The issue of NWTRCC’s More Than a Paycheck is out. It includes articles on the following:
Code Pink notes, of its audacious campaign to get 100,000 Americans to pledge to resist taxes, that “if we succeed, it will be the single largest war tax resistance in U.S. history.”
It has been heartwarming to read the comments left by some of those who have signed the pledge so far:
And this is just from those who have signed up by the beginning of !
A new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter, More Than a Paycheck, is out.
Among the interesting articles is one by NWTRCC coordinator Ruth Benn in which she recounts a meeting she recently had with an officer from the IRS’s “Abusive Tax Avoidance Transactions” branch.
From the sound of things, the IRS seems to be interpreting the war tax resistance advocacy of NWTRCC as though it were “promoting tax schemes” — putting that group in the same category as the kind of folks who peddle offshore tax shelters and bizarre Constitutionalist “sovereign citizen” untaxing kits.
In the course of explaining why ATAT was involved in my case, Officer E⸺ said “You are a threat to the compliance of the income tax system. If everyone did what you do, then the government could not do what they need to do.” Right. So we will continue to do what we feel we must do and see how things develop with the IRS.
Lincoln Rice reports on how the IRS cracked down on one such Constitutionalist group — We The People—
The court’s injunction was based on the conclusion that WTP had created an illegal tax shelter and tax fraud scheme. The injunction prohibits WTP from selling and/or distributing what the IRS considers false and fraudulent information, requires them to remove all this material from their website, requires them to post the injunction on their website, givemeliberty.org, and demands that they give to the government the list of names, addresses, emails, Social Security numbers, etc. of all the individuals and entities to whom they provided materials. The latter directive is perhaps the most disturbing from a constitutional point of view. The appeals court had temporarily blocked enforcement of that paragraph, but eventually sustained it, reasoning that forcing WTP to provide the names of its “customers” would allow the IRS to monitor whether those individuals were, in turn, failing to comply with the tax laws.
So if the IRS is now starting to treat NWTRCC as if it were an organization like We The People hawking fraudulent tax evasion schemes, could the IRS seek a similar injunction against NWTRCC?
Rice says, “probably not.”
The opinion is very precise on why WTP received this injunction, which indicates many substantial and significant differences between WTP and NWTRCC. First, WTP states that the federal government does not have the authority to tax U.S. citizens. As such, they offer materials that show interested parties how to “legally” stop W-4 withholding and provide individuals with paperwork to give their employer, which states that the employer can legally stop issuing W-2 and 1099 forms. This, in addition to their 16th Amendment arguments, is viewed as fraudulent and misleading by the court. Second, the government’s interest in the case pertains to the loss of income caused by what they see as fraud. The government states that WTP is responsible for at least 997 individuals not filing tax returns for at least the past three years. And because it costs the IRS $1,607 to produce a substitute return, this has cost the government at least $4.8 million the last three years alone.
Third, WTP sold their “package” like a commercial product, charging admission to training sessions, and even offering customized “legal opinions” justifying these tax violations. While NWTRCC is of course trying to hurt the military budget’s bottom line, we are not distributing false information and are not operating on a commercial basis. NWTRCC always presents accurate information about legal and illegal ways of resisting taxes that pay for war, and candidly describes those which would constitute a form of civil disobedience. All of our materials represent, to best of our knowledge, the laws that some are choosing to break when they withhold taxes, while fully disclosing the penalties, fines, etc., that we may face.
reports and media mentions of war tax resistance are coming in from across the country:
And in other news:
Probably nothing. If you’re self-employed without any major assets or loans, the odds of getting busted are extremely low. In fact, an estimated 7 million Americans fail to file their taxes every year, and in 2008 the IRS examined only 158,000 such cases. That comes out to a roughly 2 percent chance of getting caught. Even if the IRS does audit you, the agency probably won’t press charges. Instead, they’ll just file a tax return for you and charge you a fee for the trouble.
IRS employees have reported that taxpayers are occasionally citing the Geithner case when they are asked to pay their tax bills. “It’s making the compliance conversation harder,” [Colleen] Kelley [of the National Treasury Employees Union] said.
NWTRCC announces ’s crop of “tax day” actions:
Tax Day — Antiwar Protests, Public Demonstrations, and Individual Refusal to Pay for War
On thousands of people across the United States will be refusing to pay some or all of their federal income tax to protest U.S. wars and escalating military spending. These tax refusers, who see themselves as responsible citizens, want their money used for peaceful purposes and often give taxes to social programs instead.
, is the final day to file tax returns, and “war tax resisters” will be among those participating in events around the country to protest what they see as the skewed priorities of the U.S. government. Many hand out the pie chart produced by the War Resisters League, which calculates nearly 50% of federal income taxes pay for current or past wars.
Erica Weiland in Seattle, Washington, decided to refuse to pay for war in response to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Our money and time are much better spent addressing the issues in the U.S. and around the world that cause wars in the first place,” she says. Groups in Seattle are organizing leafleting with federal budget information at area post offices.
John K. Stoner, a retired Mennonite minister in Akron, Pennsylvania, says, “I keep wondering why people who say they oppose war continue to pay for it without a whimper of protest.” He and others in his community have launched a campaign of symbolic protest called 1040 for Peace, to encourage U.S. taxpayers to express their opposition to U.S. military spending by refusing $10.40 of any taxes due, telling the government why, and giving that money to projects that promote peace or fund human needs.
War tax resistance has a long history in the U.S. and worldwide. The most famous case was Henry David Thoreau’s refusal of $1 for the Mexican-American War. He spent a night in jail for this act of resistance. Today’s resisters refuse to pay anything from $1 to thousands of dollars of federal income taxes, while risking collection from the Internal Revenue Service for their stand.
Patricia Tompkins, a farmer in Bakersville, North Carolina, speaks for many as she accepts the risks of confronting the IRS to stand up for her beliefs. “I made the decision to become a war tax resister in protest to our government’s policies in the Middle East and Afghanistan. For me, the essence of life is connection to the land and to each other, because without the first we cannot live and without the second we cannot be fully human.”
