How you can resist funding the government →
a survey of tactics of historical tax resistance campaigns →
form mutual insurance pacts →
penalty funds
After reading about the tally of interest and penalties I’d received from the IRS recently (see The Picket Line ), a reader asks:
I wonder whether there are enough people who would bind themselves together in a defense league of some sort, pledged to treat an assault upon one as an assault upon all?
There is something called the War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund that collects money from people who want to support war tax resisters but who aren’t ready to resist themselves, and then uses that money to reimburse resisters for the penalties they pay if the IRS succeeds in seizing money from them.
According to the fund’s promotional page:
“ the fund has sent out 32 appeals for assistance ranging in amount from $2 to $30.
Membership has grown during that time from 80 participants to nearly 550, representing 44 states plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and New Guinea.
The Fund has reimbursed over $185,000, to more than 280 war tax resisters in 27 states and the District of Columbia in that time.
This represents over 72% of the $255,000 that was requested.
We welcome your participation.
With more supporters, each person’s burden will be smaller, and each resister’s witness stronger!”
Over at FSK’s Guide to Reality, FSK continues the conversation about tax resister insurance.
A while back, I started looking for examples of ways tax resisters have organized mutual aid pacts to help diffuse the effects of government retaliation.
In the course of doing the research, though, I started collecting examples instead of a larger variety of collective projects resisters and their sympathizers have used in support of tax resistance.
Here are some of the examples I found:
Tax resister “insurance”
For instance, the Breton Association in
France, which organized to “form a common stock or fund… to indemnify the
subscribers for any expense they may be put to by their refusal to pay any
illegal contributions imposed upon the public.”
Another example was the Association
of Real Estate Taxpayers in
Chicago, which formed a cooperative legal fund to fight an offensive legal
battle against the tax.
American war tax resisters today can use the War Tax Resisters Penalty
Fund to defray penalties and interest seized by the
IRS.
The fund is raised as-needed by asking subscribers to contribute an equal
amount.
The oath of the Regulator tax resistance movement in the North Carolina
colony bound its signers to “bear an equal share in paying and making up
[the] loss” if “any of our company be put to expense or under any
confinement.”
Communes, collectives, and co-housing projects.
Some tax resisters have formed mutual support communities.
Whiteway Colony
was founded to try to live up to Tolstoyan ideals. The members of the
Bijou and
Agape communities live below a taxable
income so as to avoid paying taxes.
Supporting resisters as an employer
Some members of the Restored Israel of
Yahweh ran a construction business and agreed not to withhold federal
taxes from the wages of those employees who were fellow-members and who were
resisting taxes.
Vivien Kellems refused to withhold
taxes from her employees’ wages, saying: “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.”
Charles Kanjama recently urged Kenyans
to begin a tax resistance campaign, and said that to foil pay-as-you-earn
withholding, “participating employers and employees can enter into a
voluntary contract to convert monthly employment into quarterly or
half-yearly employment, thus effectively delaying tax liability for several
months.”
British nonconformists and women’s suffrage activists a century ago also
used this tactic. Auctions became rallies, with speeches and banners and
crowds that could number in the thousands. Supporters would pack the auction
house and refuse to leave their seats. On some occasions, violence broke
out. In some cases, auctioneers refused to handle goods that had been seized
for tax refusal.
Simply boycotting the auctions and refusing to buy seized goods is one way
communities offer support. It was part of the Quaker “Discipline” to refuse
to buy seized goods. When Valentine Byler’s horse was seized for non-payment
of the social security tax, “no Amish came to bid on the horses and, due to
a lack of bidders, they went for a good price, with the harnesses ‘thrown
in’ by the auctioneer.”
Pay cash so as not to leave a paper trail
Jessica Ramer and a
Claire
Files contributor brought this idea up. If you pay in cash
whenever you can, you give the recipient the opportunity to decide whether
or not to declare the income.
Cash tips are easy to under-report. I asked about that recently and was
told that most people pay with credit card/debit card and that the
government now uses a percentage method for tips. They look at the charged
meals, look at the number of total meals served, and then look at the
charged tips to figure out how much cash tips you received.
(100 meals served. 50 paid with card, tipping 15%. the government
calculates 15% from 100 meals even if cash tips are only 10%)
You can help out by tipping more when paying with cash or better yet, when
you pay with card, put 1% tip on it and put the rest out as cash. I even
leave a note for the server saying “this is your money, don’t
tell your boss, or the government. share it with the buss boy if that is
the policy.” This will help lower the average tip figures, but
still give the nice server what they have earned.
Use barter to avoid taxable/seizable transactions
Karl Hess found people willing to barter with him as he was dodging
IRS
seizures:
The other day I welded up a fish-smoking rack for a family in Washington,
D.C. It will earn me a year’s supply
of smoked fish. At about the same time, I helped a friend dig a foundation.
He’ll help me lay the concrete blocks for a workshop. Part of my pay for a
lecture at a New England college was the use of the school’s welding shop,
to make some metal sculptures. Three such sculptures have paid my
attorney’s fees in maintaining the tax resistance which is the reason
barter has become such an integral part of my life.
Manufacture and sell goods as alternatives to taxed products
Before the American Revolution, colonists who opposed Britain’s economic
control boycotted British products and began to produce homespun cloth,
alternatives to tea, and so forth. Gandhi’s independence campaign in India
made the wearing and production of homespun cloth central to the opposition,
and the Salt March was focused on the illegal production of untaxed,
non-foreign-monopoly salt.
An example today is home-brewed beer (which beats the excise tax on
alcoholic beverages).
Buycotts and boycotts that favor resisting businesses
One report from World War Ⅰ-era America noted that this was a technique used
by those who opposed the “Liberty Bonds”:
Efforts to prevent banks from handling the bonds have centered chiefly in
Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Missouri and
Oklahoma. The President of a Wisconsin bank has advised the Treasury that
his depositors, mostly Germans, or of German parentage, have withdrawn
many thousands of dollars from his bank because he aided the First Liberty
Loan.
These depositors, he added, had taken their accounts to two rival banks on
the understanding that those banks would not aid the second Liberty Loan.
The two banks, he reported, were not aiding the loan in any way.
Many banks have felt the pressure of German influence in this propaganda,
reports indicate. So pronounced was the movement that the States of
Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and Montana recently decided that they
would withdraw State funds from any bank which did not support the loan.
Social boycotts / shunning / noncooperation with tax collectors
Adolf Hausrath writes of Roman-occupied Judaea,
The people knew how to torment these officials of the Roman customs with
the petty cruelty which ordinary people develop with irreconcilable
persistency, whenever they believe this persistency to be due to their
moral indignation. In consequence of the theocratic scruples about the
duty of paying taxes, the tax-gatherers were declared to be unclean and
half Gentile.… among the Jews the words
“tax-gatherersand sinners,”“tax-gatherers and Gentiles,”“tax-gatherers and harlots,”
“tax-gatherers, murderers and robbers,” and similar insulting
combinations, were not only ready on the tongue and familiar, but were
accepted as theocratically identical in meaning. Thrust out from all
social intercourse, the tax-gatherers became more and more the pariahs of
the Jewish world. With holy horror did the Pharisee sweep past the lost
son of Israel who had sold himself to the Gentile for the vilest purpose,
and avoid the places which his sinful breath contaminated. Their
testimony was not accepted by Jewish tribunals. It was forbidden to sit
at table with them or eat of their bread. But their money-chests
especially were the summary of all uncleanness and the chief object of
pious horror, since their contents consisted of none but unlawful
receipts, and every single coin betokened a breach of some theocratic
regulation. To exchange their money or receive alms from them might
easily put a whole house in the condition of being unclean, and
necessitate many purifications. From these relations of the tax-officials
to the rest of the population, it can be readily understood that only the
refuse of Judaism undertook the office.
