Tax resistance in the “Peace Churches” →
Quakers →
20th–21st century Quakers →
Alan (Allyn? Allan?) Eccleston
From the edition of
In These Times:
Pocketbook Pacifists
Some people use income tax time to send an anti-military message to the
government.
by Marcia Yudkin
“Some people think tax resistance is an extreme thing to do,” muses Steven
Broil, “but you have to be as extreme and active as the people you’re
opposing. Money talks.” An increasing number of people are using April
15th as an opportunity to talk back. According to
a recent General Accounting Office report, tax resistance rose sharply in
, with a 400 percent
increase in the Northeast. Accurate estimates of the number of war tax
resisters are difficult to arrive at. The
IRS has
a category called “illegal protesters,” in which it placed 6,694 individuals
in 1978 and 15,285 in 1980. According to the War Resisters League, those
figures are a gross underestimate. There might be as many as 200,000 people
resisting taxes from any principled position, including at least several
thousand specifically protesting military spending.
IRS
figures would also not include individuals using wholly legal means to resist
war taxes. And both the War Resisters League and the Conscience and Military
Tax Campaign report a groundswell of interest since President Reagan took
office.
Steven Broil, who stocks shelves in a store in Amherst,
Mass., last year found
himself for the first time owing the government money at tax time. He
happened to hear an announcement on the radio of a number to call about war
tax resistance, and after a conference with veteran tax resisters Wally and
Juanita Nelsen [sic] of nearby Deerfield, he decided not to pay the
$255 he owed. He filed and enclosed a statement of his decision of conscience
instead of a check.
Broil might seem an unlikely recruit to the ranks of tax resisters. Both his
parents were officers in the military, and only a long string of coincidences
prevented his own enlistment in the Air Force. Recently, however, he has
developed what he calls “pacifist leanings.”
“I was raised a Roman Catholic,” he explains, “and we weren’t exactly
encouraged to read the Bible for ourselves. But when I began to read the
Bible I found that it’s pretty much black and white in the Gospels not to
kill and to love your enemy. From believing that it’s wrong to kill under any
circumstances, the next logical step is that I shouldn’t participate in
killing in any way. Working so that my taxes go toward killing is
intolerable.”
He has also come to feel strongly about El Salvador. “A lot of people say
they’re against
U.S. aid going to
El Salvador, but they don’t make the connection that money is taken out of
their paycheck every week and sent to El Salvador.”
Comparative risk.
Breaking the law was not an easy thing for Broil to bring himself to do. Last
year, a series of “Dear Taxpayer” letters ended with threats to garnish his
wages or seize bank accounts, although neither happened. This year, his
giving false information on his W-4 withholding form and deciding not to file
a tax return at all make him liable to a year’s imprisonment and a
substantial fine. Although he points out that Wally and Juanita Nelsen have
been resisting for 30 years and Juanita was only jailed once for an hour, he
knows that the government could create difficulties for him.
Erin Freed of the Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters points out that it usually
costs the government more money to pursue tax resisters than it will collect,
a good reason not to bother. On the other hand, the tax system relies on
voluntary compliance, and the
IRS
must crack down on “avoidance schemes” that appear to be popular. Hence there
is great variance in the government’s response to war tax resisters. One
PVWTR
member had the $600 in his checking account seized without notice during his
second year of war tax resistance, while another member received his first
phone call from the
IRS
nine years after he began to resist. Since court trials of war tax resisters
are expensive and may generate publicity favorable to the cause, they are few
and far between. seven
pacifist refusers were criminally prosecuted, none, and in there were
two criminal convictions.
“In our little world,” Broil says, “if my wife and I lost our savings or if I
lost my job, that would really put a dent in our lives, but if you put
yourself in a village of El Salvador where they can take you out and shoot
you — or put yourself in a European’s place hearing about Haig’s nuclear war
and knowing that the war would be in your backyard — our risks are minimal.”
The roughly $2,000 that he owes the
IRS
has been contributed instead to an alternative fund administered by the
Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters, a local group of about a dozen longtime
members, “We feel we can do a better job with our money than the government
can,” explains Broil. “We put the money toward life-affirming purposes.” Part
of the money in the fund is reserved for legal fees a member might need, but
most of it is loaned to local groups who don’t have access to mainstream
funding.
Like many tax resisters, Broil keeps no bank accounts. Instead he gives extra
money to friends on interest-free loans. “You can’t have a house or a car in
your name because the
IRS
could seize it,” he says, “and it’s much easier to keep the money away from
the government in the first place if you can be self-employed.”
Alan Eccleston, an architect and builder who also lives in Amherst, is a war
tax resister in the ideal position of being able to withhold the quarterly
payments required of a self-employed person. But he has a very different
philosophy of resistance. He makes partial quarterly payments and doesn’t
much mind that for the last seven years, the
IRS has
usually ended up with his full income tax assessment, plus interest and
penalties on the amount held back. “Some war tax resisters put a maximum of
energy into preventing collection by the
IRS,”
he says. “I put my energy into following my conscience and conveying my
beliefs to others.” A Quaker, Eccleston opposes war in any form. “The only
people who have the opportunity to be conscientious objectors against war in
this country are 17-year-old males,” he points out, referring to draft
registration. “But I believe that the First and Ninth Amendments to the
Constitution protect my right to refuse war taxes.”
So that people like himself can satisfy both their consciences and the law,
he supports the passage of the World Peace Tax Fund bill, first introduced in
the Senate in by Senator Mark Hatfield and
now with 333 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives. The bill would
provide taxpayers with the opportunity to identify themselves on their 1040
form as conscientious objectors to war taxes. The portion of their income tax
that would otherwise go to the military would instead be deposited with the
World Peace Tax Fund and be available only for peaceful purposes.
Eccleston rejects the criticism of some other war tax resisters that after 40
percent or so of their taxes was handed over to the World Peace Tax Fund, the
same percentage of the remainder would still go to the military. “It’s a good
idea because the general fund would receive less money,” he argues, “billions
less if even 4 percent of the population chose to be
COs.
Their $4 billion a year in the World Peace Tax Fund would clearly support
alternatives to war that presently get no funding. It would spread the
ethical decision to more people. Every year every taxpayer would have to
think about whether or not he or she wanted to support the military.”
Another project he supports is the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign,
coordinated by four activists in Bellport,
N.Y. Signers of the
resolution they circulate pledge to withhold at least the military portion of
their income taxes when notified that 100,000 people have signed the
resolution. CMTC also administers an escrow account to hold refused taxes.
Yet Eccleston urges people not to wait for the safety of numbers. The
important thing to him is taking personal responsibility and going on record
against preparations for nuclear war.
Eccleston is accordingly less enthusiastic about the strategy of some war tax
resisters to avoid contributing to the military by reducing their income to a
nontaxable level. “The point is not to be self-sacrificing, but to witness
for peace. The real issue is peace, not tax resistance.”
This letter comes from the edition of In These Times, twenty-five years ago today:
Exemplary Poverty
Marcia Yudkin’s “Pocketbook Pacifists” (ITT, ) is a good article showing the diversity of the war tax resistance movement.
However, I don’t agree with Alan Eccleston who was quoted as being wary of us resisters who live on a non-taxable income.
Many of us choose to live in “voluntary poverty” effectively to show our opposition to the spending of our tax dollars for the military.
We do this because we know that not one cent of our money goes toward the race toward human extinction; unlike Eccleston, from which the military eventually gets its money and then goes forward to produce killing machines.
Military tax resistance, whatever its form, is just a means.
The end result is to gain support for spending for human needs (peace) and to end the threat of self-annihilation.
Brad Ott New Orleans
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
War tax resistance kept charging on through the early
issues of the Friends
Journal, though there was some indication of post-Vietnam War war tax
resister fatigue.
The issue gave an overview of
how various Friends in various places were meeting the war tax challenge:
“Friends in Illinois and Massachusetts, for example, have shared letters
to the
IRS,
to their elected representatives, to newspapers, and to the meetings in
which they have expressed the wrongness of militarism and their
conscientious refusal to support governmental expenditures for military
purposes.”
In Philadelphia, “when the
IRS
seized a car owned by Margaret (Meg) Bownan… [this] was met by many
members of the meeting and other supporters who went with her down to the
garage where the auction was held. A bouquet of bittersweet was placed on
the car’s hood, cranberry juice and cookies were passed out to everyone
(and graciously accepted by the police and the
IRS
representatives), and meeting members formed a special support corporation
and bought the car so that Meg and others may use it in their travels in
and about the city.”
Robert Anthony was fighting a Tax Court battle from Moylan, Pennsylvania,
with First Amendment freedom-of-religion arguments: “compelling the
payment of that part of the income tax that is used for war or war
preparation makes it impossible for a Quaker to practice his
religion.”
Thomas L. Carter of Santa Barbara, California, quoted Peter J. Ediger in a
parable about the Quaker peace testimony:
The devil took the Quakers to a very high mountain, the mountain of
academic-socio-economic success and showed them all the kingdoms of the
world, and the glory of them; and he said to the Quakers all this will I
give you…
financial security
acceptance in your society
many opportunities for doing good
tax exemption for your worship centers and your service programs
many other benefits too numerous to mention
if you will fall down and worship me…
bless the armies which protect your privileges
pay taxes without question for my armies around the world (a few
words of dissent to support your moral image are OK as long as you
refrain from any form of civil disobedience)
And the Quakers said (multiple choice/check one):
we want to keep our service program going, so…
we’re uneasy with your terms, but we like the benefits…
would you serve as one of our Trustees? We need more practical minds
like yours…
as children of God and members of the Religious Society of Friends
we are under obligation to free ourselves from this complicity.
In the issue, the clerk of the
Nashville (Tennessee) Friends Meeting wrote in about that Meeting’s decision
to disregard the legal exemption on local property taxes for church property
and to go ahead and pay the property tax on its meeting house.
The meeting’s decision had, according to Bob Lough, the clerk, four reasons
behind it:
The sense that churches are just as much the beneficiaries of city
government services (like “fire protection, road maintenance, libraries,
schools, social services, parks,
etc.”) as
anyone else.
That “a position in favor of paying taxes form which we are exempt may
enhance our credibility as tax resisters. we decided to continue refusing to pay the excise tax on
the meeting telephone as symbolic of our opposition to a foreign policy
which we cannot support.”
Being in favor of the separation of church and state, the meeting was
opposed to the implicit government subsidy of religious bodies owning
property that the tax exemption represented.
The meeting also felt that the property tax exemption for religious bodies
had encouraged churches to become property owners — erecting “modern day
‘steeplehouses’ which resemble country clubs more than places of Christian
service.”
The piece concluded by encouraging other meetings to consider following their
lead. “As Quakers we are noted for being conscientious about taxes, and
resistance of taxes for war-related purposes has a long history in our
tradition. Perhaps our tax record should not merely reflect our opposition to
the evils we see in society, but also demonstrate that we have a
responsibility that calls for support as well as dissent.”
an ad from the 1 February 1977 issue of Friends Journal
Ross Roby wrote in again (see ♇ 24 July
2013 for his earlier letter) to express his puzzlement about why Quakers
hadn’t gotten all enthusiastic about the World Peace Tax Fund bill. “[T]he
National Council for a
W.P.T.F. is
still operating on a shoe-string and still being warned by sympathetic
Congressmen that there is little apparent concern about the bill if they can
judge by their mail.”
Has Friends Journal any interest in developments in
the W.P.T.F.
bill…? There have been frequent opportunities in the last year for the
Journal to support and encourage lobbyists for the
W.P.T.F.,
and the chance was again present in the article of
on “Friends and the
IRS.”
For some inexplicable reason, the Journal has again
missed an opportunity to remind us that the tax laws can be changed by
legislative action — that the
W.P.T.F.
bill is a reasonable way to put conscientious objection as an alternative in
every citizen’s form 1040!
Again, Roby seemed blind to the real concerns that Quakers and other
conscientious war tax resisters might have with the plan advocated by the
“peace tax fund” advocates.
In the issue, George Lakey shared
his annual letter to the
IRS,
accompanying the letter with a telling comment: “I thought you might like to
print part or all of it to remind your readers that some of us Quaker tax
refusers are still doing it!” Although from my perspective, the
coverage of Quaker war tax resistance in the
Journal seems to be going strong, it seems that from
the perspective of this particular Quaker tax resister the practice had begun
to wane in the post-Vietnam War period. Excerpts:
Again I am asked to pay taxes to support an approach which reduces my actual
security as a human being… for paying taxes to this government means giving a
license for various kinds of international misadventures.
I see no reason, therefore, to change my own policy of refusing federal income
taxes. I very much support the principle of taxation, and encourage the
government to tax at a much higher rate the corporations whose interests it so
faithfully serves. Since it does not serve my interests nearly so well, I
withhold my hard-earned money until I see a basic change in values. I want to
see the government focused on human security, not “national”
security. I want to see the government make a serious commitment to
environmental quality. I want to see in all its policies the government taking
the side of life, not death.
To implement my tax refusal policy, I return the form only partially filled
out, lacking the financial information which would enable you to collect the
tax.
Virginia Snow Mountain and Darrell Bluhm shared their letter to the
IRS in
the same issue. Excerpts:
We have given ourselves a War Crimes Tax Credit for the amount your charts
would otherwise have had us owe and we request that you refund us the money
withheld from our incomes last year.
…Through our involvement with the Religious Society of Friends and our
personal experience of the Divine Spirit we have come to know that all life
is sacred. We are called to live in such a way as to “remove the cause of
war.”
…[O]ur vocations involve the nurture and education of children. Daily we work
to help guide young people to grow up to be peaceful, responsible adults.
They are our joy and our hope for the future. It is unthinkable to us that
any part of the wages that we earn in this work should be used to support
weapons systems or armies whose effect is to injure and kill people, or to
add to the great potential for nuclear holocaust that already exists with our
huge stockpiles of weapons. Knowing that more than half our tax dollar goes
to the death and destruction the American military represents has caused us
to conclude that we will no longer pay our Federal taxes. We cannot support
the military’s protection of corporate profit at the expense of human needs.
That issue also reprinted the text of a “petition” written by R.L. Anthony
(and invited others to sign or use it):
Members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) since the Society’s
beginning have been guided by a belief in the sacredness of life and have
implemented this by seeking ways of peace. This compels in conscience their
refusal to participate in war.
I believe the U.S.
tax laws deny us the constitutional right to religious freedom by
not providing under law an alternative to paying that portion of the income
tax devoted to war preparation.
If I should at present follow my conscience and my religious beliefs by
refusing taxes for war, I would have to face the prospect of forced
collection or legal prosecution and penalties. I believe the
U.S. tax laws
thereby deny me the free exercise of my religious beliefs.
In keeping with my beliefs and conscience, I wish to pay the war portion of
my income tax to a peace fund, such as the World Peace Tax Fund
presently in a committee of Congress, set up as a legal alternative under
U.S. law. I would
make this alternative payment instead of the war portion of my income tax if
the U.S. tax laws
provided such an alternative for all citizens conscientiously opposed to war
and the taking of life.
I wish my position made known to all branches of government concerned,
including the U.S.
Congress, the courts and the
IRS.
In the issue, Allyn Eccleston
compared the reemerging Quaker opposition to paying for war to the emergence
of Quaker abolitionism in American in the
.
Excerpts:
Today we have a different impediment in our relationship with God and we are
called, each one of us, to hold it to the light and test whether we feel at
ease. Our continued commitment to a world-wide arms race not only deprives
the world of comparable expenditures for human service, it enslaves the world
in a struggle for real and symbolic power that engenders hatred, fear and
greed. We are the masters in an arms race that enslaves the people
of this earth.
Do I feel at ease knowing that approximately fifty cents of each of my tax
dollars goes to military expenditures?
Do I feel at ease knowing the United States spends more money on armaments
than any country in the world?
Do I feel at ease knowing United States arms merchants have been peddling
ever more sophisticated weaponry to other nations, totalitarian and
democratic, undeveloped and developed, poor and rich; that in Greece, Turkey,
the Near East, and Latin America we have armed both sides of existing (or
potential) conflicts, as well as equipped and trained some of the most
repressive governments in existence?
Our country’s dependence on military manpower has been reduced even to the
point where conscription is no longer necessary. During the Vietnam conflict
it became the explicit policy of the United States to substitute wealth and
technology for manpower. This policy is directly responsible for more
indiscriminate killing and destructiveness (in ways contrary even to the
international conventions of warfare). We annihilated women, children, old
people and, in designated areas, all living things, and we did this by remote
control, thereby removing and insulating the killers from the acts.
Regardless of who actually handled the equipment, it is you and I and every
other taxpayer who paid for the weapons and are therefore responsible.
It is not as though a madman picks up our sledgehammer or another useful tool
and hits someone over the head with it. When soldiers, hired by us, use our
weapons to kill, it is not misuse-that is what the equipment is designed and
purchased for. And we must presume any future use will be as destructive (at
least) as what we witnessed in Vietnam.
It isn’t necessary to document for Friends why the preparation for conflict
is more likely to lead to war than to peace or how the evils of hatred, greed
and fear can be addressed by practical demonstrations of love, self-sacrifice
and self-confidence. Let us search for steps we might take that would set us
on a new course.
There are approximately 150,000 Friends in the United States. What would
happen if 30,000 Friends felt moved to take some step, however small, to
register their “dis-ease” in a meaningful way?
Suppose you are one of these Friends moved to register public dissent and
dismay by enclosing a personal statement with your tax return. If you owe the
government money, the letter would specify that at least a token amount has
been withheld as a testimony for peace. To be more effective, you would also
send copies of the statement to your senators, to your congressperson and to
your newspaper.
In addition to increasing the effect of your witness, this public declaration
protects you against accusation of intent to defraud the government.
Withholding some portion of your tax does subject you to the seven percent
interest charge plus a possible monthly penalty of one-half of one percent
per month up to twenty-five percent of the amount not paid. Therefore, it is
you who must determine the appropriate amount to withhold for your witness.
Some Friends might feel they should begin with one percent of their total
tax; others might be led to withhold ten percent or the actual percentage of
the budget allocated to military expenses.
If you are moved to witness this year but cannot withhold from the government
(because your money was already collected), you might consider requesting a
refund (form 843) of the amount you would have withheld. Whether you receive
a refund or not, the witness will have been strengthened. In the current tax
year, you can legally assure that you will owe some money to the government
by declaring expected allowances on your W-4 form at a level that takes your
peace witness into account.
If the burden of the witness gets too heavy, you can, and should, stop the
process by making the payment or by allowing the
IRS to
find and take payment from your bank account. (Beyond late-payment penalties,
the IRS
cannot take punitive action once you have paid the assessed tax.) The witness
already made to yourself and your friends, and the strength and truth gained
by this witness, will have moved us that much closer to world peace. We will
have another opportunity to witness next year, and the next and the next.
Each year we will have more knowledge and more strength and, if we are
mindful of the light, more love. And this will sustain us for as many
generations as it may take.
Some Friends will argue that since the government gets the money plus penalty
charges anyway, tax refusal is counterproductive. This is not so. The whole
system of tax collection is computerized and is dependent on voluntary
cooperation. By requiring the system to take special steps to collect your
tax, your message is felt. The message gains weight as the
IRS is
forced to put more and more time and attention on this matter. Friends may
feel easier about the extra money collected if they view it as a contribution
toward the government’s higher administrative costs. (There is no way the
additional money can be diverted into military expense.)
It will concern some Friends that this action is “against the law” or it
isn’t proper to claim a deduction for “peacework” if the money isn’t actually
spent or that there is no item under “Credits” where one could appropriately
list “peace witness.” True enough, the way of the tax refuser is not clean
and simple. We are confronting a system we believe to be immoral and, as
Friends have always done in similar situations, we must compromise, following
the path we believe moves us closer to the ideal.
This is why a tax refuser needs the insight, information and support of other
(Friendly) resisters. We need to discuss the pros and cons of the
alternatives open to us and to help each other in our witness.
IRS
regulations and procedures change. Individual circumstances change. If one is
isolated it can be confusing and lonely. It is important to stay in touch
with others, by mail, if necessary.
Regardless of the impact on the government, our witness will have an
immediate impact on each of us and on our meetings. This impact is likely to
differ from that which we may have experienced in visiting prisons,
counseling conscientious objectors, sorting clothes for AFSC,
or work in other worthwhile programs in which we minister and offer aid to
others. In tax refusal, we are concerned with our own brokenness and are
committed to a healing ministry of ourselves, not by words, but by deeds.
In addition to the most important witness of tax refusal, every Friend should
consider actively supporting the World Peace Tax Fund. If passed, this bill
would grant conscientious objector status to taxpayers in much the same way
as a conscientious objector status was granted to draft resisters and would
allow the military expense portion of a conscientious objector’s tax to be
diverted to a World Peace Trust Fund (for peace education and research, and
humanitarian use).
Those of us who are clear on this issue must act and we must support each
other. We must make our testimony public that others may find clarity and
courage. And when we are given the opportunity, we must lovingly and
patiently labor with other Friends who have not yet been moved to hold this
issue to the light.
The IRS
readily admits the whole tax system is dependent on voluntary cooperation.
Ultimate control is in our hands (not the Pentagon’s)! Whether we want to
acknowledge it or not, we are the masters, the slave masters. We can learn
from the early Quakers. We must seek truth in the light and speak truth to
power.
Finally, the issue gave the
unsurprising news that the “Ann Arbor Monthly Meeting was recently denied a
claim for exemption from payment of war taxes,” which it had asserted on
religious freedom grounds. Cleverly, at least from a propaganda point of
view, “[t]hey supported their claim by citing the
Buckley vs. Valeo
case where the Supreme Court decided it was unconstitutional to limit how much
money of his own a candidate can spend for his campaign, thus establishing
money expenditures as a means of free expression.”
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
War tax resistance was a frequent topic in the issues of Friends Journal in , though there was still no consensus about how to go about it, and there was a lot of hesitance among Quaker institutions about how strongly to endorse it.
The issue was another special issue devoted to the peace testimony, which might as well have been a special issue on war tax resistance for how frequently it was mentioned.
Clearly by this time, there was no talking about peace work without talking about war tax resistance.
an illustration by Duncan Harp, from the issue of Friends Journal
Editor Ruth Kilpack opened the issue.
She noted:
I see the billions of dollars (including taxes from my own earnings) being poured into the “defense” budget.
I hear of vastly increased crime and see the wanton waste everywhere, much of it the direct legacy of our last war; I remember the lives still festering in military hospitals, the suffering from the wounds of war both here and across the world.
But now, there is a handful of people who are beginning to take a new view of war and war-making, realizing that it takes place not only when the bombing and shelling begin, but in the will of the people who make — or allow — it to happen.
War-making must be paid for.