In St. Louis activists are taking their message to cut the military budget and fund human needs to Senator Roy Blunt’s office and announcing grants to humanitarian groups. In Milwaukee, the protest will be in front of the Federal Courthouse. Lincoln Rice, a Milwaukee organizer, says, “My war tax resistance is grounded in my Catholic Christian spirituality. I cannot in good conscience pay my federal income taxes and contribute to the harming my Muslim brothers and sisters in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and elsewhere.”
Individual resisters are available for interviews. Please contact NWTRCC if you need contacts in your area.
Please see the list of actions at http://www.nwtrcc.org/taxday2011.php. The list of events and contacts around the country can be found online at The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.
There’s a new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter out, with content including:
The NWTRCC held its national gathering in Los Angeles.
a banner outside of Casa Roja in Los Angeles, where the NWTRCC national conference was held
A few dozen people, including veteran war tax resisters from around the country and curious local activists, gathered at Casa Roja for a series of panels and workshops, followed by the NWTRCC business meeting on .
panel concerned various interpretations and implementations of “Divestment.” Dr. Melina Abdullah of Black Lives Matter addressed the Invest/Divest plank of The Movement for Black Lives platform, the preamble to which reads:
We demand investments in the education, health, and safety of Black people, instead of investments in the criminalizing, caging, and harming of Black people. We want investments in Black communities, determined by Black communities, and divestment from exploitative forces including prisons, fossil fuels, police, surveillance, and exploitative corporations.
Dr. Melina Abdullah addresses divestment alongside panelists Jim Haber and Anne Barron
Jim Haber of Jewish Voice for Peace discussed the oft-misunderstood (and persecuted) Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement which is trying to put economic pressure on Israel to stop oppressing Palestinians.
Anne Barron spoke about how to be tactically smart in choosing divestment targets, and how the divestment tactic has spread to diverse movements including those against private prisons and fossil fuels.
Paula Kahn of CodePink was scheduled to speak on the Divest from the War Machine project, but the attempt to keep a teleconference connected remotely from Tijuana (where she’s working in support of the migrant caravan) was unsuccessful, so we missed most of her message.
On morning Lincoln Rice introduced himself. He’s taking over the job of NWTRCC coordinator after Ruth Benn’s 15-years at the helm. Lincoln is a long-time war tax resister who works with the Casa Maria Catholic Worker house in Milwaukee.
new NWTRCC coordinator Lincoln Rice addresses the conferees
We also spent some time morning discussing the current state of activism and organizing in our communities. This was a good opportunity to learn about trends and innovations around the country from people who have been working in a variety of causes, ranging from responsible investing, to counterrecruitment in the schools, to environmental activism and climate change concerns, to youth-led challenges to structural violence, to assistance for immigrants, to organized tax redirection, to grassroots media.
Experienced resisters held a “War Tax Resistance 102” session after lunch. I asked around to see if anyone had yet been targeted by the new federal government policies that can deny passports to people with large tax debts, or that can turn federal tax debts over to private debt collection companies. So far nobody has heard of any war tax resisters who have had their passports denied or rescinded, but a couple of resisters have had private collection agencies assigned to their cases.
After that I led a workshop on Quaker war tax resistance and that of other congregations and faith-based organizations. I gave a brief overview of the history and varieties of war tax resistance in the Society of Friends, and mentioned how some other groups like Brethren, Mennonites, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Catholic Workers, and more recently groups like the Agape Community, Restored Israel of Yahweh, and the new monastic movement, have incorporated war tax resistance into their practices. We then discussed how people might try to introduce or promote war tax resistance as a spiritual practice and a way of strengthening and distinguishing faith-based communities.
That evening, we learned more about The Poor People’s Campaign (“A National Call for Moral Revival”), which is ramping up and looks to potentially be a strong protest focal point on the left in the U.S.
Lincoln Rice also spoke about the Catholic Worker movement’s attempts to identify and counter lingering racism within the movement and to speak more strongly about racism in American society in general. Rice was part of a group that drafted a controversial letter on racism in the Cathoic Worker community that included the provocative claim that “The Catholic Worker is a racist institution.”
NWTRCC held its business meeting. I don’t have much to report: some run-of-the-mill policy and budget discussion, details surrounding the transition in the coordinator position, a couple of new administrative committee members coming on board.
There’s a new NWTRCC newsletter out, with content including:
There’s a new National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee newsletter out, with content including:
In other news:
Some tabs that have slid through my browser in recent days:
Irlanda Jerez
- The MOON:
- You are a war-tax resister. How did you come to that decision, and what have its consequences been?
- Julia Butterfly Hill:
About 10 years ago I sued three corporations for creating an ad using my image without my permission to sell a hand-held wireless device. I wasn’t looking for personal gain — I was planning to give all the money away — but I felt that their using my life and my work to promote consumption was against everything I stood for.
We settled out of court, and I found out that I would have a federal tax liability of about $175,000 on the settlement. Everyone told me just to pay it, but I couldn’t stomach it. This was right as the Bush administration was beating the war drums after September 11. I marched in the streets in San Francisco with hundreds of thousands of other people, and we shut down the Federal Building and the financial district. We caused creative mayhem all day. In the back of my mind the whole time was the thought that all these hundreds of thousands of protestors were eventually going to go home and feed with their tax dollars the very same machine they were protesting. I made the decision that day that I was not going to give that $175,000 to the IRS. It turned out to be the largest single instance of war-tax resistance in history. There’s never been a larger single nonpayment of taxes in protest of a war.
Defying the IRS is a scary prospect, so I took my time. I did my research. I went to the national War Resisters League, and I talked to people who had done war-tax resistance. I did everything I could to educate myself and keep the people I work with safe, because they were not signing up for the same choice. I took myself off all the governing boards I was on, including the one for my own organization, because my presence on the board could hurt it. I took myself off salary at my own organization. I did whatever I could to protect the people I work with. And then I filed my taxes.
Along with my nonpayment I wrote a letter that said I was not refusing to pay my taxes — I was redirecting them. I’m not against paying taxes. I believe in what we can do when we pool our money together for the collective good. But the same is true for the collective bad, because our taxes were being spent not only toward war in Iraq but toward war on this planet.
