Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
American conservative arguments for tax resistance →
“Texas housewives” (U.S., 1950s)
In the early 1950s there was a revolt against the “nanny tax” — the requirement that people who hire domestic help in the United States pay social security and medicare taxes on their salary.
New Orleans,
(AP) — Those Marshall, Texas, housewives told three judges the government has forced American housewives into slavery by compelling them to be “unpaid tax collectors.”
The rebellious housewives also told the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that the government in their opinion “has no power in the operation of a household.”
The housewives who have gained national attention in their battle against a amendment to the Federal Insurance Act appeared in court with their attorney.
Domestic employes must pay one per cent of their salary for social security under the amended act and the employer contributes a like amount.
The employer must withhold this money from the servant’s wages and the Marshall housewives claimed this is unconstitutional because the government is forcing them to work without compensation.
A lower court ruled against them and then they appealed to the Court of Appeals here.
Eleven housewives refused to pay the tax.
But to consolidate the attack on the act, only one housewife, Mrs. Carolyn Abney, sued the government.
She asked that $12.57 the government took from her bank account to pay social security for domestic servants be returned.
Through their attorney, Dean Moorhead of Austin, Texas, the housewives claimed they were being forced into slavery because:
“The withholding provision violates the 13th Amendment … by imposing involuntary servitude upon domestic employers, and that provision deprives domestic employers of their liberty and property in violation of the Fifth Amendment.”
Records And Reports
Moorhead said housewives are required by law to keep records, make reports, and furnish receipts to the government.
“The amendment,” he said, “forces these housewives to be unpaid tax collectors for the government.”
Carlton Fox, government attorney, said arguments presented by the housewives were “inconceivable.”
“Sure these Texas women are good women,” he said, in urging them to “search their conscience” and see if they could turn out a servant too old to work “to face the haunting fears of poverty and old age.”
The court did not indicate when it would rule on the appeal.
That the article begins “Those Marshal, Texas, housewives…” indicates that the protesters must have been pretty well-known at the time.
It’s hard to imagine a bunch of people who can afford to hire domestic help and who then complain about the “slavery” of having to do the paperwork of withholding like any other employer, getting much public sympathy for their stand.
On the other hand, their concerns probably did resonate somewhat with the ruling class.
I wonder also about the extent to which this protest carried with it echoes from the English suffragist protests against paying insurance taxes on their domestic help (protests that were based on a “no taxation without representation” argument, rather than on an objection to the tax itself).
Marshall, — (AP) —
The federal government moved against the bank accounts of tax-rebelling Marshall wives and found several had withdrawn their money.
Two Internal Revenue Bureau agents reached Marshall National Bank with federal seizure warrants, and orders that accounts of the wives and their husbands be made available for inspection.
Carolyn Abney, spokesman for the rebellious wives, said:
“The women are now acting individually and they are all now consulting their individual attorneys.
They petitioned their government in an orderly manner and asked for a hearing.
An answer to an American citizen’s petition to his government has been a seizure.”
Kenneth Abney, Marshall attorney and husband of Carolyn Abney, said the women will ask the Internal Revenue Bureau that money taken from their accounts be refunded.
If they don’t get the money back in this manner, Abney said, they will ask Rep. Wright Patman to introduce a bill permitting them to sue the government.
In a follow-up article, Abney claimed that none of the women had closed their accounts or withdrawn money from the accounts to make them uncollectible, but that the agents or the bank must have been using faulty information to locate them.
“Texas housewives” Carolyn Abney, Dorothy Martin, Rubye Pelz, and Etheldra Spangler go over some paperwork.
Another wire article from 1953 listed the names of some of the other protesters: “Eleana Bradford, Mary Hicks, Winnifred Furrh, Mrs. Joy Quinn, Mrs. Dorothy Martin, Mrs. Celeste Clemons, Mrs. Etheldra Spangler, Mrs. Jennie Abney, Mrs. R.B. Lothrop, Mrs. Rubye Pelz and Mrs. Carolyn Abney.”
Vivien Kellems, who had her share of tangles with the tax collector over the years, sent a telegram of support.
