How you can resist funding the government →
the tax resistance movement →
birth of the modern American war tax resistance movement →
Committee for Non-Violent Action
Even my not-at-all-magical crystal ball is clear enough that I could look into it last week and see the future: the liberal wing of House Democrats would whine a lot about the tax package Obama negotiated with the Republicans but in the end they’d just give in like they always do.
Not that this is a bad thing in this case.
The Obama-Republican version of the bill means much less for the Treasury than the liberal alternative — and is even (hide your eyes, liberals!)
a better deal for the poor, particularly with its temporary payroll tax cut.
Indeed the payroll tax cut means even my tax rate will be going down next year, and I haven’t paid federal income tax since .
But, to be on the safe side, I refrained from blogging about this tax plan until it got through Congress and to the President’s desk.
But now I’ll highlight some of the features that may be of interest to tax resisters:
The bill allows for something called “bonus depreciation” of assets that businesses purchase between , at 100%.
What this means is that for assets that qualify, a business can write-off the whole cost of the asset as a business expense rather than portioning out the expense over a particular span of time.
Tax resisters who have a business or who are self-employed can use this feature to lower their taxable income this year or next year if they are in danger of rising to a taxable income level.
The bill also raises the limit for “Section 179” depreciation, which I believe applies to a larger class of business assets.
The bill temporarily reduces the “employee portion” of the payroll tax by two percentage points (for only).
The employee portion is what you see on your paycheck stub (your employer pays what used to be an equivalent amount that you don’t see on your paycheck stub).
Self-employed people will just see their self-employment tax rate drop by two percentage points (the income tax deduction self-employed people take based on the amount they’re charged for self-employment tax, however, will not change, which will make this calculation a little more complex).
You may wonder: “isn’t Social Security and Medicare running low on cash?
What is going to happen when their trust funds are taking in so much less payroll tax?”
Well, as I’ve tried to patiently explain before, these trust funds are just accounting fictions, and the government takes money from wherever it wants and puts it wherever it wants without much regard for trust funds or particularly-earmarked taxes.
In this case, the new bill explicitly says that the General Fund (where your income tax money goes) will pay into these trust funds any money they would have received from the payroll tax rate if it had not been lowered by the bill.
A number of tax credits and deductions that Congress perpetually extends “just one more year” have been extended for one more year yet again.
Also extended is the provision that allows people who have reached retirement age to exclude from income amounts they donate to charity directly from their 401ks and IRAs.
I noted that Bradford Lyttle was quoted in an article comparing conscientious war tax resisters with those agitating against requiring anti-contraception employers to be forced to provide health insurance that covers contraception to their employees.
Lyttle is a veteran of a number of pacifist direct action campaigns, and was an important figure in the Committee for Nonviolent Action, an early war tax resistance-promoting group in the modern war tax resistance movement.
Today I’ve done a little digging through the archives to find out what I can.
Here is some of what I uncovered.
Lyttle’s college roommate was James Otsuka, also a war tax resister.
In Lyttle was imprisoned for nine months for refusing to cooperate with the Selective Service (military conscription) Act.
In , he promoted tactics of nonviolent obstruction (things like blockades, sit-ins, and so forth) in pacifist circles, where many activists considered such tactics to be not strictly non-violent in a Gandhian sense, and many others were content to use more subdued educational and lobbying techniques.
“Nonviolent obstruction makes real to the construction workers the issue symbolized by the missile base… the truck driver finds himself faced with the choice of running over the man and killing him or stopping and dragging him out of the way… He sees a man sitting in the dust before his truck who is silently saying to him, ‘Kill me before you build this missile base; kill me before you help kill a million innocent people.’ ”
In , Lyttle coordinated a peace march from Quebec City, Canada to the tip of Florida.
The march, sponsored by the Committee for Nonviolent Action, was supposed to then continue by small boat to the U.S. military base and future gulag in Guantánamo Bay — but the marchers were stopped just off-shore by the U.S. Coast Guard, in order to prevent them from violating a U.S. ban on travel by its citizens to Cuba.
“This is the Caribbean Wall,” Lyttle was quoted as saying at the time.
“We have the right to travel.
It’s as bad as East Berlin.”
On that march, some of the marchers, including Lyttle, were arrested in Albany, Georgia for “failing to follow an assigned route… disorderly conduct and failure to obey a police officer” — that is, for trying to conduct a racially-integrated peace march through the white shopping district while the local government was trying to quash local anti-segregation activism.
They conducted a hunger strike in jail, were released, immediately returned to the forbidden part of town to continue their protest, were jailed again, and finally the authorities relented — labeling their march a “picket” instead of a “parade” and saying that it could therefore go on without permits.
This unambiguous (though modest) victory for nonviolent tactics is credited for influencing the adoption of nonviolent tactics in the civil rights movement.
A second leg of the march went from San Francisco to Moscow, but was halted by Soviet authorities “just 100 yards from the Lenin-Stalin tomb in Red Square” where the marchers were not permitted to speak on disarmament and a nuclear test ban, though they held a silent vigil and handed out Russian-language disarmament, conscientious objection, and war tax resistance propaganda.
Lyttle told some curious Russians in Red Square: “I went to jail because I refused to serve in the U.S. Army.
I have protested against American rockets aimed at your cities and families.
There are Soviet rockets aimed at my city and family.
Are you protesting that?”
Lyttle briefly addressed 200 students at Moscow University, and when the sponsors of the talk tried to stop it after an hour — only 15 minutes of which had been allotted to Lyttle — the students banged on their desks and demanded more time, eventually winning an extra hour and a half for the group and giving them a standing ovation at the end of their talk in which they encouraged the students to buck their government and support an end to nuclear weapons testing.
One student passed a note to the demonstrators that read in English, “Do not take any notice of the official line.
We are with you.”
They were unsuccessful in their attempts to demonstrate at the Soviet Defense Ministry, though they had been able to do so at several Western military installations along their path — sometimes courting arrest for doing so, for instance in Key West near the Boca Chica Naval Air Station where they were denied a parade permit and told that they could not carry signs or hand out leaflets, but demonstrated anyway and were arrested.
In , Lyttle was among the Committee for Nonviolent Action protesters who went to Vietnam and tried to hold a vigil in front of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.
The U.S. military promised “counter measures” and the South Vietnamese government organized counter-demonstrators (some of whom were security agents disguised as students) who threatened and threw eggs, light bulbs, garbage, and tomatoes at the pacifists and tore down their signs as they tried to give a press conference.
They were arrested before they could reach the embassy and hustled aboard a plane which deported them to Hong Kong.
Police also “roughed up several newsmen, seized the cameras of two TV photographers, and briefly detained a third cameraman” while trying to prevent them from covering the abrupt deportation, which helped it make the papers.
A policeman for the South Vietnamese government rips a protest sign from one of the demonstrators. Bradford Lyttle is on the left.
In , he was arrested during a series of demonstrations at the Pentagon.
He was quoted shouting through the bars of the windows of the bus where arrested demonstrators were being held before transport to jail: “Do not work for the Pentagon.
Do not work for the government.
Do not pay taxes.
Join us in the movement against war.”
Though a pacifist himself, his opponents weren’t interested in playing by pacifist rules.
He was knocked out by a punch to the face from a shipyard worker while he was leafletting against nuclear-armed subs, and on multiple occasions the offices where he organized nonviolent actions were attacked by right-wing paramilitary thugs or mobs.
Lyttle was the first national coordinator of the group War Tax Resistance (the predecessor to today’s National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee).
In , Lyttle was involved in the anti-war protests in Washington, D.C., as a coordinator for the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice.
The federal government conducted a crackdown, arresting thousands, with the stated goal of tying up anti-war organizers in court.
Lyttle, for instance, was charged with assaulting a police officer with “a dangerous weapon” (a bullhorn).
The case was later dropped, in part, it was alleged, because the government did not want to be forced to reveal the details of its illegal wiretapping of Lyttle and other organizers.
In Lyttle participated in the protests surrounding the siege of the home of war tax resisters Betsy Corner and Randy Kehler, which had been seized by the IRS.
In , he helped deliver medical supplies to Iraq in violation of U.S. law.
He’s been a regular presidential candidate of the “U.S. Pacifist Party,” which he founded in .
In the logo of this party is a peculiar mathematical formula — representing something Lyttle has been promoting for decades now, his theory that a catastrophic nuclear exchange is mathematically certain unless we abandon the strategy of nuclear deterrence / mutually assured destruction, due to the summing up of multiple small but everpresent probabilities of accident, miscalculation, or malice.