With penalties, interest, and fees, I now owe more than four hundred thousand dollars. I cannot own anything, or the IRS will take it. I face jail every single day. Although they’re not technically allowed to throw people in prison for not paying their taxes, because we don’t have debtors’ prisons anymore, they could take me to court and claim I’m evading my taxes, which I’m not. I’m consciously redirecting my money to causes I believe in.
The IRS hasn’t gone so far as to file formal charges, but they have taken me to tax court twice now to try to scare me into submission. They don’t seem to realize that trying to scare me into submission doesn’t work.
- The MOON:
- How come? It works on just about everyone else.
- Hill:
[Laughs.] You know, my father came out to California while I was doing my tree-sit and gave a press conference. He said, “If Maxxam Corporation thinks they can outwait my daughter, they don’t know my daughter very well.”
If you try to threaten or scare me, it only makes me more determined. If Maxxam Corporation had left me alone, it’s quite possible I might have given up before they did. I’d like to think I wouldn’t have, but I do know that their harassing me and degrading me in the press — all the things they did to try to make me come down — only deepened my commitment.
The same is true with the IRS. I didn’t decide to become a tax resister lightly. I knew going into this that it would alter the rest of my life; that I would have to be creative in providing for my own needs. I knew that I was risking prison. So the threats from the IRS didn’t take me by surprise. They only strengthened my resolve.
- The MOON:
- Do you have attorneys who represent you when you have to go to tax court?
- Hill:
- I did at the beginning. I wanted to make sure I’d done everything correctly, so that it was clear that I am not evading my taxes but redirecting them. I wanted to demonstrate that I was making this choice with the utmost integrity. But I don’t have the money to keep paying for lawyers. If they were to drag me back into court now, I’d probably go without one, because I understand my legal rights as well as the risks of representing myself.
There’s a new edition of NWTRCC’s newsletter out, with content including:
In other news…
Some tabs that have slid across my browser in recent days:
A number of items that have been in the news lately concern how the U.S. tax system has become increasingly corrupt and imbalanced in favor of wealthy tax evaders. Stories like this tend to damage what’s known in tax wonk circles as “taxpayer morale” — the willingness of citizens to pay their taxes without evasion or the necessity of harsh arm-twisting and draconian oversight. For example:
At #MennoCon19 (the Mennonite Church U.S.A. biennial conference) , Harold A. Penner and John Stoner hope to launch an alternative fund for Mennonite war tax resisters:
Creating a Church Peace Tax Fund
Desiring to teach one another the ways that make for peace in our congregations, this seminar proposes the creation of a Church Peace Tax Fund to resist the payment of federal taxes that underwrite killing, war and militarism. This seminar will encourage a faithful witness to the nonviolent life and ministry of Jesus who calls us to love God, the neighbor and the enemy. Churchwide inspiration and support of those who conscientiously object to the payment of war taxes while underwriting opportunities for active peacemaking will attract others to embrace the life-affirming and creation-saving grace of God.
As NWTRCC’s Lincoln Rice explains:
The Mennonite Church U.S.A. had approved a War Tax Alternative Fund in for employees of the Mennonite Church who wanted to redirect their federal withholding. Though dormant, this fund and policy still exist. Details about adapting this fund to also accept deposits from any U.S. Mennonite who would like to participate will be discussed at MENNOCON19.
The proposal will have redirected taxes from Mennonite conscientious objectors held in a “Church Peace Tax Fund.” That fund would be invested in socially responsible investments of some sort. Portions of it could also be used for education about / promotion of the fund and of war tax redirection. If the government takes reprisals against any participating resisters, the fund can also be used to compensate them and/or support their families.
You can see the proposed “Memorandum of Understanding” that participants in the fund would be expected to sign here.
The resolution that established the original fund in is here. It includes a copy of the General Conference resolution that passed in which the church decided to commit to civil disobedience by refusing to withhold taxes from resisting employees:
Resolution on Faithful Action Toward Tax Withholding
General Conference Mennonite Church Triennial Sessions
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania —As Mennonite Christians we seek to be biblically obedient, submitting to such injunctions as Romans 13:7, “Pay taxes to whom taxes are due,” but also Romans 13:8, 10, “Owe no one anything except to love one another… love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” We accept our subordination to government and our obligation to pay taxes. However, we must witness to governments our conviction that war and preparation for war do wrong to our neighbors and are contrary to the will of God as revealed in the teachings of Jesus Christ and his death, resurrection, and ascension to lordship.
Thus we urge our governments to sharply reduce military spending and use our resources for life-affirming purposes. Furthermore, just as conscientious objectors have received exemption from military service, we also seek legislation exempting conscientious objectors from paying taxes for military purposes. Thus we continue to work in the United States for passage for the World Peace Tax Fund Act and in Canada for the Peace Tax Fund, which would allow individuals to designate all of their federal taxes for peaceful purposes.
Both the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and Revenue Canada require the General Conference Mennonite Church to violate the consciences of its employees who are conscientious objectors to paying taxes for military purposes.
In the United States, we have thoroughly explored all legislative, administrative, and judicial avenues for obtaining a conscientious objector exemption to these withholding requirements, as we resolved at the Minneapolis midtriennium conference. Our explorations have convinced us there is no likelihood of relief in the near future for conscientious objectors to military taxes. The time has come when, like Peter and the apostles, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).
In Canada, equally thorough explorations of similar avenues for seeking a conscientious objection from withholding requirements have not yet been accomplished. We commend the “Resolution on Security and Disarmament” of the Canadian Mennonite Conference in and the work of the Canadian Tax Task Force under the sponsorship of MCC Canada Peace and Social Concerns. We encourage Canadian congregations to continue study of materials made available on the issue of military taxes.
As delegates to the triennial sessions of the General Conference Mennonite Church, we therefore:
- Authorize the conference officers to test the constitutionality of the withholding requirements in the United States and to assert the higher claim of Christ’s law of love by refusing to serve a tax collectors in cases where individual employees have asked that their federal income taxes not be withheld from their wages in order that they may conscientiously refuse to pay for war preparations. These employees will be treated similarly to the way General Conference treats ordained ministers, i.e. as self-employed persons, in that their earnings will be reported to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, but no federal income tax withheld.