In , the group lost its Supreme Court appeal.
At first, the women remained defiant and continued to refuse to pay, claiming that the Supreme Court had not really answered the Constitutional question but had only verified the interpretation of the tax statute.
They eventually caved in and began to pay the required quarterly taxes.
Abney became the first woman to be elected to the Marshall, Texas city commission in .
The Lewiston Evening Journal for carried Westbrook Pegler’s column boosting the U.S. Senate candidacy of upstart Vivien Kellems against the New England Republican establishment.
(Kellems ran as an “Independent Republican” but got fewer than 5% of the votes of the winning Republican candidate.)
Kellems was a tireless tax resister whose exploits have been recounted here before.
The Pegler column includes some interesting notes on other conservative tax resistance actions of the time:
Vivien Kellems has been flapping around in planes year after year, making speeches against the income and withholding taxes and inciting women to patriotic rebellion.
Nobody knows the history of the income tax better.
The real rebellion of the time is led by women.
The Marshall girls, of Marshall, Tex., refused to pay the baby-sitters’ tax.
Vivien flew down to give them counsel and now Mrs. Winifred Furrh, of Marshall, reports that only 20,000 households out of 50,000 in the Dallas Internal Revenue district have even filed returns under this section.
From Bethel, Vermont comes a carbon copy of a Social Security return, proudly sent by Lucille Miller, a rebel against the Communist invasion up there.
Across the face runs the loud defi: “Go to Hell, you cheap parasites!”
The amount was $5.07.
In Summit, Miss., Mrs. Mary D. Cain, the editor of the weekly Sun, refused to pay Social Security, closed her bank account, announced that her husband wasn’t responsible for her debts and dared John Snyder, the secretary of the Treasury, to do something.
Lucille Miller also did time for encouraging military draft evasion in .
The judge in the case declared her insane and ordered her locked up, and she was captured under a storm of tear gas after a brief siege of her house and not released until she won a federal court order.
She was later found guilty of “18 counts of counseling young men to evade the Selective Service Act” and given a two-year suspended sentence.
The U.S. Court of Appeals turned down her appeal.
She published a zine, The Green Mountain Rifleman, which is usually described as “anti-communist” in the press of the day, but I’ve also seen it referred to as anti-semitic.
Having not seen any copies myself, it’s hard for me to say.
Winifred Furrh was one of the “Texas housewives” whose case I covered .
Texas Housewives In Tax Revolt — Federal warrants for refusing to pay social security taxes on wages of domestic help are studied in Marshall, Texas, by housewives (seated, l to r.) Mrs. Virginia Whelan and Mrs. Winifred Furrh; and standing, Mrs. Carolyn Abney (left) and Mrs. Etheldrea Spangler.
Mrs. Abney spoke for the group, which includes 14 others, when she announced a “wait and see” policy in the dispute, involving only $54. The warrants authorize seizure of property.
(International Soundphoto.)
Here is a little more data on the “Texas housewives’ rebellion” against paying social security taxes on the wages of their household help, first from a United Press dispatch:
Marshall, Tex. (UP) — Eleven Texas housewives told Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snyder to quit trying to get them to collect Social Security taxes from their servants.
“Texas housewives” Carolyn Abney, Dorothy Martin, Rubye Pelz, and Etheldra Spangler go over some paperwork.
They indicated they would stick by their guns even if it meant a court test.
The women sent a letter to Mr. Snyder curtly requesting him to stop sending tax agents to their homes.
Their spokesman, Mrs. Carolyn M. Abney, said they don’t intend to become “tax collectors without compensation” and consider their refusal a “petition a just grievance.”
All 11 involved Social Security returns on their domestic employes as required under the new statute, but balked on paying the bill.
On , a pair of agents from the Internal Revenue Office called to present each with a letter, urging payment of the tax in order that “compulsion” would not be necessary.
The 11 payments ranged from $1.63 to $4.58. But, said Mrs. Abney, “it’s not the money, it’s the principle.
That law is unconstitutional.”
None have paid.