Such thinking has become more respectable in recent years under the term “black swan theory,” though I haven’t seen much evidence of Lyttle’s particular application catching on.
On , just a few days after Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his powerful “Beyond Vietnam” speech, Eric Weinberger, the national secretary of the Committee for Nonviolent Action, wrote to to ask if King would publicly sign on to their war tax resistance campaign:
I don’t know how (or if) King responded to this request.
I have seen no indications that he participated in the war tax resistance of the period.
King had been targeted by politically-motivated tax prosecutions in areas where he had been active.
Because of this he had been under particular pressure to keep to the straight-and-narrow when it came to tax filing, so as not to give his enemies a potentially fruitful avenue of attack.
This may have discouraged him from making war tax resistance part of his protest against U.S. militarism and the Vietnam War.
It is also possible that, since King was killed , he just didn’t have time to put any possibly-intended resistance into practice.
The CNVA letterhead as shown on this letter is a clue as to who was associated with the emerging war tax resistance movement of the time.
Many of these names are familiar to me, but some others are not:
The time has come, and that time was .
350 Balk at Taxes in a War Protest
Ad in Capital Paper Urges Others to Bar Payment
Washington, — Some 350 persons who disapprove of the war in Vietnam
announced that they would not
voluntarily pay their Federal income taxes, due
. They urged others to join them
in this protest.
The Internal Revenue Service immediately made clear that it would take
whatever steps were necessary to collect the taxes.
The group announced its plans
in an advertisement in The Washington Post.
“We will refuse to pay our Federal income taxes voluntarily,” the
advertisement said. “Some of us will leave the money we owe the Government in
our bank accounts, where the Internal Revenue Service may seize it if they
wish. Some will contribute the money to
CARE,
UNICEF or similar organizations. Some of us
will continue to pay that percentage of our taxes which is not used for
military purposes.”
Joan Baez, Lynd, Muste
The first signature on the advertisement was that of Joan Baez, the folk
singer. Others who signed it were Staughton Lynd, the Yale professor who
traveled to North Vietnam in violation
of State Department regulations, and the
Rev. A.J. Muste, the
pacifist leader.
The advertisement contained a coupon soliciting contributions for the protest.
The ad said that further information could be obtained from Mr. Muste at
Room 1003, 5 Beekman Street, New York City.
Those who placed the advertisement — which bore the heading “The Time Has
Come” — said that those who sponsored it “recognize the gravity of this step.
However, we prefer to risk violating the Internal Revenue Code, rather than
to participate, by voluntarily paying our taxes, in the serious crimes
against humanity being committed by our Government.”
The advertisement mentioned not only the war in Vietnam “against hungry,
scantily armed Vietnamese guerrillas and civilians” but also “the spectacle
of the United States invasion of the Dominican Republic,” an event the
sponsors said “will go down in history alongside Russia’s criminal
intervention in Hungary.”
Cohen Is Determined
The determination of Internal Revenue to collect the taxes the Government is
owed was expressed in a formal statement by the Commissioner of Internal
Revenue, Sheldon S. Cohen.
He said Internal Revenue would take “appropriate action” to collect the
taxes “in fairness to the many millions of taxpayers who do fulfill their
obligations.”
The Government has been upheld in court on all occasions when individuals
have refused to pay taxes because of disapproval with the uses to which their
money was being put, revenue officials said.
Ad Prepared Here
The headquarters of the Committee for Nonviolent Action, 5 Beekman Street,
said that it had prepared the
advertisement carried in the Washington newspaper after receiving 350
responses to invitations it had sent out soliciting participation in “an act
of civil disobedience.”
A spokesman for the committee said that Mr. Muste, the chairman, was out of
town and would return in about a week. The spokesman said that although
monetary contributions in response to the advertisement had not yet begun to
come in, the committee was prepared to mail literature explaining its program
to those who responded to the advertisement.
The spokesman said that the tax protest had been intended to represent “a
more radical and meaningful protest against the Vietnam War.”
The committee announced that members would appear at
in front of the Internal
Revenue Service office, 120 Church Street, to distribute leaflets concerning
the tax protest.
It also said that a rally and picketing would be staged from
, in front of the Federal
Building in San Francisco under the sponsorship of the War Resisters League.
The league also has offices at 5 Beekman Street.
With press coverage like this, including even the address to write to for
more information, Muste hardly needed to pay for ad space in the
Times (assuming they would have printed the ad — many
papers rejected ads like this).
Some other names I recognize from the ad are Noam Chomsky, Dorothy Day, Dave
Dellinger, Barbara Deming, Diane di Prima, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Milton Mayer,
David McReynolds, Grace Paley, Eroseanna Robinson, Ira Sandperl, Albert
Szent-Gyorgyi, Ralph Templin, Marion Bromley, Horace Champney, Ralph Dull,
Walter Gormly, Richard Groff, Irwin Hogenauer, Roy Kepler, Ken Knudson,
Bradford Lyttle, Karl Meyer, Ed Rosenthal, Maris Cakars, Gordon Christiansen,
William Davidon, Johan Eliot, Carroll Pratt, Helen Merrell Lynd, E. Russell
Stabler, Lyle Stuart, John M. Vickers, and Eric Weinberger.
The text of the ad (without the signatures and “coupon”) is as follows:
The Time Has Come
The spectacle of the United States — with its jet bombers, helicopters,
fragmentation and napalm bombs and disabling gas — carrying on an endless war
against the hungry, scantily armed Vietnamese guerrillas and civilians…
this spectacle will go down in history alongside the unforgivable
atrocities of Italy in Ethiopia.
The spectacle of the United States invasion of the Dominican Republic — again
pitting our terrifying weaponry mainly against civilians armed with rifles…
this spectacle will go down in history alongside Russia’s criminal
intervention in Hungary.
But the spectacle of the indifference of so many Americans to the crimes
being committed in their names, by their brothers, and with their tax money…
this spectacle reminds us more and more of the indifference of the
majority of the German people to the killing of six million Jews.
The United States government has not reacted constructively to legitimate
criticism, protests and appeals:
by world leaders including the Pope, U Thant and President De Gaulle —
by United States leaders including Senators Morse, Gruening, Church, Fulbright, Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy and Stephen Young —
by hundreds of thousands of citizens including 2,500 clergymen and countless professors who placed protest advertisements in leading newspapers —
by innumerable students, many tens of thousands of whom have taken their protest to Washington on several occasions —
by celebrated individuals such as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Robert Lowell, Arthur Miller and Dr. Benjamin Spock —
and by leading newspapers, including the New York Times.
We believe that the ordinary channels of protest have been exhausted and that
the time has come for Americans of conscience to take more radical action in
the hope of averting nuclear war.
Therefore, the undersigned hereby declare that at least as long as
U.S. Forces are
clearly being used in violation of the
U.S. Constitution,
International Law and the United Nations Charter…
We will refuse to pay our federal income taxes voluntarily
Some of us will leave the money we owe the government in our bank accounts,
where the Internal Revenue Service may seize it if they wish. Others will
contribute the money to CARE,
UNICEF or similar organizations. Some of us
will continue to pay that percentage of our taxes which is not used for
military purposes.
We recognize the gravity of this step. However, we prefer to risk violating
the Internal Revenue Code, rather than to participate, by voluntarily paying
our taxes, in the serious crimes against humanity being committed by our
Government.
I got the itch the other day to get a birds’-eye historical overview of the war tax resistance movements in America.
Here is what I came up with:
resistance by Quaker-dominated colonial assemblies to requisitions for fortifications and military supplies
resistance by individual Quakers to militia exemption taxes or bounty taxes
resistance by individual Quakers to war taxes, including mixed taxes with a military component
resistance to use of the Continental currency
Rogerene Quaker resistance of militia taxes
Restored Israel of Yahweh sect
the “new monastic” movement
19th century non-sectarian Christian pacifists
World War Ⅰ “bond shirkers” (included Mennonites, political radicals, pacifists, and others)
the Catholic Worker movement
the Concord circle (Alcott, Lane, Thoreau)
Secular anarchist and other “lone wolf” war tax resisters
Peacemakers
the Committee for Non-Violent Action
National War Tax Resistance
the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee
Here is the same diagram with some additional information about the major wars that were at issue in some of these campaigns:
Kennett Love
In , the Washington Monthly carried a story about war tax resisters written by Kennett Love, himself a signer of the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge.
“We believe that the right of conscientious objection to war belongs to all the people, not just to those of draft age,” says a pamphlet now being sent out across the country from a littered, poster-bright office on New York’s Lower East Side.
It carries a radical call to the citizenry to come out against the war in Vietnam by refusing to pay taxes that finance the war.