- We request that the Conference of Mennonites in Canada consider means to obtain relief from Revenue Canada withholding requirements as these apply to General Conference Mennonite Church employees.
- We shall inform the U.S. government of this act of conscientious objection to their withholding requirements. We shall again urge them to provide exemption from these requirements and exemption for people of peacemaking conscience from military use of their tax money.
At this moment of decision we commit ourselves to surround with our prayers the General Conference staff and government officials who will be involved in this action and all those individuals who refuse in conscience to pay taxes for war preparations, however costly their witness may be.
Some links that have floated through my facemask in recent days:
Now, while mostly at home, we find plenty of things to do, but running out to a big demonstration is not one of them. This got me thinking about war tax resistance as a perfect protest for the isolated. That led me to think of the many individual acts of resistance in antiwar history and thus to Ammon Hennacy and his “one man revolution.”
Some links that have bubbled up in my browser over the past few weeks as I’ve been on my Brethren binge:
The Mennonite Church USA is promoting its reinvigorated “War Tax Alternative Fund” through which Mennonites can redirect their taxes from the U.S. government to more worthy causes.
Richard Yoder responds in a letter: “I am grateful that there seems to be a renewed emphasis on the historic peace witness of the Mennonite tradition, including war-tax resistance and redirecting of our tax dollars to life-giving activities. The nature of warfare has changed from the past when the military needed our bodies to now needing our dollars to pay for high-tech warfare. So in the same way Mennonites in the past found a way to say no to participating in war through conscientious objection, we now need to do the same with our tax dollars.”
NWTRCC is kicking off 2021 with a series of on-line events:
, honoring those who refuse to participate in their governments’ war-making institutions. It comes a couple of days before in the United States, and so conscientious objectors to military taxation are appropriately in the news:
“I want to live my values, which includes nonviolence,” said Lindsey Britt of Brattleboro. “Paying for destruction at home and abroad doesn’t fit into that, so I live more simply and refuse to pay a portion of my taxes.”
I have been a war tax resister since the 1970s since I do not want my money supporting murder. The money I resist to the military I give to local groups that actually help people and the environment. Now I am also a war tax resister because I don’t want my money supporting the biggest contributor to the burning of our planet: the U.S. military.
In other news:
The Civil Disobedience Movement in Myanmar apparently has a lot of support from within the Ministry of Electricity and Energy, which may make things easier on resisters.“I’ve decided I won’t pay any tax to the dictators, and that includes electricity. If police and soldiers ask me, I’ll just tell them I don’t have any money. I don’t care if they cut off the power to my house,” the resident of Yangon’s North Dagon Township told Frontier. “Most people in my ward who I’ve spoken to say they’re not going to pay either.”
Ko Aung Thu, who lives in the Shwe Lin Ban area of the highly industrialised township, said he had received a bill for but had no intention of paying.
“They killed people right here, in this township,” he said, referring to the security forces’ massacre of more than 50 people on . “Why should I pay money to a bunch of murderers? I won’t pay any taxes. If we pay taxes, we’re just supporting murderers.”
A hotel owner in nearby Bagan said he wouldn’t pay either and he expected many others would also refuse.
“I just heard today about how the state lottery isn’t able to run because so few people bought tickets. I think most people won’t pay their electricity bills, either,” he said. “We won’t support the dictator… the income from electricity charges is huge and they won’t be able to survive without that money.”
During site visits to two processing centers, management estimated that 42 percent of 164 devices used by the submission processing functions are unusable and others are broken but still functioning. “IRS employees stated that the only reason they could not use many of these devices is because they are out of ink or because the waste cartridge container is full,” it said.
The report added: “The lack of working printers and copiers affects many different areas of the IRS but has an especially significant effect on the return and income verification services functions” where employees must make copies of tax returns to fulfill requests for tax documents from taxpayers and other institutions. At one center, though, only three of the 10 devices were working.
Some tax resistance links from hither and yon:
At age 77, the soft-spoken Kehler is still inspiring nonviolent anti-war activism. Locally, he and his wife of 45 years, Betsy Corner, are possibly most remembered for their stand against the Internal Revenue Service, as “war tax-resisters” whose rural Colrain home was seized for non-payment of taxes in and sold by the IRS for $5,400.
It’s so bad, that tax professionals can’t even reach the agency on the special back-channel line designed just for them. One person’s hopeless bureaucratic dysfunction is another person’s opportunity: A company has launched a $100/month service “that makes robocalls to the agency’s special practitioner line… waits on hold, and then, when it makes a connection, puts the client through to an IRS agent.”Its customer service workforce has shrunk more than 40% since 2010, according to the most recent data, and the agency is struggling to fill vacancies amid a labor shortage — handcuffed by a federal pay scale that starts college graduates at little more than fast-food wages.
French provacateur Rémi Gaillard converts a traffic ticket camera radar gun into a pose-with-Santa photo booth
Your up-to-the-minute tax resistance news:
That sort of identity theft and refund fraud has made the IRS eager to tighten up security. They’re under pressure to allow taxpayers to conveniently view their tax statements and other such information on-line in the same way they have come to expect to view their bank accounts, utility bills, and everything else in our digital age. On the other hand, cunning and not-so-cunning fraudsters like Florida Man see such convenient access as a recklessly-guarded vault full of government money ripe for the picking. What is the IRS to do?
Their response was to invite the usual suspects in government contracting to bid on a contract to square the circle and make the problem go away. The winning bidder apparently was military contractor ID.me, and the IRS has begun rolling out their solution and telling users of on-line IRS account services that they’ll need to reenroll with ID.me if they want to continue to access their accounts. However, the rollout has gone poorly. As I noted last month the sign-up process is clumsy, time-consuming, and buggy. It’s also uncomfortably invasive — requiring a face scan and copies of a variety of documents. ID.me sent out a press release claiming that those face scans were only used in a very limited way to verify identity but then had to walk back that claim when it was shown to be untrue. Privacy advocates and people & groups with a host of other concerns have been urging the IRS to reconsider.