As it is said elsewhere in this issue, “we pray for peace, but we pay for war.”
When we once understand that, great change will come about.
And especially, as war becomes more and more impersonal, with computerized strategic commands and weapons, more people are increasingly going to ask, “Who is waging this war?
Are we ourselves responsible, since we pay for it?”
(As the old saying goes, “Your checkbook shows where your heart is.”)
Take Richard Catlett, for example, a Friend who — as I write at this very moment in — is beginning his jail sentence of two months at the Kansas City Municipal Rehabilitation Institute (for first offenders) in Kansas City, Missouri.
That will be followed by three years of probation.
Richard Catlett has been an antiwar activist , refusing to file his income tax return .
In , his health food store was closed for non-payment of taxes (it is now under his wife’s ownership), and now, at sixty-nine years of age, Richard Catlett is treated as a criminal.
Clearly, he is being held up as an example of what can happen to a trouble-maker who dares to go against the tax law.… Richard Catlett’s age gives added emphasis to the warning to those no longer young and foolhardy.
(Besides, the pockets of those in his age bracket are usually better filled, and not to be overlooked by IRS.)
Catlett’s case was covered in more depth later on in the same issue by means of lengthy quotes from a Colombia Missourian article (see “Local war protester leaves for jail term” in ♇ 5 January 2013) and the following section from a Wall Street Journal article:
Tax Report
A protester got loads of publicity that drew criminal charges for nonfiling.
The IRS selects tax protesters for criminal prosecution based on the amount of publicity they get.
Usually protesters who don’t seek the spotlight are pursued by civil actions; criminal is reserved for the publicity hound.
Richard Ralston Catlett is a notorious war and tax protester.
The sixty-eight-year-old Columbia, Missouri, health food store owner argued that criminal charges of failing to file returns should be dropped because the IRS was guilty of “selective prosecution.”
The government is barred from selecting people to prosecute on grounds of race, religion or the exercise of free speech, or other “impermissible grounds.”
Catlett claimed that basing a criminal prosecution on publicity isn’t permitted.
But an appeals court disagreed.
His exercise of free speech wasn’t involved here, the court noted.
The IRS seeks criminal prosecution against publicized protesters to promote compliance with tax laws, the court observed.
“The government is entitled to select those cases for prosecution which it believes will promote compliance,” the court declared.
For some decades now we have been hearing the Church call on governments to take steps toward disarmament.
And it would be difficult to think of a thing more urgent or more appropriate for churches to say to governments.
It is hardly necessary here to give another recitation of the monstrous and unconscionable dimensions of the world arms race, culminating in the ever-growing stockpiles of nuclear weapons and the refinement of systems to deliver their carnage.
The Church has done part of its duty when it has said that this is wrong.
But the time has come to say that the good words of the Church have not been, and are not, enough.
The risks, the disciplines, the sacrifices, and the steps in good faith which the Church has asked of governments in the task of disarmament must now be asked of the Church in the obligation of war tax resistance.
It is, at the root, a simple question of integrity.
We are praying for peace and paying for war.
Setting euphemisms aside, the billions of dollars conscripted by governments for military spending are war taxes, and Christians are paying these taxes.
Our bluff has been called.
In all candor it must be suggested that the storm of objection which arises in the Church at this idea borrows its thunder and lightning from the premiers, the presidents, the ambassadors, and the generals who make their arguments against disarmament.
War tax resistance will be called irresponsible, anarchist, unrealistic, suicidal, masochistic, naive, futile, negative and crazy.
But when the dust has settled, it will stand as the deceptively simple and painfully obvious Christian response to the world arms race.
A score or a hundred other good responses may be added to it.
We in the Church may rightly be called upon to do more than this, but we should not be expected to do less.
Let the Church take upon itself the risks of war tax resistance. For church councils to take the position that the arms race is wrong for governments and not to commit themselves and call upon their members to cease and desist from paying for the arms race is patently inconsistent.
This is probably a fundamental reason why the Church’s pleas for disarmament have met with so little positive response.
Not even governments can have high regard for people who say one thing and do another.
If governments today are confronted with the question whether they will continue the arms race, churches are confronted with the question whether they will continue to pay for it.
As specialists in the matter of stewardship of the Earth’s resources they have contributed precious little to the most urgent stewardship issue of the twentieth century if they go on paying for the arms race.
How much longer can the.
Church continue quoting to the government its carefully researched figures on military expenditures and social needs and then, apparently without embarrassment, go on serving up the dollars that fund the berserk priorities?
The arms race would fall flat on its face tomorrow if all of the Christians who lament it would stop paying for it.
It is not, of course, simple to stop paying for the arms race as a citizen of the United States, or anywhere else for that matter.
If you refuse to pay the portion of your income tax attributable to military spending, the government levies your bank account or wages and extracts the money that way.
If your income tax is withheld by your employer, you must devise some means to reduce that withholding, such as claiming a war tax deduction or extra dependents.
If, as an employer, you do not withhold an employee’s war taxes, you will find yourself in court, as has recently happened to the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors.
All of these actions are at some point punishable by fines or imprisonment, and none — in the final analysis — actually prevents the government from getting the money.
Nevertheless, it must be said that the Church has not tried tax resistance and found it ineffective; it has rather found it difficult and left it untried.
The Church has considered the risk too great.
Individuals fear social pressure, business losses, and government reprisals.
Congregations, synods, and church agencies equivocate over their role in collecting war taxes.
There is the risk of an undesirable response — contributions may drop off, tax-exempt status may be lost, officers may go to jail.
To oppose the vast power of the state by a deliberate act of civil disobedience is not a decision to be made lightly (an unnecessary observation, since there are no signs that Christians or the Church in the United States are about to do this lightly).
It would be inaccurate to give the impression that Christians, individually, and the Church, corporately, in the U.S. have done nothing about war tax resistance.
There have been notable, even heroic, exceptions to the general manifest lethargy.
The war tax resistance case of an individual Quaker was recently appealed on First Amendment grounds to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the court refused to consider it.
A North American conference of the Mennonite Church is grappling with the question of its role in withholding war taxes from the wages of employees.
Among Brethren, Friends and Mennonites — sometimes called the Historic Peace Churches — there is a rising tide of concern about war taxes.
The Catholic Worker Movement and other prophetic voices in various denominations have long advocated war tax resistance, but they have truly been voices crying in the wilderness.
For all our concern about the arms race, we in the churches have done very little to resist paying for it.
That has seemed too risky.
But then, of course, disarmament also involves risks.
Could there be a moral equivalent of disarmament that did not involve risk?
In this matter of the world arms race, it is not a question of who can guarantee the desired result, but of who will take the risk for peace.
Let the Church take upon itself the discipline of war tax resistance.
Discipline is not a popular word today, but it should be amenable to rehabilitation at least among Christians, who call themselves disciples of Jesus.
How quickly does the search for a way turn into the search for an easy way!
And how readily do we lay upon others those tasks which require a discipline we are not prepared to accept ourselves!
War tax resistance will involve the discipline of interpreting the Scripture and listening to the Spirit.
In a day when the Bible is most noteworthy for the extent to which it is ignored in the Church, it is an anomaly to see the pious rush to Scripture and the joining of ranks behind Romans 13, when the question of tax resistance is raised.
In a day when the authority of the Church is disobeyed everywhere with impunity, it is a curiosity to see Christians zealous for the authority of the state.
In a day when giving to the Church is the last consideration in family budgeting, and impulse rules over law, it is a shock to observe the fanaticism with which Christians insist that Caesar must be given every cent he wants.
As the Church has grown in its discernment of what the Bible teaches about slavery and the role of women, so it must grow in its discernment of what the Bible teaches about the place and authority of governments and the payment of taxes.
War tax resistance means accepting the discipline of submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in the nitty-gritty of history.
Call it civil disobedience if you wish, but recognize that in reality it is divine obedience.
It is a matter of yielding to a higher sovereignty.
Those who speak for a global world order to promote justice in today’s world invite nations to yield some of their sovereignty to the higher interests of the whole, and those persons know the obstinacy of nations toward that idea.
It may be that the greatest service the Church can do the world today is to raise a clear sign to nation-states that they are not sovereign.
War tax resistance might just be a cloud the size of a person’s hand announcing to the nations that the reign of God is coming near.
It is clear that Christians will not rise to this challenge without accepting difficult and largely unfamiliar disciplines.
But then, of course, disarmament also involves disciplines.
The idea that one nation can take initiatives to limit its war-making capacities is shocking.
To do so would represent a radical break with conventional wisdom.
How is it possible to do that without first convincing all the nations that it is a good idea?
Let the Church take upon itself the sacrifices of war tax resistance.
It is never altogether clear to me whether Christians who oppose war tax resistance find it too easy a course of action, or too difficult.
It is said that refusing to send the tax to IRS and allowing it to be collected by a bank levy is too easy — a convenient way of deceiving oneself into thinking that one has done something about the arms race.
And it is said that to refuse to pay the tax is too difficult.
It is to disobey the government and thereby to bring down upon one’s head the whole wrath of the state, society, family, business associates, and probably God as well.
Moreover, the same person will say both things.
Which does he or she believe?
In most cases, I think, the second.
The sacrifices involved in war tax resistance are fairly obvious.
They may be as small as accepting the scorn which is heaped upon one for using the term “war tax” when the government doesn’t identify any tax as a war tax, or as great as serving time in prison.
It may be the sacrifice of income or another method of removing oneself from income tax liability.
It can be said with some certainty that the sacrifices will increase as the number of war tax resisters increases, because the government will make reprisals against those who challenge its rush to Armageddon.
Yet, there is the possibility that the government will get the message and change its spending priorities or provide a legislative alternative for war tax objectors, or both.
In any case, for the foreseeable future, war tax resistance will be an action that is taken at some cost to the individual or the Church institution, with no assured compensation except the knowledge that it is the right thing to do.
But then, of course, disarmament also involves sacrifices.
The temporary loss of jobs, the fear of weakened defenses, and the scorn of the mighty are not easy hurdles to cross.
A moral equivalent will have to involve some sacrifices.
Let the Church take upon itself the action of war tax resistance.
The call of Christ is a call to action.
It is plain enough that the world cannot afford $400 billion per year for military expenditures, even if this were somehow morally defensible.
It is plain enough that the dollars which Christians give to the arms race are not available to do Christ’s work of peace and justice.
In these circumstances the first step in a positive direction is to withhold money from the military.
If we say that we must wait for this until everybody and (and particularly the government) thinks it is a good idea, then we shall wait forever.
Having withheld the money, the Church must apply it to the works of peace.
What this means is not altogether obvious at present, but there is reason to believe that a faithful Church can serve as steward for these resources as wisely as generals and presidents.
The dynamic interaction between individual Christians and the Church in its local and ecumenical forms will help to guide the use of resources withheld from the arms race.
This is a call to individual Christians and the Church corporately to make war tax resistance the fundamental expression of their condemnation of the world arms race.
Neither the individual nor the corporate body dare hide any longer behind the inaction of the other.
The stakes are too high and the choice is too clear for that, though we can have no illusions that this call will be readily embraced nor easily implemented by the Church.
But then, of course, we do not think that disarmament will be an easy step for governments to take either.
The Church has an obligation to act upon what it advocates, to deliver a moral equivalent of the disarmament it proposes.
If effectiveness is the criterion, it is certainly not obvious that talking about the macro accomplishes more than acting upon the micro.
A single action taken is worth more than a hundred merely discussed.
(When it comes to heating your home in winter, you will get more help from one friend who saws up a log than from a whole school of mathematicians who calculate the BTUs in a forest.)
To talk about a worthy goal is no more laudable than to take the first step toward it, and might be less so.
Michael Miller wrote an article for the same issue that noted that the National Guard is a U.S. military combat function that is largely paid for out of state budgets, not the federal budget.
He concluded:
I am now more fully aware how the military affects our daily lives and activities.
I also realize that not only is the objection to payment of war taxes a federal issue, but it is also a very real state issue.
State budgets contain rather large amounts in this respect.
As Friends, we must be constantly aware of the issues involved with our tax dollars.
The military has a great influence over our lives and our tax dollars, whether or not we recognize it.
We have a responsibility to make ourselves aware of the issues and how they influence our lives.
Alan Eccleston contributed an article on war tax resistance as a method of testifying for peace — aligning ones life with ones values.
This, he felt, could be done in a variety of ways:
We do not have to be prepared for jail to be a war tax resister.
We do not have to be ready, at this moment, to subject ourselves to harassment by the Internal Revenue Service.
We do, however, have to be truthful on our tax returns.
We do have to be clear about our belief in the peace testimony and our desire to align our lives with this belief.
And that is all!
If you are clear about that, you can withhold some amount of your tax.
It can be a token amount, if that is where you are, say five dollars or fifty dollars.
Or it can be the same percent of your tax as the military portion of the current budget, currently thirty-six percent excluding past debt and veterans benefits.
(An easy way to do this is to insert the amount under “Credits” as a “Quaker Peace Witness,” line forty-six.
Alternately, some people declare an extra deduction, but this is more complicated, since the deduction must be substantially larger than the amount you desire to withhold.)
It may bother you that three times or even ten times what you have chosen to withhold is going to be spent for war preparations.
But far better to take this small step than to turn away from the witness. Write your congresspersons and tell them of your concern.
Urge them to pass the World Peace Tax Fund which would acknowledge your constitutional right to practice your religious beliefs without harassment and penalty.
Alternatively, if the government owes you money fill out the (very short) Form #843 “Request for Refund,” asking that they refund the amount you wish for peace witness.
One can also anticipate the withholding problem by filling out a W-4 Form at your place of employment declaring (truthfully) an allowance for expected deductions that includes the amount of your peace witness.
Then what?
You can expect a series of computer notices stating that you calculated your tax incorrectly and you owe the amount shown on the notice.
This may also include an addition of seven percent annual interest on the amount owed.
(Currently IRS seems not to be adding on penalty charges but that is a possibility.)
You have a choice: you can ignore the notice; you can write or call IRS and discuss it; or you can pay the tax.
Sooner or later you will receive a printout that says “Final Notice.”
If you again fail to pay the amount owed, you will probably receive a call from someone at IRS who will try to convince you that the whole process has gone far enough and that your purpose is better served by paying the government.
IRS wants to collect.
That is their job; when they have done it, they are through with you.
They cannot, by law, be harsh or punitive.
There is no debtors’ prison in this country.
If you declare the intent of your witness on your tax form and by letter to Congress, you cannot be convicted of fraud; therefore, you are not risking criminal penalties.
In other words, the tax resister controls the process.
One can witness to peace so long as it can be done lovingly and, if it is to be a meaningful witness of peace, that is the only way it can be done.
However, if one’s family obligations or other matters are too pressing, or if one’s spiritual resources are being unduly strained, it is time to lay down this particular witness.
One can carry on the witness and still bring the process to a conclusion by letting the payment be taken from a bank account or peace escrow fund.
Another round of letters to Congress and the president will testify to your continuing concern even after the pressure of collection has been relieved.
In your witness, no matter how small the amount withheld or how short the duration, you will gain strength and courage and insight.
This brings new resources to your next witness.
It gives you knowledge and resources to share with others, which in turn helps their witness.
In sharing, you both are strengthened.
Thus, a personal witness becomes a “community of witness,” and the “community of witness” gains strength, courage, and insight in its mutual sharing.
This witness and this sharing of Christian love becomes its own witness to the testimony of peace — the testimony of love for God, for ourselves, for humankind.
(A letter from Dorothy Ann Ware in a later issue credited the Eccleston article for spurring her to “make a token Quaker Peace Witness by withholding a very small portion of my income tax.
So Step One has been taken…”)
The same issue reprinted a Minute from the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting which encouraged Quakers “to give prayerful consideration… to the option of refusal of taxes for military purposes.”
Furthermore:
We reaffirm the Minute of the yearly meeting which states in part that “…Refusal to pay the military portion of taxes is an honorable testimony, fully in keeping with the history and practices of Friends… We warmly approve of people following their conscience, and openly approve civil disobedience in this matter under Divine compulsion.
We ask all to consider carefully the implications of paying taxes that relate to war-making… Specifically, we offer encouragement and support to people caught up in the problem of seizure, and of payment against their will.”
We request the Representative Meeting to arrange for the guidance of meetings and their members on the form of military tax resistance suitable for individuals in accordance with that degree of risk appropriate to individual circumstances, for advice on consequences, and for consideration of legal and support facilities that may be organized.
We also request Representative Meeting to provide for an Alternate Fund for sufferings, set up under the yearly meeting to receive tax payments refused, for those tax refusers who may wish to utilize this fund.
We recommend cooperation with the Historic Peace Churches and other religious groups in further consideration of non-payment on religious grounds of military taxes.
Following that, John E. Runnings wrote of his and his wife Louise’s war tax resistance, and decried the injustice of a “society that requires that Quakers, who renounce war and recognize no enemies, must pay as large a contribution to the support of the war machine as those who fully accept the malicious nature of other nationals and who are so frightened of their ill intent that no amount of extermination equipment is enough to assure security.”
The social reforms that we credit to George Fox’s influence did not come about by his waiting on the Spirit but rather by his responding to the Spirit.
If just one man could accomplish so much by responding to the Spirit, what would happen if several thousand modern Quakers were to respond to their spiritually-inspired revulsion to assisting in the building of the war machine?
If Quakers could be induced to discard their excuses for their financial support of the arms race and to withhold their Federal taxes, who knows how many thousands of like-minded people might be encouraged to follow suit?
And who knows but what this might bring a halt to the mad race to oblivion?
There was a brief update about Robert Anthony’s case.
Anthony hoped to use his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination (presumably in response to a government request for financial records or something of the sort).
The judge in the case asked if the government would grant Anthony immunity from prosecution for anything he disclosed, which would have cut off the Fifth Amendment avenue of resistance, but the government wasn’t prepared to do that, and that’s where the matter stood.
The issue included a notice that the Center on Law and Pacifism had “recently published a military tax refusal guide for radical religious pacifists entitled ‘People Pay for Peace’ ” but also noted that “the Center states that it is in ‘urgent and immediate need of operating funds.’ ”
A later issue gave some more information about the Center:
The Center was started after a former Washington constitutional lawyer and theologian, Bill Durland, met a handful of conscientious objectors who were appealing to the U.S. courts for their constitutional rights to deny income tax payments for the military.…
That was in .
The Center is now producing regular newsletters and has published a handbook on military tax refusal.
It has organized war-tax workshops for pacifists representing constituencies in the Northeast, South and Midwest.
One of its projects was the “People Pay for Peace” scheme, under which it was suggested that each individual deduct $2.40 from his/her income tax return to “spend for peace”: that sum being the per capita equivalent of the $193,000,000,000 which will be consumed in for war preparation in the United States.
This was a protest action against the fifty-three percent of the U.S. budget allocated to military purposes.
The Center on Law and Pacifism is a “do-it-yourself cooperative” which relies on both volunteer professional assistance and individual contributions.
Hmmm… my calculation for 53% of the federal budget in 1979 is more like $214,618,730,000… and per-capita (by U.S. population, anyway) that would be $953.63 per person.
If you use the $193 billion value, that’s still $857.57 per person.
Even if you use world population, you still get $44.08–$49.02 each.
Somebody’s confused… maybe it’s me.
Wendal Bull penned a letter-to-the-editor in the same issue about his experience as a war tax resister twenty years before.
Excerpt:
In I received a lump sum payment of an overdue debt.
This increased my income, which I normally keep below the taxable level, to a point quite some above that level.
I distributed the unexpected income to various anti-war organizations.
I anticipated pressure from IRS officers, so in the autumn, long before the tax would be due, I disposed of all my attachable properties.
This action, under the circumstances, I believe to be unlawful.
But it seemed to me a mere technicality, far outweighed by the sin of paying for war, or the sin of permitting collection of the tax for that purpose.
After disposing of all attachable properties, I wrote to IRS telling them I had taxable income in that year but chose not to calculate the amount of it because I had no intention of paying it.
In the same letter I explained my reasons for conscientious non-cooperation with Uncle Sam’s preparations for war in the name of “defense.”
My letter appeared in full or in generous excerpts in at least three daily papers and several other publications and I mailed copies to friends who might be interested.
I am not a publicity hound nor a notorious war resister.
The publicity did seem to effect a fairly prompt visit from the Revenue Boys.
They paid me three or four visits.
On one occasion two men came; one talked, the other may have had a concealed tape recorder, or was merely to witness and confirm the conversation.
After quizzing me for an hour or more they left courteously, whereupon I said I was sorry to be a bother to them.
At that the talker said, “You’re no trouble at all.
I brought a warrant for your arrest, but I’m not going to serve it.
It’s the guys who hire lawyers to fight us that give us trouble.”
If they had caught me in a lie, or giving inconsistent answers to their probing questions, I suspect the summons would have been served.
I was fully prepared to go to court and to be declared guilty of contempt for not producing records to show the sources of my income.
I had told the men I was in contempt of the entire war machine and all officers of the legal machinery who aimed to penalize citizens for non-cooperation with war preparations.
Later came two visits from a man who attempted to assess my income for that year, and the law required him to try to get my signature to his assessment.
I considered that a ridiculous waste of taxpayer’s money.
The man agreed with a smile.
Still later, there came several bills, one at a time, for the amount of the official assessment, plus interest, plus delinquency fee, plus warnings that the bill should be paid.
These I ignored, of course.
The head men knew I would not pay; and they knew they had not any intention of trying to force collection.
I have no idea who decided to quit sending me more bills.
I think the claim is still valid since the statute of limitations does not apply to federal taxes.
It is inconvenient to have no checking account, to own no real estate, to drive an old jalopy not worth attaching, and so on.
Some of us choose this alternative rather than to let the money be collected by distraint.
In the same issue, Keith Tingle shared his letter to the IRS, which he sent along with his tax return and a payment that was 33% short.
He stressed that he didn’t mind paying taxes — “a small price for the tremendous privilege of living in the United States with its heritage of freedom, equal protection, and toleration” — but that “I do not wish my labor and my money to finance either war or military preparedness.”
Stephen M. Gulick also wrote in.
“Because the military and the corporations need our money more than our bodies, war tax resistance becomes important — in all its forms from outright and total resistance to living on an income below the taxable level,” he wrote.
“Fundamentally, war tax resistance must lead us to look not only at warmaking and the preparation for war, but also at the economic, social, and political practices that, with the help of our money, nurture the roots of war.”
Colin Bell attended the Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting:
“I think,” Colin said, “that as a Society we are standing at another moment like that, when our forebears took an absolutely unequivocal stance” and we don’t know what to do.
Are we looking for something easy, he wondered, suggesting that it probably should be tax resistance.
Accepting the title Historic Peace Church, he declared, makes it sound like a worthy option, rather than it being at the entire heart and core of Christendom.