A social boycott of tax collectors was practiced in the years before
the American revolution. John Adams wrote:
At Philadelphia, the Heart-and-Hand Fire Company has expelled Mr. Hughes,
the stamp man for that colony. The freemen of Talbot county, in Maryland,
have erected a gibbet before the door of the court-house, twenty feet
high, and have hanged on it the effigies of a stamp informer in chains,
in terrorem till the Stamp Act shall be repealed; and
have resolved, unanimously, to hold in utter contempt and abhorrence
every stamp officer, and every favorer of the Stamp Act, and to
“have no communication with any such person, not even to speak to
him, unless to upbraid him with his baseness.” So triumphant is the
spirit of liberty everywhere.
Harassment of tax collectors was a signature action of the Whiskey
Rebellion. An early published resolution of the rebels read in part:
[W]hereas some men may be found amongst us, so far lost to every sense of
virtue and feeling for the distresses of this country, as to accept
offices for the collection of the duty:
Resolved, therefore, That in future we will consider such persons as
unworthy of our friendship; have no intercourse or dealings with them;
withdraw from them every assistance, and withhold all the comforts of life
which depend upon those duties that as men and fellow citizens we owe to
each other; and upon all occasions treat them with that contempt they
deserve; and that it be, and it is hereby most earnestly recommended to
the people at large to follow the same line of conduct towards them.
Tax collectors were tarred-and-feathered in America, both before and after
the revolution — the violent expulsion of tax collectors was a frequent
technique of the Whiskey rebels. Tax collectors have been the targets of
violent reprisal at many times and in many places. Because of this,
governments have often had to pay high salaries — or, frequently,
percentages of the take — to convince collectors to take on the job, which
only increases the resentment of those being collected from.
During the French Revolution and its aftermath, customs houses were burned
by mobs, tax rolls were destroyed, excise collectors were made to renounce
their jobs and then were run out of town — or in some cases killed.
The first Boer War was triggered when an armed group of Boers seized a
wagon that was being auctioned after it was distrained for resisted taxes.
The Whiskey rebels threatened to destroy the stills of those distillers
who complied in paying the excise tax.
Boycotts / social boycotts of non-resisters
If a tax resisting movement is large enough, it may be able to dissuade
people from paying taxes through boycotts or social boycotts of people
who are tax compliant. In Massachusetts, a group enforced a boycott of
taxed British imports by declaring that
…we further promise and engage, that we will not purchase any goods
of any persons who, preferring their own interest to that of the public,
shall import merchandise from Great Britain, until a general importation
takes place; or of any trader who purchases his goods of such importer:
and that we will hold no intercourse, or connection, or correspondence,
with any person who shall purchase goods of such importer, or retailer;
and we will hold him dishonored, an enemy to the liberties of his country,
and infamous, who shall break this agreement.
Maintain solidarity in the face of divide-and-conquer tactics
In
Germany, the government attempted to break a tax resistance movement by
offering to moderate its enforcement efforts against people who could show
that they had limited means. Karl Marx, who was promoting the resistance at
the time, saw this as a divide-and-conquer tactic:
The intention of the Ministry is only too clear. It wants to divide the
democrats; it wants to make the peasants and workers count themselves as
non-payers owing to lack of means to pay, in order to split them from
those not paying out of regard for legality, and thereby deprive the latter
of the support of the former. But this plan will fail; the people realizes
that it is responsible for solidarity in the refusal to pay taxes, just as
previously it was responsible for solidarity in payment of them.
Keep a record of the “sufferings” of resisters
The Quakers responded to persecution by keeping careful records of
individuals who had suffered thereby. In the archives of Quaker meetings,
you can find lists of people who had resisted militia taxes or tithes for
establishment church ministers, and what property was distrained by which
tax collector.
Sign petitions and public advertisements, engage in public protests
When the American Amish were trying to resist compulsory enrollment in the
social security system, 14,000 of them signed a petition to Congress.
During the Vietnam War, public advertisements were taken out by tax
resisters. In , for instance,
448 writers and editors put a full-page ad in the New
York Post declaring their intention to refuse to pay taxes for the
Vietnam War. The signatories included James Baldwin, Noam Chomsky, Philip K.
Dick, Betty Friedan, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Goodman, Paul Krassner, Norman
Mailer, Henry Miller, Tillie Olsen, Grace Paley, Thomas Pynchon, Susan
Sontag, Benjamin Spock, Gloria Steinem, Norman Thomas, Hunter S. Thompson,
Kurt Vonnegut, and Howard Zinn.
Protests, rallies, pickets, and the like have been a part of many
large-scale tax resistance campaigns.
Hold resisters’ property as an informal trustee
Some resisters who are vulnerable to property seizure find sympathetic
friends who are willing to hold the resisters’ property in their
names as a way of foiling seizure. Some war tax resister
alternative funds function
partially as “warehouse banks” that hold deposits of war tax resisters.
When a frustrated tax collector seized Ammon Hennacy’s protest signs
as he was picketing the
IRS
office — claiming that he planned to auction them off to pay Hennacy’s tax
debt — a friend of Hennacy helped him make new signs, each one marked “this
sign is the personal property of Joseph Craigmyle.”
Keep in contact with resisters and express support
After the press reported that Valentine Byler’s horse had been seized by the
IRS
as he was plowing his field, he got letters of support from all across
the country.
Form groups for mutual support & coordinated decision-making
Here there are too many examples to list.
Give financial aid to evicted rent strikers
When the Irish Land League launched its rent strike, it claimed that
“The funds will be poured out unstintedly to all who may endure
eviction in the course of the struggle. Our exiled brothers in America may
be relied on to contribute, if necessary, as many millions in money as they
have thousands, to starve out the landlords and bring the English tenantry
to its knees.”
Comfort and aid imprisoned resisters
The trick to supporting imprisoned tax resisters is to respect their real
needs and desires. When “someone interfered,” as Thoreau put
it, and paid his taxes in order to spring him from his night in jail, they
thought wrongly that they were doing Thoreau a favor, “for they
thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall.”
Juanita Nelson tells of the support she received in jail, where she had
been taken in her bathrobe from her home. Her supporters took the time to
learn how to support her in a way that was appropriate to her resistance:
Two fellow pacifists, one of them also a tax refuser, had been permitted
to come to me, since I would not go to them. I asked them what was
uppermost in my mind, what they’d do about getting properly dressed?
They said that this was something I would have to settle for myself. I
sensed that they thought it the better part of wisdom and modesty for me
to be dressed for my appearance in court. They were more concerned about
the public relations aspect of getting across the witness than I was. They
were also genuinely concerned, I knew, about making their actions truly
nonviolent, cognizant of the other person’s feelings, attitudes and
readiness. I was shaken enough to concede that I would like to have my
clothes at hand, in case I decided I would feel more at ease in them. The
older visitor, a dignified man with white hair, agreed to go for the
clothes in a taxicab.
They left, and on their heels came another visitor. She had been told that
in permitting her to come up, the officials were treating me with more
courtesy than I was according them. It was her assessment that the chief
deputy was hopeful that someone would be able to hammer some sense into me
and was willing to make concessions in that hope. But he had misjudged
the reliance he might place in her — she was not as critical as the
men. She did not know what she would do, but she thought she might wish to
have the strength and the audacity to carry through in the vein in which I
had started.
And she said. “You know, you look like a female Gandhi in that robe.
You look, well, dignified.”