As I noted late last year, the number of Americans who renounced their citizenship hit new highs again. But that’s not the whole story. As it turns out, in order to renounce your citizenship, you first have to appear in person at an embassy or consulate for an “exit interview.” And, with the covid epidemic as an excuse, these offices have been refusing to grant such interviews, meaning that thousands of Americans who would like to formally renounce their citizenship have been prohibited from doing so.
Clarification: the number of Americans who renounced their citizenship hit new highs in , according to numbers released , but it looks like ’s numbers dropped considerably from there, with the unwillingness of embassies to process renunciations being one reason for the drop. ―♇
Here are some excerpts from The Catholic News Archive concerning tax resistance, from sources other than Catholic Worker, from the span:
First, a typed news dispatch from “M. Massiani,” Paris Correspondent for the National Catholic Welfare Council (U.S.) News Service, dated :
Priests and People of Vendee, France, Protest Tax on Christian Schools and Refusal of State Aid
Paris, . — A delegation of 20,000 citizens from various parts of the Department of Vendee, one of the most Catholic regions of France, appeared in the town of La Roche-sur-Yon, where a number of priests were on trial for refusing to pay a tax exacted on entertainments and theatrical productions given to aid in supporting the free Christian schools of the Department.
A large group of priests and directors of Christian schools purposely decided to refuse payment of this tax and made public announcement of the decision in order to protest what is regarded by the people of the Vendee as a highly inequitable situation; the state taxing the people to support unneeded public schools, refusing to grant a subsidy to aid in maintaining the Christian schools, and at the same time taxing entertainments held to raise money for support of the Christian schools.
It is pointed out that in Vendee public schools are practically empty. The Christian schools, on the other hand, are educating the vast majority of the children of the region, saving the state more than 200 million francs in school taxes annually. Yet whenever Catholics hold a festival to raise funds for support of their schools, the state intervenes to collect part of the receipts.
It is hoped that in refusing to pay this tax, public attention will be called to the injustice and the need of a state subsidy to help support the Christian schools, such as is granted in other countries, including Belgium and Holland.
Bishop Antoine Cazaux of Lucon, who went to La Roche-sur-Yon to testify in behalf of the defendants, stated that his priests are neither rebels nor evaders, and that the court, in order to judge equitably, should take into consideration the unjust situation that exists with regard to education. Many thousands of people were in the streets outside the courtroom.
Decisions were rendered in only two of the cases, the defendants being acquitted on procedural grounds. The other cases were postponed. The action of the court caused anti-religious groups and newspapers, particularly in Paris, to demand that new suits be instituted and that the law be applied with severity.
In the Diocese of Lucon, two-thirds of the children attend the 461 primary religious schools. In six large districts, 13,757 children out of 15,183 are enrolled at the Christian schools. In two other districts, the number of pupils in the public schools is only three per cent of the total. In 41 settlements in the Department, with a population of 40,000, there are no public schools.
A National Catholic Reporter editorial (signed by editor Robert C. Hoyt) in the issue recommended that men refuse military service, concluding that in Vietnam, “we are killing people and destroying a culture without adequate justification, without a rationale that meets the minimum requirements of morality. That imposes obligations on all of us. We believe that anyone who despairs of a political solution has a right and duty to search for more effective ways, including civil disobedience and tax refusal. We have a responsibility to the rest of the world, to history, to God that nobody else can bear.”
In its issue, that paper published a lengthy article on the war tax resistance movement:
Protesters turn to taxes to fight against the war
By Gary MacEoin
Special to the National Catholic Reporter, NEW YORK— Protesters against the Vietnam war are turning to the withholding of taxes as a way of fighting against the war.
A national campaign against the payment of taxes used for the war is being organized and its goal is to involve “tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of people in conscientious tax refusal.”
The campaign is spearheaded by the War Tax Resistance, an organization founded which draws support from a broad spectrum of pacifist groups. Its headquarters is in New York and it has offices in Philadelphia and Chicago.
Resistance spokesmen say they hope to have “at least a phone, an address and a contact person” in each of the principal 50 to 100 cities in the nation by . Groups organized around such regional centers are to focus their tax resistance efforts on demonstrations on and .
“We picked the date more or less arbitrarily,” said Bradford Lyttle, clean-shaven and soft-spoken coordinator of War Tax Resistance. “That’s about the time that thousands of accountants all over the country hang out signs offering to help prepare tax returns. We want to provide an option for those who want not to pay.”
The choice of is more obvious, he said. “It is both the final day for filing tax returns and the start of the Spring offensive of the demonstrations against the war in Vietnam.”
Lyttle, 42, works out of an office in Lower Manhattan (339 Lafayette Street). It is also the home of the New York GI Coffeehouse, the Jewish Peace Fellowship, the Catholic Peace Fellowship, the War Resisters League, Win magazine (hippie-pacifist), and Liberation magazine (David Dellinger’s voice). Between them, they occupy the two top floors of a three-story cold-water walk-up not far from the Catholic Worker.
Organized resistance to paying war taxes is not new, dating from , Lyttle said. The War Tax Resistance is trying to give the idea broader appeal by modifying the totally pacifist position that its forerunners had adopted.
Lyttle, who himself is a pacifist, said the new approach was developed by a New York teacher, Norma Becker, who recruited a group of sponsors which included Joan Baez, Noam Chomsky, Tom Cornell, Dorothy Day, Dave Dellinger, Allen Ginsberg, Stewart and Charlotte Meacham, Grace Paley and Dr. Benjamin Spock.
“The result,” says Bradford Lyttle, “was a new emphasis. Instead of stressing the total pacifist tradition as the others had done, we decided to concentrate on two more immediate and obvious reasons: the horrors of the war in Vietnam, and the misuse of the taxpayers’ money by the government to the extent that it was neglecting national priorities.
“And instead of calling on sympathizers to pay no taxes whatever, we appealed to them to make a token withholding, if only $5, without of course ceasing to urge those who had the moral courage to go further.”