Such tax resistance is now gathering adherents outside traditional pacifist circles.
Although it is still far from a major headache to the government, Internal Revenue Service men are being assigned to locate bank accounts of resisters and to seize the sums due — plus six per cent interest.
Out of the frustration of the anti-Vietnam-war segment of the population, which is growing rapidly according to the polls; out of dashed hopes raised by peace promises and peace gestures from the Nixon and Johnson Administrations alike; and out of a feeling that orthodox democratic forms of protest — elections and demonstrations — have been ignored, an increasing number of otherwise law-abiding people are following their consciences into what Gandhi called the last stage of civil disobedience by openly refusing to pay part or all of their federal taxes.
The chief targets of the tax-resistance movement are the income tax, particularly the 10 per cent war surtax imposed last year, and the 10 per cent federal excise tax on telephone service.
Other federal taxes have been rejected either as too complicated to resist, such as the liquor tax, which is collected at the wholesale level before individual purchase, or as earmarked for such non-war uses as highway construction.
One pacifist, imprisoned for draft refusal and therefore lacking income to refuse taxes on, gave up smoking because the cigarette tax brings the government more revenue than any other single consumer-commodity tax.
The telephone tax is the most popular one to resist, partly because it was the first to be specifically linked to the war in Vietnam and partly because the American Telephone and Telegraph Company has proven courteous in its handling of tax resisters.
The telephone tax was due to be reduced to three per cent in .
In approving the White House request for its extension of the 10 per cent level, Chairman Wilbur Mills (D-Ark.) of the House Ways and Means Committee said: “It is clear that the Vietnam and only the Vietnam operation makes this bill necessary.”
Resistance to the telephone tax began soon afterward.
Karl Meyer of Chicago, a former Congressman’s son and a free-lance writer immersed in pacifist causes, conceived the idea and proposed it to Maris Cakars of the War Resisters League in New York.
Meyer drafted a pamphlet, “Hang Up On War!,” which has become a staple among the literature distributed by the War Resisters League through the mails and at peace booths.
It explains the link between the telephone tax and the war, summarizes moral and legal objections to the war, and provides practical advice for resisters of the tax, including a candid assessment of the possible risks.
Of the risks, it points out that under Section 7203 of the Internal Revenue Code, which covers both the telephone and the income tax, one who “willfully fails to pay” could be imprisoned for up to one year and fined up to $10,000. It adds that the experiences of tax resisters over the past several years show that the government is not willing to press criminal charges but, instead, acts to collect the taxes (with interest) directly, when and where it can.
AT&T records indicate that telephone tax resisters were relatively unmoved by President Johnson’s famous “abdication” speech on , but that about a quarter of them resumed payment of their telephone taxes at in the belief that President-elect Nixon would end the war.
A table of the telephone company statistics follows, giving the number of telephone tax refusers at the end of each quarter :
Quarter
No. of resisters to telephone tax
1,800
2,300
2,600
3,400
3,400
4,700
5,300
4,700
4,000
4,000
The figure for is not available yet, but the revived intensity of the anti-war movement, manifested in the national student moratorium on and the big demonstrations on , presage an increase.
Measured against the telephone company’s 43,459,000 residence customers, the percentage of tax resisters is minuscule.
But in view of the seriousness of the act of tax resistance, the number of resisters is a source of satisfaction and encouragement to the leaders of the movement.
A spokeswoman for the telephone company told me its standing orders are to continue service to tax resisters so long as its own charges are paid.
The company notifies the IRS of tax non-payments so it can do its own collecting.
If a tax resister informs the local business office of the telephone company that he is deliberately omitting the tax from his payment, the office will not carry the tax charges forward to his next bill.
“It would seem logical to assume that we don’t like to be a collecting agency,” she said, “but we do what we’re obliged to do.”
She said that telephone tax resisters are located mainly in college communities.
Income tax resisters, although fewer than telephone tax resisters, appear to be a more stubborn breed, unmoved by political gestures and prepared to hold out until the war actually ends.
An IRS spokesman in Washington gave me a statistical summary of the growth of such tax resistance.
So far as he knew, it first became a public issue when Joan Baez, the singer, refused in to pay 60 per cent of her income tax in an act to dissociate herself from what she called the immoral, impractical, and stupid war in Vietnam.
She refused the same proportion in and wrote the IRS: “This country has gone mad.
But I will not go mad with it.
I will not pay for organized murder.
I will not pay for the war in Vietnam.”
Joan Baez and a scattered handful of old-line pacifists, a few of whom had been refusing war taxes , were not worth keeping statistics on, so far as the IRS was concerned.
Then, in , a committee under the chairmanship of the Reverend A.J. Muste circulated a tax-refusal pledge among persons on the mailing lists of the Committee for Non-Violent Action and the War Resisters League.
They obtained 370 signatures for an advertisement in The Washington Post that stated: “We believe that the ordinary channels of protest have been exhausted…” Joan Baez headed the list of signers.
According to an IRS analysis, about one-quarter of the signers had no taxable income, about one-half cooperated with the IRS to the extent of telling the agent who called on them where their money could be seized, and about one-quarter put the IRS to the trouble of ferreting out their bank accounts.
The number of actual resisters came to about 275.
the IRS began keeping a count of tax protesters.
The number rose to 375. In there were 533 taxpayers who refused part or all of their income taxes and wrote the IRS that they were doing so in protest against the Vietnam war.
there were 848 who set themselves against the law on grounds of conscientious objection to the war.
The IRS spokesman told me that roughly three-quarters of the income-tax protesters live on the east and west coasts and that the same proportion held for persons refusing to pay the telephone tax.
IRS
spokesmen emphasize that the number of refusers is only a tiny fraction of the total number of taxpayers.
There were some 71 million returns filed in , about 73 million in , and 75 million in .
But again, tax-resistance leaders find significance in the fact that the very idea of tax refusal was unthinkable to nearly all of the resisters until their consciences impelled them to it.
Furthermore, although the numbers are small, the rate of increase of tax resisters is far greater than the annual increase in tax returns.
Fear of prosecution and jail is a deterrent to potential tax refusers.
Many people fail to recognize the distinction between clandestine tax evasion and open tax refusal.
The IRS makes the distinction, however, and has shown no inclination to prosecute persons refusing taxes because of the Vietnam war.
An IRS spokesman said earlier this year: “Is IRS going to ask the Justice Department to go to a federal grand jury and get a jury trial to put a man in jail for a dollar, when all we have to do is go to his bank account?”
Tax-resistance leaders believe also that the government wishes to avoid the publicity attendant on a prosecution, largely because a test case might produce a martyr and create sympathy for the movement.
The few prosecutions in recent years have been for refusal to file returns or disclose information rather than for refusal to pay.
War tax refusal in this country is older than the United States itself.
It began in when Mennonites and Quakers refused to pay taxes for the French and Indian wars.
They refused again during the American Revolution and the Civil War.
The most famous early instance was that of Henry David Thoreau, who spent a night in jail in for refusing taxes in protest against our invasion of Mexico.
He explained in his essay on civil disobedience that he could not “without disgrace be associated with it” and added: “If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a bloody and violent measure, as it would to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood.”
Gandhi, who was deeply influenced by Thoreau, wrote in that “civil non-payment of taxes is indeed the last stage in non-cooperation.
…I know that the withholding of payment of taxes is one of the quickest methods of overthrowing a government.”
He went on to say: “I am equally sure that we have not yet evolved that degree of strength and discipline which are necessary… Are the Indian peasantry prepared to remain absolutely non-violent, and see their cattle taken away from them to die of hunger and thirst?
…I would urge the greatest caution before embarking upon the dangerous adventure.”
But Lord Mountbatten said with relief after India became independent: “If they had started to refuse to pay their taxes, I don’t know what we could have done.”
The idea of modern, organized tax resistance in this country against armaments and war seems to have begun with the Peacemaker Movement, which was formed by 250 pacifists who met in Chicago early in .
In , the Peacemaker Movement published the first edition of a mimeographed Handbook on Non-Payment of War Taxes, which contains practical advice and case histories.
The handbook has now run to three editions and nearly 10,000 copies.
It points out that since the bulk of the federal budget (estimates range from 66 to 80 per cent) goes to pay for past wars, finance the Vietnam war, and prepare for future wars, “it is apparent that the major business of the federal government is war… it is useless to act as if the major business of government is civil functions or peaceful pursuits.”