A letter to the editor of the Peacemaker magazine from John Schuchardt is quoted in the issue:
I have recently received threatening letters from a terrorist group which asks that I contribute money for construction of dangerous weapons.
This group makes certain claims which in the past led me to send thousands of dollars to pay for its militaristic programs. The group claimed: 1) It was concerned with peace and freedom; 2) It would provide protection for me and my family; 3) It was my duty to make these payments; and 4) I was free from personal responsibility for how this money was spent in individual cases.
Last year, for the first time, I realized that these claims were fraudulent and I refused to make further payments…
That issue also noted that the Albany, New York, Meeting “joined the growing number of meetings which are calling on their members to ‘seriously consider’ war tax resistance…” That Meeting was also considering establishing its own alternative fund, and was hoping Congress would pass the World Peace Tax Fund bill.
This “seriously consider” language, along with the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s earlier-mentioned call for Quakers “to give prayerful consideration” to war tax resistance, is a far cry from the sort of bold leadership John K. Stoner was calling for.
But then again, Quaker Meetings were no longer the sorts of institutions to bandy about Books of Discipline and threaten “disorderly walkers” with disownment, or even to give them “tender dealing and advice in order to their convincement.”
Meetings had in general become much more humble about what sort of direction they should provide and what sort of obedience they could expect.
It is hard to imagine a Meeting from this period adopting a commandment along the lines of the Ohio Yearly Meeting’s discipline — “a tax levied for the purchasing of drums, colors, or for other warlike uses, cannot be paid consistently with our Christian testimony.”
The issue included a review of Donald Kaufman’s The Tax Dilemma: Praying For Peace, Paying for War, a book that defends war tax resistance from a Christian and Biblical perspective.
“What is the individual’s responsibility in the face of biblical teachings and the history of tax resistance since the early Christian centuries?
Some biblical passages have been used to justify the payment of any and all taxes.
But Kaufman warns us to consider these passages in their historical context and in the light of the primary New Testament message: love for God, oneself, one’s neighbor, and one’s enemy.”
That issue also included an obituary notice for Ashton Bryan Jones that noted “[h]is courage in the face of the harsh treatment that he endured in the struggle for social justice and against war taxes…”
The issue reported on the New England Yearly Meeting, which held a workshop on war tax resistance, and also agreed to establish a “New England Yearly Meeting Peace Tax Fund.”
Recognizing that each of us must find our own way in this matter, the new fund is seen not as a general call to Friends to resist paying war taxes but specifically to help and to hold in the Light those Friends who are moved to do so.
The fund will be administered by the Committee on Sufferings, which came into being last year to support Friends who are devoting a major portion of their time and energies to work for peace.
New Call to Peacemaking
The “New Call to Peacemaking” brought together representatives of the Mennonites, Brethren, and Quakers in , and to try to strengthen their respective churches’ anti-war stands.
It continued to ripple through the pages of the Journal in .
Barbara Reynolds covered the Green Lake conference that drafted the New Call statement in the issue.
Among her observations:
In my own small group, I saw social action Friends struggling with Biblical language and coming to accept many scriptural passages as valid expressions of their own convictions.
And I saw a respected Mennonite, a longtime exponent of total Biblical nonresistance, courageously re-examining his position and corning out strongly in favor of a group statement encouraging non-payment of war taxes.
Elaine J. Crauder gave another report on the project in the issue.
Excerpts:
Quakers, Mennonites and Brethren are known as the Historic Peace Churches.
How do they witness against evil and do good?
Where does God fit into their witnessing?
Are they responding to the urgency of the present-day world situation, or are they truly “historic” peace churches, with no relevance to today’s complex world?
The New Call to Peacemaking (NCP) developed out of exactly these concerns: Where is the relevance and what is the source of our witnessing?
The answers were clear.
To seek God’s truth and to witness, in a loving way, by doing good (through peace education, cooperation in personal and professional relationships, living simply and investing only in clearly life-enhancing endeavors) and by resisting evil (working for disarmament and peace conversion, resisting war taxes and military conscription).
Crauder says she first started thinking about her support of war through her taxes in :
The 1040 Income Tax form didn’t have a space for war tax resisters.
Either I would have to lie about having dependents, or my taxes would be withheld. l didn’t feel that I had a choice.
It did not occur to me to claim a dependent and then support that person with the funds that thus wouldn’t go for war.
So, I did what was easiest — nothing — and paid my war taxes.
In , she says:
I started to think about my taxes again.
Maybe I could lie on my form.
It was definitely not right to work for peace and pay for the war machine.
I even went to one meeting of the war tax concerns committee.
But there were enough meetings that I had to go to, so I managed not to find the time to struggle with my war taxes.
Words of John Woolman seemed to fit my condition:
They had little or no share in civil government, and many of them declared they were through the power of God separated from the spirit in which wars were; and being afflicted by the rulers on account of their testimony, there was less likelihood of uniting in spirit with them in things inconsistent with the purity of Truth.
Woolman was referring to the early Quakers when he said it was less likely that they would be influenced by the civil government in questions of the truth.
It seemed to me that in Woolman’s time it was also easier to be clear about the truth — we are so much more dependent and tied to the government than they were.
Perhaps it is always easier to have a clear witness in hindsight.
I think Crauder has it a little backwards here.
Woolman was speaking of early Friends in England, who were being actively repressed by the government and banned from much of any exercise of political power, and contrasting them to the Quakers in Woolman’s own time and place (colonial Pennsylvania), where Quakers held political power, and were by far the dominant party in the colonial Assembly.
In Woolman’s time the government and the Society of Friends were as tightly linked as they ever have been.
Historical notes
In the issue, Walter Ludwig shared an interesting anecdote about Susan B. Anthony’s father, Daniel Anthony:
During the Mexican War he made the quasi tax-resisting gesture of tossing his purse on the table when the collector appeared, remarking, “I shall not voluntarily pay these taxes; if thee wants to rifle my pocketbook thee can do so.”
I hunted around for a source for this anecdote, and found one in Ida Husted Harper’s The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (1898), where she put it this way:
In early life he had steadfastly refused to pay the United States taxes because he would not give tribute to a government which believed in war.
When the collector came he would lay down his purse, saying, “I shall not voluntarily pay these taxes; if thee wants to rifle my pocket-book, thee can do so.”
But he lived to do all in his power to support the Union in its struggle for the abolition of slavery and, although too old to go to the front himself, his two sons enlisted at the very beginning of the war.
John Woolman was invoked in the issue as someone who “took as clear a stand on payment of taxes for military ends as he did on slavery.”
He was quoted as saying:
I all along believed that there were some upright-hearted men who paid such taxes but could not see that their example was a sufficient reason for me to do so, while I believed that the spirit of Truth required of me as an individual to suffer patiently the distress of goods rather than pay actively.
Bruce & Ruth Graves
The issue brought an update on the case of Bruce and Ruth Graves, who were pursuing a Supreme Court appeal in the hopes of legally validating their approach of claiming a “war tax credit” on their federal income tax returns.
They were trying to get people to write letters to the Supreme Court justices, in the hopes that they would find influential the opinions of laymen on such points as these:
1) petitioners right to First Amendment free exercise of religion and freedom of expression, 2) paramount interests of government not endangered by refusal of petitioners to pay tax, 3) petitioners should be able to re-channel war taxes into peace taxes (via World Peace Tax Fund Act, etc.), 4) IRS regulations should not take precedence over Constitutional rights of individuals, 5) threat of nuclear war must be stopped by exercise of Constitutional rights, 6) other pertinent points at the option of correspondent.
There was a further note on that case in the issue — largely a plea for support, without any otherwise significant news.
Included with this was a message from the Graveses with this plea: “How can Friends maintain the secular impact of the peace testimony expressed through conscientious objection when technology has replaced the soldier’s body with a war machine?
Does it not follow that technology then shifts the emphasis of conscientious objection toward reduction of armaments by resisting payment of war taxes?”
The issue brought the news that the Supreme Court had turned down the Graveses’ appeal.
“[W]hen asked whether the frustrations of losing the long court battle had ‘generated any thoughts of quitting,’ Ruth Graves replied, ‘Never.
If I were going to let myself be stopped by seemingly hopeless causes, I’d just die right now.”
World Peace Tax Fund
A note in the issue reported that some people who had “sent in cards or letters expressing support for the [World Peace Tax Fund] bill” had reported that they had “been subjected to IRS audits and other harassment.”
A letter from Judith F. Monroe in the issue expressed some concern about the World Peace Tax Fund plan.
Excerpts:
I fear the World Peace Tax could become a device to appease the consciences of those of us who are not willing to face the consequences of civil disobedience.…
…One important purpose of the tax is to shake the complacent into a realization of the madness of our current armaments race.
I don’t believe the casual matter of checking a block on a tax form will ever cause extensive introspection on the part of most people.
How will peace tax funds be handled?
Will such a tax require more complex tax laws, IRS investigators, and tax accountants?
How can we believe in the government’s ability to use such funds constructively?
I can envision the Department of Defense receiving peace grants.
After all, they’re the boys who fight for peace.
This may be an exaggeration.
The point is I do not feel we can trust any large bureaucracy with the task of peacemaking.
If the majority or at least a sizable minority do not opt for the peace tax, all that will happen is a larger percentage of their taxes will go to armaments to compensate for the monies diverted by the few who chose a peace tax.
Under such circumstances, the peace tax would accomplish little.
Evidence of some critical appraisal of the “peace tax” idea is also found in a note in the issue, which summarizes an address by Stanley Keeble to the June General Meeting in Glasgow, Scotland:
If this were permitted, would not government simply raise military estimates to compensate for expected shortfall?
Would not people not conscientiously opposed to military “defense,” take advantage of such legislation?
Would the procedure be destructive of democracy and majority rule?
Should not individuals rather reduce their earnings to a non-taxable level, or would that deprive useful projects of legitimate funds?
Other such questions were raised, relating to possible effects on national “defense” policy.
For his part, however, Stanley Keeble felt that it was important to “bring a peace decision right to the level of the individual,” and added that of fifteen replies so far received from monthly meetings on the subject of a Peace Tax Fund, only one was completely negative, two uncertain, and “the rest endorsed the proposal whilst acknowledging certain difficulties.”
There were occasional reports on the bill’s status in Congress scattered through the issues of the Journal.
One, in the issue, said:
Endorsed by the national bodies of the Unitarian-Universalist Association, the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of the Brethren, the Mennonites, and the Religious Society of Friends, this bill provides the legal alternative for taxpayers morally opposed to war that the military portion of their taxes would go into the WPTF to be used for a national peace academy, retraining of workers displaced from military production, disarmament efforts, international exchanges and other peace-related purposes; alternatively for non-military government programs.
That issue also quoted the newsletter of the Canadian Friends Service Committee on the legislation, saying: “Thousands of letters and postcards were sent to members and many meetings held across the country as well as slide-tape shows, television and radio programs. Newspaper coverage was also good.
The U.S. government is beginning to act in response.”
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
There was plenty about war tax resistance in the Friends Journal in , but it seemed to involve tax resisting Mennonites as least as often as tax resisting Quakers.
The issue announced that the Center on Law and Pacifism was organizing a critical mass style tax resistance action:
The Center… has prepared and has available a “Conscience and Military Tax Resolution,” which may be signed by any conscientious objector to military taxes, witnessed (not necessarily notarized), returned to the Center.
When officially notified by the Center that there are 100,000 such resolutions on file, the signer may carry out his or her resolve to withhold the military portion of the federal income tax.
Alternatively, he or she may deposit the withheld taxes in an escrow account for the World Peace Tax Fund, pending passage by Congress of the WPTF Bill, deposit them in an alternative fund or donate them to some other peace purpose.
The issue was all about anti-war work, and it opened with an article on the history of Quaker war tax resistance by editor Ruth Kilpack.
Excerpts:
[W]e should not suppose that this is a new concern among Friends and members of other Peace Churches, who, by the very nature of our faith, have a conscience tender to such questionings.
For Friends, the searching extends back to the seventeenth century, when Robert Barclay, the English Quaker apologist, wrote in :
We have suffered much in qur country because we neither ourselves could bear arms, nor send others in our place, nor give our money for the buying of drums, standards, and other military attire.
This was the so-called “Trophy Money,” that could be distinguished as such.
But common or “mixed” taxes could not so readily be dealt with, since most Quakers believed it was their duty to pay taxes, and the part allocated to the military could not be separated out from the whole.
Today, like those earlier Quakers, we find ourselves in the same dilemma.
Law-abiding citizens, we continue to find ourselves troubled by the demand that we pay taxes for purposes we cannot in conscience condone.
We cannot pretend that we accept war as a legitimate function of the civil government which we support, and, just as some of our members have refused to serve in the armed services, many are beginning to question the contribution of our money for purposes we eschew for moral, humane, and religious reasons.
Quakers struggled with all these same questionings in the mid-eighteenth century and the period prior to the American Revolution.
One of the most articulate on the subject of war taxes was Samuel Allinson, a young Friend from Burlington, New Jersey, who in wrote “Reasons against war, and paying taxes for its support.”
The Samuel Allinson essay “Reasons against war, and paying taxes for its support” can be found in the book American Quaker War Tax Resistance.
Thus, in words written , he deals with the question of “a remnant who desire to be clear of a business so dark and destructive, that we should avoid the furtherance of it in any and every form.”
He describes it as a “stumbling block to others, [which] ought carefully to be avoided,” and sees such avoidance as advancing the Kingdom of the Messiah, that “his will be done on earth as it is done on heaven; a state possible, I presume, or he would not have taught us to pray for it.”
Further, says Samuel Allinson,
We have never entered into any contract expressed or implied for the paym[en]t of Taxes for War, nor the performance of any thing contrary to our Relig[ious] duties, and therefore cannot be looked upon as disaffected or Rebellious to any Gov[ernment] for these refusals, if this be our Testimony under all, which many believe it will hereafter be.
And finally, Samuel Allinson points out that even though earlier Friends paid their taxes (including that going to the military), that is no good reason for our continuing to do so.
It is not to be wondered at, or an argument drawn against a reformation in the refusal of Taxes for War at this Day, that our Brethren formerly paid them; knowledge is progressive, every reform[atio]n had its beginning, even the disciples were for some time ignorant of many religious Truths, tho’ they had the Company and precepts of our Savior…
Friends, we find ourselves in the very position of the Friends being addressed by Samuel Allinson two centuries ago.
For myself, I cannot think it is by sheer accident that I have stumbled upon his words now.
Neither is it by accident that a growing “remnant” of Friends are awakening to the ambivalence we feel in what we profess and what we practice regarding our involvement in the awesome “stumbling block” of nuclear warfare in our own age.
Friends in the past responded to the threats of the age in which they lived according to the light they had.
We of our generation have been given even greater light, and we must respond accordingly.
Given our heritage, if we don’t respond, who will?
In the meantime, I ask you to think on these things and, to paraphrase George Fox’s advice to William Penn, “Pay thy tax as long as thou canst.”
In the issue, Keith Tingle told readers that they should know “how easy it is to do” war tax resistance… at least in his experience:
My own experience in military tax resistance has been rewarding thus far.
By claiming a tax credit for conscientious objection to war on my income tax form, I was refunded $260 from my taxes.
Now that the IRS has discovered its mistake, I am resisting through federal tax court the recollection of this money.
My appearance in tax court has been reported favorably in three local newspapers, providing an opportunity to publicize the Quaker peace testimony, the history of war tax resistance, the economic impact of military spending, the pacifist position on the military draft, the concept of the World Peace Tax Fund, and the legal assistance offered by the Center on Law and Pacifism.
This has been accomplished with a total expense of about $30 and about thirty hours of time.
I have enjoyed the dedicated support of the Committee on War Tax Concerns of Friends Peace Committee and the legal guidance of lawyer Bill Durland at the Center on Law and Pacifism…
The issue noted that conscientious objection to military taxation was on the agenda at the Kent General Meeting in Canterbury, England — though from the sound of it, this was mostly in a theoretical way: presenting the argument that such a thing was a logical and practical counterpart of conscientious objection to military service.
That issue also reported on the case of Cornelia Lehn, an employee of the General Conference Mennonite Church who was trying to convince her employer to stop withholding federal income tax from her salary:
There was a “neither yes nor no” vote on this request by the 500 delegates present.
Those who favored a strong tax resistance program did not Nor did those who wanted members to unquestioningly pay taxes as a Christian duty.
There was a feeling, however, that neither side really lost.
Thirty percent of the delegates were ready for the conference to take action in “some sort of civil disobedience and tax resistance” and it was hoped the number will grow.
I’m struck by this last phrase — “it was hoped the number will grow” — which makes a pretty clear editorial statement of sympathy for those who favored corporate resistance by the Conference and antipathy for “those who wanted members to unquestioningly pay taxes as a Christian duty.”
At this time, few if any Quaker Meetings or organizations were willing to go out on that limb, in spite of strong urgings from Quaker war tax resisters that they do so.
But I don’t remember the Journal betraying an editorial bias when it reported on this debate in Quaker institutions.
One case in point is a report on the New England Yearly Meeting in which the lukewarm statement is made that “We approved a minute asking New England Friends to give prayerful consideration to non-payment of war taxes.”
The New York Yearly Meeting went so far as to “discuss” a “minute on Refusal of Taxes for Military Purposes” and to note that it “was to be commended for consideration by all monthly meetings and individuals.”
The issue had a followup in which the General Conference of the Mennonite Church was proposing launching a lawsuit in which it would seek a judicial ruling to legalize conscientious objection to military taxation, while at the same time it would increase its efforts to pass the “World Peace Tax Fund” legislation.
Maurice McCracken had a piece of autobiography in the issue.
Naturally, it touched on his tax resistance:
I had decided that I would never register again for the draft nor would I consent to being conscripted by the government in any other capacity.
In contradiction to this position, each year on April 15 I was letting the government conscript my money.
Thus I was voluntarily helping the government do what I vigorously declared was wrong.…
Realizing this inconsistency, I decided that in good conscience I could no longer make full payment of my federal taxes.
At the same time, I did not want to stop supporting civilian services supported by the government.
So, in my tax returns I continued to pay the small percentage allocated for civilian use.
The amount that I formerly had given for war purposes I hoped now to give to such causes as the American Friends Service Committee and to support other works of mercy and reconciliation which help remove the roots of violence and war.
As time went on I realized, however, that this was not accomplishing what had been my hope; for year after year the IRS ordered my bank to release money from my account to pay the money I had held back.
I then closed my bank account, and at this point it came to me with complete clarity that by so much as filing tax returns I was giving the IRS assistance in the violation of my own conscience, because the very information I was giving on my tax forms was being used in finally making the collection.
There is something else that those who withhold a portion of their tax on conscientious grounds should realize.
The IRS does not practice line budgeting.
All that it collects goes where the government wants it to go, which in ever-increasing proportion goes to finance wars, past, present and future.
I have not filed any tax returns, nor have I paid any federal income tax.
On , on charges growing out of my refusal to pay this tax, I was given a six-month sentence, which I spent at Allenwood, Pennsylvania, which is run by the Lewisburg penitentiary.
Some two years my release from Allenwood, in , the Presbytery of Cincinnati, on charges quite unrelated to the real issues, suspended me as a minister.
In , this action was upheld by the General Assembly, the highest court of the denomination.
In the presbytery declared my ordination to the ministry no longer valid, making a highly questionable presumption that they could cancel out whatever spiritual grace the Holy Spirit had bestowed on me when I was ordained at a meeting of Chicago Presbytery back in .
For nearly eighteen years our congregation has been a member of the National Council of Community Churches.
I have been accepted as a minister in full standing, and whatever validity my ordination had back in , is, for them, still valid.
A note in the issue recognized 86-year-old Pearl Ewald’s persistent activism: “Pearl Ewald continued her activities for peace, civil rights and war tax resistance, despite a recurring heart condition.
She has been arrested and jailed more than once for stubbornly refusing to discontinue her witness.
On one occasion, although desperately in need of medical attention, she refused to be admitted to a hospital, because it was a segregated institution.”
That same issue mentioned the case of Mennonite war tax resister Bruce Chrisman, “who was convicted of failure to file an income tax return in , was sentenced to one year in Mennonite Voluntary Service,” to which I can only think: “Please don’t throw me in the briar patch, Your Honor!”
“I’m amazed,” said Chrisman.
“I feel very good about the sentence.
The alternative service is probably the first sentence of its kind for a tax case.
I think it reflects the testimony in the trial and its influence on the judge.”
Chrisman could have been sentenced to one year in prison and a $10,000 fine.
A letter from Mildred Thierman in the same issue challenged Friends:
Could we now unite this year in sending a flood of personal declarations to President Carter and our government, saying that we can no longer, in conscience, allow part of our taxes to be used for the purchase of annihilating weapons?
Can we back this up by joining together in significant numbers to withhold whatever portion of our income tax fits our circumstances, in order to make our protest noticed?
A review of Conscience in Crisis: Mennonites and Other Peace Churches in America, , Interpretation and Documents in the issue, summarized its version of the history of Quaker war tax resistance this way:
Testimony against participation in the military and refusal to pay Trophy Money — the English tax to raise money for military regalia (arms were, by law, furnished by the individual soldiers) — were traditional Friends’ observances by the beginning of the period covered by Conscience in Crisis.…
…Friends and other Peace Church members were, by and large, loyal subjects.
They paid taxes “for the King’s use” — including the royal decision to make war.
Friends began to question payment of taxes more broadly.
The essential issue, according to the authors, was that “the individual is responsible for the actions of his government in a free society.”
Israel Pemberton, John Pemberton, John Churchman, John Woolman, and nineteen other Friends petitioned the Assembly on the issue of taxes in :
…Yet as the raising Sums of Money, and putting them into the Hands of Committees, who may apply them to Purposes inconsistent with the peaceable Testimony we profess, and have borne to the World, appears to us in its Consequences to be destructive of our religious Liberties, we apprehend many among us will be under the Necessity of suffering rather than consenting thereto by the Payment of a Tax for such Purposes…
By the time of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting sessions, Friends decided not to discuss the issue of “mixed” taxes because of a significant lack of consensus.
Yet, Friends were increasingly beginning to question less direct forms of support for war not traditionally inconsistent with the peace testimony.
an illustration from the issue of Friends Journal
In the issue, Alan Eccleston wrote of his calling as a peacemaker, and how that manifested for him.
Excerpts:
For me personally, the witness to peace has led to war tax resistance.
Over the past six years of this witness I have been — and still am — strengthened by others who are not, themselves, war tax resisters.
The witness of war tax resistance is one that raises fear.
We have been conditioned to fear the Internal Revenue Service as something nearly equivalent to a ruthless secret police, in its imagined power to terrorize.