War Tax Resisters chose as their prime targets the 10 per cent surtax and the 10 per cent federal excise tax on telephone service — two taxes more clearly linked to Vietnam than any others.
Both War Tax Resistance and other organizations distribute literature explaining the various ways — some legal, some doubtful, some illegal — for nonpayment of federal taxes. The first War Tax Resistance leaflet was prepared for the antiwar demonstration in Washington, D.C., , and 10,000 copies were handed out there.
“The act of war tax resistance creates a confrontation between the government and the conscience of the citizens,” this pamphlet states. “We believe that the right of conscientious objection to war belongs to all people, not just to those of draft age… Do whatever makes sense to your conscience. But do it.”
Among the ways to avoid paying taxes, the first is to earn an income so low as not to be taxable. This means for the single person under 65, an earned income of less than $900 annually. Yet a considerable number of pacifists choose this method.
Another form of protest is to refuse to pay the percentage of the tax that goes for war. More than two-thirds of the federal budget pays for wars, past, present and future. This is the amount some withhold. Others refuse to pay the proportion of the federal budget (23 per cent) directly allocated to Vietnam, while others hold back a token amount.
According to Internal Revenue Service figures, 73 million Americans paid their income taxes in full , while 1,025 refused to pay all or part in protest against the Vietnam war. The 1,025 protesters was an increase from 592 .
IRS counted 10,511 cases of refusal to pay the telephone tax in , down from 14,396 in . Several factors combine to make the telephone tax the attractive target it has become.
For one thing, the American Telephone and Telegraph Co. has handled the situation with kid gloves. So long as the protester makes it clear to the company with each payment that the amount withheld is the tax portion, it will not cut off a phone. Printed forms are made available by the resistance groups to facilitate this notification. What the telephone company does is simply to report to IRS the fact of nonpayment and the amount.
IRS also is anxious to keep the situation as cool as possible, but it wants at the same time to maintain whatever pressure is necessary to dissuade the hesitant from joining the movement. Back in 1967, the first step was to send the defaulter a “notice of preliminary assessment” which enabled him to demand a hearing. Because of the number of cases involved and the small amount in each, the IRS quickly eliminated this step and moved immediately to Form 17-A or some other “notice of final assessment.” This notice contains a threat to seize property to collect a debt.
Ralph Di Gia of War Resisters League is one who has been through this process several times.
Early in , for example, the IRS computer at Andover, Mass., sent him Form 17 demanding payment of $2.25 owed as telephone tax. Next a New York agent wrote him, then called on him in his New York office. After checking with Di Gia’s landlord and the building superintendent to establish his political views, the agent tried to place a lien on his salary at the War Resisters League, but the League refused to cooperate.
After another confrontation with Di Gia, which merely established that it was “the principle,” not the $2.25, that was at issue on both sides, the agent located Di Gia’s bank account and collected the $2.25 plus 6 per cent interest. Under the IRS code, it can take money from a bank account without a court order in payment of taxes due by the account holder.
Apparently the discovered account was then fed into the computer, because another section of IRS moved quickly to seize the entire balance in payment of income tax. And as of , the IRS located a savings account recently opened by Di Gia in another bank and collected yet another telephone tax bill. But Di Gia insists that he doesn’t mind.
“The issue isn’t withholding money from the government,” he says. “They’re going to get it ultimately. But I made a few collection agents think about what their job’s about, and now IRS is going to have to realize that there are people who aren’t afraid to resist. They got the tax, but they had to come and get it, like when the agents had to go to the fields in France for collection.”
Unpaid taxes, whether telephone or income, can result not only in seizure from a bank account but also a lien on salary or the attachment and sale by auction of some property, usually an automobile.
In addition, some banks make a service charge — as high as $10, reportedly each time a lien is placed on an account, and the resisters suspect that IRS is pressuring banks to do this as a deterrent. Such a fee every month would make telephone tax refusal impractical for most people. But actually, the load on the IRS is such that it usually moves against any given individual only at much longer intervals.
Everyone who refuses to pay any taxes he owes is actually exposing himself to heavy penalties, and the resistance literature spells out this danger very openly. Simple “willful failure to pay” is punishable by fine up to $10,000 and a year in jail, plus the cost of prosecution. Similar or greater penalties are available for a variety of related offenses.
Although the offense of counseling or urging others not to pay taxes would seem greater than the simple act of withholding, the law on this point is somewhat ambiguous and apparently has never been tested in the courts.
There are few, if any, cases of conscientious tax refusers being jailed for not paying taxes or filing returns. Most of the small number of cases on record have resulted from related non-cooperation with the courts, such as ignoring a court order to disclose financial records.
In addition, it would appear that prosecutions have been initiated by local collectors who did not first check with headquarters. Current IRS policy on this issue apparently stops short of court action.
The most distinguished American to go to jail for refusal to pay taxes was Henry David Thoreau, the essayist, poet and naturalist. He spent only one night in confinement, because a neighbor paid the tax, but the experience inspired his essay on Civil Disobedience, espousing the doctrine of passive resistance. It deeply influenced Gandhi and has become the bible of the resistance movement. One passage is found to be particularly relevant by today’s resisters:
“When… a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the Country to overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.” The reference is to the Mexican War of .
About half a dozen have been jailed in the past 20 years. Juanita Nelson was arrested in Philadelphia in , threatened with a year in jail and $1,000 fine if she did not disclose certain financial information, but in fact was held only some hours.
Maurice McCrackin, arrested in Cincinnati in , was given a mental test, imprisoned “indefinitely” on a contempt charge, then sentenced to six months and a $250 fine. James Otsuka got 90 days and a $140 fine in Indianapolis, in . Eroseanna Robinson, sentenced to a year and a day in Chicago in , was released unconditionally after 93 days. Walter Gormley got 7 days in Cedar Rapids in .
And in the first such imprisonment in several years, Neil Haworth of New London, Conn., got 60 days in for refusal to produce records. He had served six months in for “committing civil disobedience at a missile site” near Omaha. And in , he was a crew member of Everyman Ⅲ, a boat which sailed to Leningrad to protest the Russian nuclear tests.
