the voice of Jesus to the Society of Friends, and I think that we of A Quaker Action Group seek to act for that remnant and to find once more the spirit of the early Christians and the early Friends.
In seeking the will of Jesus for our time, some of us have been led to break the laws of the United States — thus A Quaker Action Group sent the sailboat Phoenix to North Vietnam with medical supplies in violation of the law against “trading with the enemy,” and thus I have refused to register for war, and last year refused to pay the ten percent war tax on telephones.…
Jane Meyerding wrote in from prison, where she was serving time for her action in destroying draft board, U.S. Attorney, and FBI records. Excerpts:
We have to stop this war. We have to end the military takeover of our economy, our minds, and our young men. We have to retake control of this nation in order to stop its wanton destruction of lives here and abroad.
Of course, these things will not be accomplished simply because we want them to be. The first step in the direction of change is to look for opportunities to act effectively. This first step is harder than it sounds. I had to be practically hit over the head with it before I opened my eyes to see how I could be useful. (I thank God the action was successful even with my reluctance to accept disruption of my “business as usual.”)
After the opportunities are discovered, they have to be taken. We all have opportunities to stop paying war taxes, to publicly remove our support from the government’s war policies, to “aid and abet” those who take direct action against the institutions of war. Why do we so often leave the most radical and risky parts of our witness to the young men who have already put at least some aspects of their futures in jeopardy by refusing to comply with the draft?
With so much to be done, we all just have to become activists of one sort or another. From now on — each time a step away from war and toward peace needs to be taken — if I do not take it, you will have to; if you do not take it, I shall have to. None of us can afford to miss any more opportunities.
So, what will I be doing when I get out? As much as I can of what needs to be done. With as many friends (and Friends) as possible.
The issue noted that the Ann Arbor (Michigan) Meeting was asking telephone tax resisters to pay their phone bills, minus the excise tax, as a group, in order to “[p]rotest the obscenity of war.”
Brinton Turkle shared his decision to start resisting in the issue:
One of the most familiar Quaker stories concerns William Penn’s reluctance to give up wearing his sword when he became a Friend. With great wisdom (and some humor, I think), George Fox is supposed to have told William Penn to wear his sword as long as he could. On , I sent this letter to the Internal Revenue Service and thus took off a sword I had been wearing long enough:
Sirs:
To repudiate a government that no longer represents me, I am not filing a federal, state, or city income tax this year.
I am self-employed. In the past, federal taxes I have filed but refused to pay in protest were simply seized from my savings account. To make my earnings less accessible for uses I abhor, I have been deliberately remiss in keeping records of my income and expenses. An accurate assessment of my taxes is therefore impossible.
I expect harassment and retribution to follow my defiance of a government that has made my nation the greatest scourge mankind has ever suffered. Imprisonment may end my career as a creator of books for children. It is a privilege to be able to bring enrichment and delight to young people. It is work I do with love and pride. My work is not murder.
I would not release a bomb or pull a trigger. I would not pay another man to do these things, nor would I buy his weapons.
My Lai stops with me.
Brinton Turkle
How long was it before the awareness of the sheer senselessness of encumbering himself with a sword caused William Penn to discard it? What a relief it must have been to him to be rid of it!
It was a long time until the awareness of the enormity of underwriting murder brought me to the act of civil disobedience I have just committed. About twenty years ago, I began to see that America’s war machine rolled on our tax dollars and nothing else. Tentatively, I sent notes to Internal Revenue with my tax payments disapproving of our national priorities and the Korean war.
When the horrors piled up in Vietnam five years ago, I sent a letter of protest instead of payment with my federal income tax file. I thought I was facing prison, but it turned out that I was not a criminal — only a delinquent. There followed a correspondence of one-sided passion between me and a computer. Internal Revenue took the money from my savings account with six percent interest.
The war continued. A Quaker president in the name of peace-seeking opened up the war in Cambodia and Laos and began to show unmistakable signs of affliction: Either he was captive to his own overweening ambition, or else he was in pawn to the Pentagon and the industries it supports. Perhaps he was doubly afflicted and thus worthy of a compassion that I did not have the goodness to give him.
Holding in the Light a man to whom truth is a mere expedience, a man who is using his power to tear our country apart, a man who has caused the death and maiming of thousands, is beyond my present capabilities. My tax status, however, as a self-employed person gives me a peculiar opportunity, and I have grasped it.
I have heard the objections. Some of them I cannot answer. One does what one must. Swordlessness will never be understood by some.