That was my first encouragement. Everyone else had tended to make me feel
like a fool of the first water, had confirmed fears I already had on that
score. My respect and admiration for Gandhi, though not uncritical, was
deep. And if I in any way resembled him in appearance I was prepared to
try to emulate a more becoming state of mind. I reminded myself, too, that
I had on considerably more than the loincloth in which Gandhi was able to
greet kings and statesmen with ease. I need not be unduly perturbed about
wearing a robe into the presence of his honor.
Support the families of imprisoned resisters
When Gandhi was preparing the groundwork for a tax refusal campaign in
India, he noted that the Indian National Congress “should undertake
to feed the wives and families of those who may be imprisoned.”
Study the law, give legal support
When Elizabeth Cady Stanton was contemplating a tax resistance campaign for
women’s suffrage in the United States, she noted, “One thing is
certain, this course will necessarily involve a good deal of litigation,
and we shall need lawyers of our own sex whose intellects, sharpened by
their interests, shall be quick to discover the loopholes of retreat.”
Combine redirected taxes for dramatic charity giveaways
Larry Rosenwald wrote, of this technique, “To sit on the Grants and
Loans Committee of New England War Tax Resistance, and to dispense the
interest on refused taxes to a youth group in Chelsea, a video for cable
television on United States involvement in Central America, and a
people’s garden in Roxbury is to be reminded of the ideal community,
however blurred and fragmented, that war tax resistance is done on behalf
of, in the hope of helping to make it clear and whole.”
Can you think of any I’ve missed?
I’m fresh back from the NWTRCC national conference, which was held in Eugene, Oregon, and hosted by the enthusiastic and welcoming Eugene “Taxes for Peace Not War” group.
I’ve got a binder full of handouts and hastily-scratched notes that I took whenever I found a spare moment.
Today I’ll share some of my impressions of the gathering and of the current state of the war tax resistance movement.
Frivolity
Many of the attendees were concerned about the IRS being more aggressive in sending out notices of “frivolous filing” penalties to resisters who send letters of protest that explain their refusal to pay along with their tax returns.
One couple who were first-time resisters and had only refused to pay a token $50 last year were assessed “frivolous filing” penalties of $5,000 — each, even though they had filed a single return jointly — though they had filled out their return accurately and completely.
The IRS also insists that once they have assessed a “frivolous filing” penalty, you must pay that penalty before you can appeal it!
The law seems pretty clear that the “frivolous filing” penalty is only meant to apply if the tax return is incomplete or incorrect, but the IRS seems to be applying it haphazardly — not only to people who file complete and accurate returns but who refuse to pay some portion, but even to people who file and pay every cent but who merely inclose a letter registering their protest or disapproval!
Meanwhile, other resisters — including one who files a return every year with her social security number at the top but with none of the other required information, and with the 1040 form over-written with a protest message in red ink — have never been assessed a “frivolous filing” penalty or even received a “frivolous filing” warning letter.
The coordinating committee discusses the RFPTFA on morning
The “Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act”
For a more in-depth examination of my misgivings about the RFPTFA, see:
One item on the agenda was a request by the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund that NWTRCC formally “recommit to the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Bill and the efforts NCPTF is doing to get it passed in Congress.”
As I explained , I have serious misgivings about “peace tax fund” proposals in general, and think that the current incarnation of the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act in particular would do more harm than good.
However, NWTRCC had endorsed a different version of this legislation years ago, and so many people expected this new call for an endorsement to be a no-brainer.
Much debate ensued.
Robert Randall pointed out that NWTRCC’s “Statement of Purpose” includes “support of the US Peace Tax Fund Bill.”
He interpreted this as being a built-in endorsement of the latest act which would make the current debate moot.
However, no act by that name has been introduced recently — I think since — and in many important ways the current legislation does not resemble the version that NWTRCC endorsed back in the day.
I was a little worried that I would be the only one objecting to the endorsement and that this would put me outside of the general consensus of the group, but as it turns out there were many people present who expressed misgivings about peace tax fund legislation and who weren’t enthusiastic about endorsing it, and I heard more than one person express that this was a long-overdue debate.
Many of the Act’s supporters seem to have ideas of what the Act would accomplish that go way beyond the actual text of the legislation.
One said, for instance, that if the Act passed, it would effectively allow citizens to annually vote yea or nay on war or on whatever wars the government was engaged in at the time.
Some participants in the discussion were concerned that NWTRCC remain on good terms with NCPTF, in part so that we may be more influential as they recraft their strategy in the coming years.
One person said that because the Act is a long-shot to ever become law, it is best judged not by what its effects would be if it were enacted, but by what it symbolizes as a proposal that approximates the hopes of people who want legal recognition for conscientious objection to military taxation.
(Myself, I’m not sure I buy this argument, but in any case I think that the symbolism of the Act is ambiguous at best and may very well communicate a message that is, on the whole, harmful to the cause.)
The result of our discussion was that we decided to hold off on making a decision of whether or not to endorse until our meeting, at which time we will have more time to discuss the question and more time to study the points that are in debate.
A book of writings by and about Marian Franz and her work with the peace tax fund campaign is forthcoming, and will include a piece by Ruth Benn about the war tax resistance movement and its relationship with the peace tax fund campaign.
Election aftermath
There was varied reaction to the recent presidential election.
Many people were skeptical of the promise for meaningful change, and distrustful towards the Democratic party, and saw the election mostly in terms of whether it would anaesthetize progressive activists or whether it might be possible to reactivate the hopeful coalitions that helped to propel Obama into office once Hope turns to disappointment.
Others were very enthusiastic about the change and hoped that progressives and peace activists might finally be able to influence government policy.
One person went as far as to say that we’d “won” and would have to get used to being winners on the inside of the power structure instead of ignored pleaders outside of it.
Another hopefully imagined getting a group of progressive religious leaders to sit down with Obama and confront his faith with a challenge to go further than his public statements have so far suggested.
To me this all sounds like stuff of the same sort as gingerbread houses, flying carpets, and fairy godmothers, but I mention it here to show that some of the Hope bubble has infected even a skeptical group like NWTRCC.
There was much mention of “Camp Hope” — a vigil that will be held near Obama’s home in Chicago in up to inauguration day.
The goals of this vigil will be to encourage Obama to follow-through boldly on some of his more progressive campaign themes.
The demands of the vigil are meant to harmonize with, rather than to protest, the goals of the Obama campaigners, and will concentrate on actions that the new administration can take immediately via executive orders.
This is said to be partially based on a similar vigil that took place in the run-up to Jimmy Carter’s inauguration in that asked Carter to pardon Vietnam-era draft resisters and to cancel the B-1 bomber program, both of which Carter did.
A new war funding supplemental bill is expected to hit Congress in , and this will be an early test of what kind of Change we can expect from the new order, and what kind of power the current anti-war movement is capable of asserting.
The War Tax Boycott
’s war tax boycott campaign was well-received by some local war tax resistance groups, who found it a good focal point for their outreach efforts.
However, the number of people who participated in the boycott disappointed the hopes of those who initiated the campaign.
There was much discussion of whether we should continue the campaign into and if so in what fashion.
If we were to continue the campaign into — making the the climax of the campaign — this would give us little time to mount a serious outreach effort, and at the same time it would have to compete for attention with the actions of the opening months of the new Obama administration.
It might be hard to convince new resisters to join up if they’re still placing their hopes for peace with their rulers.
We eventually concluded that we would continue the campaign, but would concentrate this year on retrenching and consolidation rather than on a major outreach and publicity campaign, in preparation for a larger campaign when the inevitable Obama Disappointment sets in.