Mrs. Abney said the agents were “very courteous” to the women but charged they made “intimidating and frightening” remarks to the servants involved.
In one case a Negro maid was told “your good white folks must not think much of you if they wont pay this tax,” she said.
The women said they don’t want “any color line” drawn.
In their letter to Mr. Snyder, the housewives suggested use of the U.S. mails for future communications in the controversy, saying it would be faster and cheaper than sending agents to call.
They said their decision to fight the new law was reached after “long and prayerful consideration.”
“We have in good conscience petitioned our government on a just grievance,” they said.
One of the protesting women lost her maid simply by requesting her Social Security number, Mrs. Abney said, and “most of the domestic employes don’t want it.”
Marshall, Tex. (AP) — Treasury agents came back to Marshall to extract more money from bank accounts of housewives who refuse to pay Social Security taxes on servant’s wages.
But some of the rebellious housewives have so far been overlooked, and they are puzzled.
“I can’t understand it,” said Mrs. Mary V. Hicks.
“Why, I have a personal account in one of the banks, and there’s enough money in it to pay the tax and penalty and leave six cents.”
As a new treasury agent, Gus W. Davis of nearby Longview, served additional seizure warrants, the housewives’ spokesman made these announcements:
1. The housewives did not withdraw their deposits.
(When treasury agents moved in and served seizure warrants against bank accounts, it appeared several accounts had been withdrawn.)
“There was enough money to cover every warrant issued,” declared Mrs. Carolyn Abney, spokesman for the housewives.
“The accounts must just have been overlooked.”
A bank spokesman said this could have happened in the confusion of the treasury agents’ visit.
2. There are only 13 women — that she knows of — who are refusing to pay the taxes, said Mrs. Abney.
Davis levied against the account of Mrs. Zach Abney Sr., for $4.14 and against the account of Mrs. J.C. Quinn for $4.08. This brought the Internal Revenue Bureau’s take in two days to $44.23 from ten bank accounts.
The housewives say that they will ask the Internal Revenue Bureau to give their money back.
The Texas Housewives lost their first court case in , and in they lost a Supreme Court appeal.
At first, the women remained defiant and continued to refuse to pay, claiming that the Supreme Court had not really answered the Constitutional question but had only verified the interpretation of the tax statute.
They eventually caved in and began to pay the required quarterly taxes.
In the modern world, many governments have introduced income tax withholding
or “pay as you earn.” In such a scheme, it can be difficult for people to
resist paying income tax, as the tax has already been paid on their behalf by
their employers. In such cases, resisters need their employers to be willing
to go out on a limb and resist alongside them.
Today I’ll give some examples of employers who helped their employees resist
income tax withholding.
Quaker Meetings
Quaker Meetings (congregations and collections of congregations) have sometimes
supported the war tax resistance of their employees by not withholding taxes
from their paychecks.
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Yearly
Meeting) has discerned and again affirms that conscientious objection to
paying taxes supporting military purposes is an appropriate and traditional
individual expression of the Friends Peace Testimony. As a result, Yearly
Meeting has a religious duty to refrain from taking action that violates an
employee’s expression of conscience in such historic Friends testimonies. …
At the written request of an employee pursuant to this Policy, Yearly Meeting
will withhold from an employee’s gross salary or wages, but refuse to forward
to IRS,
amounts up to but not in excess of the military portion of the federal income
tax otherwise due on that employee’s pay. Yearly Meeting, in notifying
IRS
that it has not remitted a portion of withheld taxes, will disclose and advise
IRS of
its action, as described [below]…
Yearly Meeting will communicate at least annually with an appropriate office
or official of the
IRS to
explain that, pursuant to this Policy and Yearly Meeting’s core religious
principles, it has withheld the full amount of taxes, as indicated by form(s)
W-4, from the salaries of certain employees opposed to the payment of taxes
for military purposes. Yearly Meeting will further explain that, at the
request of each such employee, it has not remitted the portion of the amount
withheld which the employee has conscientiously refused to pay, that it has
identified the amounts not remitted in its records, and that the amounts not
remitted, plus interest, will be paid over to the Treasury of the United
States on behalf of the employees at such time as there is assurance that the
taxes will not be used for military purposes.