In , a little more than a year after A.J. Muste’s committee published its tax protest advertisement with 370 signers, Gerald Walker of The New York Times Magazine began to organize a Writers and Editors War Tax Protest, in which all the signatories pledged themselves flatly to refuse the then-proposed 10 per cent war surtax and possibly the 23 per cent of their income taxes allocated to the war effort as well.
As was the case with the Reverend Muste’s advertisement, most daily newspapers that Walker approached refused to sell space to him.
The New York Times was one that refused and so, this time, was The Washington Post.
The New York Post printed Walker’s advertisement in , as did The New York Review of Books and Ramparts.
In all, 528 writers and editors signed the pledge.
Walker told me recently that about half of them, including himself, failed to carry out the tax-refusal pledge.
“Johnson’s ‘abdication’ two weeks before the tax deadline convinced me that we had won,” he said.
I was myself among the other half of the signers who did refuse part of their taxes — 23 per cent in my case, the 10 per cent surtax not having gone into effect.
Since my own hesitant involvement in war tax resistance seems typical among the non-pacifists now joining the movement, I will summarize it here as the case history I know best.
With my part payment of my income tax, I wrote the IRS as follows:
Enclosed please find my check for $1,862.81, which is 77 per cent of the tax required.
The 23 per cent unpaid is a protest against the government’s use of that proportion of its revenue for the war in Vietnam.
My conscience revolts against the gross immorality of the war… There are also questions of law.
The war violates the supreme law of our land, notably the Constitution (Art. Ⅰ, Sec. 8, clause 11), the United Nations Charter (Art. 51), and the Southeast Asia Treaty (Art. Ⅳ)… Responsible jurists and philosophers soberly accuse our government of crimes against international codes on human rights and the conduct of wars and the specific statutes created ex post facto to punish the Nazis…
The prodigal waste of our national energy and treasure in destroying the land and people of Vietnam is so weakening this nation that other powers may bring us to judgment as we once brought the Nazis to account at Nuremburg… It will then be no defense to plead, like the “good Germans,” that we had to obey our government and cannot be held responsible for what it did.
By paying taxes which I know my government is using to kill a small nation I commit a greater and more violent breach of laws than I do by not paying…
I was a Navy pilot in World War Ⅱ.
I would not serve in this war.
If I could prevent my tax dollars from serving, I would do so.
Unfortunately, I have not yet learned of a practical way to keep the government altogether from extracting financial support from me for the war.
In the meantime, I balk at 23 per cent in token of my dissociation from the cruel injustice and bloodshed to poor and distant strangers being done under my flag, in my name, with my money.
The IRS reply did not come until after I had refused a similar amount of taxes .
It was a form postcard saying: “Dear Taxpayer: Thank you for your letter.
We are looking into the matter you brought up and should have the answer to you shortly… Thank you for your cooperation.”
The answer, inevitably, was a series of printed forms, progressing from a “notice of tax due” to a “Final Notice Before Seizure.”
The IRS had already seized telephone taxes, which I stopped paying in , from three bank accounts, patiently tracking down the bank to which I transferred my account after each seizure.
The IRS obtained the unpaid part of my tax, plus six per cent interest, in .
At this writing I am awaiting implementation of the Final Notice Before Seizure of the refused portion of my taxes.
Banks are required by law to surrender private assets, including the contents of safe deposit boxes, to the IRS upon demand.
Most banks surrender the levied amount immediately and the depositor is informed afterward.
This whole business of deliberately defying and harassing the government, even in a moral protest, is a heavy and anxious experience.
When I first considered it in I was unaware that some hundreds of other people were already doing it.
I was afraid of going to jail, which, among other things, would have prevented my fulfilling a contract to complete a book.
I began refusing the telephone tax after obtaining the pamphlet “Hang Up On War!” from a pacifist in Princeton in .
The Writers and Editors War Tax Protest, which came to my attention , gave me a sufficient sense of safety in numbers to begin income-tax resistance.
I am still troubled over possible consequences, particularly after the conspiracy convictions in the Dr. Spock trial, and I find it innately distasteful to resist paying my share of the general tax burden.
But my revulsion against the war in Vietnam prevails over anxiety and civic reservations.
And the Nixon Administration seems as unwilling or as unable as the Johnson Administration to make a significant and credible effort to end the war.
In the country voted for Johnson and peace and got an escalation of the war.
In , between Nixon and Humphrey, there was no real opportunity to vote for peace.
Demonstrations have proven equally futile as a means of affecting war policy, so much so that the President declares that he will not be swayed by them.
Under these circumstances, tax resistance, distasteful as it is, seems to more and more people to offer the most effective channel of protest.
I participated in the formation of War Tax Resistance, which is working to transform tax protests from essentially individual acts into an integrated political factor.
The leading figure in the organization is Bradford Lyttle, a slim, earnest, no-nonsense pacifist who led a peace march across the United States and Europe to Moscow, urging unilateral disarmament on governments along the way and exhorting citizens toward non-cooperation with military service and war production.
Its “Call to War Tax Resistance,” claiming the right of conscientious objection for taxpayers as well as draft-age men, says:
The first goal… is to convince as many people as possible to refuse at least $5 of some tax owed the government.
Nearly everyone can do this by refusing their federal telephone tax or part of their income tax.
If hundreds of thousands refuse to pay $5, they will establish mass tax refusal.
Besides having the burden of collecting the unpaid amounts, the government will be faced with the political fact of massive non-cooperation with its war-making policies.
In a separate but related action, the poet Allen Ginsberg and I have obtained the backing of the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee for a suit against the government to recover money that has been seized from us in enforcement of tax claims and also to enjoin further seizures.
The main ground of our action, as it is now being prepared, is based on the historical equivalency between taxes and service (which is a kind of tax) and the claim that the right of conscientious objection is as inherent to taxpayers as it is to men liable for military service.
Conscientious objectors cannot avoid service but they can earmark their service to the exclusion of warlike activity.
In the same way, we claim, taxpayers should pay their full share but they should be able to earmark their taxes to the exclusion of war-like applications.
In a time when weaponry has achieved the capacity to wipe out civilization, we believe, the people should be accorded a direct voice in deciding whether they shall make war.
Since World War Ⅱ the decision has moved ever more into the hands of the executive despite the Constitutional stipulation that it is Congress which should declare war.
Meanwhile, until we are legally able to earmark our taxes for non-warlike applications, we feel conscience-bound to resist paying at least a part of them.
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
By , though there was still no consensus in the Society of Friends about whether paying taxes was the right thing to do (and if not, how best to resist it), the issue had become impossible to avoid.
The issues of the Friends Journal published that year reflect this, with most of them including at least a mention of war tax resistance or of the dilemma for Quaker taxpayers.
War tax resistance was again on the agenda of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s annual conference , but the Journal only includes the topic in a list of “special concerns” that were covered on , without giving any details of how the conversation went.
In the opening article in the issue, “Tithing for Peace” by Alan Strain, the author expresses his anguish over how much he has “tithed for war and instruments of war… several dollars each day to create a warfare state in which fear and violence have become ever more accepted and expected.”
However: “I cannot see how to disentangle myself from this madness… I cannot even see a way to end my involuntary tithing for war.”
Rather than resist the war tithe, he has decided to try to match it with a peace tithe: “giving this amount to private or public agencies working to remove the causes of war and to develop the conditions and institutions of peace.”
In that same issue, a note about the Canadian Friends Service Committee’s humanitarian efforts in Vietnam includes a parenthetical remark that some of the $60,000 donated to the cause came from “two U.S. churchmen who sent money normally used to pay income taxes.”
In the issue, the American Friends Service Committee tried to capitalize on the new craze with this ad:
In the Baltimore Yearly Meetings approved a minute “including refusal to pay the surtax for the war if such a tax is imposed.”
An article by Cynthia E. Kerman on “The Rationale of Protest” in the issue made note in passing of the communicative possibilities of war tax resistance: “Tax refusal, for instance, may be a means of speaking to people — not only of purifying our lives.”
In the issue, a letter from Lucy P. Carner picked up where Cynthia E. Kerman left off, asserting that there are “possibilities for witness inherent in tax refusal” that are not immediately obvious to people who are looking for a quick fix “to put a stop to war.”
Excerpts:
Tax refusal enables one to “speak truth to power.”
A letter to the Revenue Service protesting the tax, but paying it, is likely to get less attention than one explaining why one is not paying a portion of the tax.
In the latter case, the Revenue Service has to do something about it.
A representative of the service has to make a telephone call reminding the taxpayer of his delinquency.
Here is another opportunity to witness.
“You mean you do not intend to pay?” said the incredulous voice of the representative.
I explained to him what I had already written to his office.
“Yes, I know that you will eventually get the money from my bank.