Most of us, unwilling to admit, even to ourselves, that fear alone would block us from a spiritual witness, find other reasons for willingly paying to produce weapons that can annihilate all humankind.
Based on my own experience, I would say fear imagined is greater in most people than fear actually experienced, and that this is by a factor of ten, at least — maybe 100. Fortunately, borrowing from each other’s experience and knowing others will be there to help us, we can find the courage to move ahead.
Then comes the surprise.
With dread and foreboding we make our stand.
Then, gradually, we become aware that a great weight has been lifted from us.
That nagging, cumbersome burden of blocking from consciousness our own complicity with this evil has fallen away.
We are lighter, more open, more truthful.
We are free, at last, to speak truth to power.
When this affirmation is truly clear in our lives, it will be seen and felt by the president and by Congress.
As in , when C.O. status was incorporated in the Selective Service Act, the tax laws will then be amended to create C.O. status for taxpayers and a “World Peace Tax Fund.”
That legislation, approved by the world’s leading arms supplier, will move the world one step closer to peace.
That portion of our population (approximately four percent during the Vietnam War) which is pacifist would then contribute to peace, not war, and these contributions would total in excess of $2.3 billion every single year — year after year.
For the first time in history, peace programs would have a significant budget.
The funds could be used to support: a National Academy of Peace and Conflict Resolution; research to develop and evaluate non-military, nonviolent solutions to international conflict; disarmament; retaining workers displaced by conversion from military production; international exchanges for peaceful purposes; improvement of international health, education and welfare; and education of the public about the above activities.
The Friends General Conference in drafted “A Statement of Conscience by Quakers Concerned” and collected signatures.
The statement said, in part:
We advocate conscientious refusal to register for the draft and wish young men of draft age throughout the United States to know that if, after thoughtfully considering the reasons and consequences, they refuse to register, we will give them practical and moral support in every way we can, even though our willingness to do so may result in our prosecution, fines and possible imprisonment for disobeying a man-made law that leads us in the direction of war.
Mary Bye wrote in response that although she signed the statement, it felt to her to be something “like a hollow gesture.”
[M]aybe we [adults] should make sure about the beam in our adult eyes before we concentrate on the motes in those bright young eyes of the nineteen- and twenty-year-olds.
“[W]hat would be our reaction to young Quakers pointing out that since it takes money as well as men to fight a war, they encourage Friends beyond draft age to refuse war taxes?
Finally, the issue presented the case of Ruth Larson Hatcher.
Excerpt:
Not wishing to contribute tax money for war-making purposes, she managed for years to have an income just sufficient for survival but not large enough to require payment of taxes.
Then in a friend persuaded her to accept the management and bookkeeping of a children’s art center.
Conscientious and religious beliefs caused her to oppose acceptance of insurance benefits under Social Security, as well as the payment of taxes for war.
Her claims for exemption under various sections of the Internal Revenue code of as well as under the First and Fifth Amendments were routinely rejected, until a Supreme Court judge approved her use of Form No. 4361. It seems that this form (and another previously ignored by the authorities) had been used by an Amish sect to avoid the taxes (and payments) of the social security system.
Although the Court of Appeals handed down the opinion that exemptions were enacted to accommodate individuals commanded by their conscience or their religion to oppose acceptance of insurance benefits, it refused to accept that this was the exact status of petitioner Ruth Hatcher.
It’s a little unclear what took place here, but it sounds like this is saying that the courts left an opening for people who were not members of sects that qualified for an exemption from the social security system but who held similar beliefs to gain the same exemption.
Interesting if true.
I was able to find the appeals court decision that ruled against Hatcher, and the earlier Tax Court decision to the same effect, and the District Court decision that affirmed the Tax Court decision.
I was not able to find any record of Supreme Court action on the case, but I did find some other cases that cited the Appeals Court decision as precedent, which seems to suggest that the Supreme Court didn’t overturn it (as the above excerpt implies).
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
1984 brought the Friends Journal’s second special issue on war taxes, at a time when even its critics acknowledged war tax resistance as a mainstream practice in the Society of Friends.
In a letter-to-the-editor in a issue of the Journal, Tim Deniger, a supporter of the World Peace Tax Fund legislation, had pointed out some of its flaws, for instance that it “does not address the problem of spending for defense versus social welfare; it is simply a bookkeeping proposition which would ease the consciences of pacifists.”
(See ♇ .)
Bill Strong wrote back, and, in a letter that appeared in the issue, defended the bill against its critics.
Excerpts:
[T]he World Peace Tax Fund Bill…[’]s enactment won’t lessen defense spending; Congress will still need to do that.
What it will do is establish a Peace Trust Fund (like the eminently successful highway trust fund), enabling our society to make a striking (i.e., dollar-worthy) commitment to seeking peace (via, for example, funding a peace academy, U.N. peacekeeping forces, the use of mediation, negotiation, and reconciliation techniques — none of which are currently part of U.S. commitments).
As to alternative service for war tax dollars being but an “accounting illusion” or only easing the consciences of pacifists, the same applies to the now-established alternative service of C.O.s. Although men choose alternative service, our government has never lacked the bodies to pursue any conflict any place, any time; but the C.O.’s personal witness still stands for what it is, a man’s conscientious decision not to be a part of the war system.
If we could have C.O. status for men over 20 and all women, allowing them not to pay for war but to have their tax dollars go toward peacemaking, our society would make a new and totally different kind of statement to this violence-weary world.
There’s a little bit of sleight-of-hand here in comparing people who would pay their taxes into a government-run alternative fund with only those conscientious objectors who would be willing to enter government-run “alternative service” in lieu of combat roles (as opposed to the many conscientious objectors who refused to be conscripted into any service whatsoever).
But it’s also important to note that these earlier versions of the “peace tax” scheme were much more conscientious about segregating the “peace tax” payments so that they would pay for new, additional, nonviolent, peace-seeking measures.
This enabled promoters to make a much stronger case in favor of the bill than today’s poor “Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund” promoters — who have to somehow defend the idea that “peace tax” payers’ dollars will somehow magically get routed just toward the non-military portions of the government’s usual budget.
the cover of the issue of Friends Jounal
The issue of Friends Journal was dedicated to “Our Taxes and Peace” — the second such issue devoted to the war tax issue that I found in the archives.
Vinton Deming, a war tax resister and now the Editor-Manager of the Journal, introduced the issue.
Excerpts:
[W]hat can we do, many of us are asking, to stop the flow of our tax money to the Pentagon?
It feels as if the Society of Friends has come more under the weight of this concern in the past year.
My yearly meeting (Philadelphia) wrestled with the question of tax resistance a year ago, and monthly meetings have been asked to consider the question further as they prepare for yearly meeting sessions this month.
Within my own monthly meeting I have attended clearness meetings this year for members seeking direction and support on the issue.
And I have seen a marked increase in the number of members taking tentative steps to withhold at least a portion of their taxes.
Reports from abroad include London Yearly Meeting’s minute of support this past summer for its employees who seek to hold back the military portion of their taxes.
Robert F. Tatman proposed a Minute on the subject, confidently presenting a target that was well in front of what any meeting had been prepared to accept thus far.
Excerpts:
[W]e are led to declare for ourselves that all participation in war and preparation for war — in any form — is contrary to the Spirit and teachings of Christ.
By this, we mean that membership in the armed forces of the United States or of any country, whether under arms or as a noncombatant; participation in, including registration under, a system of military conscription; acceptance of the privilege of alternative service as a conscientious objector; payment through taxes, both direct and indirect, for wars past, present, and future; and all other forms of participation in the war system, which now holds the world in such deep oppression, are in direct opposition to the Peace Testimony of the Religious Society of Friends.
Friends are advised to examine themselves, their finances, their possessions, and all of their associations to discover whether they are clear of such participation in war and preparation for war, and if they are not, to seek guidance and support from their monthly meetings in their efforts to attain clearness.
We accept that this search for clearness will inevitably bring us, both individually and corporately, into conflict with the laws of the United States and of other countries, and we pledge our full moral, spiritual, and financial support to any Friend or meeting in need of such support as a result of this minute.
We realize that there are many Friends who will not be in full unity with this minute at present, who will feel it is their duty as U.S. citizens to continue paying the taxes demanded of them by the federal government, and to support and counsel cooperation with military conscription.
We recognize the depth of their convictions but stand in loving disagreement with them, and we pledge them, too, our full moral, spiritual, and financial support as they struggle to reach clearness on this concern laid upon us by the Lord.
We are indeed loyal citizens of the United States, but first we are citizens of the Kingdom of God, and the higher law must always take precedence over the lower.
Kingdon W. Swayne went the opposite direction, feeling that Friends had gotten too carried away with war tax resistance and ought to reconsider.
Excerpts:
Most of the current discussion of “war” taxes within the Society of Friends is based on the implicit assumption that those who don’t pay them are morally superior to those who do.
The charge of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to that of is to come up with a “stronger minute” on war tax concerns than the one currently on the books, clearly implying that greater “strength” in this area must be morally superior.
In a discussion several months ago at Representative Meeting in Philadelphia, those who obey the law were compared to the Quaker slaveholders of , and not a dissenting voice was raised.
As a member of the substantial majority of Friends who are dutiful taxpayers, I have felt intuitively that my position has every bit as good a moral claim as the contrary view.
I have sought to examine that intuition in two ways: first, to identify the moral assumptions that underlie it and, second, to identify the moral ambiguities in the tax refuser position that render it unattractive to me on moral grounds.
Swayne argued:
It is important to him to be a vigorous participant in the various “circles of community” that he finds himself in, and only to be a disruptive force in those circles in the most extreme circumstances, when productive participation is no longer possible.
He feels that the national circle in the United States has not reached such a stage, and so it’s better to play by the rules.
Friends overemphasize “the dramatic, large-scale evils associated with the national security system” while remaining indifferent to other man-made sources of suffering, for instance “our transportation system [which] has brought more death and injury to U.S. citizens than all the wars of .”
The national security establishment is just a large-scale version of such thoroughly moral defenses as “police forces and locks on houses” — they are not evil in and of themselves, though they can be used in evil ways or can become aggrandized in an evil way.
But war tax resistance treats them as pure evil.
He then described the varieties of resister: the one who reduces his or her income below the tax line (the “most admirable” variety, according to Swayne), the one who tries “limiting but not eliminating federal income tax liability, and paying the required tax” (Swayne considers himself one of these, saying he “does so from prudential rather than pacifist motives” because “I think I give money away more wisely than does Uncle Sam”), and the one who refuses a symbolic “military” percentage of the federal income tax (this, he calls the “mainstream” variety).
He sees problems with this third variety:
It actually means the government gets more money in the end.
The calculation of the “military” percentage is flawed.
“It requires one to assert unequivocally that one’s own reading of the will of God is superior to that of others, not only with respect to goals but with respect to the tactics needed to achieve those goals.”
By filing legal cases contesting government actions against resisters, these resisters undermine their moral position, becoming not civilly disobedient martyrs but mere plaintiffs.
Such war tax resisters incorrectly deny that their position sets a precedent for tax resisters of all sorts.
Law-breaking reflects poorly on the peace movement in the court of public opinion.
But, he concluded:
As for the tax refusers, I hope other Quaker taxpayers will join me in accepting their position, despite its ambiguities, as being in the mainstream of Quaker thought, and therefore entitled to support from Quaker bodies.
I will support them not out of a sense that theirs is the morally superior position, but only because they are taking a greater risk.
Following that, Franklin Zahn promoted phone tax resistance as “a simple way of continuing Friends’ tradition of witnessing for peace.”
He first wrote about why resistance was important (indeed, he felt, as a regressive tax at a time of reduced social welfare spending and tax cuts for the rich, resisting this particular tax could be justified even without reference to military spending), and then explained the mechanics of how to resist and how the phone company is likely to respond.
No one has ever been jailed for refusing the telephone war tax.
Although the tax is small, its refusal by thousands of Friends could be a significant force for peace.
Gandhi, for instance, made good use of a very small salt tax.
Being “effective,” however, need not be the main motive in refusals.
A draft-aged person refuses induction not primarily to be effective but because it is immoral to support war.
The same motivation can apply for tax refusers.
There was also a brief note in that issue about a new “study document” from the National Council of the Churches of Christ on “The Churches and War Tax Resistance,” but it didn’t give much indication about the content or the context in which it had been produced.
The issue brought the news that a group of “peace tax fund” promoters in Canada had incorporated and were planning to pursue a test case in the courts that they hoped would establish a right to conscientious objection to military taxation under the new Canadian Constitution.
Kingdon Swayne’s challenge to what he identified as the orthodox Quaker position in favor of war tax resistance drew some responses that were printed in the issue.
Roland Smith, “a rather recent tax refuser,” thought Swayne’s criticism was “helpful” but not always correct.
In particular, he didn’t think that it was true that war tax resistance always would mean the government would come out ahead in the end, and he felt that the difficult (Swayne called it “arbitrary”) practice of trying to discern the military portion of your tax bill represented “not a drawback but… an opportunity for the refuser to exercise his or her conscience in deciding which percentage of which budget figure to use.”
More troubling, he thought, was the threat to democracy embodied in the idea that people could conscientiously choose to support some decisions of their elected representatives and not others.
Irving Hollingshead denied that “self-righteousness” was behind war tax resistance.
“The moral point is that war and the preparation for mass killing are wrong, and most Friends feel a moral obligation to oppose it.
Tax resistance is merely one tactic consistent with this moral position.”
Tor J.S. Bejnar looked at Swayne’s three varieties of resister and decided that the second variety, to which Swayne (and until recently, Bejnar) belonged, “barely connects spiritual and earthly matters” and so he has decided to move into the first category, which he termed “deliberate poverty.”
Alan Eccleston was glad to see that Friends were “open[ing] ourselves to the question” rather than evading it.
He felt that framing the issue as being about “moral superiority” was counter-productive and judgmental.
And he also felt that more important than strong Minutes from Meetings about war tax resistance was “the continuous witness of those who, under a concern, constantly hold the question before us through their own loving commitment.”
My personal experience suggests that we feel most anxious when we are in a stage of determined avoidance, when, intuitively, we sense something stirring within us for which we believe we are not ready.
All of our defenses are mobilized and we shut ourselves off from that inner stirring — but at a price!
Scott Crom questioned the consequentialism implicit in Swayne’s critique.
“[S]ometimes we are called upon to act in certain ways, or refrain from acting, regardless of the consequences.
Here one does not judge the morality of a choice by its results or its impact, but by something else.
This approach is the one I prefer, and I believe it has ample precedent, both in the Bible and in Quaker history.
The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount do not say, ‘Thou shalt accomplish such-and-such,’ but speak directly to actions and to attitudes.”
Ben Norris wrote that “Some Quakers are motivated especially towards striving to keep their own lives pure, simple, or consistent, and this inner spiritual state is the focus.
Others note that it is quite impossible to exist outside of some sort of economic and social system… and therefore, such an action as war tax refusal is part of a vastly complex involvement in responsible citizenship, the right ordering of our economic and social systems. Both motivations may exist in the same person.
But to concentrate on which person’s actions, public or private, are ‘more moral’ than someone else’s usurps a judgment not given to mortals, and trivializes both the spiritual and political motivations of rational change in our lives.”
Karl Meyer wrote in to promote his “cabbage patch” method of tax resistance:
the Internal Revenue Service began using a special $500 penalty against people who make protest claims on income tax returns.
This “frivolous tax return” penalty is a significant and intolerable assault on the inalienable rights of freedom of speech and religion.
It seems to me both a challenge and an opportunity for mass civil disobedience by people of conscience.
The only act needed is to assert the rights of conscience on an income tax form.
As an experiment in showing the way, I have begun to file daily protest returns for each day of .
My net income from my work as a carpenter in will be reported and distributed on 365 tax returns, at an average of about $38 per day.
Each return will be addressed to a different employee or office of IRS.
A copy of the daily return will be sent each day to a different newspaper, magazine, public officeholder, or peace organization.
If the IRS imposes penalties for all of my returns, the total assessment may rise to more than $180,000. I have already received notice of one penalty for $500. Of course I don’t intend to pay or allow collection.
I invite Friends to join with me in resisting war taxes and this penalty on the expression of conscience.
This is a good project for people like me, who feel able to protect their income and assets from seizure by IRS.
Some others, whose assets are more vulnerable to collection, may participate by filing protest statements on tax return forms, in the names of some of the victims of U.S. militarism worldwide.
G.M. Smith trotted out the argument that paying taxes is no more of a moral issue because of how the government will spend the money, than handing your wallet over to a violent mugger is because of how he might spend the loot.
He suggested instead of tax resistance that people donate (in a tax-deductible way) to charity.
“Thus, through contributions one could reduce his or her tax liability legally and at the same time be contributing to good in the world.
It is important, however, not to make one’s contributions in a tax-supported area.
There’s nothing government would like better than to dump the entire burden of social services on the private sector and have all those extra tax dollars for bombs.”
Robert R. Schutz questions Swayne’s casual assumption that because the national security apparatus is something like the local police apparatus writ large (and the police are something like the locks on our doors anthropomorphized and handed pistols) that there’s nothing inherently wrong with a military.
Schutz agrees with the theory but denies Swayne’s conclusion.
Rather: “The use of police power may be even less morally defensible than war because it is deliberate, pre-planned, cold-blooded, and because it is entirely mercenary — we hire other people to do our killing for us.”
A report on the annual Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in the same issue noted that “[m]uch of Saturday was taken up with Friends’ wrestling with war tax concerns.”
The minute which finally resulted said, in part, that “Friends are uneasy in conscience that a substantial portion of their tax dollars goes for military purposes”; that we “are ready to support a wide variety of approaches to war tax witness in accord with individual circumstances and leadings”; that “while Friends do not urge one another to undertake civil disobedience, Friends are ready to give strong support to members led to refuse payment of taxes for military purposes”; and that “most Friends strongly endorse passage of the World Peace Tax Fund legislation.”
The minute concluded, “We realize that we have no single or simple answer to the dilemma of praying for peace and paying for war.
We ask for Divine Guidance as we proceed in struggling with the issue of taxes levied for war-related purposes.”
The issue will be considered again at the sessions.
In the issue was a letter from Donna and Jerome Gorman in which they explained how they had extended tax resistance-like techniques to a State-level battle against capital punishment.
They held back a symbolic 1¢ from their electric bill to protest against the Virginia Electric and Power Company’s complicity with the state’s electrocution method of executing prisoners, and later began to also withhold 1¢ from their phone bills in a similar protest because of a state excise tax on phone service.
They saw this largely as a method of getting the attention of people to whom they could then direct anti-death-penalty outreach.
We refer to this economic and tax resistance as “penny resistance.”
Multiple innovations in economic and tax and other forms of resistance are most urgently needed to impede the various methods of carrying out capital punishment.
We pray and we hope that many others will consider joining in this resistance.
Jeff Hunn promoted the War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund in the issue.
He described it this way:
The Tax Resisters’ Penalty Fund is a sort of “mutual aid fund” for war tax resisters.
Formed in , the Penalty Fund is supported by people who contribute small amounts of money periodically to help war tax resisters pay fines and interest levied by the IRS.
Funds contributed are used to help pay not the resister’s original tax burden but what the IRS terms “statutory additions”: interest, penalties, and fines imposed because of war tax resistance.
When each supporter contributes his or her small amount, the total becomes enough to reimburse the resister for the additional cost of his or her witness.
For example, 200 supporters contributing $2.50 each could cover the aforementioned $500 “frivolous” penalty.
The Tax Resisters’ Penalty Fund has grown from 85 supporters in to 400 supporters .
The larger we grow, the bigger an impact we can make and the smaller each supporter’s contribution will need to be.
Finally, in the issue, Dan Merritt reminded people that phone tax resistance was still a good option, and noted that the Claremont, California, Friends Meeting had been refusing to pay the phone tax since the Vietnam War.
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
There was lots about war tax resistance in the Friends Journal in , including an active debate about the worth of the World Peace Tax Fund legislation.
In the issue Jill Penberthy shared how a “committee on clearness” organized by the Middlebury (Vermont) Friends Meeting helped her decide how to use an anticipated IRS levy as an outreach opportunity.
Excerpts:
…I struggled to figure out how to respond to an Internal Revenue Service computer’s $1,800 bill for taxes, penalties, and interest on my account withheld as a war tax protest.
I also remembered a tai chi class in which we were taught to yield with the aggressor, using his or her energy and our own creativity to change the process.
I was puzzled about how to use these concepts with the IRS.
The computer was not listening to my numerous letters explaining my position as a war tax resister.
I was unable to contact anyone within the IRS with whom I could share my witness.
I brought my quandary to Middlebury Friends Meeting in Vermont and asked for a committee on clearness.
We gathered at my home and in the silence were moved to initiate a Peace Witness Fund under the care of the meeting that would be transferred to a local bank for seizure by the IRS.
The process became one of grace among us and within the Middlebury community.
The committee asked to share the penalty and commitment to peace represented by the withheld taxes.
Quaker history bears witness to conscientious objection through tax resistance.
We struggled to move beyond resistance to “yielding and overcoming,” and this we did with the guidance of the Spirit.
Letters of purpose were sent to Friends and sympathetic supporters requesting acknowledgment of the commitment to peace and offering a share in the assessed penalty.
They were asked to send copies of the purpose to elected officials and the IRS, and to join us on the Green in the center of Middlebury for singing and dancing before depositing the Peace Witness Fund in the bank.
We announced the peace gathering in the local papers — “Everyone is welcome.”
At the gathering we distributed leaflets explaining our concern about the present military escalation and preparation for nuclear war.
Babies and siblings, parents and grandparents, and retired military men all joined hands on the Green in a dance of peace, recognizing the Light within each of us.
“We are all one planet, all one people on earth,” sang a myriad of voices.
During the silence that followed, a professor from France said, “There are people you don’t even know about who are supporting you.
Let that be your strength.”
Another witness said, “This isn’t happening in my home state.
I’ll take it home with me.”…
…Our group proceeded up the hill and into the local bank where tellers and customers witnessed our Peace Fund deposit.
A brief note in the same issue said that “[s]ignatures of war tax resisters are being collected by the War Tax Resistance National Ad Campaign for placement in newspaper ads in ” and gave an address for the campaign.
A second brief announcement read:
A Peace Tax Fund has been established by Friends United Meeting.
The FUM general board established an escrow account this past fall into which war tax resisters who belong to FUM may deposit taxes withheld from the government.
Should the IRS take action against the depositor, the money may be withdrawn later.
Income generated from the fund will be used to finance FUM peace and justice programs. For more information…
The issue brought news that the Palo Alto (California) Meeting had endorsed phone tax resistance: “In keeping with our Peace Testimony,” a minute from the Meeting read, “Friends are encouraged to refuse payment of taxes which would otherwise be used primarily for killing and war preparation.”