The Meeting was taken to court in
for failing to remit $11,224 in taxes
from resisting employees. More recently, the Meeting has been pursuing legal
arguments in support of its employee Priscilla Adams, who has been resisting
war taxes for years with the help of the Meeting. The Meeting was unable to
convince a court to order the
IRS to
respect its conscientious scruples, and the agency ordered to Meeting to
garnishee Adams’s salary. The Meeting has continued to refuse.
The London Yearly Meeting for a while withheld a portion of the
pay-as-you-earn withholding of some of its employees, hoping to make this a
test case that might legalize conscientious objection to military taxation.
The courts rejected their arguments, and an appeal to the European Commission
of Human Rights also failed, and so the Meeting stopped trying to resist
military taxation and now gives war tax resistance only rhetorical support:
Since losing the appeal we have paid in full the income tax collected from
our employees. In recent months we have considered whether we can continue to
do this, but after very careful consideration have decided that for the time
being we must do so. The acceptance of the rule of law is part of our
witness, … for a just and peaceful world cannot come about without this.
However we do wish to make it clear that we object to the way in which the
PAYE [withholding]
system involves us in a process of collecting money, used in part to pay for
military activity and war preparations, which takes away from the individual
taxpayer the right to express their own conscientious objection. This
involvement is incompatible with our work for peace.
American Friends Service Committee
During the Vietnam War, the American Friends Service Committee refused to
withhold taxes from those of its employees who were refusing to pay taxes.
Milton Mayer said, of the Committee’s action:
Under withholding, most of the people who don’t want to buy Mylai have
already had it bought for them by April 15. … A few religious
organizations — not the churches, of course — have refused to withhold the
tax from the pay of their employes who do not want to buy Mylai. The most
respectable of them is the American Friends Service Committee, with which I
confess to being associated. … But the AFSC
has a task force of eighty Philadelphia lawyers, and one of these years a
test case will go to Washington. Meanwhile, however, the conscientious
citizen who waits for a test case will go on buying Mylai until the whole of
Vietnam is a ditch.
The AFSC continues to support tax-resisting employees, and has had mixed luck defending itself in court.
According to the NWTRCC pamphlet on Organizational War Tax Resistance:
Employers or other entities which refuse to withhold from the assets of a war
tax resister on religious grounds actually have a chance of justifying their
actions in court thanks to a case involving
the American Friends Service Committee
(AFSC) and the
IRS. A
federal district court ruled that the
AFSC and
its employees had the First Amendment right not to be required to participate
in the withholding system, since the
IRS has
other methods of satisfying its objectives, such as levies. The decision was
overturned by the Supreme Court, but solely on procedural grounds. This
position is possibly strengthened by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act
(RFRA), passed by Congress in .
The IRS
has more recently tried to send what are called “lock-in letters” to the
AFSC, demanding that they withhold taxes from their resisting employees at
the maximum rate permissible by law.
For a time (and this may still be the case), the AFSC policy was to obey
such withholding laws and orders, but to hold back a percentage of the
withheld taxes from the government, putting that percentage (a percentage they
deemed equal to the percentage of the federal budget spent on the military)
into an escrow account.
According to a Treasury Inspector General
for Tax Administration report, many employers ignore these lock-in letters.
This takes some gumption. The way the law works, if an employer doesn’t comply
with the lock-in letter, the employer can become liable for the taxes
that the employee isn’t paying.
Mennonite General Assembly
In 1989, the Mennonite Church General Assembly adopted a resolution to
“support the Mennonite General Board in establishing a policy that federal
income taxes not be withheld from the wages of any of its employees who make
this request because of conscientious objection to the use of their taxes for
military purposes.”
The General Board, however, balked on establishing such a policy after
determining “there was not enough support… to ask church boards to engage in
civil disobedience.”
Restored Israel of Yahweh
The small Jehovah’s Witnesses spin-off group called the Restored Israel of
Yahweh practices war tax resistance. To help facilitate this, two of them, who
ran a construction business, agreed not to withhold taxes from those of their
employees who were also members of that denomination.