Father Daniel Berrigan has summed it up for this Quaker:
“…To be right now in some serious trouble with respect to the ‘powers and principalities’ of this nation means to occupy a most important geographical position — if one wishes to struggle with others all over the world for their freedom; and by the same token to be in no trouble at all is to share in what I take to be a frightening movement towards violence and death. To resist that movement is one’s choice.”
A choice has been made, and I feel pounds lighter.
The issue brought the news that the New York Yearly Meeting planned to file a friend-of-the-court brief in the AFSC lawsuit challenging mandatory employer income tax withholding from the paychecks of conscientiously resisting employees (see ♇ 15 July 2013). The issue added that the Meeting also “agreed to publicize… a two-year-old minute regarding the non-payment of the telephone tax for war by the Yearly Meeting Office. It urges Friends who are also nontaxpayers to join in a possible advertisement” and proposed a “minute on the deliberate nonwithholding of wage tax levies for Internal Revenue Service when requested by Yearly Meeting employees. The complex procedure would notify Internal Revenue Service of the percentage of wages not withheld and the possible setting up of a special fund of these monies for peaceful uses.”
The “Sufferings” column of the issue include listings for Paula & Howard Cell, who “[h]ad an automobile seized by Internal Revenue for refusal to pay the war tax on their telephone,” for Bill Himmelbauer, who was “[s]entenced to one year in prison for refusal to pay war taxes on his income. To do this he openly altered his W-4 form,” and for Lilian & George Willoughby, who “[h]ad an automobile seized by Internal Revenue for refusal to pay the war tax on their telephone.”
The issue brings the first mention of the war tax resistance of Robin Harper, who will periodically appear in the context of war tax resistance in the magazine for . His first appearance comes in the “Sufferings” column:
Robin and Marlies Harper, London Grove Meeting, Pennsylvania: Falsely assessed, after a decade of resistance to military taxes, for $32,000 in alleged unpaid taxes, interest, and penalties. The Harpers actually refused less than $8000, including penalties, over these years.
The “Sufferings” column in the issue gave an update:
[The Harpers s]ucceeded in convincing IRS to reduce its claim upon the family for a decade of unpaid federal income taxes from thirty-two thousand five hundred dollars to a bit more than seven thousand dollars.
Robin explained: “Under duress, I sent IRS income tax returns for to set the record straight — a clear compromise in order to protect our family from great financial hardship should IRS proceed to seize such unwarranted sums from me.”
The issue mentioned Harper among a number of war tax resisters, and described his resistance thusly:
Conscientiously opposed to participation in war of any form, Robin began his tax resistance in in opposition to the nuclear arms race. The war in Indochina has deepened his conviction. He insists that during he contributed $3,385 to “organizations engaged in constructive programs designed to repair ravages of war abroad and counteract the ugly wounds inflicted by segregation and discrimination at home…” The IRS, however, claims he owes $3,206 plus $1,502 in penalties and $2,700 in interest. Robin is asking the U.S. Tax Court to reject all IRS claims for the 10-year period.
In the issue, Harper is mentioned as being “a member of the War Tax Concern Support Committee” who addressed the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting about that subject, “urging a symbolic tax refusal of a small portion of these taxes as a witness to the Peace Testimony.” Alas, “[a]fter a deep and searching discussion, there remained some who did not feel comfortable with this kind of witness. Later in the week a revised minute was presented, and after renewed searching it was adopted.” No details are given about this revised minute.
I next notice Harper in the Friends Journal archives in the edition, which finds him again (still?) battling the IRS in court:
In three court hearings, attended by as many as 40 supporters, tax resister Robin Harper… testified recently that he could not be compelled against his religious beliefs to participate in the collection of taxes for war purposes. In the final hearing, Edwin Bronner, Haverford College history professor, appeared as an expert witness to spell out the 300-year history of the Friends Peace Testimony.
The government apparently considered the arguments presented, including an excellent brief prepared by volunteer attorneys, as too compelling. Department of Justice lawyers abruptly withdrew their subpoena issued to Harper a year earlier to force him to present documents and answer questions in federal court in Philadelphia.
In the issue, Harper wrote at length about war tax resistance in the Society of Friends. He mentioned the cases of three Philadelphia Yearly Meeting employees who were resisters, and how the IRS had filed lawsuits to try to compel the Meeting to levy their salaries.
In her decision in , Judge Norma Shapiro denied the validity of the [refusal to pay] penalty but upheld the levy, which the yearly meeting then paid “under duress.” In each instance the yearly meeting incurred legal expenses, but the individual employee reimbursed it for the full amount of the actual IRS collection.