The Meeting suggested redirecting resisted taxes to an alternative fund set up by the Pacific Yearly Meeting in .
At the Friends World Committee for Consultation meeting in , the group formed a new committee: “Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns.”
According to a Journal article on the meeting:
Sponsorship of the FCWTC followed two broad-based consultations the FWCC initiated in on questions of conscience raised by the use of Friends’ taxes for war and war preparations.
Drawing upon decades of experience with conscientious objection to conscription, representatives of all Quaker organizations formed the FCWTC to prepare a series of papers for discussion and to organize regional conferences and a conference for Quaker employers on the complex issues involved.
A later issue mentioned Wallace T. Collett as the new Committee’s clerk and Linda Coffin as “staff.”
It reported:
The FCWTC initially is focusing on three areas of work.
The first will be publication of educational materials, with the hope of reaching a broader understanding among Friends of the concern about war taxes.
The pamphlets will cover such topics as the biblical guidance for war tax refusal; Quaker history and recent Quaker statements on war tax concerns; recent experiences of individual Friends; positions of other churches and Christian denominations on the payment of war taxes; legal issues, IRS codes, and alternatives for those with war tax concerns; spiritual and rational bases for war tax concerns; possible legislative remedies for conscientious objectors; and a general annotated bibliography.
The second area is consultative services to Quaker employers who are involved in the issue through the actions of their employees and through their own role in the collection of taxes.
A conference for Quaker employers is being planned for or .
The third area is facilitating consultation and study throughout the Society of Friends through a series of regional conferences.
The first of these conferences, “Paying for War; Paying for Peace,” was held in Washington D.C., , under FWCC auspices.
The FCWTC also hopes to develop informal ties with other groups working on the issue of conscience and war taxes, including both those of other denominations and those outside the United States.
Barbara Harrison mentioned in a letter-to-the-editor in the issue that as her husband has an income that “meets most of our needs (wants, though, are beyond us), and as I wish to limit the amount of money we pay in taxes that goes for military expenses, I avoid most paid employment” and that this has freed up her time to volunteer to help at a local elementary school.
The issue brought an update on Karl Meyer’s “cabbage patch resistance” technique:
The Internal Revenue Service seized a trailer and a station wagon from Karl Meyer of Chicago during the night of .
Early two IRS officers came to his door and served him with a levy for $20,160 in frivolous tax return penalties and a “Notice of Seizure” for the vehicles they had already removed.
In , Karl Meyer, a long-time peace activist and pacifist, filed a daily protest tax return to the IRS — 365 in all.
On the day after the seizure, about 30 supporters joined him in a protest demonstration at the Chicago IRS office.
Meanwhile, he has been taking public transportation to his work as a carpenter.
The same issue also mentioned a sort of round-about form of tax resistance being pursued by Lucy & Sheldon Clark and Dorothy & Edward Snyder, Quakers from Baltimore, who were filing a lawsuit against the government for the return of that portion of their taxes that they believed had been spent on illegal acts of military aggression in Central America.
The issue noted that the suit was dismissed.
That issue also mentioned a seminar on war tax resistance would be among those offered at “The Rise of Christian Conscience, a national conference of Christian nonviolence and civil disobedience sponsored by Sojourners Peace Ministry.”
It also noted a quarterly newsletter from a General Conference Mennonite Church-associated group called “God and Caesar” concerning conscientious objection to military taxes.
The Lake Erie Yearly Meeting in approved a minute that “suggested that Friends General Conference set up a fund for Friends who wish to withhold the military portion of their taxes.”
an ad from the issue of Friends Journal
In a weekend retreat was planned in Voluntown, Connecticut to discuss “the Philosophy of War Tax Resistance”.
Bob Bady appears to have been an (the?) organizer.
The issue noted that NWTRCC had published some brochures on topics like “Your Taxes Pay for the War in Central America,” “Your Taxes Pay for the Nuclear Arms Race,” and “Your Telephone Tax Pays for War” as well as “a Telephone War Tax Resistance Poster Kit.”
The issue noted that the IRS had seized an alternative fund from a Meeting to collect a tax debt:
Four IRS agents seized Craig MacDonald’s pickup truck on in Wappingers Falls, N.Y., in lieu of his federal income taxes.
Craig MacDonald, a member of Purchase (N.Y.) Meeting, attends Cornwall (N.Y.) Meeting, where he is clerk of the Peace Committee.
The IRS had ordered Craig to pay $1,440.85, which includes interest and penalty charges.
The original amount of taxes owed, $1,159.90, was put into the Stamford-Greenwich Friends Meeting Peace Tax Fund.
The IRS seized this money in addition to the truck.
The IRS explained in a letter that it did not know about the account until after seizure of the truck.
Neither truck nor money has been returned to Craig.
To pay the additional IRS charges, Cornwall Meeting has set up a fund for suffering for Craig.
The same issue noted that the Quaker Council for European Affairs had published a second edition of its pamphlet, Paying for Peace containing “facts for Friends concerned about conscientious objection to military taxation,” and that Conscience Canada had published a booklet called The First Freedom: Freedom of Conscience and Religion in Canada to promote the Maple Leaf State’s version of the peace tax fund proposal.
The “Peace Tax Fund” Debate
In the issue was an article by Christopher Hodgkin entitled “Second Thoughts on the World Peace Tax Fund.”
Excerpts:
The World Peace Tax Fund ranks almost as a motherhood-and-apple pie issue for Friends.… [It] now offers a legal basis for conscientious objection to taxation along with the chance to support a national, tax-supported peace fund.
Indeed, a multitude of pacifist organizations have endorsed the fund, including such Friends organizations as the American Friends Service Committee, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Friends United Meeting, Friends General Conference, and various monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings.
Such heavyweight support is impressive.
It is also, however, a nagging cause for concern.
Quakers have historically, and with good reason, been religious “contrarians.”
Often the proposals with the widest support need the closest scrutiny.
Truth most often comes on tiptoe and alone.
Is there something in this well-regarded and well-supported measure that needs to be more carefully examined?
[Proponents argue that] Conscientious objection to conscription of the body is recognized; why shouldn’t conscientious objection to conscription of the dollar be recognized equally?
Unfortunately, they are not parallel for two principal reasons.
First, one’s person and one’s dollars are not the same thing.
One’s person is a creation of God; one’s dollars are a creation of the state.
Jesus dealt with the different responsibilities for the two quite succinctly; I do not need to add to his teaching.
Second, military conscription and taxation have completely different scopes.
The draft is a single-purpose instrument.
It conscripts U.S. men for military duty.
It has no other dimension.
It is relatively simple to say that one accepts or rejects military service, and therefore accepts or rejects conscription.…
The income tax, on the other hand, is a multipurpose vehicle that supports the entire range of programs and activities of our government.…
Assume for a moment that our government conscripted people, as it conscripts dollars, to perform the complete range of government activities.
Does anyone doubt that the equivalent of C.O. status would be granted to, say, Catholics to exempt them from performing Medicare abortions?
If we conscripted people to teach the theory of evolution as truth in our schools, does anyone doubt that fundamentalist Christians would become conscientious objectors to that service?
If we conscripted people to perform death sentence executions, would all citizens perform such duty, or would some seek exemption?
Conscientious objection to war is the only conscientious objection currently sanctioned by our government not because there is something special about war resisters but because military service is the only bodily conscription now sanctioned by the government.
He later extends this point into the familiar slippery-slope argument in which if conscientious objectors to military taxes are granted a legal exemption from paying such taxes, the government would be acting inconsistently if it did not offer similar exemptions to people who have conscientious objections to other aspects of government spending.
[The promoters’ statement that war taxes mean “conscientious objectors must either violate their beliefs or violate the law”] is, of course, not true.
A number of individuals who object to paying taxes for war arrange their incomes and live so that they are not subject to taxation and therefore pay no taxes for war.
No law is violated.
What this argument really says is that conscientious objectors who are unwilling to undergo economic discomfort in support of their beliefs must either violate their beliefs or violate the law.
These objectors would not be likely to impress those early (and not so early) Friends who over the years have suffered a great deal more than economic discomfort in their commitment to Truth.
The simple fact is that any person who objects to paying taxes for war can legally avoid paying them.
What they may not be able to do is avoid paying taxes for war without making some sacrifices.
It is not the exercise of conscience that is at stake, but convenience.
Are Friends ready to endorse a major change in national policy and in the principles of shared representative government to support those whose principles may be less important to them than their comfort?
Those who would ask for the crown without the cross?
Perhaps the greatest irony in this issue is that the bill diverts attention from the real issue of peacemaking.
The World Peace Tax Fund bill is a special interest bill for a special interest minority.
If we truly believe in the need for a national peace effort — and I believe that many individuals who are not conscientious objectors recognize the urgent need for serious new approaches to peacemaking — we should be supporting legislation to add a serious commitment to peacemaking to the budget, legislation supported by all taxpayers, not just conscientious objectors.
Many U.S. citizens not yet ready to reject all defense spending are desperately afraid of nuclear war and would strongly support an active national peacemaking program.
But the World Peace Tax Fund allows no role to such individuals.
It demands that its supporters renounce all military spending at whatever level as a condition for participating in a tax-supported peace effort.
This exclusionary approach reduces the funds and personal commitments that could be available to a nationally supported peace program.
The World Peace Tax Fund claims to protect conscientious objectors to war from having their dollars conscripted for military purposes.
But that right already exists.
This proposal does not create the right; it makes its exercise painless.
The World Peace Tax Fund seeks special privileges for one religious minority that will inevitably lead to special privileges for a multitude of other religious minorities, quite possibly doing serious damage to programs that the fund’s supporters consider most important.
The World Peace Tax Fund seeks to provide taxpayer support for a national peacemaking effort, but ironically the approach taken may actually reduce the funds that could be made available if such an effort were undertaken as a normal part of our national budget.
As you might expect, this led to some debate in subsequent issues:
Brandt Chamberlain thought that Hodgkin’s slippery slope didn’t have anything very frightening at the end of it: “Laws permitting the diversion of tax dollars from programs felt to be morally objectionable could meet the demands of individual conscience while increasing our democratic influence on setting government priorities.”
He also is skeptical that resisting taxes by lowering income is such a great idea, as “economic disengagement in this manner could limit us in our efforts to help define and meet the material needs of our society.”
Wallace T. Collett wrote in to say that he is on the whole supportive of the federal income tax system as “the most equitable way to raise the funds needed for necessary government services,” and regrets that an overwhelming conscientious imperative forces him to noncooperate with it.
“But… we cannot separate the collection process from the use of the funds that are collected… military policies that lead toward the death of all life on earth.”
He hoped that once “a million” Americans either refused to pay war taxes or chose to pay into the World Peace Tax Fund, “then the dominance of the military on our nation’s policies will be overcome and our country and the world will be set on a new course.”
Robert Hull, then chairperson of the National Campaign for a World Peace Tax Fund, also wrote in.
He disagreed with Hodgkin’s scriptural interpretation of money as being a creature of the State, and therefore the State’s to do with as it will.
Conscripting a person’s money is tantamount to conscripting the time they took to earn that money.
When such large proportions of the exchange value of one’s labor (i.e., money) is confiscated through the federal treasury for military purposes, I believe there is a strong case for speaking of “military conscription.”
And if “military conscription” is operating, then conscientious objection is appropriate.
In our technological age, the young few have at times been conscripted for military duty; the many older are continually being conscripted through their labor.
Hull also had no fear of Hodgkin’s slippery slope.
…Hodgkin’s fear [is] that if we are allowed to divert our taxes away from military expenditures, the floodgates will open to every group with a conscientious dissent.
So be it!
Let each of them go to Congress and make their case, as we are doing.
We trust our representatives to sort out the true grievance of conscience from the false greed of opportunism.
Alan Eccleston defended the World Peace Tax Fund bill this way (excerpts):
…[A]t either a symbolic or substantial level, we can refuse voluntary compliance with a tax system that has God’s priorities turned upside down.
The institutional wheels of government start grinding and, in time, the IRS will collect the money withheld plus interest and penalties.
What has been accomplished?
Is this just an act of self-righteousness?
Has the world changed?
Yes, it has changed!
I know this experientially.
Praying for peace is powerful in itself.
When the prayer is made manifest in one’s daily life its power multiplies.
There are many ways for the manifestation to be expressed, and each of us must listen to our inner guide for direction.
Those of us who, through love, are led to say no to war taxes announce we trust God, not armaments, for our security.
In addition to creating a new ethical choice for most of the adult population, the World Peace Tax Fund bill establishes a separate trust fund that will disburse over one billion dollars a year for programs of health, education, and welfare.
I know of no other peace initiative that has this potential.
James B. Eblin wrote that the option of lowering his income below the tax line was not available to him as “I am morally and legally obliged to support my children.”
He therefore sees the World Peace Tax Fund as his only possible relief.
Lissa Field also criticized Hodgkin’s stark distinction between conscription of bodies and taxation of earnings.
“[W]e are responsible for both… as my taxes pay for the destruction of other humans and that of God within them, I am responsible for responding on the level of God’s rules, not Caesar’s.” She also, as someone who had faced a $5,000 fine for her resistance, found “particularly tedious” Hodgkin’s casting of tax resisters as unwilling to sacrifice.
Joe Marinello also thought that since income is the fruit of his labor, his person is very much wrapped up in his income, and so Hodgkin’s distinction does not hold.
“My labor (directly represented by my earned income) is the fruit of my being in this world.
I will not let my actions, my labors, be used to create weapons of mass destruction.
Nor will I allow my labor to be used by others to kill our neighbors.”
And he reminded Hodgkin of the sorts of sacrifices above-the-line resisters have to make so “that the government does not steal my labor.
I am self-employed, have no savings accounts, no property in my name, and I give away most of my income.
I have no desire to go to jail, but I will go to jail before I willingly pay any war taxes.”
Linda Coffin prefers the World Peace Tax Fund to living below a taxable income because the latter “would be shirking our responsibility to support the life-affirming programs of our government.
I could not take that option because it would mean ceasing my support for public schools, federal programs for the poor, health assistance programs, U.S. contributions to the United Nations and international aid agencies, and so on.”
In contrast, “The Peace Tax Fund bill… uniquely demonstrates the depth and sincerity of our concern for the moral use of our tax dollars.”
Ira Byock felt that conscientious objection wasn’t really what the World Peace Tax Fund was about.
“The real value of the Peace Tax Fund — like so much of what we do in peace work — lies in its symbolism, in its potential for heightening general public awareness of the percentage of our tax money spent on the military.
We bear witness to the morally objectionable so that others may pause to notice.”
That said, “the issue of conscience remains real.
To write one’s elected representatives, contribute to peace campaigns and organizations, take part in public peace activities, and then send in money for guns, subs, missiles, and bombs is inconsistent.”
And this is true even for people not willing to live below the tax line.
Anne Friend agreed with Hodgkin in his opposition to the World Peace Tax Fund.
Weirdly, though she was most persuaded by Hodgkin’s argument “that having a witness made easy dilutes its power and will probably deflect it from its ultimate goal,” she didn’t see this as a call for her to make a difficult witness instead, but rather to wait and meanwhile do nothing: “I am not yet ready to refuse the military portion of my income taxes.
But when that becomes an option [?], I expect the action required of me will be noncooperation, even if special status is available.”
Historical Notes
Margaret Hope Bacon penned an article on “Effective Peacemaking” in the issue that discussed the history of war tax resistance in the Society of Friends:
[T]he Quaker testimony against paying war taxes began with a few individuals who felt an opening and a “stop in my mind.”
Theirs was an even more difficult path than that of C.O.s, for the Society itself was not always behind them.
Friends have always refused to pay purely military tithes, but when the taxes are “in the mixture,” that is, war taxes and civilian taxes mixed together, or when the tax is not publicly stated as being for war, they have urged members to pay.
In , London Yearly Meeting disciplined a woman member who was advocating that Friends refuse to pay a new tax that she thought was clearly for war purposes.
She was told that for the past 1600 years Christians have always paid their taxes.
In this case the individual was trying to respond to the dictates of conscience (religion) while the group was concerned to prevent further persecution (politics).
This uneasy balance continued for years, until today, at last, monthly and yearly meetings are beginning to give more support to tax objectors, and some believe we will eventually have legal provision for the conscientious objection for our tax dollars as well as ourselves — a political result of a religious impulse.
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
There was a noticeable lull in coverage of war tax resistance in the Friends Journal in .
The issue mentioned that the War Tax Concerns Support Committee of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting was sponsoring “a demonstration on a theme that relates to sanctuary and war taxes: war tax resistance can help to stop the threat of nuclear annihilation and provide sanctuary for our children, our world, our consciences, and the homeless everywhere.
A refugee in sanctuary will be among the speakers at the event,” which was to be held at the Federal Building in Philadelphia.
“A key part of the demonstration will be the collection of refused tax monies, which will then be used to support local life-affirming work.”
There was also a notice that NWTRCC was collecting information about tax day protest actions for a press release it would be issuing.
The issue included an article by Patricia Gilmore about how the Boulder, Colorado, Meeting had come up with a plan to help Friends who were upset about their tax money going to the arms race but who wanted to respond with “something more creative than all this hassle with the IRS.”
Excerpts:
It was noted that for a person in the 30 percent tax bracket who itemized deductions, a $100 contribution to the meeting for someone to work on peace concerns would mean $30 less to the IRS.
In essence, the Friend’s $70 contribution would be matched by a $30 IRS contribution.
At the monthly meeting, consensus was reached for a peace secretary/coordinator program.
That’s when the real challenge began.
The meeting, to save itself disappointment, decided it would go no further until 50 percent of the $9,000 was raised from at least 20 families.
Within two months $11,000 was raised from 58 people.
Among the program’s early accomplishments was to convince a Colorado member of the U.S. House of Representatives to sponsor the World Peace Tax Fund bill.
They also engaged in vigils and protests, networking with other peace groups, publishing material on peace activism, advocating for conflict resolution education, developing speaker opportunities, pushing for a sister city project to link up Boulder with a city in the Soviet Union, among other things.
This seems to have been an attempt to try to build something approaching the plan anticipated by the World Peace Tax Fund bill — but from the grassroots up, rather than waiting for the politicians to grant it from above.
It reminds me of the new Norwegian Peace Fund I learned about while I was in Colombia (see ♇ ).
That said, it only really amounts to tax resistance — even if you interpret that very broadly — for those donors who could take advantage of itemized charitable deductions.
Really, it was more of a tax break than a tax resistance strategy.
But it’s interesting to see that war tax concerns were part of what launched the project.
a notice in the issue of Friends Journal
The issue reported on one of the regional conferences that had come out of the new Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns — held in Greenwich, Connecticut .
Excerpts:
Alan Eccleston, a member of New England Yearly Meeting and an active participant in the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund and the New Call to Peacemaking, spoke on “Opening Ourselves to the Spirit.”
He emphasized that money is a very uncomfortable issue for many people.
Effort must be made to avoid judging each other’s choices and pushing others into an impasse of guilt or fear.
Our witness can be widely varied, as we search for answers together.
was strong in that spirit, as Friends shared openly their own questions and experiences.
Worship sharing and group discussions emphasized personal support, and understanding the spiritual basis for our witness.
Discussions covered lifestyle and choice of vocation, socially conscious investments, peace tax fund legislation, and group support for individuals.
A strong group spirit was fostered at meals prepared by three of the participants, and during walks and worship outdoors in beautiful autumn colors.
On , Friends were treated to a potluck dinner at Chappaqua (N.Y.) Meeting, followed by a panel of Friends sharing the “Experience of Concern for the Right Use of My Money.”
That issue also announced an workshop planned by the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund (which had evidently dropped the “World” part of “World Peace Tax Fund” by this time).
Supporters of the legislation could learn lobbying techniques and other ways to support the bill at the workshop.
The “First International Conference of Military Tax Resisters and Peace Tax Campaigns” was held in .
The Journal’s coverage didn’t come until , but here’s what they had to say:
More than 100 participants representing 14 countries shared personal histories and reported on the progress of the war tax issue in their homelands.
International cooperation was the major focus, with participants experiencing fellowship and awareness that they were not alone in their concerns.
Participants were invited by the German Peace Tax Campaign, Ohne Rüstung Leben (Live Without Arms), the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (German branch), the German Mennonite Peace Committee, the German Quaker Peace Committee, and the Military Tax Boycott Committee of Bielefeld/Bethel.
Organizations represented were Conscience Canada, Quaker Council for European Affairs, War Resisters International, National Campaign for a (U.S.) Peace Tax Fund, National Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, Conscience and Military Tax Campaign, War Resisters League, and the Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns.
From their sharing, individuals discovered that people of conscience around the world are carrying the same concerns and struggling with the same complex issues of paying taxes that are used for military purposes.
Conscientious objection to paying for war goes far beyond national policies to the underlying philosophical and moral base of conscience.
There were differences between the groups, of course.
Some were political; some were religious (of these some were pacifist).
Each U.S. group had its own approach, its own program, and its own constituency.
In most of the other nations, one group usually embodied many facets, including legislative action, alternative funds for military tax money, and counseling.
Each campaign has its own character related to its national situation.
For instance, legislative action is strong in the United States and Britain, while the Canadian and Japanese groups are mounting challenges through the court system.
In Italy, Catholic clergy are taking the lead.
In the course of the conference, participants began using the new network by writing letters to each other’s governments, exchanging materials and addresses, and sharing experiences and wisdom.
They dreamed of integrating the issue of military taxes into the programs of all existing peace groups.
Many also felt that the church is an important international organization which holds a great deal of power.
Unfortunately, politicians are often able to use the churches as an excuse not to make morally imperative changes in policy, merely by saying, “Well, the church isn’t speaking out on this…”
Petra Kelly, member of the Deutsches Bundestag and the Green Party, spoke to the conference.
She urged us to help reach a goal of civilian and nonmilitary defense, moving us away from deterrence and a “peace” that oppresses us.
Nonviolence must be both the means and the end.
She quoted German theologian Dorothee Solie, “There are things we must just do, to feel worthy of ourselves, to be able to look ourselves in the face…”
The conference agreed upon three major actions: 1) to propose to our groups a World Peace Tax (Alternative) Fund; 2) to publish war tax news in the War Resisters International newsletter; 3) to make September 1 an international day of solidarity on war tax concerns (already a traditional day of antimilitarism in many nations.)
In a recent speech, frequently quoted at the conference, Dorothee Solie spoke of the great European cathedrals, which took as long as 200 years to build.
She said, “So a stonemason… never saw the finished building, only scaffolding and foundations and bits and pieces.
It’s no better for us, who are building the cathedral of peace.
We only see a few stones, but we must live with our dream, and learn from those who have begun the work before us.”