Those two, along with the company’s bookkeeper, were taken to court and
convicted of tax evasion charges, making them, according to one of their
lawyers, “the first pacifist tax resisters to be prosecuted and
jailed — possibly ever — for felony conspiracy to defraud the
U.S. and attempted
tax evasion, the most serious criminal charges in the Internal Revenue Code.”
War Resisters League & War Resisters International
In , Ralph DiGia, who was working for the War
Resisters League, asked them to stop withholding federal taxes from his
paycheck. The League agreed, and some other employees followed DiGia’s lead.
It had taken a lot of work to get the League to adopt a policy of tax refusal.
At first, they had refused, with a member of the League’s executive committee
saying “the life of the organization is at stake.” War tax resisters
responded, saying: “If pacifist organizations, whose business is to create a
warless world, are not ready to risk something for war resistance
now, when will they be ready?” Another group, the Fellowship of
Reconciliation, also refused to challenge the
IRS, and
some of its employees resigned over the issue.
War Resisters’ International, which is based in London, decided in
to hold back a percentage of
its employees’s taxes (equivalent, in its view, to the military percentage
of the British national budget). The organization takes the position that
conscientious objection to military taxation is an unrecognized human right,
but a human right all the same, and they intend to assert it.
Collective Impressions
American war tax resister Ed Guinan for a time ran a print shop called
“Collective Impressions.” “Most of the workers in the collective were rooted
in a Catholic tradition of pacifism,” said Guinan, and so,
the company paid its
employees’ withholding not to the Internal Revenue Service but directly to the
U.S. Arms Control
and Disarmament Agency.
The Agency returned the money, saying it could not accept it under such
circumstances, whereupon Collective Impressions put the money into an escrow
account from which it hoped to eventually be able to pay the money in a way
that wouldn’t violate the pacifist beliefs of its employees, and from where
it was eventually seized by the government.
Straight Lines, Ltd.
Martin Philips, director of the Welsh jewelry business “Straight Lines”
stopped paying the 13.6% pay-as-you-earn withholding to the government for his
employees — sending the money instead to the Overseas Development
Administration as a protest against government military spending.
The government took Straight Lines to court, and eventually seized money from
the company to cover the unpaid taxes.
Vivien Kellems
Soon after income tax withholding was introduced in the United States,
ornery industrialist Vivien Kellems decided she was not interested in being
the tax collector for her employees’ at the Kellems Cable Grip Manufacturing
Company:
The most un-American phrase in our modern vocabulary is “take home pay.” What
do we mean, “take home pay”? When I hire a man to work for me we discuss
three things: the job to be done, the hours he shall work, and the wages he
shall receive. And on Friday when he received that pay envelope, we have both
fulfilled our contract for that week. There is no further obligation on
either side. The money in that envelope belongs to him. He has worked for it
and he has earned it. No one, not even the United States Government, has the
right to touch it. Who dares to lay profane hands upon that money, to rudely
filch from that free man the fruits of his labor, even before the money is in
his own hands. This is a monstrous invasion of the rights of a free people
and an outrageous perversion of the spirit of the Constitution. This is the
miserable system foisted upon the people of our country by New Deal zealots
and arrogant Communists who have wormed themselves into high places in
Washington. This system is deliberately designed to make involuntary tax
collectors of every employer and to impose involuntary tax servitude upon
every employee. We don’t need to go to Russia for slavery, we’ve got it right
here.
Paying taxes is a duty, a responsibility and a privilege of citizenship.
Without taxes we can have no government. However I do not exercise other
duties, responsibilities and privileges of citizenship for my employees. I do
not vote for them, I do not form political opinions for them, I do not select
a church for them, I do not pay real estate taxes for them. They are all free
American citizens, thoroughly capable of performing all of the duties and
responsibilities of citizenship for themselves. And so, from this day, I am
not collecting nor paying their income taxes for them.
To demonstrate that she wasn’t against her employees paying their taxes, but
only opposed to having to do it for them, she organized her employees once per
quarter and allowed them, on company time, to fill out their own tax returns
and to go down to the post office as a group to purchase money orders and file
their own taxes.
