Miscellaneous tax resisters → individual war tax resisters → Lori Barg

Vermont’s Rutland Herald has run a piece on the local tax-resistance community. Excerpts:

Anti-war activist Linda Leehman refuses to put her money where her mouth is. And that’s the whole point.

By withholding about 50 percent of her federal tax bill, Leehman says she at least partially washes her hands of the blood spilled in U.S.-waged military operations.

“It’s a deeply moral and spiritual decision when you decide that killing is wrong,” Leehman, a 31-year tax resister, told about a dozen other people gathered in the basement of the Kellogg-Hubbard Library on . “I believe that war is murder. … And I have to insist on my moral right to not connect myself (financially) with what I believe is truly insane and truly abhorrent.”…

Her remarks came during a workshop for central Vermont residents looking to find out more about tax resistance.…

For Plainfield resident Lori Barg, another tax-resistance expert offering advice , Thoreau’s stance against the Spanish-American War retains its relevance 157 years later.

“What’s one bullet cost? A nickel? A dime?” Barg said, as she recounted a meeting she had with a Central American woman whose son had been killed by a bullet fired by a U.S. soldier. “Since there’s no draft for women, the only way for me to be resistant was to not pay for war.

“As horrible as I feel when I read the news, one really wonderful thing about being a tax resister is I can say, ‘I didn’t buy that bullet.’ And that makes me happy.”…

Varying forms of tax resistance carry varying degrees of consequence. A common and relatively safe strategy is withholding the 3 percent federal excise tax levied on telephone bills. About half that money goes to the defense budget, Barg says. Another low-risk method is simply keeping your income below the level at which the federal government begins to require taxes. With the help of an accountant, Barg said she has kept her annual income below that threshold.

Other resisters are bolder. Leehman, whose taxes are withheld by her employer, claimed more dependents than legally allowed, thereby preventing the government from taking its full legal share of earned income. She ends up paying about half the taxes she actually owes. Leehman also publicizes her protest by writing letters to her congressmen, local newspapers and the IRS.…

For Lea Wood, an 89-year-old World War Ⅱ veteran arrested just this week at an anti-war rally in Barre, tax resistance is “another piece” in her effort to subvert her government’s military policies.

“People will say, ‘I’m only one person, what I do is so little,’ ” Wood says. “But when water drops on a stone long enough, the stone wears away. Eventually it has a cumulative effect. And tax resistance is one way to achieve that effect.”

There’s a new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter out, with content including:

the cover of NWTRCC’s newsletter
  • a look back at the life and work of Juanita Nelson with contributions from Bob Bady, Karl Meyer, Ginny Sсhnеider, Ed Hedemann, Lori Barg, and Ed Agro
  • some notes about trends in tax enforcement including IRS levies on royalty income, the sudden decline in property seizures for the past 15 years, phone tax resistance, and Elizabeth Boardman’s attempt to get some respect for war tax resistance in the courts
  • a note about the passing of Dirk Panhuis, who had been active with Conscience and Peace Tax International
  • some updates about war tax resisters Julia Butterfly Hill and Joseph Olejak, the Spring Rising anti-war action, Greg Wise’s mouthing off about tax refusal, and the Mennonite Central Committee’s war tax redirection program
  • news about tax day outreach on social media, at the U.S. Social Forum, at the Jewish Voice for Peace conference, and the Intercollegiate Peace Fellowship
  • and a profile of Peter and Mary Sprunger-Froese of the Bijou Community — excerpt:

    Members of the Bijou Community were already involved in war tax resistance when Peter and Mary arrived. Early on, money was held in common, but that evolved over the years to each doing their own thing. One year the community did a tax protest and filed a 1040 saying they didn’t want to pay anything “because we don’t want to support the war.” That seemed to trigger an audit, which took an exhausting six months of collecting receipts to convince the IRS that members were not living off donations that came in for the soup kitchen and houses of hospitality. “The IRS said don’t file like that anymore because it messes up our system, and we said don’t audit us anymore because it messes up ours!”

Also, on the War Tax Talk blog, Jason Rawn reviews David Hartsough’s book Waging Peace: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist. Excerpt:

David Hartsough is a Quaker and a War Tax Resister who has for decades been redirecting a large portion of his “tax obligations,” believing that if war is abolished, “humanity can not only survive and better address the climate crisis and other dangers, but will be able to create a better life for everyone. The reallocation of resources away from war promises a world whose advantages are beyond easy imagination.” (Editor’s note: The 2016 U.S. budget for past, present, and future wars is $1,300 billion.) He cofounded the Nonviolent Peaceforce, inspired in part by Gandhi’s idea of a shanti sena, a peace army, and this organization is now active in 40 countries, stationing trained professional peaceworkers in conflict areas around the globe and is sustained by an $8 million budget. He works with World Beyond War and is currently executive director of Peaceworkers in San Francisco. Waging Peace has been in the works for 27 years.

And Ruth Benn of NWTRCC was a guest on Law and Disorder radio recently.