That isn’t your fault and you have very courteously fulfilled your duty.
But this is my way of saying that I think the war is wrong.
Only for that reason would I break the law — I’m not accustomed to breaking laws.”
“Yes,” said he, rather helplessly, and hung up.
A few months later a bank official will send a letter saying how much the bank would regret allowing the tax collector to take money from my account and won’t I please pay up and avoid this embarrassment.
Here is another opportunity to write my objection to the war.
Refusal to pay the additional Federal tax on my telephone bill provides similar opportunity to make my voice heard.
Tax refusal, then, is a manner of speaking to government officials, to banks and business concerns.
It is a nonviolent way of reaching the hard-to-reach, for it has nuisance value.
It deserves wide consideration as one way of bearing witness to one’s conscientious objection to war.
The lead editorial in that same issue, by Ruth A. Miner, suggests that instead of resisting war taxes, Quakers should pay an additional tax — “the same amount (or a practicable fraction of it — or even more!)”
— to the United Nations.
This, she suggests, would be in the spirit of Jesus’s suggestion that “whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two.”
That issue was also the first to feature the ad from “Southern California Business Service” (see ♇ 1 July 2013) that included the message: “A word about tax refusal: Since we limit our income to avoid paying income tax, our rates are low — and — in hiring our help we actively seek out C.O.s and/or tax refusers.”
Phone tax resistance
James B. Osgood, in a letter-to-the-editor in the issue, takes note of the American Friends Service Committee’s “stickers which one can attach to one’s phone bill to make payment of the war tax under protest” (see ♇ 13 July 2013).
This form of protest is better than nothing, but its practical effect is next to nothing.
No real witness is made; no war funds are withheld from the government; no one’s reputation is put on the line.
Those of us who have refused to pay the ten per cent tax hope that others joining us will make a great visible witness and will cause sufficient trouble to the government to give it pause for thought over both collection and prosecution of those who conscientiously refuse.
This, however, will require a real step forward, not a mere licking of a label.
Maris Cakars of the Committee for Nonviolent Action also wrote in, and his letter appeared in the following issue.
He believed that there were “hundreds” of telephone tax resisters who had not notified the Committee of their resistance, and hoped they would speak up so that the campaign could move on to its next phase: “placing advertisement in newspapers and holding press conferences.
For this phase to have maximum impact it is important for us to have as complete a list of tax refusers as possible.”
The issue announced that the Claremont (California) Meeting had decided to resist the telephone tax on its meetinghouse phone.
In the issue was a letter from a representative of 57th Street Meeting in Chicago, in which they noted that two other Meetings had contacted them about actions they had taken in response to their call for phone tax resistance, and said “we would be pleased to act as a clearinghouse on positions taken by Meetings on telephone-tax refusal…”
In the issue, George Lakey wrote an article about why he was joining the crew of the Phoenix to illegally (by U.S. law) bring humanitarian aid to North Vietnam.
He described the escalation of his activism, from letter-writing and congressman-lobbying to his current action.
Along the way, he says, “I stopped paying the telephone tax.”
War tax resistance internationally
The issue noted that Quakers in The Netherlands had formed a “Conscientious Objectors’ Committee Against Paying Taxes for Defense Purposes” which was trying to come up with some sort of government-approved “peace tax”-style plan.
I got a wry smile out of the closing sentence: “In The Netherlands it is not permitted to affix protest stickers on tax forms; instead one must use a written announcement of protest.”
The fourth Friends World Conference was held .
The “Protest and Direct Action group” there “called upon Friends in countries party to the [Vietnam] conflict to ‘go as far as conscience dictates in withholding support from their governments’ war-making machinery,’ first by direct communication with those against whom the protest is made, and then if necessary by public witness and individual action, including the possibility of refusal to pay taxes for war.”
“Corporate Witness and Individual Conscience”
The lead (guest) editorial in the issue was “Corporate Witness and Individual Conscience” by Lindsley H. Noble.
It cautioned Quaker corporate bodies (like Meetings) that were contemplating civil disobedience actions like phone tax resistance.
For one thing, he says, a Quaker group should make sure to have the consent of all of its members before it takes such a drastic step, something he thinks some groups have been careless about.
Secondly, even if every member of the group consents to civil disobedience, the group as a corporation has a different relationship to the state than individuals do.
While individuals and their consciences predate and arguably supersede the state, corporations are creatures of the state and are therefore necessarily subordinate to them.
Quakers incorporate their meetings in part in order to get government privileges associated with legal incorporation.
“In voluntarily putting ourselves under the law to receive these subsidies do we not morally forego corporately the right to refuse to obey other laws not to our liking?”
If Quakers, as a group, find a law so intolerable that they must disobey it as a group, he says, they should first legally detach themselves — “withdraw from our contract with the state and give up our subsidies before setting out on this path.”
This led to months of discussion in the letters-to-the-editor sections of future issues, in particular:
Victor Paschkis thought that Noble’s argument failed on both points.
First, his call for groups to reach consensus before taking a civilly disobedient stand should be understood for what it is — merely a preference for the law-abiding status quo.
After all, “inaction in a given situation may violate the conscience of some members just as action may violate the conscience of others.”
Secondly, a Quaker Meeting, whether or not it has incorporated under the laws of the state, still has a yet higher allegiance to God that must be taken into account.
Also, what’s the point of having Meetings if they do not have “corporate insight” greater than the sum of their parts?
Stephen G. Cary mirrored some of this: “There are times when inaction speaks to the world as clearly as action.
In these situations inaction does not leave us neutral, but committed by default.
Responsibility is not a one-way street, resting only on Friends who wish an action taken.
Those who oppose the action are committing the Meeting, too.
I do not suggest that the proponents’ views should necessarily prevail; I only want it recognized that responsibility to conscience cuts both ways and requires both sides to search their hearts.”
He is also suspect of the idea that corporate entities have no responsibility to disobey unjust laws: “Does the Nuremburg principle have no bearing on the institutions of society?
I prefer to regard the corporation as the creature of those who create and operate it, and the fact that the state charters it does not make the state its ultimate master.”
Marie S. Klooz also defended “corporate witness” as being not exactly “the witness of a corporation” but the collective witness of the corporation’s “component members.”
Such a thing is not only justifiable, but is particularly important to Quakers: “Each member is supposed to test his light by the corporate light.”
And: “If the light requires social action, it is our duty to labor lovingly with those whose light differs, not to refrain from action.”
It is no more necessary for a Meeting to divest itself of its corporate charter to be civilly disobedient, than it is necessary for an individual to first renounce his citizenship.
Pat Foreman found himself uncomfortable with the peace testimony “as interpreted by most Friends” and thinks Quakers like him “sometimes have the feeling that we are being shunned.”
He wants “to remind Friends that Quakerism is a religion and not a prodigious committee.”
Evan Howe thought that dissenters were asking too much if they were asking Quaker Meetings to give up their corporate privileges in order to engage in civilly disobedient actions under the direction of the “sense of the Meeting.”
Such a “surrender of subsidies, as I see it, while apparently a demand of conscience, is rather a surrender of conscience with the ultimate consequence of destroying the society.
I do not believe that dissent gives anyone that right.”
Norman J. Whitney stressed that “Meetings do have a responsibility for corporate witness if the integrity of our testimonies is to be maintained.
It is not enough to shift responsibility to ad hoc committees or special groups among us.”
Roy W. Moger suggested that Noble had hit on a truth when he suggested that legal incorporation was a sort of “trap” that the Religious Society of Friends had fallen into, “thereby placing our conscience in jeopardy.”:
I wonder if the Religious Society of Friends should not begin to unincorporate and remove itself from the trap into which it has fallen, so that Friends can once more seek dependence upon the Holy Spirit, act under guidance of that Spirit as a corporate body, and not have to say, “As a group we dare not take corporate action [and offend the state] because our corporate life depends upon the State, and we are obligated to obey.
The individual can alone take the risk and break the law of the State if he feels the law of the State breaks the law of God.”
Roger S. Lorenz said that because there is a good argument that the Vietnam war is itself illegal, both under international and under domestic law, what it means for a person (or a corporation) to remain within the law under our circumstances is no easy question to answer.
David Hartsough
Over the years, starting in , David Hartsough contributed several pieces to the Friends Journal touching on war tax resistance:
In the issue, he set out a simple, compelling case for war tax resistance — “is it not our responsibility to set the example and refuse to pay our taxes for the weapons and ammunition which inflict this suffering?”
He also suggested that if enough people were to refuse, the government would probably legalize some form of conscientious objection to military taxation.