Those who have refused to pay federal taxes and have got away with it include the Catholic Worker settlement houses and the settlement house of the New England Committee for Non-Violent Action. “We pay local taxes,” says Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker, “and we let the IRS people examine our records, but we pay them nothing.” The New England group says that IRS has spent thousands of dollars going through their bills and receipts, without collecting a penny.
War Tax Resistance is now urging citizens “to sue the government to refund all your taxes on the grounds that the taxes have been used for illegal and immoral purposes.” The main value of such suits to date has been the publicity.
Professor Donald Kalish, chairman of the philosophy department at UCLA, filed a suit to recover his telephone tax but it was dismissed by the District Court. He appealed, and the appellate court has agreed to hear his appeal.
The most important case to date is that of Walter C. Pietsch, of Rego Park, N.Y., a 33-year-old administrative employee in a hospital. Last year, he instituted “a class action” for an injunction to enjoin IRS from collecting the 10 per cent surtax and all other taxes used to propagate the war, and also for a declaration that the Vietnam war was unconstitutional. A class action, if successful, would provide the same remedy for all taxpayers.
Pietsch, who served in Korea, “is not against all wars, just this one.” The surtax he withheld was $190.84. “The amount is insignificant,” he said, “It’s the principle I’m fighting for.” After a preliminary hearing in the Brooklyn federal district court on , written arguments were submitted on , and on the case was dismissed on a motion by the defendants. An appeal was filed immediately.
Although the Vietnam war is the direct issue on which tax resisters are concentrating, many of them insist that the campaign has escalated into something much bigger — the war mentality behind much of United States foreign policy. “Maybe it’s a hang-up,” says Ted Webster, administrator of the Roxbury War Tax Scholarship fund, “but I personally have a great feeling of urgency, it seems the logic behind bombing North Vietnam can be so easily applied to China. The influence of the Pentagon on policy, and the political expediency of yielding to it seems so obvious, I see the need to rapidly escalate resistance, or there will be a greatly expanded war — maybe with China — within one to three years.”
Another National Catholic Reporter article, from the issue, asked “In the name of God, how did Milwaukeeans get so radical?” A section of it covered tax resisters:
One area in which a number of community members are discussing is tax resistance. Some say they have claimed as many exemptions as were needed to keep from paying any federal taxes used to finance the war.
[Richard W.] Zipfel, who is defense committee chairman for the Chicago 15, Feit and Father Robert W. Dundon, a Jesuit, have sent a letter to the Wisconsin Telephone Co. stating they are refusing to pay the federal telephone tax on their phone bills because “we can no longer tolerate our nation spending more than $75 billion on the military while our cities die.”
The letter, dated , added that “even if the present war ended, our policies would quickly create another Vietnam.”
Their resistance gesture is significant, they said, because the tax was argued through Congress as a specifically Vietnam war tax. They have reserved a reply from the utility saying their letter was being forwarded to the government.
“I do believe in the legitimacy of the magistrates,” [Michael] Cullen said. “In paying property taxes, I believe in the state.
“I’ll render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but when Caesar decides to take what is God’s, or if Caesar decides to look like God or act like God, I won’t render to Caesar.
“You only render to what is legitimate and what is human, and what is for the common good. War destroys humans.”
Milwaukee’s Casa Maria Catholic Worker House still looks to be something like a hotbed of war tax resistance, at least relative to the current national lull. Lincoln Rice of Casa Maria is the current NWTRCC coordinator. I recognize the names of war tax resisters Roberta Thurstin and Don Timmerman among their volunteers as well.
From the Pittsburgh Catholic, :
Five say they won’t pay taxes
Five local clergymen handed in their income tax forms at the Federal Bldg. downtown on with the announcement they were withholding a portion in protest to the Vietnam War.
Joining them in the protest at the Internal Revenue Office there were several dozen local lay members of War Tax Resistance, an organization whose members carried out withholding actions in a number of cities , the last day for filing income tax returns. It is headquartered locally at 3601 Blvd. of the Allies.
The clergymen issued a statement denouncing the Vietnam war as immoral and stating other means of protest had been futile. “Now we must do more than talk. The time is now that we must act,” they said.
They included three priests active in civil rights causes here: Fr. Donald C. Fisher of St. Francis de Sales, McKees Rocks; Fr. Donald W. McIlvane, St. Richard’s, Hill District; and Fr. John O’Malley of St. Joseph’s, Manchester. Also taking part was Fr. Bernard Survil of St. Hedwig in Smock, Greensburg Diocese.
Protestant clergy included Rev. Oscar L. Arnall, a Lutheran, Rev. Thomas Whitcroft, an Episcopalian, and Rev. William S. Richard, a Presbyterian, signed the statement but weren’t present.
The clergymen announced they were withholding 25 per cent of their income tax, the proportion of the national tax that is estimated goes for the Vietnam war, they said. Some said they would pay the money into local community action programs suffering because of the amounts given to the Vietnam war.
“We are conscious of our obligation to pay taxes, but we are equally conscious of our obligation before God to refuse to cooperate with evil,” the clergymen said.
The National Catholic Reporter, in its issue, printed the following letter from Robert Calvert of War Tax Resistance:
Tax resisters suggest: “Stop paying for it”
To The Editors:
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos… young people by the hundreds of thousands are rebelling in disgust and anger against the squandering of lives and resources in an immoral and illegal war. They are risking their freedom, careers and often their lives to protest and resist what they see to be wrong.
We, as participants in war tax resistance, are resolved to confront our own complicity in war, waste and callousness. We resolve to end to the extent possible our cooperation in a federal tax program geared to death more than life.
For every dollar which the administration expects to spend in , 64.8 per cent will go for wars — past, present and future. Of this amount, 48.4 per cent will go for current military expenditures, including Vietnam. (The administration has not revealed the exact costs of the Indochina war.) Another 17 per cent will go to health, education and welfare; 18.2 per cent for other expenditures.