Harper then proposed a series of queries “for the purposes of discussion and discernment… mindful that beneath each lies the Grand Query: ‘What does the Spirit require of me?’ ”:
Query 1: If I am opposed to the military conscription of my body, am I called to bear witness to the military conscription of my tax dollars?
Query 2: How do I approach the dilemma of paying taxes for constructive government programs while resisting payment for war preparation?
Query 3: Does the fact that billions of military tax dollars are unearmarked and hidden “in the mixture” in the U.S. treasury lessen my burden to bear witness?
Query 4: Have I sought clearness on what to do with the money I have refused to pay in military taxes? Are alternative funds that use my refused taxes to pay for peace and social justice initiatives an adequate spiritual response from me?
If the Peace Tax Fund were passed by Congress, would the escrow account thereby established be an acceptable alternative?
Query 5: How much inconvenience or suffering am I prepared to accept for the “moral disarmament” of my federal taxes, such as penalties and interest on refused taxes, seizure of bank accounts, salaries, or other assets, or loss of credit?
Query 6: As a military tax refuser, am I sufficiently sensitive to the impact my witness may have on loved ones, co-workers and others who may not share my conviction but whose personal, spiritual, financial, or professional well-being might be affected by my witness?
Query 7: When a Quaker employer must choose between compliance with government demands and honoring the conscientious witness of an employee, where does its allegiance lie? What issues of faith make this decision a difficult one?
Query 8: Honoring the conscientious witness of an employee may place serious risk on the Quaker employer, its members, and other employees. How do Friends institutions balance support of employee conscience against these risks?
Query 9: Should Quaker employers rest easy serving as collectors of federal military taxes by routinely withholding income taxes from their employees and remitting them, without protest, to the Internal Revenue Service?
Query 10: When making a strong, public witness against military taxes by protest or refusal to pay, is a Quaker institution likely to strengthen or weaken the peace movement? The Religious Society of Friends? The possibility of doing successfully the work for which the institution was created? (This query is taken from page 189 of the Handbook on Military Taxes and Conscience, edited by Linda Coffin…)
In the issue, Harper responded with a letter-to-the-editor to a critic of war tax resistance as a Quaker practice who had published a piece . Harper recommended a carefully-designed form of war tax resistance that might overcome the critic’s objections:
[L]et us suppose a conscientious taxpayer, engaging in open civil disobedience,
- refuses to render 100 percent of her/his federal income tax to the Internal Revenue Service (say “no” to war).
- carefully calculates the tax liability and redistributes the entire sum to recipients engaged in building up civil society in peaceful ways, thus excluding any personal benefit. Includes list of recipients/amounts and a “letter of conscience” along with tax return — a transparent witness (say “yes” to peace).
- declares to IRS that he/she recognizes a moral responsibility to contribute to the general welfare by paying one’s fair share of taxes — hence this “alternative service” for the tax (taking personal responsibility).
- clarifies to IRS that the full tax would gladly be paid, provided the government would assure the taxpayer that it would be spent exclusively for nonmilitary purposes, as defined by Congress, which is the legislative architecture of the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Bill, still pending in Congress (support legal relief for this dilemma of conscience).
Finally, in the issue, Harper’s war tax resistance got a mention in an article by Parker J. Palmer, based on a speech he gave on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Pendle Hill Quaker Center:
I am going to end with a small story that has big meaning for me. Back in the day, a wonderful man named Robin Harper was head of buildings and grounds… Robin was and still is a conscientious war tax refuser. Not only did this mean the possibility of prosecution and imprisonment, but tax resistance made very heavy demands on his life. He had to be employed by people who would agree not to withhold any taxes, which shrinks one’s job opportunities dramatically, and he could not own any real property that could be seen by the IRS as capable of being turned into cash. But he has never done time because his integrity is so self-evident, not unlike that of John Woolman.
When I was a young man here, I shared Robin’s abhorrence of war (as I do to this day), but I could not imagine taking the risks and making the sacrifices required of me. I was at that stage of moral development where I had very high ethical aspirations and equally high levels of guilt about the way I continually fell short. One day I went to Robin and told him of my dilemma. “I believe what you believe,” I said, “and I want to put my beliefs into action, but I just cannot bring myself to do what you do.”
Robin responded plainly,simply, and with great compassion. “Keep holding the belief,” he said, “and follow it wherever it may lead you. As time goes on you will find your own way of resisting violence and promoting peace, one that fits with your gifts and your calling.” That is Quakerism at its best. That is community at its best. That is teaching at its best. That is friendship at its best.