Meanwhile, local groups that find the campaign useful can continue to use it as before.
Rather than making April 15th the target date for beginning to resist, we may be better off doing what Code Pink did with its war tax resistance campaign and tell people that their resistance begins the moment they take their first affirmative step toward tax resistance, for instance by adjusting their W-4 withholding.
One person said that although she resisted taxes , she didn’t sign up for the boycott because she was only resisting a small amount and was redirecting that amount to local groups, and she had the impression that the boycott was mainly for people redirecting larger amounts to the two showcase charities highlighted by the boycott campaign.
Some people who did boycott outreach found that some folks were reluctant to sign on to the boycott for fear of the danger of being on some government list, and stressed that there should be a way for people to join the campaign anonymously.
Miscellany
Some local University of Oregon students dropped by the meeting and volunteered to create a redesigned mock-up of the nwtrcc.org web site that we could use if we’d like — a much-appreciated and spontaneous act of generosity.
NWTRCC will be trying to nurture a new regional gathering of war tax resisters — something along the lines of the New England Regional Gathering of War Tax Resisters and Supporters that is coming up later .
To this end, it will be inviting groups that are interested in hosting such a gathering to submit proposals, and will select one of these proposals to support with some seed money and other assistance.
NWTRCC decided to commit to revitalize the War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund, which seems to have run out of steam (appeals for funds go out very infrequently, and resisters are reimbursed only after long delay).
NWTRCC coordinator Ruth Benn is preparing a series of “Readings on Money.”
These include transcripts of some of the discussion on that subject at the Fall gathering in Las Vegas, Karen Marysdaughter’s essay on “The Influence of Money on Decisions to Engage in War Tax Resistance,” George Salzman’s “Inheritance and Social Responsibility,” a debate about the ethics of accepting interest on loans and bank deposits from Juanita Nelson and Bob Irwin, and a look at the intwined structure of government spending, national debt, the war machine, the federal reserve, and the income tax from Jay Sordean.
Kathy Kelly leads a workshop on “Honesty and Empathy: Questions for Collaborators”
Kathy Kelly led us through some role-playing exercises concerning collaboration and how to confront it, and shared some stories with us from her experiences with activism and humanitarian assistance.
Her public presentation at the University after the end of the NWTRCC conference session was well-appreciated by those who attended.
Kelly is an engaging speaker who relates interesting experiences vividly and well — with a great command of accents and the ability to invoke strong and varied emotions without making the audience feel like they’ve been strapped on a roller-coaster.
One of her themes: around the world, many people are forced to make great sacrifices because of the decisions our political leaders are making.
Meanwhile, what will raise us to make the sacrifices we need to make to make things right?
To those of us to whom much has been given, much will be expected in this regard.
We need to slow down and unflinchingly reassess our priorities.
“This is what grown-ups do.”
Mike Butler volunteered to bring NWTRCC into the MySpace / Facebook universe, so keep an eye out there.
Erica Weiland removes a pillar of militarism in Susan Quinlan’s workshop
Susan Quinlan demonstrated some of the techniques she uses in youth outreach to teach about the unbalanced government budget priorities and about how to build a better society by shifting your support from the pillars that support a system of injustice to the pillars that support the scaffolding of a better system.
I remember a couple of interesting stories of how people were introduced to war tax resistance.
One couple was working with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Colombia and met some war tax resisters there and then took up war tax resistance on their return home.
Another new resister had been working for an alternative newspaper that received a grant from a war tax resisters’ tax-redirection alternative fund, and learned about war tax resistance that way.
Conference attendees review part of Steev Hise’s rough cut for Death and Taxes
Steev Hise’s war tax resistance video project continues, with a projected completion date around .
Conference attendees saw a preview of a portion of the film and seemed enthusiastic about it.
The next national meeting will be held this coming Spring (early ) somewhere in the vicinity of Washington, D.C. — details to be hashed out in the coming months.
The next national will be in Cleveland, Ohio around .
And with all that, I’m still leaving a lot out.
But for now, that’ll have to do.
Tax resistance was also used as a protest against the second-class political status of the Northern Territory, and against the government’s crackdown on civil liberties (which was related to the radical union agitation).
Many resisters were jailed, and the resistance was widespread — including even the mayor of Darwin, Robert Toupein.
According to one report:
It has been stated that early in Toupein admitted, in open Court, that the tax was owing, that he had ample means to pay it, but that he would not pay a penny.
His refusal, it is stated, was because of “no representation” in the Federal Parliament.
No step was taken to enforce the order of the Court, as the police force was inadequate to stand up to any resistance.
It is even alleged that some Government servants have paid no income tax for two years.
Failure to prosecute the former mayor will surely raise a protest from residents of the Territory who have paid their taxes regularly.
By some it is contended that the Government has adopted the line of least resistance, and refrained from collecting the thousands of pounds due only to obviate all risk of disturbance.
Mr. Hardie Gibson, who followed, dealt chiefly with the payment of income tax, and referred to the anomaly of residents of the Northern Territory being asked to contribute towards the cost of their own coercion, and the upkeep of a most despotic regime.
Mr. R.M. Balding briefly endorsed Mr. Hardie Gibson’s remarks, and stated that, if the men of the Northern Territory were true to their own interests, the Fannie Bay penal establishment would have to be considerably enlarged before it could hold all those who refused to pay income tax.… With regard to income tax, those who purpose resisting payment thereof were asked to affix their signature to lists which will be prepared and left at certain business places for that purpose.
The question, paramount above all others in the present and future, is whether Papuan residents are to sit quiescent and then take the objectionable medicine of taxation without representation which is being forced upon them without a say in its expenditure and without a voice in Parliament.
We have been informed that but 10 per cent of the population of Papua have rendered returns.
Are the other 90 per cent going to sit idly by and allow this insult to their intelligence without a protest?
One victim of this iniquitious impost whose income runs to four figures, has stated definitely that he will not pay the tax.
Dozens of others are murmuring threats at the Commonwealth’s refusal to grant us the franchise, and have averred that they will suffer imprisonment rather pay.
The many scandals which have been ventilated, together with other performances, information of which has been suppressed, but which are gradually coming into the light of day and deserve opprobious censure, have caused the feeling that we should have some say in the spending of any moneys paid by us to the Commonwealth Treasury.
One thing and one only is our present demand — Elective representation and no taxation without it.
“The Courier,” as evidence of its bona fides on the question, has decided, to form a fund for the defence of any resident who may by victimised, persecuted, or prosecuted for failure to pay the tax, and to that end we open the list with a contribution of Five Guineas.
Every white resident throughout Papua is asked to rally to the support of the movement — No taxation without representation.
A public meeting convened by the Northern Territory Industrial Council at the instance of the Darwin branch of the Australian Workers Union was held in the Don Stadium on .
The subject for discussion was: — “Taxation without Representation,[”] with the object of inaugurating some concerted movement as a protest against such taxation.
Mr. J. Thomas, chairman of the industrial council occupied tho chair.
Among the speakers were Messrs.
W. Blount, Hardie Gibson, Alf.
Paine, Tom M’Donald and J. M’Donald.
It was moved by Mr. Alf.
Paine, and seconded by Mr. T. M’Grath, “That we citizens of Darwin refuse to pay any taxation until we receive representation.”
An amendment was moved by Mr. T. M’Donald, seconded by Mr. J.J. M’Donald: — “That this meeting of Darwin citizens condemns the injustice of taxation without representation, and calls upon the Minister through the Director of the Territory to withdraw all summonses on this head pending the question of taxation as it effects the Territory being fully discussed, and that we protest against the system of garnishee as set forth in section 50a of the Income Tax Assessment Act of , and we warn the employers of Darwin that any attempt to put it into force from this date onwards will lead to industrial trouble.”