The deadline for paying income taxes is close, . Many who read this letter will owe the federal government money. Don’t pay. War tax resistance is being supported by numerous civil rights, anti-poverty and peace organizations in our call to help end the war by widespread tax refusal. Widespread tax refusal does more than force the government to spend much money to try to collect unpaid taxes. It confronts the government with the political fact of massive non-cooperation with its war-making policies.
We need to dramatize war tax resistance and to expand it from an act of individual conscience to a nationwide demonstration of collective civil disobedience.
On , the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice — which includes such groups as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Welfare Rights organization, the American Friends Service committee and the Fellowship of Resistance — is calling for a nationwide “Tribute in Action to Martin Luther King.” The theme is “Freedom from Hunger, War and Oppression”; the event will be observed by hunger marches, fasts, teachins, demonstrations and religious services.
War tax resisters will relate to these events in a real way. We are asking people to refuse to pay $10 to $50 or more of their federal income taxes, and to publicly turn this money over to a local community group on . We will thus take our tax money out of the hands of the government and put it into the hands of the people. If we work hard thousands of dollars can be rechanneled to the people. We can not wait for the government to change priorities. We must change them ourselves.
Find out what actions are being planned in your city or region and build a demonstration dramatizing the transfer of funds to useful community programs. A possible action: Rally at the IRS office where people put their tax money into a container of some sort. The money is then carried to the main event and is turned over to the designated local community group.
There also will be actions at Internal Revenue Service offices across the country on . We will publicly submit our 1040 forms to the IRS with all or part of our taxes deducted. This is a simple action and serves as an extension of the observance.
If no action appears to be under way in your community, contact the nearest war tax resistance center or the People’s Coalition office (1029 Vermont avenue, Washington, D.C.). Information about the WTR center nearest you, and about other forms of tax resistance, may be obtained from War Tax Resistance, 339 Lafayette street, New York, N.Y. 10012; telephone (212) 477‒2970.
Thousands are already engaged in these acts of peaceful, conscientious civil disobedience. If you engage in any of the above acts of civil disobedience we strongly urge you to write a letter to the IRS setting forth the reasons for the steps you have taken. Keep a copy.
Although there is a penalty for openly refusing to pay federal taxes (Section 7203 of the Internal Revenue Code — a fine of up to $10,000 and up to a year in jail, plus the costs of prosecutions) no war tax resisters have been prosecuted under this law. The only war tax resisters arrested have been those who have filed “fraudulent” W-4 forms, refused to file any income tax form, refused to present financial statements to the courts when ordered to do so. There have been prosecutions and convictions based on Section 7203 but none for openly refusing to pay for conscientious reasons, as far as we know.
We invite all Americans to join us in some form of war tax refusal. We must now take a stand by refusing to support the governments destructive policies with our bodies, our skills and our money.
Robert Calvert
New York, N.Y.Editor’s note: The writer is a member of the Working Committee of WTR. Among sponsors of the organization are Dorothy Day, Joan Baez, David Dellinger, Arthur and Cathy Melville, the Rev. Richard J. Neuhaus, Rabbi Michael A. Robinson, Noam Chomsky, Peter Seeger and Theodore Roszak.
An op-ed from Eugene C. Bianchi, in the National Catholic Reporter:
“Maybe next year…”
To resist or not to resist
Two TV tableaus recently jarred me into fresh appreciation of how my tax money fosters the insanity of Vietnam.
In one film, helicopter gunships swooped down on a truck convoy; thousands of rounds of computer-directed cannon fire pierced the night. There goes at least one year’s withholding tax, I thought. But the commentator saw this military exercise as a demonstration of admirable killing efficiency. It was so orderly and precise; nothing out of place, except perhaps some Vietnamese flesh and bone.
The second scene showed men carefully loading bombs into B52s. The calm reporter noted how effectively these marvels of American know-how worked. The big bombs tore open huge craters and sent waves of damaging concussion. The antipersonnel bombs spewed thousands of body-ripping nails. As I viewed the distant puffs of smoke, I mused about how many income tax returns it took to accomplish such a feat.
It’s appalling how resigned we are to this insane use of our financial resources. Yet my and your tax money is closely related to the terrible statistic from the Kennedy subcommittee about 325,000 Indochinese, civilian deaths in recent years. Many more are maimed and driven from their homes. When I drop that IRS envelope through the red and blue bomb bay of the mail box, I wonder how many sad faces I’ve put behind the fences of relocation camps, how many children I’ve separated from parents. If Mr. Nixon is a prime candidate for war crimes according to the Nuremberg principles, we have all in some degree had our hands on the tax trigger.
Yet my courage rarely equals my insights. I also tell myself that some tax money goes for good causes. But the spirit of Ammon Hennacy, that holy maverick against war, won’t let me be content with such dodges. The whole Catholic Worker crowd stares up at me from their penny paper. I finally summon up the mouselike courage of refusing to pay the telephone war tax. At least that will cost the government more in time and bother than they’ll eventually get from me.
Maybe next year around income tax time, I’ll be brave enough to risk other concrete gestures. The words of Thoreau won’t go away: “If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bill this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure as it would be to pay them and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood.”
War tax resistance, though only a small act before the mighty state, could have broad effects if it became more widespread. It has the educational effect of conviction in action. Such tax resistance is illegal; but the war, by an ever-growing consensus, is enormously more illegal and immoral. Even token refusal to pay war taxes confronts the government with a concrete statement about its brutal policies. Tax resistance also awakens conscience to active non-complicity, to a new level of sensibility. For the situation is overwhelmingly clear: Tax money can be as killing as the weaponry it buys.
Since some risk is involved in tax resistance, it is worth reading a brochure or two about it. These can be easily obtained from a number of peace action groups, such as the War Tax Resistance (339 Lafayette St., New York 10012; or War Resisters League-West, 833 Haight St., San Francisco 94117). A Catholic group, Ammon’s Tax Associates (Box 1744, Indianapolis, Ind. 46204) is striving to awaken church institutions to their responsibilities for supporting conscientious tax resisters, as an extension of the church’s respect for conscientious objectors.
Perhaps the American church will end its complicity of silence with the warmakers when enough of us try to stop our own complicity in war taxes.
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