The government subjected Kellems to a public smear campaign (which included
intercepting and publicizing her love letters), and to legal action. The
government won the legal battle, fining Kellems $7,600, whereupon she resumed
withholding taxes from her employees’ paychecks.
George Fidenato
George Fidenato is Vivien Kellems reincarnated in today’s Italy.
he has been refusing to withhold
taxes from his six employees’ paychecks. “I do not want to be the tax
collector. I’m not a slave of the state, and wouldn’t want to work for it even
if you paid me!” As of this writing he is still pursuing legal appeals.
Indianapolis Baptist Temple
The Indianapolis Baptist Temple started refusing to pay federal taxes in
, when pastor Gregory Dixon “decided the
church would break all ties with the government and no longer act as its agent
in withholding taxes from its employees,” citing Constitutional freedom of
religion as his mandate for taking his church out from under Uncle Sam’s
thumb. For several years, nothing came of this defiance, but in
, the
IRS
started seeking back taxes, eventually filing liens against the church and
against Dixon. The church fought back in court, but lost a series of appeals,
finally getting turned down by the
U.S. Supreme Court
in , whereupon the government seized
and auctioned off church property and Dixon himself was fined.
“Texas housewives”
, a group of women the
press invariably referred to as the “Texas housewives” refused to withhold and
pay social security taxes on the wages of their household help. The women were
opposed to government-run social security, and to being enlisted as government
tax collectors. They claimed also to be supported in their stand by their
employees.
Money was eventually seized from their bank accounts to cover the taxes. They
also pursued court appeals to try to get the tax declared unconstitutional,
but in they lost their case and began paying
the taxes.
The women’s suffrage movement in the United Kingdom
The National Insurance Act of required all
workers to pay a portion of their paycheck into a fund for government-run
health and unemployment benefits.
Members of the women’s suffrage movement saw this as another tax enacted
without their consent, another example of “taxation without representation,”
and another opportunity to resist.
Some members of suffrage groups were employers, and some suffrage groups had
paid employees. In the Women
Writers’ Suffrage League met to ask whether they “should, as a society, resist
the new insurance tax and refuse to insure their secretary, with her full
consent to their so doing?”
Kate Harvey refused to pay 5 shillings, 10 pence of tax for her gardener — for
which she was sentenced to two months in prison.
The Women’s Freedom League refused to pay the tax on their employees — “we
refuse to acquiesce in any legislation which controls the resources of women
without the consent of women” — but the government seemed unwilling or unable
to do more than threaten the group.
Individuals can demonstrate their support for tax resisters in various ways.
Sometimes just dropping them a line can be a good pat-on-the-back. Here are
some examples of ways in which people and groups have given their thumbs-ups
to tax resisters:
When the
IRS
seized Amish farmer Valentine Byler’s horses to cover his unpaid social
security taxes, Byler received dozens of letters of support from around
the country, with sentiments like:
“I congratulate you on having the intestinal fortitude to stand up for
your beliefs.”
“Your courageous stand for your religious principles is to be
commended.”
“I am sincerely sorry this has happened.”
When the “Texas housewives” banded together to refuse to withhold social
security taxes from the wages of their domestic help, Vivien Kellems
(another American conservative tax resister) sent a telegram of
support.
When Utah governor J. Bracken Lee started resisting his federal income tax
to protest what he felt to be unconstitutional federal spending, he got
hundreds of letters and postcards of support from across the country
(including, again, one from Vivien Kellems). Among the messages:
“Good for you — both for having the courage to stand up to this
tax-despotic government of ours and its paid press, and for being
right.”
“When a man of your stature comes out as you have on such a vital issue
it rekindles the hopes of the American people that all is not lost and
that there is still a chance.”
The [U.S.]
National Woman Suffrage Association put forth resolutions at their
conventions of in
praise of resisters Julia & Abby Smith, Abby Kelly Foster, and Sarah
E. Wall.
When the government tried and failed to auction off goods seized from a
tax resisting doctor in the Dutch West Indies in
, “[a] cheering crowd carried the
physician about shoulder high.”