A division was taken, and the amendment was carried by a majority of at least three to one.
A further resolution was passed that the members of the Advisory Council place the above motion before the Director of the Northern Territory.
(A Contributed Report.)
The following is a resume of the speeches delivered at the public meeting on :
Mr. Blunt (Executive Council A.W.U.) said the present struggle reminded him of the fight for liberty in , and , a struggle which he thought would never occur again in the history of Australia.
He referred to the fight in which the machinery of the Coercion Act was used against them, to the rise and progress of the Australian Labor Party, the fight for adult suffrage, and never thought he would again be called upon to participate in a fight for representation in his own country.
For ten years the Territory had been under the control of an Administrator, and very little was known of the country.
Presuming that the country’s chief industry was stock-raising, the government appeared to think that the Territory’s best interests would be served by the appointment of a veterinary surgeon as Administrator at a salary of £2000 a year.
But every effort made for the advancement of the interests of the Territory was passed out by Gilruth.
The ballot box, a boasted institution throughout the British Empire, was not here, and the situation was irksome to any man, but especially to those who had enjoyed that privilege in other parts.
Every man had a rightful claim to a say as to in what manner the country should be governed, and how their money was to be spent.
Here in the Northern Territory they had, however, direct taxation without any form of representation — an unjust condition of affairs which brought on a feeling of antagonism to all forms of government.
The conduct of the Government was rapidly creating in the Territory a strong feeling of antagonism to all forms of Government.
We had a striking example of a similar instance when the British attempted to force the Americans to pay taxes without representation, with the result that the United States of American sprang into existence.
He referred to the proposal by the British in the American war of independence, to let loose the Red Indians on the Americans, and to the statement by Pitt in the House of Commons “Shame on them!
They would not be British if they would not fight for their independence.”
Pitt gloried in the Americans in their struggle.
How could a country be honestly governed if the people had no say?
Common sense must tell them that where the government of a country rested in the hands of two or three people, they would govern it in their own interests and not in the interests of the people.
They wanted the Government of the Territory more in the hands of the people and he held that in the local population sufficient brains could be found without sending 3000 miles away down south.
Mr. Burton, a returned soldier and President of the Darwin Branch A.W.U., endorsed the remarks of the previous speaker.
He was one of those men who had left this country to fight for freedom on the other side of the world.
Each and every one of those countries engaged in that bitter war, even the unspeakable Turk, had representation in the Government of his country.
Now he had come back to his own country to find himself placed on the level of a blackfellow or a Chinaman.
He had no vote.
The Germans would have treated him better.
Mr. Gibson (A.M.I.E.U.) referred to the agitation in Papua where a strong fight was being made against the injustice of taxation without representation.
Territorians must keep up their reputation and not allow Papua to lead the way.
He pointed out one unjust phase of the question as affecting the Territory in the fact that the Arbitration Court in New South Wales had ruled that an ordinary unskilled laborer required not less than 12s per day as a living wage, and was exempted accordingly.
In Queensland the minimum wage Was £200 per annum, but if living was £50 per annum dearer in Queensland than in Sydney a further exemption of £50 above Queensland should be allowed in Darwin.
He was afraid that pressing for payment of the tax would create a revolt in the Territory and he counselled first to endeavour to obtain their end by peaceful means.
Don’t refuse to pay your taxation, but don’t break your necks running up to the office to pay for fear of a blister.
In other words he counselled passive resistance to see how far the authorities were prepared to go.
They would pick their marks as was done in the cass of the Mayor, but when the final move was made he would not be in the rear.
He did not want trouble like they had last year, he could not see the necessity for it, but unless the Government adopted different methods they would spread the seeds of Bolshevism faster than by any other method.
The Government had hounded men out of jobs they had occupied for years, and when these unfortunate men again got a job the Government came down with a blister to take their money back again.
Another unfair point: An unskilled laborer may earn £150 in 14 weeks at the meatworks.
The exemption being £56 he would have to pay taxation on the £94 despite the fact that he may be unemployed for the rest of the year.
Mr. Bollon: We have held meeting after meeting and what good did it do?
A few men hopping over the fence at Gilruth finished things at once.
We should absolutely refuse to pay the tax until representation was granted.
(Applause.)
Mr. T. M’Donald said the attitude of the people was not so much against the tax — it was a question of taxation without representation.
In all countries a certain amount of representation was given before the people were required to pay the tax, and here in the Commonwcaltih all the States had representation in Parliament, the Northern Territory being the only exception.
He recognised that they were up against the Commonwealth Government, and was not anxious to cause trouble.
They should be able to get along without trouble or with the least possible trouble, and he suggested that the Director of the Territory be asked to keep back summonses until the people have had a chance to discuss the matter and see what basis could be arrived at to pay the taxes.
Mr. Paine said he had moved at the A.W.U. meeting that those present pledge themselves not to pay the tax till representation was granted.
He had been asked to modify the motion but refused to do so.
They should [pay?] nothing, but sit tight and let the Government do their best.
Hang out — stick to it!
Mr. Culliney: Can you tell us what to do if they put the bailiff in?
It is all very well to lead us into the forest, but who is to lead us out?
Mr. Paine said the bailiff was a tough question, but if none would pay, no one would compel him.
Mr. Balding said he had refused to pay 12 months ago.
Since then he had had numerous notices from the Government through the post.
A Government officer had been instructed to stop the amount out of his pay, but he had challenged them to do so without an order from the Court despite the fact that he had got a barrister’s opinion that they could legally do so.
In answer to a question Mr. Gibson said the Act was rotten and ought to be passed out of the country along with the party that passed it.
The Mayor Before the Court.
On , before Mr. E.C. Playford, S.M., Robert Toupein, Mayor of Darwin, was charged on an unsatisfied judgment summons, by the Commissioner of Taxation, for whom Mr. D.A. Roberts appeared, with non-payment of income tax.
Defendant, who went into the witness box, admitted owing the amount, but stated that he declined, on principle, to pay income tax until such time as political representation was granted to the Northern Territory.
An order was made for payment forthwith, but, so far as we have been able to ascertain, payment has not yet been made.
The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund has just sent out a new appeal.
Some background:
The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund is a mutual aid fund designed to assist ourselves in the event of an IRS seizure of interest and penalty amounts.
It is a way of spreading the financial cost of resistance and redirection amongst all of us, rather than having it borne only by those few who experience collections.
The Fund, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in , is administered by volunteers in North Manchester, IN.
Appeals are sent occasionally, asking each person on the mailing list to send in a certain amount to cover requests for reimbursement of interest and penalties to individual war tax resisters who have had money seized by the IRS.
For example, the last appeal was mailed in , seeking $21.07 per member to reimburse three war tax resisters.
However much comes in is what is used to split up and reimburse the resisters.
That appeal, the 41st in the fund’s history, netted $6,392 — 87% of what was requested — from the 300 contributors.
The new appeal, in which I am participating as a requestor and as a contributor, is aiming to reimburse four war tax resisters for a total of a little over $10,000 in interest and penalties that have been seized from us by the IRS.
Each contributor to the fund is being asked to contribute $33.63 towards this goal.
If you would like to join this mutual aid group, here’s what you need to know:
We encourage you to be part of this important support organization.
If you are not already a member send a note to the address below asking to be added to the active member list.
WTRPF PO Box 25 N. Manchester, IN 46962
I’m back from the NWTRCC National Gathering in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
I’ll share some of my impressions and go into more detail in the coming days.