The Tiibingen conference seemed to be an important foundation stone for the cathedral of peace we are all building.
Another conference was announced in the issue: “Employers & Employees: Responding to Conscience” which was described this way:
[A] conference for Quaker employers sponsored by the Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns, will be held at Pendle Hill, .
Participants will examine the dilemma of a Quaker employer who is caught between the role of a tax collector and an employee’s concern for the military use of income taxes.
Keynote speaker will be Kara Cole of Friends United Meeting; resource people will include tax lawyers.
Attendance is limited.
Finally, a brief note in the issue, about four U.S. military veterans who had ended a 47-day fast and vigil in protest of the U.S. government’s proxy war in Nicaragua, mentioned that the four — Charlie Liteky, George Mizo, S. Brian Willson, and Duncan Murphy — planned to continue to “withhold war taxes.”
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
The question of how Quaker meetings and other organizations ought to respond to the tug-of-war between the IRS and their war tax resisting employees was among the major concerns of Quakers in , as can be seen in the pages of the Friends Journal.
The IRS has long been trigger-happy with its “frivolous filing” penalty.
According to the issue:
Adding “signed involuntarily under penalty of statutory punishment” to the IRS form 1040 will no longer bring a fine for a “frivolous” return.
In a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union in Montana, a district court ruled that Donna Todd of Billings, Mont., was protected by the First Amendment when she typed the above on her 1040 form.
The IRS is appealing the ruling; meanwhile, it has told its agents to refrain from imposing the frivolous-return penalty against taxpayers who editorialize on their return.
The agency didn’t seem to want to learn its lesson, and was still overapplying this penalty until very recently.
See The Picket Line for for another example of the agency being forced to back down on this issue.
A profile of Barbara Reynolds appeared in the issue, penned by her daughter, Jessica Shaver.
It focused on her war tax resistance.
Excerpts:
My mother is hardly your stereotypical tax evader.
At 70, she lives on Social Security, and her sole assets are a small apartment in downtown Long Beach, California, a beat-up Chevette (bright green), an electronic typewriter, and a six-toed cat named Marmalade.
But she has been a deliberate and most determined resister of taxes .
After years of courteous correspondence, responding to explanations of her position with repeated warnings marked “Past Due. Final Notice,” the IRS quietly closed in.
One day recently, her checking account balance was $131.14.
The next day it was zero.
She tried to make an electronic withdrawal from her savings account, which had held $799.
A message on the screen reported, “Funds not available.”
She was left with $3.06 in cash.
Only days before, Long Beach City College had voted her Senior Citizen of the Year.
At a luncheon in her honor, her efforts on behalf of Indochinese refugees were lauded, and she received a pen set inscribed “Barbara Reynolds, Woman of Peace.”
, she had dinner with Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone, the Japanese government having paid her way to Hiroshima for the 40th anniversary of the first atomic bomb used on people.
Because of her many years of service to the survivors — entirely voluntary — she was the first woman granted honorary citizenship in that city.
A few months earlier, members of the War Resisters League named her their Person of the Year.
In , she was selected as one of 14 “Wonder Women” — women more than 40 years old recognized by the Wonder Woman Foundation for outstanding contributions to society.
The foundation flew her to New York for a press conference with Bill Moyers.
Polly Bergen introduced her and presented her award for “striving for peace and equality.”
So why is a little old white-haired “woman of peace” withholding taxes from the United States government?
It is precisely as a woman of peace that she withholds taxes.
She believes her stand on taxes to be consistent with her commitment to a world without war.
She doesn’t want her taxes, in whole or in part, to go for defense.
She has been up front with the IRS about her motives.
In one of her letters, she wrote, “Having spent 18 years in Hiroshima working with victims of our atomic bombs, I can only say that never, so far as it is in my power, will any portion of my income go to the government as long as it continues to base its economy and its foreign policy upon the development, stockpiling, and deployment of nuclear weapons and missile systems.”
For her, the honorable way to avoid paying taxes is to avoid owing them.
So she studiously attempts to keep her income below the minimum taxable level and gives generously to deductible causes.
In , however, Mum had to sell the old family homestead in Ohio.
In spite of her best intentions, the house had appreciated in value, and she wasn’t eligible for the one-time capital gains exemption.
She was appalled to find that she owed the government $1,189.
She paid the money but she didn’t pay it to the IRS.
She sent $667 to the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign Escrow Account and $522 to Friends United Meeting Peace Tax Fund.
CMTC calls itself “a mechanism to accept payments in anticipation of legislative action” now pending to create a federal Peace Tax Fund.
The FUM Peace Tax Fund is for members who wish their taxes to be used for life-affirming activities.
When and if such a federal fund is created, both accounts will have all individual deposits transferred to it.
In the meantime, because of penalties, she still owes more than $400.
It will be interesting to see how the IRS claims its remaining debts.
Maybe they’ll garnishee the six-toed cat.
A postscript noted: “[Reynolds] has received notice that the IRS has placed a lien on her property for $162.79 in taxes owed for and has seized $100.83 from her checking account. ”
In the issue was a fantasy by Charles R. Sides that imagined a more “user friendly” personal computer.
Excerpt:
I chose the Home Accountant which neatly arranges my expenses and income in spreadsheet form.
After booting the program I began to record my written checks.
A major expense for the month of April is my reconciliation of the past year’s taxes and the quarterly payment for the next year.
When I entered the check number, it responded correctly and asked to whom it was paid.
I entered IRS.
Next question was the amount.
I entered.
At prompting to enter my message the Corona suddenly asked, “Do you know what portion of your taxes goes to the defense department?”
“Have you contacted your congressperson concerning the World Peace Tax Fund?”
“Have you considered withholding your taxes as a protest against the administration’s military position?”
Unable to answer in good conscience, I exited the program.
Was this “user Friendly” computer going to continue its assault on my conscience?
I hadn’t counted on that possibility.
The “War Tax Concerns Committee” of New England Yearly Meeting — Cushman Anthony, Elizabeth Boardman, Alan Eccleston, Finley Perry, and George Watson — published a statement in the same issue:
New England Yearly Meeting, through various minutes, has declared that refusal to pay all or part of one’s income tax is an appropriate way to refuse to participate in war making, for those who feel led to engage in such a witness.
A number of members of the yearly meeting who have felt so called have been offered guidance and support through the Peace and Social Concerns Committee, the Committee on Sufferings, and the NEYM War Tax Alternatives Fund.
War tax resistance is usually an individual witness rising out of the Peace Testimony.
However, if one of our members who wishes to make this witness is also an employee of the yearly meeting, some additional considerations come into play.
The question presently facing us was raised by the Personnel Committee:
Should NEYM refuse to act as the federal government’s agent in collecting — by withholding and paying over to the IRS — taxes of an employee who refuses on the basis of conscience to pay war taxes?
The problem is not new.
Action has already been taken by other organizations, including Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, London Yearly Meeting, American Friends Service Committee, and the General Conference Mennonite Church.
Each of these organizations has wrestled with it for a number of years, and after careful consideration, each refused to withhold taxes.
Nobody yet knows the full consequences of any of these decisions.
There are difficult questions involving individual conscience on both sides.
We note some of the concerns and reasoning of the Meeting for Sufferings of London Yearly Meeting in taking this step.
Some Friends saw the Society as having become a little too comfortable in its peace testimony and saw in this witness a gesture to all peace loving people.
It was noted that since Quakers are people who put principles into practice, the yearly meeting as an employer of conscientious objectors should assist them in their witness.
On the other hand, concerns were raised that should a witness be made, there would be criticism that “it was neither logical to juggle with the mathematics of tax monies, nor moral to opt out of the give and take of a democratic society.”
Another observation was that Friends “from John Woolman to draft resisters had been careful to place no one but themselves at risk,” whereas this refusal to withhold would place the yearly meeting itself at risk.
In a letter to the Board of Inland Revenue (), the clerk of the Meeting for Sufferings of London Yearly Meeting noted, “The name Meeting for Sufferings derives from when Friends met to give support to those of their members who suffered in diverse ways for conscience’s sake and that at various times the Society of Friends corporately has recognized a religious obligation to stand with individuals whose commitment of conscience may not currently be recognized by the laws of this country.”
In deciding this question for ourselves as a yearly meeting, there is a case for joining the witness as an employer by refusing to withhold income tax money or refusing to forward withheld money to the IRS; and there is a case for continuing to withhold and to forward money to the IRS as required by law.
The Case for Continuing to Withhold as Required by Law
The United States has one of the most effective tax systems in the world.
Its success rests on the voluntary compliance of U.S. citizens.
Undermining this system by noncompliance with the law does great harm to the system.
Refusing to pay withheld taxes to the government would put us in opposition to the Internal Revenue System.
Our real dispute, however, is with the Department of Defense.
Consequently, this effort misdirects our energy and our witness away from that portion of governmental power which we would choose to oppose.
Failing to pay all of the tax money would not directly reduce the war making budget.
By legal process, the IRS would almost certainly collect the money plus penalties.
Even if it did not, the military would get its full appropriation anyway and would be unaffected by the witness.
This action could well jeopardize some assets of the yearly meeting, the standing of the yearly meeting as a taxdeductible organization, and the officers of the yearly meeting.
Since some members of NEYM are not in agreement with the war tax objection position, they should not be asked to put themselves and the yearly meeting in jeopardy for a cause in which they do not believe.
The yearly meeting is supporting and should continue to support individual war tax witness actions.
If the yearly meeting does not join the witness as employer, its employees will not be placed in any worse position than Quakers employed elsewhere.
A number of members of the yearly meeting feel required by their consciences to pay all the taxes which they owe to the federal government.
A decision by the yearly meeting to refuse to pay employees’ withheld taxes would violate the consciences of these Friends.
The Case for Joining the Witness as Employer
We live in a world where there are in excess of 15 million deaths a year by starvation (41,000 a day) while $660 billion goes to military expenditures.
It is estimated that just $60 billion, or less than 10 percent of all military expenditures, would eliminate starvation on this planet.
Purchasing weapons of war not only increases the likelihood of killing, it causes thousands of deaths each day by depriving people of the sustenance needed for their survival.
As a religious organization in a country that is one of the leaders in the arms race, we have a clear responsibility to address this issue.
Joining a witness as employer gives the yearly meeting an opportunity to take concrete action as a religious body on this critical problem.
Taking this position is not a threat to the voluntary tax system, since it is an open and honest witness, and tends to encourage others to be open and honest in their dealings with the IRS.
It is the creeping tendency to be dishonest in declaring one’s financial situation that threatens to undercut our tax system.
If this witness is viewed as a threat to the voluntary tax system, there is a remedy at hand — passage of the World Peace Tax Fund Act in the U.S. Congress.
New England Yearly Meeting’s action would work towards passage of that act, which would benefit individuals in the Society of Friends, as well as our country as a whole.
Friends’ testimony on peace is one of our central experiences of truth.
The weight of this issue in our world calls us to act with clarity and resolve, regardless of risk and possible complications.
The fact that the tax may be collected does not diminish the value of this conscientious objection to war.
Taking this action as a yearly meeting gives us an opportunity to define the differences between our beliefs and those of the U.S. culture in general.
This could then strengthen the resolve in individual Friends to speak out and take action in regard to our war making society.
Other Quaker organizations have already begun this witness, and our standing with them adds our testimony to theirs.
This amplifies the message to the world of Friends regarding war and peace, and at the same time will contribute to the unification of Friends.
We urge all Friends to weigh these considerations prayerfully and to seek clarity on how the yearly meeting should respond if one of its employees requests that it support him or her by refusing to pay withheld taxes to the government.
As an example of Friends weighing such considerations, the same issue reported on a meeting of 35 people from 21 Friends organizations at the Pendle Hill center “to discuss their responsibilities when employees are conscientious objectors to the payment of war taxes.”
Excerpts:
Wallace Collett, clerk of the Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns which organized the conference, noted that this may be the first time so many Quaker organizations have come together to deal with the issue of how individual conscience flows into our corporate organizations.
In a talk formed by images of “Stones and the Builder” drawn from 1 Peter 2, Kara Cole, Administrative Secretary of Friends United Meeting, noted that Scripture shows how the lonely and isolated find themselves formed into a community which is the temple of God.
The issues for the conference revolved around choices, risk, and obedience, as they relate to appropriate use of our taxes.
Kara pointed out that when we choose Jesus, we choose to be with one who was alone in prayer, who was misunderstood, who was the living stone rejected by people.
However, we also find that we become living stones.
Not only can we find the temple in one another, we also find one another in the temple.
This image set the tone for the remainder of the conference, as participants sought ways to allow our institutions to be incarnated as communities under the influence of religious concern.
Representatives from the Friends Journal, the Friends World Committee for Consultation, Friends United Meeting, London Yearly Meeting, the American Friends Service Committee, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, and other Quaker organizations and groups were able to share firsthand experience with ways Quaker employers have responded to staff members’ conscientious objection to payment of war taxes.
A panel of three lawyers presented a particularly helpful analysis of the legal situation.
These materials and some queries and advices that emerged from small group discussions will be revised and made available by the Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns.
While participants struggled with complex technical issues associated with war tax resistance, there seemed to be agreement that Quaker institutions have a corporate responsibility to assist their employees in responding as openly and honestly as possible.
Employers were admonished to develop policies to clarify the situation for the employees.
Employees and employers were urged to work together to avoid any form of tax evasion.
Employers need to develop policies so that their employees are not put in the position of having to commit fraud to gain control of income that would be subject to withholding.
Employees need to practice full disclosure of their actual tax liability and redirect refused taxes to constructive programs.
Individuals were urged to seek clearness with their faith community (monthly meeting or church) before engaging in this witness.
A letter received from Marion Franz, Executive Director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, told Friends of the importance of corporate witness on war taxes.
She finds that most Congressional staffers — who are rarely asked to consider rights of individual conscience — sit up and take notice when informed that the issue is not just of concern to some individuals, but that organizations have begun to take stands in cooperation with their employees.
Bob Hull, of the Mennonite General Conference, reported that New Call to Peacemaking has tentative plans to hold a conference on war tax concerns for Mennonite, Brethren, and Quaker employers in .
This conference, somewhat delayed, was announced in the issue:
The Challenge to church organizations from employees requesting their federal taxes not be withheld will be the topic of a conference jointly sponsored in by New Call to Peacemaking and the Quaker War Tax Concerns Committee.
A note in the back of the issue said:
Conscientious tax resisters who are forthright in their dealings with the IRS are unlikely to face a criminal penalty, according to Peter Goldberger in War Tax Concerns: Options and Consequences.
This booklet offers the layperson an overview of the IRS tax collection process for those who may be considering war tax resistance…
A second note concerned the booklet Taxes and Idolatry which concerned “the forgotten biblical witness in which taxation is seen as an affront to God.”
The issue included an article that noted in passing that at the London Yearly Meeting “[i]n recent years… two clerks were threatened with imprisonment on the issue of whether the yearly meeting should withhold for taxation purposes a part of employees’ pay.”
That issue also announced an “seminar/lobbying day” on behalf of the Peace Tax Fund, and an “National War Tax Resistance Action Conference” — which is to say, a NWTRCC gathering.
A letter from Geoff Tischbein in the issue is a good and rare example of the fourth variety of war tax resister I mentioned in my typology of the American war tax resistance movement back in .
Tischbein takes issue with the assertion in the article from the War Tax Concerns Committee of New England Yearly Meeting that their real dispute is with the Department of Defense, not the IRS.
As a war tax resister, I’ve often struggled with this question, and for myself, I do not feel that my dispute is with either.
Most immediately, my dispute is with the U.S. Congress and its refusal to grant conscientious objectors to military taxes the same right of conscience granted to conscientious objectors to military service.
The legal arguments are manifold and include, among others, free exercise of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment and international law which involves Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution and the Nuremberg principles.
Indeed, much of the thinking and correspondence of the founding fathers indicates that freedom of conscience was a principle they strongly believed in, but one they did not specifically list in the Constitution.
I suppose, if I were to follow the thread of responsibility to the spool, it would ultimately lead to the entire population of the United States that, in some macabre contortion of expediency, has put the welfare of the state above the rights of the individual, more closely a description of communism than of Western-style democracy.
Ultimately, I feel that war tax resistance is a religious issue and no governmental power has any authority in the case; it is strictly a personal concern to be resolved, individually, with God.
Thus our goal, as I see it, is to convince Congress of the religious nature of this issue.
The “Sufferings” column in that issue concerned Jerilynn C. Prior:
[Prior], a member of Vancouver (Canada) Meeting who paid into Conscience Canada’s Peace Trust Fund that portion of her Canadian federal income taxes which goes for military purposes, has had her appeal to the Tax Court of Canada rejected.
In , Revenue Canada assessed the amount of tax that Jerilynn had withheld from her income tax.
She appealed the assessment, but was denied the appeal.
The forthcoming hearing will be in Vancouver; the case will eventually go to a Federal Court of Appeal and then to the Supreme Court of Canada as a test case of the Charter of Rights provisions for freedom of conscience and religion.
Legal costs will probably exceed $100,000. Donations, payable to the Peace Tax Legal Fund, may be sent to The Society for Charter Clarification…
Prior’s case got a more in-depth look in the issue.
Excerpts:
Jerilynn Prior, a member of Vancouver (B.C.) Meeting, will be the first person to claim in court that the new Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms provides the right not to pay for war, and she is prepared to follow this claim through the courts to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Her first war tax resistance was in with refusal to pay the 10 percent telephone tax which was reimposed specifically to support the Vietnam war.
Throughout the time she had an income in the United States she withheld various kinds of taxes and put the money into recognized charities when there was no peace trust fund.
She became a Quaker in Cambridge (Mass.) Meeting in .…
She went to Canada in and became a Canadian citizen in .
Beginning in (which was the year the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enacted) she consistently refused to pay the government that portion of her federal income tax which would otherwise be spent for war purposes.
She paid this money into Conscience Canada’s Peace Tax Fund.
Her decision to withhold the portion of her income tax which would otherwise be spent for war purposes and to deposit it in a Peace Tax Fund was made from a deep-felt conviction that war is wrong.
Her appeal in the tax court in against a ministerial decision that she should be assessed the amount she deducted in was pursued with the same spiritually-based conviction.
And when the tax court ruled against her, her decision to take the case through the federal court system was with the conviction that she could not honestly teach peace to her children while paying for war.
She feels that to have a strong belief and not to act on it is hypocrisy.
She insists that her action is not a political one and maintains she is not trying to change the government or the Income Tax Act.
She affirms the government of Canada and is proud to be in that country.
She does not wish to change government policy on taxation but merely wants a way in which to pay taxes and at the same time uphold her conscience and religious beliefs.
When asked if the government could assure her that none of her tax money would go to military purposes, would she pay the full amount of tax to the government, she replied, “I certainly would.”
Jerilynn has specifically asked that these legal proceedings not be referred to as “her test case,” for her action is being upheld by many others and is taken on behalf of all.…
A great deal of media attention was aroused when the decision by the tax court judge was made public.
No doubt an even greater media coverage will be given to the next court decision.
Such publicity gives to those who disagree an opportunity to voice their opinions, to hear responses, and to give the subject more thought.
When it increases public awareness of the urgent need for nonviolent solutions to disagreements, that is, in itself, an accomplishment.
We hope that the final Supreme Court decision will be affirmative and will set the stage for other equally sincere efforts in Canada, and perhaps elsewhere, toward a more peaceful world.
Prior’s Federal Court appeal was denied in and the Supreme Court declined to take up her case in .
She appealed further, to the UN Human Rights Committee, but they too refused to hear her appeal.
Another article in the issue concerned the Norway Yearly Meeting. Excerpt:
A growing feeling of guilty conscience among members led to drafting a letter to members of the government and various peace groups about the peace tax issue.
The meeting asked that ways be found to direct tax money from those who wish to humanitarian, ecological, or promoting peace instead of to the defense budget.
Leah B. Felton had a letter-to-the-editor printed in the issue that covered little new ground, and discussed war taxes (though not war tax resistance) and promoted the Peace Tax Fund as if nobody had ever heard of these things before.
It’s notable perhaps only for the opening phrase: “No doubt the overwhelming majority of Friends pay income tax…”
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
There was a great deal about war tax resistance in the Friends Journal in , in part because of the occupation of the Randy Kehler/Betsy Corner home which the IRS was trying to auction off, and in part because of the IRS suit against the Journal to try to force it to pay its editor’s resisted taxes, and in part because of the Peace Tax Fund bill’s first congressional hearing.
A note in the issue pointed out that politicians were playing a name game that had apparently fooled some Quakers into thinking that the telephone excise tax had been transformed into something benign:
The telephone tax continues as a source of money for military expenditure, contrary to recent confusion about its status.
The tax, which was due to expire in , was extended under the Act for Better Child Care.
Those who proposed the act were searching for a way to finance their new program and seized upon the telephone tax as their “new” source of money.
However, the phone tax revenues continue to go into the General Fund, as always, and are not earmarked for the child care programs. More than 50 percent of the General Fund is used for military expenditure.
The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee recommends that conscientious resistance to the telephone tax continue, as it can have a powerful impact if enough people are involved.
an ad for NWTRCC in the issue of Friends Journal
That issue also had a follow-up on the “Alternative Revenue Service” protest:
In , the Alternative Revenue Service reports that individuals redirected $104,740 of their federal income taxes away from the military to areas of human need.
The total includes $12,898 redirected through the ARS, $38,416 redirected by Alternative Funds, and $53,426 that individuals redirected to social action and relief programs. The Alternative Revenue Service campaign is designed to educate taxpayers about how their federal income tax dollars are used.
The service provides the EZ Peace Form, which participants can use in registering their opposition to military spending at the time they file their taxes.
The service reports that 70,000 EZ Peace Forms were distributed nationwide last year.
This year’s form is simplified, with clearer instructions.
The issue brought the news that the Peace Tax Fund promoters had finally managed to get a Congressional Committee hearing for their bill, which was scheduled for .
“The hearing will be informational to determine the need for such legislation, not a preparation for floor action.
The need is assessed from the testimony of both individuals and religious bodies.
The hearing will support the bill by providing a permanent public record, by lending it legitimacy, by possibly attracting more serious consideration from prospective cosponsors, and by providing a record of congressional scrutiny.
The hearing will be brief, not lending itself to extended exchanges.
However, written testimony can be added and will become part of the official record.”
A follow-up in described the latest Peace Tax Fund bill as one that “would amend the Internal Revenue Code to permit qualified conscientious objectors to have part of their federal taxes — that part equal to the military portion of the federal budget — to be paid into a fund for peace-related projects.”
It encouraged readers to submit “written testimony for the official hearing record,” to publicize and perhaps attend the hearing, to contact Congressional representatives and encourage them to attend and to support the bill, and to donate money to the cause.