In the issue, he paraphrased George Fox’s advice to William Penn: “Pay the military portion of thy tax as long as thou canst.”
He suggested that people begin now by resisting the phone tax, and then prepare to resist “the 69.2 percent of our income taxes which go for war” .
In the issue, he told the story of what happened when an IRS agent came to his office to try to collect his unpaid income taxes.
Excerpts:
We talked about the Nürnburg trials, in which the Americans told the Germans that they should obey their consciences rather than their state.
I told him I felt that when we are bombing and burning people and their homes in Vietnam, I cannot condone this action by paying other people to do it.
“I want to make it clear that I have no argument with you on your position about the war,” he said.
“I do not argue that you shouldn’t follow your conscience.
But it is my responsibility to get this money.”
…he gave me a financial statement to fill out.
I refused.
He reminded me: “It’s my job to get this money in any way I can.
I don’t like to do this, but we can take any property you have — your house, your car, or whatever.”
“I have a bicycle downstairs,” I said, “and the suit I’m wearing.”
“No, no, I wouldn’t take your bike or your suit.”
He also expressed concern about the dangers of the poorer neighborhood where I live — a concern beyond his responsibility.
“I guess I’ll have to do what I believe is right,” I said when he was leaving, “and, friend, you will have to do what you believe is right.”
He left without collecting the overdue tax or taking any of my property.
In the issue, he penned another exhortation: “Let us, like Friends through the years, blaze the trail and set the example for others, rather than wait until there are masses of people taking this action.”
He recommended redirecting taxes to the American Friends Service Committee or the Friends Committee on National Legislation, which “will do a much better job of putting our beliefs into action than does the Pentagon.”
David & Jan Hartsough returned to the Journal in with a letter expressing the same basic argument, and giving some details as to how their tax resistance technique had evolved: “Each year we write a check to the Department of Human Services (rather than the IRS) for the 50 percent of our taxes that we do pay.
Along with the check, we send our 1040 form to the IRS and ask them to spend all that money for healing and education, not for killing.
And the other 50 percent (the war portion), we refuse to pay.
Instead, we contribute those funds to organizations helping to feed the hungry, heal the sick, house the homeless, and work for justice and peace in the world.”
The federal government has attached the bank account of the Committee for
Non-Violent Action because two of its employes refuse to pay taxes on the
grounds that such money will be used for war preparations. The CNVA,
a pacifist organization, supported the two and did not deduct withholding tax
money from their pay.
There have been numerous cases of objectors to war preparations refusing to
pay income tax, thus inviting federal prosecution. In this case, however, the
Internal Revenue Service has apparently taken no action against the two
individuals but against the pacifist organization which employed them.
A.J. Muste, CNVA
chairman, wrote the tax bureau that
his organization would not be an instrument for collecting taxes and that the
government would have to do the collecting itself from the individuals
involved.
This is the twelfth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite.
Today we continue our trek into the 1960s.
When 60–75% of the national budget and a similar percentage of every tax dollar goes for an armament program there is cause for protest.
Even an outgoing general-president warned about the power of the industrial-military complex in our society.
The amount Christians pay for things they know are absolutely evil is frightening.
In The Christian Evangel estimated (conservatively so) that the 8,800 Amish Mennonites of Elkhart County (Indiana) were annually paying three million dollars toward future wars just by paying taxes!
We have long excused ourselves, saying that we were giving to Caesar what belongs to him.
Really, does all that belong to Caesar?
Does it become his simply by request?
Isn’t Caesar taking more than belongs to him, in fact, taking from that which belongs to God?
We believe in obeying the state, but only when such obedience is not in conflict with our commitment to God.
Likewise we believe in paying taxes, but only when such taxes do not do violence to Christian priorities.
In the days when the state asked primarily for men to go to war, we were conscientious objectors.
But now the primary tool of war is money.
Can we still be conscientious objectors now?
We must protest: 1) individually through our congressional representatives; 2) collectively through our official church channels; 3) by supporting the proposed Civilian Income Tax Act; 4) by refusing to pay the military portion of the tax, directing it for charitable and welfare uses through other channels.
What a wonderful thing it would be for the cause of Christ if folks would be willing to go to jail again for what they believed?
Who will lead the way?
In late the Committee for Nonviolent Action began in a “San Francisco to Moscow” Walk for Peace.
They had reached Pennsylvania by , and The Mennonite gave them some coverage that month.
Among the things they noted:
The walkers ask individuals to oppose militarism and the continuation of the arms race by considering non-cooperation with government policies when they conflict with individual conscience.
They urge concerned persons to seriously consider refusal to work in military (“defense”) industries, serve in the armed forces, and pay taxes which support military programs.
A guest editorial in the issue urged people to maximize their tax-deductible charitable contributions as a way of avoiding paying tax for military purposes.
Along the way, the author explicitly called out the “civilian bonds” dodge Mennonites had used during World War Ⅱ:
During World War Ⅱ the Canadian Government did provide what was called a Sticker Bond.
The conscientious objector, if he desired that his money be used for other than war purposes, could request that a sticker be attached to his bond.
While this may have eased his conscience, it was purely a bookkeeping matter as far as the government was concerned.
James C. Juhnke, then an undergrad at Bethel College (where he’s now a professor), wrote a piece on “Youth & Taxes” that appeared in the .
It starts with this charming bit of sixtiesism:
Maybe I’m wrong.
But sometimes I get to thinking that we young people shouldn’t be so dependent upon our elders to do all the decision-making for our society.
And just between us young people, the reason we ought to do our own thinking is because older people tend to lose their fire.… But we are different.
We are young.
We can afford to do some bold and dangerous thinking.
Here’s the bold and dangerous thinking Juhnke has in mind:
For a starter, I suggest that we lead the way for our older generation with some creative thinking on the issue of paying taxes to the government.
War isn’t what it used to be when our parents were young.
They used to talk quite seriously about winning a war.
And in a gruesome sort of way, I suppose we were on the “winning” side in World Wars Ⅰ and Ⅱ.
But the next global war won’t produce any winners.
Another thing has changed.
Today we are all involved in a fantastic peacetime war effort.
The defense expenditures of our government amount to over fifty billion dollars annually, a sum we can’t even comprehend.
The principle of military conscription in peacetime has been accepted.
Around 75 per cent of the government’s budget goes for military purposes.
Nuclear submarines, atomic-warhead missiles, anti-missile missiles, fallout shelters are becoming accepted parts of the American way of life.
We are living in a military age.
Now what we should consider is that we are going to be paying for all this.
Some of us have earned enough money to pay federal income tax.
The rest of us will be paying in the future.
And our parents have poured thousands of dollars into the government treasury, three-fourths of which is used for military purposes.
We believe that participation in war is wrong, and we refuse to serve in the armed forces because of our conviction.
If participation in war is wrong, what about paying taxes?
Aren’t we participating in war when we pay for it?
As Christians we know that we are responsible to God for our money and possessions.
We have dedicated ourselves and our lives to God.
We are obligated to use our money for constructive, Christian purposes.
Most of our money is used to purchase things we need and want.
We give up ten dollars and get a pair of shoes in return.
We pay 75 cents and receive the privilege of hearing a concert or seeing a play.
Paying taxes is a little like making a purchase.
Only this time for our money we get war preparations.
But not only do we not want war preparations, but we have serious questions about whether a Christian should be a partner in such a transaction.
Let’s not kid ourselves that we are not responsible for our tax money.
No miracle happens as my money travels from my home to Washington, D.C. to transfer responsibility for what I did from myself to the government.
I know that 75 per cent of what I sent in will be used for military purposes.
And I know that it would not have been used in this way if I wouldn’t have sent it.
But didn’t Jesus tell us to “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s”?
Right.
And if we are serious about this question we will turn to the Bible for answers.
However, let’s not expect to find immediate and easy “proof-text” answers there.
In this instance, for example, only the first half of the quotation was given.
We also are to give “to God that which is God’s.”
The problem for us, then, is to decide what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God.
We probably are agreed that Caesar and God are not equals and that God’s claims are the most important for us.
What, then is to be given to Caesar?
Are we ready to say that the government should be given everything it asks of us?
Would we enter military service if the government demanded it of us?
Would we pay a special war tax which went exclusively for military purposes?
(There have been instances in Holland and Prussia where Mennonites did this.)
Or do we pay only when less than 50 per cent is used for military purposes?
Toward I attended the Inter-Collegiate Peace Fellowship Conference of Mennonite Colleges.
We discussed the relationship of so-called “radical” peace action projects to the church.
We talked about peace marches, nuclear testing protests, defense plant pickets, refusal to pay taxes, and similar forms of peace action.