I flew into Charlottesville and was picked up by one of our hosts — who’d be shuttling incoming conferencers all weekend and who did a fantastic job of making sure we all got collected, assembled, fed, and then given a comfortable place to lay our heads at the end of the day.
We passed the new America tombstone on the way back to Harrisonburg where we were holding the sessions of our meeting at the Community Mennonite Church.
After the administrative committee met on morning and afternoon to grease the wheels for the larger coordinating committee meetings, night was devoted to introductions, a viewing of a video on corrupt and insufficiently-monitored government spending on the Afghanistan War, and reports from local groups about how their Tax Day actions went and what they’ve been up to.
Clare Hanrahan shared some stories from the tour she and Coleman Smith have been conducting through Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina to meet with peace & justice activists in that area, forge alliances between them, and learn about the state of the regional movement.
They’ve been blogging their adventures on the War Resisters League Asheville site.
Lots of people reported that their tax day protests had been upstaged by the Tea Party demonstrations this year, though a few groups took the “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” approach and partied along with the rest of them.
One person noted that with more people e-filing their tax returns, the phenomenon of the last-minute post office rush has diminished, and there’s less media attention and less of an audience for leafletting and such.
Ruth Benn reported on how in New York they held a viewing of tax resistance related excerpts from Boston Legal and Stranger Than Fiction as a discussion-prompter.
Robert Randall reported that an attempt to focus messaging around the single issue of opposition to the Iraq War had seemed promising at first, as the war became more unpopular even in his red state of Georgia, but that it hadn’t seemed to lead to any noticeable uptick in interest in war tax resistance or in new resisters.
Many people noted the increasing challenge of developing interest in our message in a time when the anti-war movement is suffering from a post-election tranquilization.
Ray Gingerich reflected on the difficulty he is having in trying to reinvigorate the war tax resistance tradition in the Mennonite church.
On tax day, he sends his letter of protest to his church.
He also recalled for us that their local war tax resistance group used to be much more active and at one time they had a mutual aid fund that they used to defray the costs of penalties, interest, and frivolous filing fines incurred by individual members.
morning
After breakfast morning, we discussed what we thought of a rough cut of an upcoming war tax resistance film project, and talked about what we thought would be the best use of the available footage.
Then Bill Ramsey gave us an update on the War Tax Boycott project, and we discussed options for modifying the campaign going forward.
Here are some of the comments from my notes (these are all paraphrased and on-the-fly, so may not represent what these folks actually said or meant to say):
David Waters
I love the palm cards.
Pam Allee
It would be good to keep the campaign going on a low simmer during the sleepy times so that we would be ready to jump in with a flashier campaign when the moment is right.
Bill Ramsey
I recommend a scaled-down campaign in which we keep the website updated but reduce the budget.
Robert Randall
How can we hold on to the new resisters whom we learn about for the first time when they sign up for the boycott?
Ray Gingerich
I’m confused as to whether the boycott is meant only for first-timers or if it’s for everyone; to me it seemed gimmicky and not particularly appealing.
Susan Balzer
Some people might not want to sign on to the boycott because they don’t want to be “on a list” and they might be more comfortable if there’s a way to remain anonymous.
Jim Stockwell
I think maybe “boycott” is a threatening or discouraging word to some people.
Clare Hanrahan
The hard copy boycott sign-on sheets weren’t at all popular when we were tabling.
Daniel Woodham
We should make the palm cards less likely to go stale by removing the year and references to specific wars/issues.
Geov Parrish
The value of the campaign is mainly as a vehicle for publicizing war tax resistance as an option, not so much in getting people to sign on.
Erica Weiland
I wonder if by framing the campaign as a one-year thing we prompt people to make their resistance temporary.
Clare Hanrahan
I do low-income resistance and I redirect unwaged labor, not money.
I think the war tax resistance movement should honor that and recognize that option for boycott participants (not assume everyone has a dollar amount to redirect).
Tim Godshall (and others)
We need to have better follow-up with the people who sign on — by phone is better than by email.
Robert Randall
Maybe we could parcel out some of the following-up to people in our network list.
Next came a discussion of our finances and a report from the fundraising committee, and then we broke for lunch.
afternoon
First thing on afternoon we had a panel presentation and group discussion about the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act and about NWTRCC’s relationship with the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund.
This was the most contentious item on the agenda, and I’m going to leave you all in suspense about it by writing it up in a future blog post all its own rather than putting it here.
After this, we broke up into smaller group sessions.
In mine, a group of maybe twenty resisters just shared some of their recent experiences with resistance and with the IRS.
Sharing our war stories like this is one of the best parts of these meetings, and is also a great way of keeping our fingers on the pulse of how IRS enforcement trends are changing.
I didn’t take notes during that session since it seemed to be a more-intimate sharing of personal information than the general meeting.
I did write down one quote though that was too good to miss, from Clare Hanrahan:
“I used to say that they could boil me in oil before I’d pay any war taxes, but now that I know that they could actually do that…”
One idea I came away with was that it would be nice to have some tips from war tax resistance veterans about how to deal with “mixed marriages” in which one partner is a resister and the other one is not.
There are some tricky questions, especially when finances get tangled up together.
I’m hoping, next time I have some free time, to put some time into collecting some of these stories and tips.
The next full-group session was about “organizing strategies and outreach ideas in the Obama era.”
I didn’t take notes here either as I was facilitating and had to devote all of my attention to that.
What I mostly recall from the discussion is that people were less interested in talking about strategies, techniques, and outreach ideas and more interested in talking about what sort of messaging we should and shouldn’t use.
Before dinner was another set of small-group breakout sessions.
I joined the web team, discussing the nitty-gritty of web site maintenance and design, none of which is really worth relating here.
was our business meeting, in which decisions that require consensus approval of the coordinating committee are made, folks are rotated onto and off of the administrative committee (Erica Weiland is joining us this time), we review the budget and priorities and how the coordinator is doing, check in on the progress of ongoing projects, and plan for the next gathering.
The first half of the meeting was largely taken up by Peace Tax Fund-related discussion, which I’m holding off reporting on until a future post.
For the second half, I was the facilitator and so took no notes.
So you’ll just have to wait until Ruth Benn posts her meeting minutes for a full picture of what took place.
The conservative call to send teabags to DC to protest high taxes may be based on a event, but organizers are newbies when compared to a 23-year-old tax protest underway in northern Indiana.
There, peace activists gave been quietly supporting those who dare to withhold taxes because they don’t want their money to support the US military budget.
There’s a price to pay for that kind of protest, of course, in the form of penalties and interest on taxes due.
That’s where the War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund (WTRPF) comes in.
Some links that have caught my eye recently:
The Green Zone: How a Greening Culture Cannot Ignore the Military.
The elephant in the room during the debate over the environment and climate change and what-have-you is U.S. militarism.
If “the largest source of pollution in the world is the military, particularly the military at war” then maybe environmentalists have something better to do than encourage people to change their lightbulbs.
Tax resistance by American fiscal conservatives against taxpayer-funded bailouts and deficit spending continues to be an idea that has yet to come, though a lot of folks are meekly hoping somebody else will get the ball rolling.
The latest of these ideas goes by the name “Operation Dep 9” and encourages folks to re-file their W-4 forms, claiming 9 allowances so as to reduce or eliminate federal income tax withholding (this is the same technique that many war tax resisters use).
China’s official Xinhua news agency said the local government’s plan to more strictly enforce payment of taxes from the furniture makers and dealers has been suspended in the face of the opposition.
China’s furniture industry has suffered in the global economic downturn from a decline in demand from export markets.
Thousands of similar protests over taxes, land disputes or corruption are reported in China each year.