When the Wyoming Conference of the Methodist Church dismissed a minister
for being a war tax resister, another minister, James Gail Garst, resigned
from the Conference in protest.
At NWTRCC gatherings, one regular activity is for the
attendees to sign cards of support to send to resisters who have suffered
property seizures, liens, levies and other such government reprisals for
their resistance.
One way a tax resistance campaign can claim victory is by convincing the government to either formally rescind the tax, or to recognize the legal validity of tax resistance.
Charles Ⅰ went around Parliament to create a new property tax, and John Hampden famously said “no” in .
He lost his court case, but the next Parliament legalized his resistance by voiding the “ship-writs” tax and declaring the court judgment against him invalid.
American Amish, after a long campaign of lobbying, lawsuits, civil disobedience, and public relations, successfully won an exemption to the U.S. social security system, including its tax, and also canceled the outstanding social security tax bills of 15,000 Amish resisters.
A number of pacifist groups, frequently including war tax resisters, have been trying to get their governments to recognize or legally formalize a right to conscientious objection to military spending that would permit conscientious objectors to pay their taxes in a way that would not pay for the military portion of the government’s budget: a “Peace Tax” as it were.
So far, none of these long-standing efforts — which have included legal challenges using a variety of arguments, lobbying, and appeals to international legal bodies — have borne much fruit.
Governments seem universally hostile to the idea, and those international legal bodies with any clout have been unwilling to push the point.
Besides this, it is difficult to separate a government’s military budget from the rest of its budget in a way that would make a separate “Peace Tax” plausible.
The American version of the “Peace Tax” legislation, for instance, would ironically result in more taxpayer money going to military projects.
Italy has an otto per mille tax, which people can designate either for their church or for “humanitarian and cultural projects” of the government’s choosing — this resembles the sort of plan the “Peace Tax” promoters have in mind, but Italy’s government cunningly declared its participation in the Iraq War a “humanitarian and cultural” project and siphoned the funds off that way.
A tax resister who was opposed to the death penalty came to an agreement with the state of Delaware in which the state permitted him to pay his state taxes into a fund designated for paying state tax refunds of other taxpayers, rather than into the general fund that funded the prison system and executions.
American Quaker war tax resister Joshua Evans was so persistent that eventually the tax collector gave up.
“I was told it was concluded that as I gave myself up very much to the service of Truth, it was not proper I should be troubled on account of military demands; and I understood my name was erased, or taken from their list.”
Occasionally something similar happens today, when because a war tax resister has so few assets, or those assets would take too much trouble to discover, the IRS formally lists the resister’s file as “uncollectible” and gives up the attempt to force payment.
After ten years, a delinquent income tax payment hits a statute of limitations and the U.S. government is generally forbidden to pursue the matter further.
American suffragist activist Sarah E. Wall resisted her taxes for 25 years, when finally, according to Susan B. Anthony, “I do not know exactly how it is now, but the assessor has left her name off the tax-list, and passed her by rather than have a lawsuit with her.”
Something similar happened to English suffragist tax resister Charlotte Despard and some others: “[T]he Government rather than go to the trouble of selling up the recalcitrant ‘debtor,’ and attracting attention to the principle involved, had quietly dropped the matter in several instances.
Mrs. Despard had had no application for taxes since she had been sold up last year.”
Ellen C. Sargent patiently pursued legal challenges in California to try to promote women’s suffrage with a “no taxation without representation” argument.
She began by petitioning the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for a refund of her property taxes, and then filed a lawsuit when this petition was denied (the lawsuit also failed).
When farmers in drought-ravaged regions of Argentina threatened a tax strike in , the government responded with a clever bit of ju-jitsu — it declared an agricultural emergency in the area which exempted those farmers from paying taxes.
Utah governor J. Bracken Lee stopped paying his federal income taxes in the hopes of prompting a Supreme Court test case that would invalidate what he considered to be extraconstitutional federal spending.
(The court declined to take his case.)