I was amazed by the general agreement that the Mennonite church should seriously study these “radical” peace projects with a view toward possible participation in similar forms of witness to the government.
Here is a good program idea for your youth group.
Why not initiate a study and discussion of the problem of the Christian and taxes?
Find out if anyone in your church or community has done any thinking about this.
Write to the Board of Christian Service and the Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section to see what they have done in this area.
Try to find out exactly what percentage of tax money actually does go for military purposes and what alternatives are available.
Plan a Bible study to learn what the biblical position is with regard to taxes.
Maybe you could set up a program in the form of a debate with two people taking the affirmative (“Paying taxes is a compromise of Christian principles”) and two people on the negative (“Paying taxes is not a compromise of Christian principles”).
At any rate, let’s start thinking about issues like these.
We’ve too often wasted all our enthusiasm on activities and problems that are here today and gone tomorrow.
Answers to the taxes problem won’t come easily.
But we’re not out to tackle easy problems. We want issues that are worth our consideration.
Let’s get busy soon though.
The world, the church, and the older generation, need our contribution.
In a letter published in the issue, Mardy Rich Stone applauded Juhnke’s article.
Excerpts:
I cannot understand why Mennonites, historically outspoken on pacifism, do not take a stand against the payment of military taxes.
Christ said, “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.” Do Mennonites believe we are to give Caesar whatever he asks?
This I cannot accept.
Many people say that one cannot escape paying military taxes.
Military sources for revenue are numerous — gasoline tax, luxury tax, etc. Perhaps one cannot be perfect, but should this stop one from doing the best possible?
I know of only a few individuals who have refused to pay taxes — and they were the subject of criticism by fellow church members.
The least one can do is support them.
Executive secretaries of the General Conference Mennonite Church were asked to write up answers to some of the questions that were asked at that year’s conference.
Leo Driedger of the Board of Christian Service answered this question: “Some years ago a request was made for guidance on the matter of the use of income tax for military purposes.
Has anything been done?”
Driedger’s reply:
Two years of work by the Peace and Social Concerns Committee has resulted in much discussion.
Contracts [sic] with the Friends and Church of the Brethren were made.
We encouraged the Friends’ bill presented to the United States government asking for an alternative.
Gathering of material resulted in a classification of different approaches by our members as follows: being jailed for nonpayment, evasion of payment, adjustment of income so no need to pay, working for an alternative, payment under written protest, evasion of reporting, payment with uneasy conscience, 30 per cent charity contributions to reduce tax, and payment without question.
Articles and reports of some of these positions appeared in conference papers.
We encouraged the Institute of Mennonite Studies, Church and Society Conference, and the Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section to study income taxes.
The Peace Section held a full meeting to discuss the historical, biblical, and present day concern on taxes.
There is no consensus so far.
Individuals are encouraged to act according to their consciences.
Kansas City — (INS) –
The Rev. Lawrence Scott of Kansas City withheld one-third of his federal income tax payment to protest government expenditures for military purposes.
Rev. Mr. Scott, director of the Interracial Fellowship House, said he was a member of a tax refusal committee of a national pacificist [sic] organization known as the Peacemakers.
He mailed the internal revenue collector $29.21, two-thirds of his tax due for .
He added that he was sending the remainder of $15.04 to the Fellowship of Reconciliation in New York “for the promotion of peace between nations.”
A Baptist minister, Rev. Mr. Scott said the amount of tax he withheld represented the proportion of the national income “being used for armaments and other expenditures relative to preparation for war.”
Scott is credited as founder of the Committee for Nonviolent Action, which advocated for war tax resistance and other forms of nonviolent direct action in the peace cause.
Although the article above says he was a Baptist minister, I think that he had joined the Society of Friends by .
In he became Peace Education Secretary for the Chicago office of the American Friends Service Committee, but he resigned in with a bang after the organization refused to support his tax refusal stand, publishing his resignation letter in which he criticized “effete middle-class Friends of today” for their cheap words of peace at a time when action was called for.
(As I noted a while back, the AFSC is very timid and conservative, particularly around the war tax resistance issue.)
After a flurry of interest in war tax resistance in the early 1960s, things simmered down a bit just as the focus of the tax resistance movement shifted from conscientious objection against nuclear-era militarism to protesting against the U.S. war in Vietnam.
A letter from Mary Blocher Smeltzer and Ralph E. Smeltzer to the Director of the IRS, announcing their tax resistance, took up a page in the issue of the Messenger (source):
We are filing our Income Tax Return with our District Director of Internal Revenue, but we are refusing to pay the $21.83 balance of the tax due, for reasons of conscience.
During the years it has been our practice to accompany our return with a statement protesting and strongly opposing the use of any of our tax money for military purposes, for war, and for preparation for war, and requesting that it be used only for the peaceful nonmilitary activities of our government.
Last year we also refused to pay the balance of the tax due, for reasons of conscience.
We are both Christian pacifists.
One of us is a minister employed by the General Brotherhood Board of the Church of the Brethren.
The other is a public school teacher.
We enthusiastically approve and support the constructive services and peaceful programs of our government.
But we conscientiously object to war and preparation for war by reason of our religious training and belief.
We especially oppose our country’s present program of producing and stockpiling nuclear, chemical, biological, and other weapons of mass destruction which are now capable of destroying the human race.
We equally oppose similar programs by all other nations.
We would like to designate all of our income tax for the purposes of disarmament and preparation for disarmament, for increasing the constructive services and peaceful programs of our government, and for increasing the constructive and peaceful programs of the United Nations.
But the Internal Revenue Code makes no provision for such designations. We are urging our legislators to work for such provisions and amendments in the code.
Most of our income tax has been withheld by our employers and forwarded to you.
We have had no control over this action by our employers who in turn must follow this procedure by law.
However, as individuals we retain the choice as to whether we will pay the balance of the tax called for by the government, or whether we will not.
We have decided to protest the use of our income tax for military purposes by refusing to forward the balance of our tax called for.
We recognize that the United States government may impose penalties upon us for not paying this portion of our income tax.
We are prepared to accept the consequences of our Christian conscientious objection to the payment of our tax, at least seventy-five percent of which now goes for military purposes.
We do not desire to receive any personal privilege or gain from this refusal to pay the balance of our tax.
We are contributing an equivalent amount to the Brethren Service Commission… for its program of peace and relief at home and abroad.
A receipt for this contribution is enclosed.
A roster of 360 persons, among them professors, scientists, writers, doctors, clergymen, and entertainers, made public their refusal to pay voluntary part or all of their federal income taxes.
As critics of U.S. policy in Vietnam, the signers declared that American forces there are “clearly being used in violation of the U.S. Constitution, international law, and the United Nations Charter.”
Their statement, published in newspapers this spring, deplored “the spectacle of the United States with its jet bombers, helicopters, fragmentation and napalm bombs, and disabling gas, carrying on an endless war against the hungry, scantily armed Vietnamese guerrillas and civilians” and compared such action to Italian atrocities in Ethiopia and Russia’s intervention in Hungary.
It further drew parallels between “the indifference of Americans to the crimes being committed in their names, by their brothers and with their tax money” and the indifference of most Germans to the slaughter of Jews.
Two of the signers, Ralph and Mary Smeltzer, Elgin, Ill., have refused to pay voluntarily the unwithheld portion of their federal income tax for four years, opposing the use of tax moneys for military purposes.
The outcome has been the government’s attaching the balance in wages.
“While only the unwithheld portion of the tax is all we have control over, we protest the sixty percent of every tax dollar used for military purposes,” said Mr. Smeltzer, who is Brotherhood director of peace and social education.
“At the same time we voice approval and support for the constructive and peaceful programs of the government.
“If enough people express themselves a change in the law may be made allowing people to designate how their income tax will be used.”
Mr. Smeltzer added, “or the program and policy of military expenditures may be reduced.
“Whether our actions do any good or not, we have to do what we conscientiously feel.”
This open letter from Russell F. Helstern appeared in the issue:
It’s tax time again!
Tax paying is a privilege and a responsibility of every American citizen.
To my knowledge I have never voted against a bond issue or a tax levy, nor have I ever been delinquent in the payment of my taxes.
Good government and the needed community services can be secured and maintained only through the willingness of citizens to assume this civic responsibility.
Right now my desk is cluttered with income tax forms, family ledgers and accounts, scribbling paper, and a box of aspirins within easy reach.
The aspirins are not alone for eyestrain and headache from long hours of juggling elusive figures but serve more as an opiate for a troubled conscience.
As a Christian and a responsible world citizen I am genuinely disturbed as I sit here ready to write my income tax check.