A while back, I applied to the War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund for reimbursement of $813 in penalties and interest that the IRS had seized from me along with taxes I had refused to pay voluntarily.
I was one of four resisters who applied to the fund during this appeal cycle.
The Fund then sent out the details about our requests to the hundreds of fund participants.
These people chipped in more than 79% of the total requested amount — in my case, $649.
The penalties and interest came to about 16½% of the amount I had resisted, but after taking this reimbursement into account, the total cost to me personally came to only a little over 3%.
It takes the IRS a long time to go through its process of seizing money from resisters (I started refusing to pay assessed taxes in the tax year, and they seized this money from me ).
Since the value of money is being constantly eaten away by inflation, seen even from a purely pecuniary point-of-view this was a pretty good investment for me — a 3% nominal loss over three years.
In any case, it should shut the mouth of anyone who claims the potential for dire financial hardship as an excuse not to resist.
But speaking more practically and from a broader point-of-view, this allowed many people to participate in my tax resistance, some of whom are unable to participate more directly by resisting themselves.
The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund
is designed to encourage and support war tax resisters by partially defraying
the cost of penalties and interest they might incur as a result of their
resistance. The fund does this by sending out periodic appeals to its members,
asking each one to share equally in reimbursing the resister.
In this way, people who are unable or unwilling to do war tax resistance
themselves, but who are sympathetic to war tax resistance, can help people who
are bolder or better-situated than themselves.
It just released a new appeal for funds, the first one since February 2009.
The new appeal covers $10,776 in penalties and interest charged against two
war tax resisters: Mike Palecek and Michael C. Moore. Palecek’s is for a
$5,000 “frivolous filing” penalty, which he plans to appeal (if he wins the
appeal, he will return the $5,000 to the Penalty Fund).
Spread out over the various fund participants, this comes to $38.90 per
person.
If you would like to join up with (or donate to) the War Tax Resisters Penalty
Fund, write to them at
P.O. Box 25, North
Manchester, IN 46962.
That’s too bad, because it’s a fine book, one of those large-sized volumes full of photos from the archives and such.
It tells the story of the development of nonviolent political action theory and practice in the United States, with brief bios of some of the important figures, and in-depth looks at some of the movements that most exemplified or advanced nonviolent resistance — such as the anti-war movements, the women’s suffrage movement, the civil rights movement, and the labor movement.
Of course I kept a close eye out for any mentions of the tactic of tax resistance so I could report my findings here.
The book has a more complete story of the founding of Peacemakers in than I’d seen elsewhere.
Peacemakers launched the modern American war tax resistance movement, and just about anyone who practiced war tax resistance in America between World War Ⅱ and the Vietnam War was connected with that group.
According to The Power of the People, Peacemakers was founded mostly due to the efforts of Ernest & Marion Bromley and Juanita & Wally Nelson, and it drew about half of its original membership from a leftist anarcho-pacifist group called the Committee for Nonviolent Revolution that had been founded in Chicago a couple of years earlier.
Peacemakers was more Gandhian than it was Marxist and rejected much of the rhetoric of CNVR in favor of small direct action projects.
It was organized as a network of local radical pacifist cells, participants in its local activities being deemed members.
During the following ten years [after it was founded in ], until the formation of the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA), Peacemakers was the most active nonviolent direct action group and the initiator of organized war tax resistance.
A sidebar goes into more detail:
Peacemakers was one of the first organizations to be formed after World War Ⅱ by radical activists inspired by the growing theory and accomplishments of nonviolence throughout the world.
There was a growing conviction among many that the times called for a grass-roots movement, no matter how small in its beginnings, which was committed to a vigorous and unmistakable disassociation from military power.
Although it never became a large organization, Peacemakers did have an important effect on many of the people and organizations which came to make up the modern nonviolent movement.
Peacemakers attempted to build a decentralized and self-disciplined movement which stressed local initiative and group coordination along the lines of the nonviolent revolutionary movement in India.
Emphasis was put on building intentional communities which practiced communal living.
“Groups or cells are the real basis of the movement,” Peacemakers announced, “for this is not an attempt to organize another pacifist membership organization, which one joins by signing a statement or paying a membership fee.”
Instead, Peacemakers emphasized a living program which included resistance to the draft and war taxes, personal transformation, and group participation in work for political and economic democracy.
Uniquely non-organizational, Peacemakers has no national office, paid staff or membership list; decisions are made at yearly Continuation Committee meetings.
The major connecting link between individuals and groups considering themselves Peacemakers is The Peacemaker, published since as a forum for letters, announcements, and accounts of the experiences of radical pacifists.
Peacemakers initiated organized work against war taxes and since a number of its members have been imprisoned for refusing to pay for war.
Peacemakers at the Ohio cell organized a land trust to remove property from the market place and established the Peacemaker Sharing Fund, a mutual aid plan designed to insure aid to dependents of imprisoned Peacemakers and to help finance group projects.
During the Vietnam war, the sharing fund became the main vehicle for donations to meet the needs of war resisters’ families.
When the government seized the land trust home where Peacemakers Marion and Ernest Bromley lived, in , allegedly to collect taxes on the “income” to the sharing fund, Peacemakers exposed the fraud and persuaded the government to withdraw its case.
Peacemakers organized a number of direct action projects in the late Forties and Fifties, including demonstrations in Puerto Rico against U.S. colonialism and a disarmament bicycle trip across Europe by four pacifists which preceded the San Francisco to Moscow Walk by nearly ten years.
Peacemakers also sponsored the “Walk for Survival” in , the first large post-war peace walk in the U.S., and set up Operation Freedom, a fund to aid people in Tennessee and Mississippi who had been deprived of home or job for seeking their civil rights.
Peacemakers lost some of its initial impetus by the mid-Fifties as it encountered the difficulty of maintaining a decentralized and largely anarchist program and at the same time keeping a disciplined and well organized radical group functioning.
Some Peacemakers went on to join or form other nonviolent groups which incorporated the radical view Peacemakers helped to germinate, while others in the organization gave more emphasis to life style and nonviolent principles.
Peacemakers published a “Handbook on the Nonpayment of War Taxes,” and has also offered summer training and orientation programs in nonviolence since , often organized and led by long-time resisters and Peacemakers Wally and Juanita Nelson.
What happened between the time when Peacemakers was leading the war tax resistance charge and , when the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee was founded?
There was another group, simply called “National War Tax Resistance,” that took the reins during the Vietnam War.
was, as the CNVA Bulletin declared, “The Year of Vietnam.”
Picketing and sit-downs across the country marked the announcement of the first US bombing of North Vietnam on .
These continued throughout the month and much effort was expended gathering signatures for a new appeal, the Declaration of Conscience, circulated by radical pacifist groups, urging civil disobedience.
The Peacemakers group in Cincinnati organized a “No Tax for War in Vietnam Committee” calling for tax resistance.
In a separate group — War Tax Resistance, coordinated by Bob Calvert — was established and at the time included some 200 local tax resistance centers across the country.
Nonpayment of war taxes, practiced by Quakers and others, disappeared as a pacifist testimony soon after the Civil War and Thoreau’s famous stand against the U.S. foray in Mexico.
It first reappeared in World War Ⅱ when a few widely scattered individuals refused to pay federal taxes on the grounds that there was no way to prevent a significant part of their money from being used for military purposes.
One resister, Ernest Bromley, was prosecuted and imprisoned for his refusal.
Many others began to inform the Internal Revenue Service that payment violated their principles.
The enactment during World War Ⅱ of a measure which required employers to withhold taxes from their employees caused particular difficulties for pacifists and led to the formation of Peacemakers in .