The issue described how the hearing before the House Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures went — “the first actual hearing held since a Peace Tax Fund Bill was first introduced in Congress .”
Excerpts:
“If we give the right to a person to withhold their body from a war as a conscientious objector, that person should be able to withhold his money as well.”
So spoke Sen. Mark Hatfield in his lead-off testimony…
…Several hundred spectators from across the country packed the hearing room.
Many attended as concerned individual taxpayers.
Others came as members of religious denominations and peace groups long associated with the Peace Tax Campaign.
Three chartered buses, one from Lancaster, Pa., two others from Philadelphia, swelled the numbers by some 150 supporters.
When the last of them filed in from a late-arriving bus to find all spectator seats occupied, Chairman Charles Rangel stopped the hearings momentarily, inviting standing-room only observers to move forward and to occupy empty seats normally reserved for officials and the press.
Many did so.
Veterans of peace demonstrations, several parents holding small children, young bearded men in simple dress, older couples from the peace churches created a colorful patchwork as they mixed with congressional aides, heads of foundations, and Capitol bureaucrats in business suits.
…Over 2,300 letters in support of the Peace Tax Fund Bill were bound in large volumes and set on a front table to be presented to the committee.
From 50–100 such letters a day continued to arrive as of the time of the hearing.
Following the introductory testimony of Mark Hatfield, lead sponsor of the bill (S.689) in the Senate, there were also presentations by four members of Congress: Andy Jacobs (lead sponsor of the bill in the House), Nancy Pelosi, and John Conyers.…
…[A] panel of religious leaders testified.
One, Thomas Gumbleton, Roman Catholic bishop from Detroit, and past president of Pax Christi, pointed out that two of the first leaders of the church, John and Peter, said that sometimes it is necessary to obey God before obeying the law.
How much better it would be, Gumbleton said, for COs to be able to pay all their taxes, knowing their money would be used for life-affirming purposes.
William Davidson, retired Episcopal bishop of western Kansas, a CO in World War Ⅱ, has actively opposed war .
“Having lived past draft age, I have been saddened and conflicted each year having to pay taxes to support war,” he said.
The Episcopal Peace Fellowship has consistently supported war tax resistance as a religious witness.
John A. Lapp, executive secretary of Mennonite Central Committee, Akron, Pa., spoke on behalf of the three historic peace churches (Mennonites, Quakers, and Church of the Brethren).
The issue of war-related taxes is one of religious freedom, Lapp said.
“Many of us feel the pain of having our religious institutions serve as tax collectors for war.”
During committee questioning, Representative Jacobs asked Rabbi [Phil] Bentley [with the Jewish Peace Fellowship], “Is [passage of this bill] going to give rise to requests for similar legislation from people who don’t want their money going for a golf course?”
…[Friends Journal] editor-manager Vint Deming, associate editor Melissa Elliott, typesetter Susan Jordhamo, and board members Robert Sutton and Sam Legg joined several hundred other citizens in packing the hearing room…
The hearing was informational, to give legislators material to use in future considerations, rather than to schedule the bill for action.
As such, it gave supporters a chance to formally present the case, get testimony in the written record, and show the depth and breadth of people’s interest in the bill.
The pace of this legislative process is frustratingly slow, but, for many of us, the hearing was a heartening experience.
There, we heard people testify in a formal legislative setting to our most deeply held beliefs.
One activist-participant said, “All my life I’ve been on the side that opposes government decisions.
It was a weird experience to see all those peace movement people in the same room with legislators.
I’ve never seen anything like that before, nor ever imagined it.
It gave me a different vision of what might be possible.”
The Peace Tax Fund Bill has come a long way , with many technical refinements, and it has a long way to go in gathering widespread support.
On we witnessed one small step in validation, acknowledgment of our beliefs, and moving the dream closer to reality.
Perhaps one day we will look back, as do those who watched the process of legalizing conscientious objection, and be glad we were involved in making it legal to follow our beliefs with our money-as well as with our bodies.
“This is not a political issue, but a moral issue of conscience,” responded Bentley…
Jacobs, in response, thanked the Rabbi and others of religious conscience who had testified.
“I am a sponsor of this bill,” he said, “but I am not a pacifist.”
He called to mind one of his favorite movies, Friendly Persuasion, and the lines spoken toward the end of the film: “It’s good to know that somebody is holding out for a better way of settling things!”
Terrill Hyde, tax legislative counsel for the Department of the Treasury, presented the Bush Administration position opposing the PTF.
She mentioned “problems of complexity, confusion, and increased administrative burden,” sure to arise if the bill were passed.
There would be no deterrent either, she said, to restrain taxpayers from inappropriately claiming CO status.
If taxpayers were allowed to designate the uses for which their tax dollars were spent, “our entire budgetary process would be undermined.”
There would likely be loss of revenue to needed federal programs.
Others, however, presented differing views.
Several speakers argued that there would likely be substantial increases in revenue as a direct result of the bill.
Many who currently refuse to pay a portion or all of their taxes would gladly pay.
Also, large costs resulting from IRS efforts to collect from tax resisters would be avoided.
Answering the criticism of how the act might increase paperwork and administrative costs, several people testified to the simple nature of the bill and of the tax filing process.
As to IRS claims that the bill raises possible legal questions, a panel of two law specialists responded.
Mark Tushnet, professor of law at Georgetown University, said, “A nation that wants to protect the religious freedom of its citizens can reasonably be expected to enact legislation to enable the freedom to be expressed.”
It seems perfectly appropriate, he concluded, that such legislation be enacted.
“It is needed in addition to the Religious Freedom Act.”
Philadelphia, Pa., attorney and war tax specialist Peter Goldberger agreed.
“Legislation of this kind has a noble history in our country,” and he quoted from a letter from then-President George Washington to Philadelphia Quakers.
The nation’s laws, Washington wrote, must always be “extensively accommodated” in cases of individual conscience.
Alan Eccleston, a Quaker and an organizational development consultant from Hadley, Massachusetts, told about how, in his own tax witness, he has endured penalties, punishments, and the threat of losing his home.
The IRS has a lien on his house right now.
“Conscience must be taken into account.
Spiritual values are real.
They are not to be treated as incidental or expendable to fit the needs of the state.
This is what the First Amendment is all about.”
Ruth Flower, legislative secretary of Friends Committee on National Legislation, emphasized that the Peace Tax Fund Act would not offer an escape to those who do not wish to pay their taxes, because they would have to pay the same amount either way.
It would, however, provide a legal way out of violating one’s religious beliefs in order to comply with the laws of the land.
Her point was born out by Patricia Washburn, who gave perhaps the most moving testimony of the hearing.
She talked about the challenge presented to each of us, and to her personally, in Micah 6:8: “…what does the Lord require of you but to act justly, to love constantly, and to walk humbly with your God?” Walking humbly requires us to acknowledge the seeds of violence in our own hearts, rather than projecting them onto someone else.
“Loving constantly” can be a discouraging and difficult task, especially in today’s climate of distrust and alienation.
“I am not opposed to paying taxes, but I find no alternative form of tax payment… Thus, I see no current alternative to withholding the military portion of my taxes… I pray that my witness is done in love and that it will help to build a bridge across the chasm of violence and fear.”
After the hearing and following the press conference, [Marian] Franz [executive director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund] gave a brief workshop on lobbying for the bill.
She pointed out that the testimony would now be entered in written record and could be referred to in the future.
She added, “the fact that we got a hearing is absolutely amazing.”
Many other pieces of legislation have not yet been so lucky, and the demand is great.
“If all members of the committee had been present, they all would have been deeply moved, and we would be a lot further down the road.”
Franz encouraged people, when lobbying, to talk in terms of conscience, as defined by Pope John ⅩⅩⅢ, who said, “Deep inside, each one of us finds a law that we did not put there.
It tells us to do this and shun that.”
That is what puts the issue of paying taxes for war in the arena of religious decisions and touches on every individual’s right to follow their faith — whether they are housewives, bureaucrats, lawyers, teachers, or politicians.
That is why it is important to keep trying to open doors and ears and minds.
Marian Franz has a suggestion for how to approach people: “Talk to aides and legislators as though you’re sharing something personally.
You will often find that when you are talking about conscience, people are moved deeply.”
The issue also plugged “Good Use: Songs of Peace, Tax & Conscience” — “a tape of War Tax Resister Songs, featuring Charlie King, Luci Murphy, Geof Morgan, Lifeline, and others.
It was produced by Don Walsh, who donates the royalties.”
The lead editorial (by Vinton Deming) in the issue concerned the ongoing Randy Kehler/Betsy Corner case:
Finding Affinity
Randy Kehler and his wife, Betsy Corner, have been tax resisters .
They have given the tax money instead to a variety of groups doing constructive community work.
the IRS has been trying to sell their house in Colrain, Mass., in an effort to collect $25,896 in back taxes — but it hasn’t been easy.
First of all, there’s been a growing tax resistance movement there in Franklin County.
Bob Bady and Pat Morse, for instance, had their house seized and auctioned in .
(They still live in the house, however, and the buyer hasn’t taken possession.)
Shelburn Falls dentist Tom Wilson had his dental license revoked when he refused to cooperate with IRS.
(He continues his practice, however; even the local sheriff remains one of his regular patients).
So when the word got out that IRS planned to auction Betsy and Randy’s house, supporters in large numbers turned up on the announced day to oppose the sale.
There were lots of signed bids (such as an offer to clean the teeth of an IRS agent, others pledging to do community work or to be peace activists for life) — but no cash buyers came forward.
Not a one.
So, in , IRS upped the ante.
Betsy, Randy, and daughter Lillian, 12, were given an eviction notice.
When Randy decided to stay, he was held in contempt and tossed in the county jail for 6 months.
This didn’t go unnoticed by friends and neighbors, however.
A sign-up sheet got circulated, and volunteers committed themselves to stay in the house around the clock.
There’s been a continuous presence there .
Groups from as far away as Washington, D.C., have signed up to come and help out.
In , members of Mount Toby (Mass.) Meeting formed such an affinity group for a week.
Meanwhile, Randy stays in jail and makes the most of his time there.
He has made friends with many of the prisoners, has organized a chess tournament, and does what he can to interpret his tax witness.
Allan Eccleston, member of Mount Toby Meeting, has been approved as the meeting’s official minister and visits Randy twice a week.
So what’s next?
IRS has scheduled another auction, this time out of the area in Springfield, Mass. — in the hope, it seems, of attracting a buyer for the house, someone who doesn’t know about this whole chain of events.
Randy will not be there to talk about it, but lots of his friends will.
Even if the house is sold, the issue will be far from over.
The house is part of a land trust (Randy and Betsy own the house but not the land on which it stands) — and there’s the likelihood of a continuing nonviolent presence in the house to welcome any potential new buyer.
How might Friends respond?
I asked this question in of Francis Crowe, long-time head of the American Friends Service Committee office in western Massachusetts and a supporter of Randy and Betsy.
She suggests:
Form an affinity group to help sustain the presence in the house.
(To be scheduled, contact Traprock Peace Center…
Funds are also needed to support the action (checks made out to “War Tax Refusers Support Committee”…).
Letters to the editor on the subject of taxes and militarism are always helpful.
More sponsors are needed in Congress for the Peace Tax Fund bill.…
At a rally in support of Betsy and Randy, Juanita Nelson — who, with husband Wally, has been a tax refuser for decades and is known to many Friends — offered these words by Goethe: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has Genius, Power, and Magic in it.”
Good advice as another tax season is upon us, when many of us seek to find our way on this difficult question of taxes for war.
In a later issue, David Zarembka reported in a letter-to-the-editor about how the occupation / blockade of the Kehler/Corner home was proceeding:
On , federal marshalls arrested seven members of the Flowing River Affinity Group who were occupying the Kehler/Corner home and removed the furniture into storage.
At , the IRS sold the house to the highest bidder in an auction for $5,400. The seven affinity group members were released from jail later in the afternoon.
So was Randy, who had served two months of his sentence.
Do not think, however, that Betsy and Randy have lost their home in an exotic cause!
As soon as the federal marshalls left the house, an affinity group reoccupied it, and other groups, including one from Washington, D.C., of which I am a member, have continued to occupy the house on a 24-hour basis.
Affinity groups, which occupy the home for a week each, have been organizing , but new ones are still being formed…
The “buyers,” a young couple with a two-month-old son, have visited the house several times but have not as yet forced the issue.
They are consulting with their lawyers.
Betsy and Randy have become members of the Colrain Neighbors Affinity Group, which will occupy the home for the week beginning .
They and their twelve-year-old daughter, Lillian, will move back into their home when they can comfortably live there once again.
I would hope that this action would lead Friends to consider how their cooperation with the federal tax collection process — even those who are symbolic tax resisters or those who force the IRS to take their taxes from them — allows the present military system to thrive.
A report in that issue on the Canadian Yearly Meeting that had taken place noted that:
Canadian Yearly Meeting, in its role of employer, was asked to refuse to remit that portion of its employees’ taxes that will be used to support the military.
Concern was expressed by the yearly meeting’s trustees, who would bear the legal results of such actions.
Although the yearly meeting came close to supporting a minute for this action, it agreed to seek clearness with the trustees and monthly meetings and return to this issue next year.
an ad from the issue of Friends Journal
The issue was largely devoted to war tax resistance.
It began with an editorial from Vinton Deming concerning his war tax resistance and the response of his employer, the Journal.
Excerpt:
From the outset, I knew it wasn’t a very practical thing to do.
The government was too powerful, and all the tax laws were against me.
I’d just end up paying much more in the end, so why not choose a better way to work for peace?
A good letter to my congressman, for instance, or a tax vigil at the federal building on Apri1 15.
But this was in .
Our war in Vietnam was just over, but the Cold War continued.
As the Reagan years unfolded, with still larger military expenditures and big cuts in domestic programs, I became even more clear: I must resist as fully as possible the payment of taxes for war.
The Journal board was always supportive of my witness.
It refused twice to honor IRS levies on my wages.
In doing so, Friends openly accepted the possibility of being taken to court one day and fined severely.
The board wrote to IRS: “Our position of noncompliance to the requests of the Internal Revenue Service is not an easy one.
We do not question the laws of the land lightly, but do so under the weight of a genuine religious and moral concern.”
Well, as they say, “What goes ’round comes ’round.”
, Friends Journal was told by the U.S. Justice Department to pay up or we’d be taken to court.…
I am grateful for the steadfastness of the Journal’s board of managers.
, it has been faithful to the Quaker peace testimony.
The road has been an uncertain and confusing one at many points, but Friends have shown courage in continuing.
In my own personal war tax journey, these words by John Stoner have served to guide: “We are war tax resisters because we have discovered some doubt as to what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God, and have decided to give the benefit of the doubt to God.”
Sam Legg, clerk of the Friends Journal Board of Managers, gave his take on the Deming situation and on why the Journal had decided to throw in the towel and pay the IRS’s demands.
Excerpts:
… Vinton refused to pay any federal taxes.
Each tax year he sent a blank 1040 along with a letter to the president explaining his opposition to war and his unwillingness as a Friend to pay for it.
Since there was no Peace Tax Fund, Vinton reasoned, he would instead contribute the money to worthwhile projects and see that it was used for peaceful purposes.
In , the IRS served a levy on Friends Journal for $22,714.16, Vinton’s taxes for the period, plus interest and penalties.
The IRS asked Friends Journal to withhold part of Vinton’s salary each month, but the Journal Board refused, writing that “We… are in support of Vinton Deming’s conscientious witness.”
In , Friends Journal received a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice reminding us of the levy on Vinton’s salary and asking us to try to “resolve this matter short of litigation.”
That is, to pay the original assessed amount plus interest and a possible 50 percent penalty on the total.
We were given until to respond.
If we were to continue refusing to honor the levy, an immediate court action would follow.
The U.S. Supreme Court decision, Smith vs. Oregon, as Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and the American Friends Service Committee have learned, teaches us that there is no way we could win such a case in court, nor could our assets be protected from seizure.
More troubling, this seizure could make others who are not involved in our decision, undergo unwelcome investigation.
Finally, a court case offers IRS the opportunity to set a legal precedent requiring the payment of the 50 percent penalty (which a sympathetic judge excused in the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting case last year).
We fear that the inevitable negative decision could establish that precedent and thereby restrict other individuals’ or groups’ religious freedom.
And so, most reluctantly, the Friends Journal Board has agreed to negotiate with IRS and to pay the least amount IRS will accept ($31,300) as settlement of this claim.
Our painful recognition of failure is heavy upon us.
We have to accept that our witness in its present form can no longer serve a useful purpose.
We can hope Vinton’s action and our support will have brought the issue of tax refusal to the attention of others, thereby becoming a part of the tradition of citizen pressure that in the long run eliminates or diminishes social evils such as slavery and war.
Our protest is on record.
What we will do now is support the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of … which aims to reestablish the first amendment religious rights lost in the Smith vs. Oregon decision.
We also urge support for the U.S. Peace Tax Fund Bill… which makes the same witness, but provides money to finance peace-enhancing projects.
(Needless to say, if there had been a Peace Tax Fund in , Vinton’s taxes would have been paid gladly, and there would have been no need for an IRS levy.)
We ask all those who share our concerns to join in these legal approaches to the continuing effort to convince ourselves and others of the futility of armed conflict and the necessity of finding other means to resolve human disputes.
The immediate financial challenge to the Journal is a very real one.
In a year in which we already face a substantial budget deficit, the payment of such a large lump sum adds an enormous burden.
Vinton has engaged to repay the Journal through payroll deductions over time.
We have been heartened as well, as word of our tax witness spreads, to receive gifts of support from our readers.
One contributor writes: “I hope everyone at the Friends Journal can be made aware of Friends’ approval of [your] Board action.
To help this happen, I encourage the Journal to go as public with the story as is consistent with respect for Vint’s privacy and the Journal’s limited resources.
I am convinced that other Friends will wish to help financially when so informed.”
For such words, and unexpected gifts, we are most grateful.
Readers wrote in with their feedback about the Journal’s decision, and some of their letters were printed in the issue:
Duane Magill wrote to “applaud” and “sympathize” with the Journal’s stand.
“As a war tax resister myself for the past quarter of a century, I have had some brushes with the IRS myself and know what it is like.
I also appreciate your giving publicity to the subject.
I know that not many Quakers take this position, and giving the matter this extensive coverage just might encourage more to take this stand.”
Yvonne Boeger wrote in on behalf of the Live Oak (Texas) Meeting to say that the meeting had recently “discussed the importance of war tax resistance as a means of witnessing to Friends’ long-standing opposition to all forms of war and violence” and that the Meeting was supportive of the Journal’s (and Deming’s) action.
“We send the enclosed check as a token of our support and solidarity in Friends’ resistance to war.
Thank you for the example you have set for us all.”
Lillian and George Willoughby wrote to express gratitude for the Journal’s “courage in standing in support of Vint Deming.”
They wrote: “Most important is the example of a Quaker religious employer providing support to staff who endeavor to live according to Friends’ teachings.
The Journal has run considerable risk and incurred heavy expenses.
We enclose our check as a demonstration of our support.
We think that many other Friends will want to help carry the financial burden of this witness.”
An editorial note in the letters column expressed “thanks to all those who have sent checks!” and a later editorial note (in the issue) said that they had received “$8,000 from individuals and meetings, $7,000 from a Sufferings Fund of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting,” and almost $4,000 from Deming himself.
Mennonite war tax resister (and, according to his author bio, “itinerant prophet and spiritual retreat leader”) John K. Stoner wrote about the call he got from an IRS employee.
Excerpts:
We talked for about ten minutes, as I explained why Janet and I had said “no” to paying the full amount of our income tax.
The man could not understand why anyone would invite the collection pressures of the IRS upon themselves by withholding some taxes.
But by the time the conversation was over, he was a little closer to understanding that this was, for us, a matter of faith and a question of the practice of our religion.
It was a Mark 13:9 kind of experience of being called before the authorities, “before governors and kings,” because of Jesus, as a testimony to them.
By the sound of Mark 13, Jesus expected this kind of thing to happen regularly to his followers.
Mark 13 is a good text to remember when everybody around you is quoting Romans 13.
The Christian Peacemaker Teams organization is promoting symbolic war tax refusal as a way to make a clear witness in the matter of war taxes.
Taxes for Life is a plan to have taxpayers redirect to education an amount equivalent to 1 penny for every billion dollars in the military budget.
For tax year this is $3.03, which can be mailed to Christian Peacemaker Teams… Listen to your conscience when you pay your taxes.
Write a letter of witness to the IRS, with copies to Congress and your local newspaper.
Redirect some taxes to education through CPT.
If the IRS calls, tell them that it makes you a little bit nervous to break their law and that you do not enjoy being harassed by the collectors of blood money.
Go on to say that you are far more apprehensive, however, about breaking God’s law.
Tell them that you hear God’s warning rising up from the bulldozed mass graves of Iraqi conscripts, fathers and husbands, and the nightmares of their children.
Explain that you are really afraid to harden you heart to the cry of the victims and that you have decided you will not take their blood upon your hands.
When Randy Kehler was thrown in prison on contempt of court charges for refusing to vacate the home that had been seized by the IRS, he prepared a statement that he hoped to read.
The court denied him permission to address it.
The Journal printed the statement he’d hoped to have made, which is a good thing: it would be a shame if such an articulate statement was left to sit unread in a file folder somewhere.
My refusal to give up our home is not an act of contempt or defiance of your court order.
I regard it as an act of conscience and also an act of citizenship.
The two go hand in hand.
The first obligation of responsible citizenship, I believe, is obedience to one’s conscience.
Obedience to one’s government and to its laws is very important, but it must come second.
Otherwise there is no check on immoral actions by governments, which are bound to occur in any society whenever power is abused.
I want to assure you, however, that I am not someone who treats the law lightly.
Even when a particular law seems at first to have no clear purpose or justification, I try to give it — that is, give those who created and approved it — the benefit of the doubt.
In an ideal sense, I see law as the codification of those rules and procedures by which the members or citizens of a community, be it local or global, have agreed to live.
A decent respect for one’s community requires a decent respect for its laws.
At their best, such laws express the conscience of the community, causing conscience and law to coincide.
The international treaties and agreements that my wife, Betsy, and I cited in the legal documents recently submitted to, and rejected by, this court are wonderful examples of the coincidence of law and conscience.
These agreements, each one signed by our government, include the United Nations Charter, which outlaws war and the use of military force as methods of resolving conflicts among nations; the Hague Regulations and Geneva Conventions, which prohibit the use or threatened use of weapons that indiscriminately kill civilians and poison the environment; and the Nuremberg Principles, which forbid individual citizens from participating in or collaborating with clearly defined “crimes against humanity,” “war crimes,” and “crimes against peace,” even when refusal to participate or collaborate means disobeying the laws of one’s government.