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
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:
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…
There was a bit of an anti-war tax resistance backlash in the Friends Journal in .
In the issue, Peter Phillips came out against war tax resistance in a two-page article. Here is a summary of his argument:
You will not be surprised to learn that Phillips’s article led to some exchanges in the letters-to-the-editor column in later issues. Here is a summary of some of the back-and-forth:
She even suggested a more radical outlook toward taxes that I have rarely seen in Quaker circles:The moral consequence [of Phillips’s decision not to serve in the military] is not that other people were made to serve in his stead, as Phillips suggests. The moral consequence of his not serving in war is simply that he did not violate his conscience by serving. Others could have and did make their own choices, consulting conscience or not.
The moral consequences of not paying taxes for war are similarly direct.
Greenberg also felt that there was a big difference between the Quaker ethos of consensus and conformity when “recognizing the sense of the meeting” and trying to figure out how to confront “legislation written by lobbyists and summarized by Congressional interns in a process that has been compared to the making of sausage.”Our taxes are compulsory, and in some sense they are the least desirable way to provide a constructive economic foundation for a compassionate society. They presuppose that there is no Friendly nor Christian nor Jewish nor Hindu nor Muslim nor conscientious nor atheistic nor socialist love for one another and so we must be forced. Paying taxes separates us from those with whom we might otherwise be in community, and with whom we might shake hands, share food, share laughter and tears. Paying taxes for war separates us from many of them irrevocably.
Some Friends testify that we expect better of ourselves than that, because we know experimentally that God expects better of us.
An obituary notice for Kent Larrabee in the issue noted that “[f]or much of his life, Kent purposely lived below the poverty line in order to identify with the poor and to avoid payment of income taxes for war.”
In the issue, Arthur Waskow offered a reading of the “Render unto Caesar…” koan that puts it into a context of thousands of years of Rabbinical debate about the passage in Genesis that reads: “God created humankind in God’s own Image.” He thought that Jesus had been intending to refer to this debate, and not intending to give any advice about taxes.
An obituary notice for Lillian Willoughby in the issue mentioned that “Lillian felt called to refuse to pay war taxes, and the IRS seized her car in .” An obituary notice for Arthur Evans in the issue said that “[f]or 20 years, Arthur withheld the portion from his federal income tax that he believed went to war and weapons, and in , he was jailed for 90 days for refusing to turn over income records to the Internal Revenue Service.” And an obituary notice for Merrill Hallowell Barnebey in the identified him as “a war tax resister.”
In , most of the mentions of war tax resistance in the Friends Journal were brief and retrospective.
The issue noted that Christopher Moore-Backman had lost a federal district court suit in which he had asserted “that the use of his federal income tax payments for military spending substantially burdened his religious exercise in violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”
An obituary notice for Alfred Frederick Andersen in the issue noted that “[h]e refused to pay federal income taxes for most of his adult life, and the family home was sold at auction by the IRS in .”
A review of a book on conscientious objectors of World War Ⅱ mentioned that, among the activities such conscientious objectors took after the war, “Stephen L. Angell, a Quaker CO and a social worker, started his own business during the Vietnam war to avoid paying taxes toward a war he could not morally support.” And an obituary notice for Angell, in the issue said that “[i]n , to avoid paying taxes for the Vietnam War, he resigned from Nassau County Health and Welfare Council and formed a consulting organization that would pay him less than taxable wages.”
There were also some mentions of Robin Harper’s war tax resistance in that issue (I covered these in the Picket Line).
A retrospective on the lives of George & Lillian Willoughby in the issue remembered:
Lillian had always felt a deep calling to refuse to pay income taxes since such a large percentage went to war costs. One day after lunch, George and some students and I [Lynne Shivers] were chatting under the trees. Two IRS agents approached us and announced that they planned to confiscate the Willoughbys’ red Volkswagen Beetle. We were stunned and said little. A few minutes later, Lillian walked briskly toward all of us, carrying a briefcase with papers she needed as a dietary consultant. She opened the car door and got in, saying, “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have to get to work!” And she drove away! Friends bought the car when it was auctioned off and gave it back to the Willoughbys, but the IRS did not use an auction again in the Philadelphia region for the next 30 years. The IRS called it “The Willoughby Principle.”
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
There’s a new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter out. Contents include:
Here’s a bit more news from Tax Day this year:
Also, NWTRCC is collecting photos and reports from Tax Day war tax resistance actions across the country at its website.
There seems to have been less tax day protest than usual in the news this year. I saw next to nothing from the TEA Party folks, for instance.