For many years I have met the dilemma of conscience by sending with each income tax return and check a letter of protest for paying that portion of my tax that would be used for military purposes and requesting that it be allocated to humanitarian and legitimate constructive areas of service but at the same time knowing it would all go into the same till.
With poised pen ready to write the check, I become suddenly aware that last year’s income tax check helped to purchase the bombs that fell on Hanoi, tearing huge, gaping craters in residential areas quite remote from military targets, as Harrison Salisbury of the New York Times has informed us by photos and news dispatches.
It was my income tax check of last year that helped purchase napalm bombs that were dropped indiscriminately on areas of South Vietnam, inflicting unimaginable suffering and death on innocent and helpless women and children who, by the remotest stretch of imagination, could not be held responsible for any part of this conflict.
It was my income tax check of last year and the year before that helped pay the cost of the defoliation of the Vietnamese rice fields and croplands, accentuating the problem of hunger and starvation in a world much of which is already locked in a grim race with death from mass starvation.
The pen is still poised and I am deeply troubled.
I stand before almighty God, who holds me individually responsible for the use I make of the resources he has placed at my disposal.
(The Nurenberg war criminal trials taught us that!)
I am not absolved of guilt for crimes committed at my country’s insistence.
And so as a Christian and one who tries to be a responsible world citizen I confess I am deeply disturbed.
I’m not sure what’s going on here.
After years of frequent coverage of war tax resistance inside and outside the church, now the magazine retreats to reprinting some timid hand-wringing about being “deeply disturbed” about paying taxes for war crimes without even alluding to resistance as an option.
War tax resistance came up at the Annual Conference in as the Church voted to issue “A Call for Peace in Vietnam” (source):
One specific step urged for congregations proved to be the subject of some debate.
It was a proposal that congregations should oppose legislation which would increase taxes designed specifically to support the war.
One delegate was eager to have this sentence eliminated from the statement, but his amendment failed.
Another delegate proposed that a sentence be added that would urge members to consider seriously whether they should continue to pay income taxes that might be used for the support of the war.
This amendment also failed to gain support.
In a later issue, remarks of a Catholic observer of the Brethren conference were summarized this way: “[he] summed up the Brethren statement on Vietnam and recounted a plea by a Midwest minister urging members to consider whether they should pay income tax in light of its heavy use for war purposes. ‘The assembly listened politely to the young man and then defeated his amendment.’ ” (source)
The issue included a “Special Report” on phone tax resistance as an option for people who wanted to resist a “war tax”:
“The act is small but the meaning is large. It clearly says that this war is not our war.”
In its “Call for Peace in Vietnam” (see [above]) Annual Conference in urged congregations to oppose legislation which would increase taxes designed specifically to support the war in Vietnam.
One such tax already enacted (though not mentioned in the Annual Conference statement) is the ten percent federal excise tax on telephone charges.
The tax, which once had been reduced to three percent and was due to be dropped entirely in , was reinstated in .
Rep. Wilbur D. Mills (D., Ark.), who managed the tax legislation in the House, is quoted in the Congressional Record () as saying:
“It is clear that the Vietnam and only the Vietnam operation makes this bill necessary.”
War protest: In protest to the Vietnam “operation” — particularly the mass bombings, napalming, support of the Ky government, and other aspects of U.S. military involvement — a group of several hundred persons have begun boycotting the telephone tax on the grounds that it is singularly a war tax.
The refusal is treated by phone companies as a matter between the individual and the government, and phone service has not been interrupted.
In fact, according to some sources, the telephone company has rather welcomed the protests, for it has long opposed the excise tax, though for a different reason.
At Staten Island, New York, the telephone company reportedly reminded a tax-refusing customer that she had neglected to withhold the tax in one payment, and it credited her account with the amount of the tax.
Sponsor: Promoted by the Committee for Non-Violent Action (5 Beekman Street, Room 1033, New York, N.Y. 10038), the campaign of telephone tax refusal has been dubbed, “Hang Up on War!”
According to CNVA staff member Valerie Herres in New York, some 800 persons have made known their refusal to CNVA.
Colleague Karl Meyer in Chicago says the actual number of telephone tax protesters likely exceeds 2,000, including members of at least two Church of the Brethren congregations.
In withholding the excise tax from payments, individuals are urged always to include a note explaining the omission.
The CNVA asks also that protesters inform them of their stand.
In , after the Chicago Daily News carried a front-page story on the campaign, the district director of Internal Revenue within two weeks sent to the withholding parties first notices of direct assessment.
However, for most of the recipients no actual collection was yet made several months later.
The CNVA makes clear to tax refusers that in the severest application of the law, under the criminal penalties act, one who “willfully fails to pay” the phone tax could possibly be charged with a misdemeanor, under Section 7203 of the Internal Revenue Code, and be imprisoned up to a year and fined up to $10,000.
It is also possible that one could be charged with attempt to “evade or defeat” the phone tax, under a section carrying a stiffer penalty.
On the record: Testimony of Internal Revenue Service officials on the matter before the House Subcommittee Hearings on Appropriations for the Departments of Treasury Post Office, and Executive (as quoted in Peacemaker magazine ) went as follows:
Mr. Robison (congressman).
That is income tax.
Unpaid excise taxes will be pretty small per individual, however, unless it accumulates over a period of years.
Mr. Cohen (IRS director).
If necessary we collect small amounts, and we have.
I think it will be less convenient for them than it will for us.
Mr. Bacon (assistant director).
We have about eighty-five cases pending in Illinois and above thirty-five in Ohio.
It is a nuisance situation because the tax is small.
Mr. Cohen.
But we do not intend to sit by.
People cannot pick and choose which laws of the United States they will obey and those which they will not.
Mr. Robison.
I agree wholeheartedly, but I want to know what your policy is.
Mr. Cohen.
We intend to vigorously follow up any of these cases and collect the tax.
We may let several months accumulate and do it all at once.
Exaggeration? In reflecting on the above testimony, Karl Meyer of the Chicago Workshop in Nonviolence commented to Messenger:
“This exaggerates somewhat the vigor of their determination.
I have been refusing for over a year (and income taxes for seven years), and they have yet to collect a cent from me.
To my knowledge they have thus far collected from only two or three of the Illinois refusers, and in those cases only the initial couple months of unpaid tax.
In two cases the taxes were taken from bank accounts after unsuccessful visits from IRS agents.
In one case a bank charged a fee of $10 for handling this transaction, and in the other case a bank charged $5.
In a third case the tax was collected by attachment against a paycheck.
Agents have visited several other refusers and have sometimes made threats of serious action, but in the three cases cited the serious action turned out to be no more than collection by seizure.”
Toward what end? What is the point of refusal?
Mr. Meyer put it this way:
“The future will be different only if we change our lives.
The act is small, but the meaning is large:
This war is not our war, and we are willing to struggle to be on the side of life.”
From some Brethren involved in the telephone tax “hang up” came the explanation that it is one direct means, small yet tangible, of dissenting to the United States’ action in Vietnam.
“It probably will not change government policy,” one member said, “but it does something to me.
It lays my witness on the line.”
In light of the vote by Annual Conference delegates against amending “A Call to Peace” to express support for income tax refusal as a means of peace action, many Brethren likely would be reticent to join in telephone tax refusal.
Still, even the prospect of income tax dissent is up for study by the Brethren Service Commission.
Prompted by a request last fall from the Pacific Southwest Conference board, a five-member committee has been named to explore federal income tax alternatives.
In the meantime, for those who choose, telephone tax refusal appears as a modest but viable means of voicing concern over the Vietnam war.
In response, Ethel Weddle wrote in to the issue to say that she didn’t have any reluctance in paying her taxes in spite of her disapproval of the government’s military policy.
Civil disobedience is too dangerous, she thought, as it opens the door to all manner of lawbreaking: “giving those people with less than Christian ideals the go-go sign to disobey, rob, destroy, and kill” (source).
Horner M. Eby replied to this in the issue (source). Excerpt:
Ethel Weddle makes some cogent points in her letter… Withholding federal telephone excise tax is a rather picayune gesture.
I am doing it.
The Internal Revenue Service is not long-suffering.
The IRS man has visited our home twice and has levied against our checking account both times, so that we are never more than eight months in arrears on this tiny tax.
If I really meant business, I should reduce my income enough to eliminate my income tax, which is a hundred times greater.
Then, of course, I could not give to the church an amount comparable to my income tax, nor to the FOR, the AESC, the ACLU, SNCC, SCLC, SOS, the Chicago Area Draft Resisters, and the DuPage Draft Resisters.