These international accords — which, as you know, our Constitution requires us to regard as “the Supreme Law of the Land” — are at least as much affirmation of conscience, rooted in universal moral standards, as they are statements of law.
Betsy and I regret that you chose to deny our request for a trial, which would have allowed us to argue the relevance of these international laws before a jury of our peers.
Even in the absence of such laws, however, I believe that citizens would still have an affirmative obligation to follow their conscience and refuse to engage in or support immoral acts by governments.
It is not true, as is commonly thought, that if large numbers of people put conscience ahead of the law and decided for themselves which acts of government were immoral, civilized society would break down into violence and chaos — that is, greater violence and chaos than there is now.
In fact, the opposite would likely occur.
There would likely be greater compliance with those laws that are fundamentally just and reasonable — in other words, most laws — and there would be greater public pressure to abolish or reform those laws (and policies) that are unjust or unreasonable.
There would be exceptions for the worse, of course.
In the name of conscience, certain individuals would, no doubt, do some terrible things and cause much injury and death, which happens now.
On balance, however, the historical record is clear: from the Spanish Inquisition and the African slave trade, to Stalin’s purges, Hitler’s Holocaust, the genocide of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and our own devastation of Vietnam and Iraq, far more killing and suffering, has resulted from people following “legal” orders and obeying the law than from people refusing to do so in obedience to conscience.
My own refusal to kill (which led me to spend nearly two years in federal prison rather than cooperate with the Vietnam draft), Betsy’s and my refusal to pay federal taxes used for killing (which caused the IRS to seize our home), and now our refusal to turn over our home in lieu of taxes, are all acts of conscience.
It has not been easy for us to deliberately violate the law in these instances, and in so doing incur the anxiety and disapproval of some of our friends and family, as well as the scorn and censure of many members of the community.
We are painfully aware that even though we do pay our town and state taxes, and even though we have given away to the poor and to the victims of our war-making in other countries every cent that we have withheld from the federal government, nevertheless we are still regarded by some as irresponsible and not contributing our fair share.
These are times, however, when all of us are confronted with difficult choices.
Betsy and I, and many others like us, feel we must choose between knowingly and willingly paying for war and killing, and openly and nonviolently breaking the law with respect to federal taxes.
Our consciences compel us to choose the latter.
For me, the issue is larger than simply the taking of another human life, or even the instance of a particular war in which many lives are lost.
I have increasingly come to see the larger issue as war itself.
Whereas there has always been a moral imperative to end war and refrain from killing, today the imperative is much greater.
Today the logic of peace, the logic of nonviolence, is also the logic of survival.
It is impossible to dis-invent today’s nuclear, chemical, biological, and so-called conventional weapons of mass destruction.
Therefore, we have no alternative but to effectively abolish war.
This is the one essential adaptation the human species must make — and, I firmly believe, can make — if life as we know it is to continue.
War today is the scourge of the planet.
It is tragic enough that war is daily claiming the lives of people, maiming more, leaving orphans and widows, and destroying homes, schools, and hospitals — to say nothing of the irreplaceable treasures of human civilization destroyed in Baghdad last year and in Dubrovnik over the past several months.
What makes war today even more tragic, more horrible, are the incalculable economic, social, and environmental costs that go along with it.
Instead of using our human and material resources to produce food, medicine, housing, schools, and other desperately needed commodities, the world’s nations, led by our own, are annually spending trillions of dollars to purchase more and more weapons of even greater destructive capability.
The hundreds of millions of children, women, and men whose lives are ravaged by poverty, hunger, and homelessness — around the world and here in the States — are as much victims of our addiction to war and militarism as are those who are hit directly by the bullets and bombs.
While the awful gap between the rich minority and the poor majority of the world’s people grows wider and wider, war’s assault on the earth — the earth that sustains us all — becomes more savage and less reversible with each new armed conflict.
The severe and longterm ecological damage to the Persian Gulf region that resulted from only a few weeks of war last year is just the tip of the iceberg.
The cumulative impact of the many smaller, less publicized wars elsewhere around the globe is no less severe and, ultimately, no less threatening to the well-being of people everywhere, including the United States.
Furthermore, here at home, where ecological damage to our own environment is proceeding at a frightening pace, the single largest polluter by far, producing more toxic and radioactive waste than any other single entity, is the U.S. military.
I am not at all suggesting that our country bears sole responsibility for the global state of affairs.
But we bear a good deal of it, and therefore any steps we take to move away from war will have great influence upon other countries around the world.
Even before the collapse of the Soviet Union, we had the most powerful armed forces in the world, the most sophisticated weaponry, and by far the largest number of military bases outside our own borders.
Since World War Ⅱ, we have used our military might to bomb, invade, or otherwise intervene in more countries around the world than any other nation.
We were the first to develop the atomic bomb, and we are the only nation ever to use it.
For years we have led the Soviets in atomic test explosions, and we ani continuing these tests even though Soviet testing has stopped.
In addition, we have long been the world’s largest arms merchant, today supplying 40 percent of the entire overseas arms market.
We have been told that all of this is necessary for our security, but the opposite is true.
This military colossus we have created has greatly undermined our security — by creating more enemies than it destroys, by wasting our precious resources and poisoning our environment, by degrading our democracy with “national security” secrecy, covert actions, and official lying, and by undercutting our highest Judeo-Christian values with the insidious doctrine of “might makes right.”
Betsy’s and my actions that have brought us to court are testament to our belief that there is another way for us to live in the world, and another way for us to resolve our conflicts with our fellow human beings.
It is a way that is rooted in the best of our values: the values of generosity and justice, of human dignity and equality, of compassion and mutual respect.
The seeds of this alternative way — the way of nonviolence that Dr. Martin Luther King tried to teach us — already exist within our society, and within each person.
We have only to honor and nurture those seeds, individually and collectively.
This is a prescription based not on wishful idealism, but on practical necessity.
It is our only real hope for survival.
The transformation required cannot be accomplished without our accepting some measure of personal responsibility for the mess we are in.
It would be futile to expect our government, or any other, to initiate it.
In any event, we cannot afford to wait.
The transformation must begin with us.
Because we profess to be a self-governing people, it is all the more our responsibility.
We can exercise this responsibility by means of the choices each of us is called upon to make.
For example, we can choose to speak out publicly against governmental practices and priorities that we know to be wrong.
Many of us can also choose not to hand over to the federal government some part of our tax money — instead redistribute it to those in need, until such time as those in need become our government’s first priority.
And each of us can choose to continue leading lives based on materialism, consumerism, and environmental exploitation, or we can find ways of living based on simplicity, sharing, and respect for the Earth.
The choices we make as individuals will determine the choices we make as a nation.
This is, no doubt, a dangerous and ominous time to be alive in the world.
Yet it is also a very exciting time to be alive.
People all over the world, despite the opposition of their governments, are taking initiative to bring about momentous and long overdue changes.
These winds of change are sweeping the planet, and they are not likely to stop at our borders.
If the people of Prague and Moscow can overthrow Soviet communism and bring about democracy and human rights; if the people of Soweto and Johannesburg can abolish South African apartheid and establish an egalitarian, multi-racial society; then, I feel sure, it is equally possible for us to dismantle U.S. militarism and replace it with attitudes and institutions of nonviolence.
It is my great hope, my silent prayer, that Betsy’s and my struggle to see that the fruits of our labor are used for nurturing and healing, rather than for killing and war, will somehow contribute to that process.
Following this, Christopher L. King had a piece promoting the Peace Tax Fund.
He described it as the brainchild of David Bassett, who some twenty years before had come up with the idea of allowing taxpayers to perform “alternative service” money the way conscientiously objecting draftees could with their labor.
King wrote that he was surprised to find little awareness of the bill in Quaker circles and described some of the work that he and his comrades were doing for the bill.
Those of us who meet each month and a quiet group of supporters in the surrounding communities believe in our consciences that war and militarism are wrong.
We don’t believe they should be the major tools of our foreign policy.
We sympathize with citizens like Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner of Colrain, Massachusetts, who have chosen to pay no taxes because they are pacifists.
We empathize with those brave souls who choose alternative lifestyles so they can keep their income below taxable levels.
It often means their children must learn to sacrifice at an early age.
It means stepping out of the mainstream culture.
Most of us don’t want to change our lifestyles radically or go to jail for our beliefs.
Some might argue that if we are true to our faith, we have no other choice.
On the other hand, there is a need to resist the fundamental tyranny that requires that we must become rebels if we wish to stand firmly for peace.
King’s article was pretty vague on the mechanics of what the Peace Tax Fund bill would actually accomplish, and it was written as if there were no reason why a conscientious objector to paying to war might not find it a satisfactory solution.
The issue included a brief review of the video Paying for Peace: War Tax Resistance in the United States, which was produced by Carol Coney.
Excerpt:
Among those interviewed are Brian Willson, a war tax resister and Vietnam veteran who in was run over by a train while blocking munitions shipments at the Concord naval weapons plant in California.
Also interviewed is Maurice McCrackin, a minister who was sentenced to jail for war tax resistance in ; Ernest and Marion Bromley, who have lived under the taxable income level to avoid paying taxes for military purposes; and Juanita Nelson, an early civil rights organizer who was the first woman to spend a night in jail for war tax resistance.
The issue included an op-ed from Allan Kohrman suggesting Quakers ought to be more patriotic, perhaps singing “God Bless America” during their Sunday meetings, and in particular should rethink their permissive attitude toward civil disobedience and war tax resistance.
“Many Friends seem to define civil disobedience as breaking any law they feel is morally wrong.
Some will not pay war taxes, testifying that God has called them to resist.
I would argue that paying taxes is a basic responsibility of citizenship, a function of my almost mystical relationship to my country.
God calls me to pay my taxes much as God calls others to resist them.”
That’s what “an almost mystical relationship to my country” will get you, I guess.
Another note in that issue concerned two Quakers in Germany — Christa & Klausmart Voigt — who had been prosecuted for war tax resistance.
“About 40 Friends from all over Germany attended the hearing, which was overseen by five judges.”
Klausmart had “placed his money in an account for a peace tax initiative,” and at press time they were still awaiting the court’s decision.
There was another note about the Tax Resisters’ Penalty Fund in the issue, which described it this way: “When a request for assistance comes in, the committee that oversees the fund takes it under consideration, then notifies people who have agreed to participate of the amount each would need to contribute to cover the tax resister’s penalty and interest debt.
Contributions are not used to cover the tax liability itself.
The fund is administered in cooperation with the North Manchester (Ind.) Fellowship of Reconciliation.”
This is the twenty-seventh in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite.
Today we enter the 1980s.
During the first and second world wars the Mennonite “presence” to the world was the shock of refusal to bear arms. That’s not an issue now; most military service is voluntary.
What are we refusing now?
Not many are doing it, but some Mennonites in the U.S. are refusing to pay the portion of their income tax which will be used for military expenditures.
For instance, Cornelia Lehn, director of children’s education for the General Conference, has shared this witness: “Finally I decided to give half of my income to relief and other church work and thus force the Internal Revenue Service to return that portion of my tax which they had already slated for military purposes…
“I realize that this is not the perfect answer… It is, however, the best answer I know at this time.
Finally I could no longer acquiesce and be part of something so diabolical as war.
I had to take a stand against it…
“I wish that my church, which believes in the way of peace, would as a body no longer gather money to help the government make war.
I wish all the members of our church would stand up in horror and refuse to allow it to happen.
Then the conference officers would be in a position to say to the government: ‘We will not give you our sons and daughters and we will not give you our money to kill others.
Allow us to serve our country in the way of peace.’ ”
Is Cornelia Lehn speaking as a prophet?
Does she have a word from the Lord to help us respond in a meaningful way to demonic forces?
Peter Ediger writes with prophetic urgency about what people like Cornelia Lehn are doing: “Do we know that there are hundreds and thousands of people out there waiting for a word from the church, waiting for some action from the church?
Have we some sense of the explosive evangelistic potential of this kind of action?
Do you know that the day of the police state is not only coming but that it is here in its roots, and the issue will not go away?”
Whether we follow Cornelia Lehn’s example or not, we would do well to have her sense of urgency about our own allegiance to the Prince of Peace and ask God for help in making our own faith relevant to our times.
The Commission on Home Ministries met in . Military conscription was prominent on the agenda (President Carter had recently revived military draft registration), but war tax resistance seems to have been pushed aside except for a brief mention:
Chairperson Don Steelberg asked, “How can we who are older support those facing this decision?”
[Robert] Hull replied, “If we counsel them to say no to registration then we should say no to paying war taxes.”
This was part of a “council of commissions” gathering.
Another report on that gathering mentioned the “Smoketown Consultation” rebellion of conservative Mennonites .
Three of these dissenters were at the council, and one, Albert Epp, reportedly “said the preparatory materials for the war tax conference in Minneapolis were slanted in favor of war tax resistance.”
The West Coast Mennonite Central Committee and the Fellowship of Reconciliation co-sponsored a “first annual” workshop on war tax resistance.
Local tax resisters told their stories.
Gray-haired Helen, a Friend, donates the amount of her military tax to organizations working on justice.
Diane works at a state institution for the mentally retarded and realized that military taxes take money away from human needs.
All hope for a mass movement by citizens but stressed the consistent commitment necessary.
They write letters of explanation to the Internal Revenue Service, editors of newspapers, their churches, members of Congress, the President.
They educate employers and bank officials of the possibility of their wages being garnisheed or a lien put on an account.
The IRS is sensitive to “principled tax refusal,” said Irwin Hagenauer [sic], retired social worker who now serves as volunteer resource person to those who would refuse war tax.
He gives advice on every method, from W-4 exemptions to war-crime deductions.
The edition carried an article by Weldon Schloneger on Biblical Authority that discussed the difficulty of interpreting even straightforward-sounding biblical passages in context, and urged charity toward other Christians with differing interpretations.
Among those verses he describes are Matthew 5:44 (“Love your enemies”) and Matthew 22:21 (“Render unto Caesar”) and he mentions how war tax resisters and their opponents each accept the authority of these verses, but interpret them differently.
The edition included another poem trying to drive home the point about taxpaying and complicity: “I fueled the fire / Pumped gas in the the furnaces at Buchenwald / Its flames have lingered within us, smoldering / Today I paid my taxes, that’s all” and so forth.
The edition included the article “Tax form for pacifists” by Colman McCarthy.
It started by pointing out taxpayer complicity with military spending, and “the hollowness of denouncing increases in the defense budget and ‘the wicked Pentagon’ [when c]itizens pay for both.”
The article took a detour into wishful thinking about the World Peace Tax Fund bill before finally returning home:
Without this kind of legislative relief conscientious objectors are left with three options: violate their moral values by financing the military, violate the tax laws by not paying, or earn so little income that it is not taxable.
Traditionally courts have had little patience with tax resisters.
Often judges mistakenly see those citizens as evaders, when actually they are pacifists who want to put their money where their convictions are.
According to William Samuel of the [National Council for a World Peace Tax Fund], cases of conscientious tax resistance have not only been increasing in recent years, but they have also been going on to higher courts of appeal.
In at Richmond the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments from three citizens claiming First and Ninth amendment rights not to pay taxes for military spending.
While Congress and the courts mull over the issue a few individuals are acting on their own.
Only blocks from the White House, Collective Impressions Printshop has been refusing for the past two years to send its federal withholding tax to the IRS.
Instead this corporation submits the money to the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.
The defiance of these pacifists unloosens only the smallest of screws in the U.S.’s vast military machine.
The arms-control agency politely returns the checks and eventually the IRS seizes the group’s bank account.
But it doesn’t seize its moral integrity or squash the option for dissent that is so crucial.
That issue also included an interview with Harold R. Regier and Hubert Schwartzentruber, until recently the peace and social concerns secretaries for the Mennonite General Conference and the Mennonite Church respectively.
The former, when asked what the highlights of his term had been, mentioned the General Conference resolution that had announced church support for war tax resisters, and also God and Caesar:
This little newsletter of information and dialogue about war taxes brought together a community of people struggling with the question of supporting with our money what we could not participate in personally.
We discovered increasing numbers of people responsive to the dilemma of being Christian peacemakers and their support of war with tax monies.
Working on the war tax issue as a new frontier for Anabaptist discipleship was perhaps the single most exciting highlight of my as PSC secretary.
A special Commission on Home Ministries supplement, dated , listed “some ideas we are testing” which included this one:
Just as our forefathers clarified important church-state issues in objecting to war participation, we may be able to make a significant contribution for freedom of religion and against state religion in the area of paying taxes to support war.
An outside-our-conference-budget fund could finance test cases in the U.S. and Canada to clarify the church-state issues involved in paying taxes used for war.
A creative proposal could be tested with legislators, such as one just surfacing: persons contributing “sabbatical service,” a VS term every seventh year to work for the good of others, should be allowed to designate their taxes for constructive purposes.
This idea apparently came out of a discussion between Robert Hull of the CHM Peace and Social Concerns group and a young conscientious objector facing a trial on tax charges.
The task force that had been assigned to try to find some legal avenue for the General Conference to stop withholding taxes from its conscientious objecting employees seems to have come up with its first concrete action plan:
A resolution seeking approval to initiate a judicial action to exempt the General Conference from withholding taxes from the income of its employees will be presented to delegates attending the denomination’s triennial meeting in Estes Park, Colorado, .
At a special meeting of church delegates in Minneapolis in the highest governing board of the church was instructed to vigorously search for “all legal, legislative, and administrative avenues for achieving a conscientious objector exemption” from withholding taxes.
Implicit in the initiative is the view that if it is wrong for pacifists to countenance the drafting of their bodies, it is also wrong to agree to the drafting of that portion of income taxes which go to the military.
The judicial action would be based on the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects the church from laws causing it to violate its principles.
The estimated cost of a judicial action is $75,000 to $130,000. It would likely require several years to reach a final decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Delegates will be asked to authorize an annual church offering to fund this action and also a stepped-up drive to gain congressional support for the World Peace Tax Fund act.
The Church of the Brethren has affirmed “open, nonevasive withholding of war taxes as a legitimate witness to our conscientious intention to follow the call of discipleship to Jesus Christ.”
With respect to the payment of taxes used for war purposes, the New Call restated its commitment to urge Christian peacemakers to “consider withholding from the Internal Revenue Service all tax monies which contribute to any war effort.”
The statement of findings recommended the following as alternatives to the payment of war taxes: (1) active work for the adoption of the World Peace Tax Fund bill which, if passed by the U.S. Congress, would serve as a legal alternative to payment of war taxes just as conscientious objector status is a legal alternative to military service, and (2) individuals are urged to consider prayerfully all moral ways of reducing their tax liabilities, including sizable contributions to tax-exempt organizations, reduction of personal income, and simplification of lifestyles.
In the edition, Peter Farrar shared a letter he wrote to his senator saying that he was going beyond draft resistance “to sever all personal connection with the federal government of the United States”:
I will no longer vote in federal elections, pay federal taxes, nor use federal services, and I will do everything in my power, privately and in the press, to influence others to join me.
Ed Pearson gave an update on an “escrow fund” originated in , to which people can send the part of their taxes they refuse to pay… The government is notified that the money will be released when the World Peace Tax Fund Bill, pending in congress, is passed.
Similar efforts are under way in Canada, Great Britain, Japan, Holland, Switzerland, Australia, and New Zealand.
William Sloane Coffin, Jr. addressed the World Conference on Religion for Peace (Canada) in .
In The Mennonite’s description of his remarks is this note:
Finally, “The Historic Peace Church Task Force on Taxes” met again in .
The Historic Peace Church Task Force on Taxes will undertake a major effort to inform and educate members of its congregations and meetings on the implications of the payment of taxes used for military purposes.
The committee has commissioned the preparation of a packet of study materials on the biblical basis of war taxes, the World Peace Tax Fund (WPTF) bill currently pending in the U.S. Congress, and suggestions for personal and political action.
Meeting at the General Conference Mennonite Church (GCMC) headquarters here on , the task force also heard a report that William Ball, noted constitutional law attorney from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, has indicated interest in representing the GCMC in its proposed judicial action on the withholding of taxes from its employees.
Among other attorneys being considered to carry the case are Alan Hunt of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; William Rich of Topeka, Kansas; and Harrop Freeman of Ithaca, New York.
The selection of a legal representative will be finalized .
Preparation of the tax study materials will be coordinated by Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Peace Section in Akron, Pennsylvania, in consultation with the National Council for a World Peace Tax Fund in Washington, D.C., and representatives of the historic peace churches.
These groups include the General Conference Mennonite Church, Mennonite Church, Mennonite Brethren Church, Brethren in Christ, Church of the Brethren, Friends General Conference, Friends United Meeting, and Evangelical Friends Alliance.
Several members of the task force voiced concerns over the lack of understanding on the part of lay people within these congregations and meetings of the magnitude of the nuclear and military threat, of which the U.S. is a major participant.
The decision to prepare study materials came in response to the need for greater awareness of the sizable contribution which each taxpayer makes to the “morally bankrupt” process of gigantic military expenditures.
“Our congregations need to be educated to understand the issues and the policies of our [U.S.] administration,” said Alan Eccleston of the National Council for a World Peace Tax Fund.
Eccleston noted that the WPTF bill has entered a critical phase; during the elections, 5 of its 35 sponsors were lost.
Efforts to see the legislation through Congress must be redoubled, or the bill will soon have to be abandoned and energies channeled in other directions, he said.
Regarding the legal action to seek an injunction against the Internal Revenue Service concerning the collection of taxes from General Conference employees, Vern Preheim, general secretary of the GCMC, indicated that other historic peace churches have been invited to join in in the suit in some way.
Responses from other church groups however, are still in process.
The General Board of the GCMC was empowered to undertake the court challenge at the triennial meeting of conference delegates at Estes Park, Colorado .
At the meetings, task force members seemed to differ significantly in terms of their interests in war tax issues.
Committee members such as Eccleston and Robert Hull, secretary for peace and justice for GCMC, were concerned about the future of the peace witness in comprehensive terms, and specifically as it related to the war tax issue.
Others, such as Duane Heffelbower, an attorney from Reedley, California, were interested in the tax question in more professionally restricted terms. Heffelbower stated that he could face disbarment if he became an active tax resister; therefore, the passage of the WPTF is an attractive option because it involves no risk to his profession.
Other task force participants included Heinz Janzen, Hillsboro, Kansas (chairperson); Delton Franz, North Newton, Kansas; Paul Gingrich, Elkhart, Indiana; Janet Reedy, Elkhart, Indiana; John Stoner and Ron Flickinger of Akron, Pennsylvania; and James Thomas, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
The entire task force will meet again on in Chicago.