A group referred to as “the Texas housewives” resisted paying the social security tax on the salaries of their household help, and pursued a two-year parallel legal challenge to have the tax invalidated, before finally being turned down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Property tax resisters in Depression-era Chicago won a court case that found property assessments in the city to have been performed incorrectly — with $15 billion in property held by wealthy, well-connected Chicagoans somehow left off the rolls — thus effectively legalizing the resistance.
“As the matter stands,” a newspaper account put it, “citizens howled about their taxes, refused to pay them and a court upheld them.
They are in revolt with legal sanction.”
During the Land League’s rent strike in Ireland, Charles Stewart Parnell reported that “a large majority of landlords” reduced the rents on their properties, “[which] shows that they did finally recognize the situation, and that they determined to make the best of it.”
When the Prussian quasi-autocracy tried to ignore the legislature and govern on its own, the legislature formally declared tax resistance to be legal, and said that the autocrats had no authority to raise or spend money.
Something similar happened in Russia half a century later, when the Czar dissolved the legislature, which then reconvened in Vyborg and called on the citizens to refuse to pay any more taxes to the Czar.
According to a book on war tax resistance: “In Russia became the first country to establish legislation exempting pacifists from paying war taxes.
Thirty British citizens were invited by Czar Alexander Ⅰ to establish a cotton mill.
Because some of the employees were Quakers, a petition was submitted to the Czar from the employees asking for freedom of conscience and an exemption from military service, church taxes for war, etc. The Czar issued a certificate which read ‘His Imperial Majesty has given his gracious assent to this petition … all … shall be exempted from all civil and military taxes … the sect of Quakers may now and in future be freed from war taxes for the support of the Military…’ Two English Quakers visiting Russia in found these provisions still in effect.”
The Great Confederated Anti-Dray and Land Tax League of South Australia began as a tax resistance and mutual insurance group, but was soon successful in convincing the government to rescind the offensive tax.
But history is also full of lessons about the foolishness of trusting the government when it responds to your tax resistance campaign by insisting that it’s on your side and wants to help.
For example:
When tax resistance leader Wat Tyler was assassinated while negotiating with the King in , the king boldly went out to the enraged crowd and told it that he would be their leader and would press for their demands.
Instead, he waited for the fuss to die down, then executed some of the other leaders of the rebellion.
When the Whigs were whisked into power in the wake of the Reform Act agitation around , the tax resistance movement celebrated its victory… only to find that the Whigs could be just as tyrannical about prosecuting those who promoted tax resistance as their Tory cousins.
The recent American TEA Party was quickly coöpted by the Republican Party, which learned how to lead it by the nose with witless rhetoric, but conceded nothing on the tax-and-spend big government front.
During the Annuity Tax strike in Edinburgh, the government passed something called the “Edinburgh Annuity Tax Abolition Act.”
Despite its name, that act did not abolish the annuity tax, but merely concealed it with an aim to making it more difficult to resist.
On , the “Marshall housewives” were again in the news:
Housewives Again Refuse to Pay Tax
Marshall, Tex. (UP) — The rebellious Marshall housewives have refused again to pay social security taxes on their domestic servants, but a government spokesman said it appears they cannot be fined or jailed for their failure to do so.
In their first public stand since the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider their attack on the constitutionality of the law, the housewives announced they had filed the return due but did not enclose the money.
“This may be the opportunity for congressmen to uphold their oath of office which charges them with the responsibility of protecting the Constitution,” Mrs. Caroline Abney, spokesman for the housewives, said.
“We’ve been given a judicial run-around.”
In Washington, an Internal Revenue spokesman said the housewives will have to pay the taxes, willingly or otherwise.
He said the housewives, by filing their quarterly returns, cleared themselves of any criminal violation of the social security law for which they could have been fined or jailed.
He said the Internal Revenue Bureau “will proceed on our normal way to collect those taxes.”
He said normal procedure in such cases is for the bureau to issue “warrants of distraint,” under which it can attach the salary, bank account, or other property of delinquent taxpayers.
The housewives contend the household amendment to the social security law is unconstitutional because it makes the housewives tax collectors for the government.