A Peacemaker committee promoted tax refusal and provided research, literature, action suggestions, and publicity for those in the tax resistance movement.
Although many hundreds of people were refusing to pay income taxes during , the government prosecuted and imprisoned only six: James Otsuka of Indiana, Maurice McCrackin of Ohio, Eroseanna Robinson of Illinois, Walter Gormly of Iowa, Arthur Evans of Colorado, and Neil Haworth of Connecticut.
These imprisonments and the seizure of a few cars and houses by the IRS, served to highlight the tax refusal testimony and establish it as a major nonviolent principle and tactic.
Tax resistance, like other forms of opposition to the military, increased dramatically during the Vietnam War.
In the federal government levied an additional tax on every private telephone, and in a rare moment of candor, admitted that the money would help subsidize the war in Indochina.
Peacemakers, the War Resisters League, and other nonviolent groups urged refusal of this tax and in the following years countless thousands heeded their call.
Under the leadership of Bob and Angie Calvert, War Tax Resistance was formed in as a separate organization to investigate all aspects and ramifications of conscientious tax refusal.
During the war there were over 200 local war tax resistance centers, as well as a number of “alternative life funds” which rechanneled refused tax money back into the local community for constructive purposes.
Many of these continued after the end of the war.
The tactic of claiming enough dependents so that no income tax would be withheld became more widespread as the Vietnam war continued.
Often the tax refuser would make clear the moral grounds for the protest by listing, for example, “all the Vietnamese” as dependents.
Refusing to pay for war by claiming excessive exemptions brought particularly strong response from the government.
A number of people were prosecuted and imprisoned: Jim Shea, Karl Meyer, William Himmelbauer, Mark Riley, Ellis Rece, Carole Nelson, John Leininger, and Martha Tranquilli (a 64-year-old grandmother and nurse).
The tax resistance movement continued after the war and grew to include both pacifists and non-pacifists who could no longer in conscience support the military priorities of the government.
As more and more tax money was directed toward the [Reagan era] military buildup, many activists revived interest in war tax resistance.
Protests were organized each year, and individual resisters tried a variety of means to deny the government money for war.
In , demonstrations were held in Dallas, Atlanta, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other cities and 24 people were arrested at IRS offices in New York City.
The following year, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee was formed by the Center on Law and Pacifism, Conscience and Military Tax Campaign, WRL, Peacemakers and eighty local groups.
featured the largest show of war tax resistance actions in , including Ralph Dull, an Ohio farmer and tax resister , who drove a truckload of grain to the IRS office as payment for his taxes.
The IRS instituted a “frivolous returns” penalty to discourage the filing of returns with any but the requested information, and some resisters began an insurance fund, pooling their resources to pay fines and interest charges levied against fellow tax resisters.
It was e.e. cummings, I used to love this when I was an early teenager about a conscientious objector [“i sing of Olaf glad and big”].
There was one line, “there is some shit I will not eat,” that reverberated in my social conscience since probably age 12.
There comes a point when there is something out there that we have to reject ultimately, and we have to throw ourselves on the wheel to stop it — even if the wheel devours us.
The boycott of taxes is so strong, so potentially powerful, that I guess I am urging other people to go forward without fear.
We are right.
War is wrong.
We are approaching the totalitarian state.
Take from them their finances, and we take their strength.
Eliminate the nexus between corporate wealth and industry and politics.
In this era there is so much to protest against, and tax is a very salient part of that.
A note about “frivolous filing” notices.
The IRS has gotten in the habit of responding to taxpayer protests with $5,000 frivolous filing penalties — even if the protests accompany a tax return that has been filled out correctly and legally.
What’s worse is that by the IRS’s rules, in order to appeal such a fine, you have to first pay it.
Peace activists have a resource of financial support when they accrue penalties for resisting taxes, participating in civil disobedience or in nonviolent direct action.
Through the PSC, the cost of a person’s or family’s penalty can be defrayed by almost 100%.
This is possible because a community of almost one hundred people have come together and committed to help each other with their fines.
And from the Chicago News Examiner from
, an article by Marj
Halperin:
The conservative call to send teabags to
DC to protest high taxes may be
based on a event, but organizers are
newbies when compared to a 23-year-old tax protest underway in northern
Indiana.
There, peace activists gave been quietly supporting those who dare to
withhold taxes because they don’t want their money to support the
US military
budget. There’s a price to pay for that kind of protest, of course, in the
form of penalties and interest on taxes due. That’s where
the War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund
(WTRPF) comes in.
Organizers send out appeal letters from time to time, asking for
contributions from those who agree with the protest but don’t have the nerve — or resources — to withhold their own taxes. Each letter briefly describes
the status of individuals who have withheld their taxes.
San Francisco’s David Gross stopped paying federal income taxes when the
US invaded Iraq,
“and started working for my values instead of against them.” He quit his job
and reduced his income to the point where he no longer owes federal income
tax, and discusses his efforts on the web.
A former nun from North Carolina owes $1,749 in penalties for withholding
taxes in . “I cannot in
conscience pay for war and killing, weapons and bombs… these our federal
taxes perpetuate,” she writes in the latest appeal to supporters.
A brunswick, Georgia activist cites “the First Amendment of the
US Constitution
and certain
US treaty
obligations to honor the religious practices of its citizens” when he
withholds federal taxes in opposition to war, adding “the government has
provided me no way of paying taxes which does not violate my faith in God.”
In return, his paycheck has been garnisheed to collect $7.027 in interest and
penalties.
The WTRPF asks only for
what it needs. The current appeal went to 300 active contributors, asking
each for $33.63 to raise a total of $10,089 (including $300 for postage and
printing, $200 for the
WTRPF organization). Non
profit fundraising doesn’t get much more honest than that.
So, while the conservatives’ “national day of protest” is good for plenty of
air time, the WTRPF has a
no-frills approach to protesting the military budget — one that also helps
individuals feel like they’re making a difference.
People will be less reluctant to take risks in a tax resistance campaign if
they know other people are willing to share those risks. One way of providing
this sort of reassurance is for resisters to join together in a mutual
insurance plan, so that if the government takes legal action against a
resister, or retaliates against them in some other way, they won’t have to
bear these consequences alone.
Today I’ll review some examples of how a variety of tax resistance campaigns
have created mutual insurance plans to protect resisters.
War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund
The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund
reimburses American war tax resisters who have penalties & interest
seized by the
IRS.
The fund is operated by a team of resisters and sympathizers, and has hundreds
of subscribers:
In a core group of 83 people across the
country decided we could easily share $463.14 in penalties and interest
incurred by a few military tax resisters who appealed to the war tax
resistance community for help. The more people we could recruit to shoulder
the penalties and interest of resisters, the lighter the burden for everyone.
With the modest help we could provide, conscientious resisters were able to
keep on keeping on.
The penalty fund had the added benefit of making us all tax resisters, not
just those who withheld all or a portion of their income taxes. The base list
of supporters has been as high as 800 people sharing the weight. In nearly
every appeal, at least 200 people respond, usually more. In all we’ve paid
out about $250,000 to help resisters stay in the struggle.
Resisters who have had money seized by the
IRS
send the fund documentation showing how much of the seizure was the result
of interest and penalties, and then the fund sends out an appeal to its
members to help reimburse the cost:
We divide the total amount for all resisters by the number of active names on
the membership list to arrive at a “share.” We then send out an appeal to
both actives and inactive members. Each contributor pays all of a share or
whatever amount she can afford. Some pay more than a share. If we collect 75
percent of the total we ask for, each resister gets 75 percent of the amount
they requested. We cannot promise that we will collect the total amount
requested; usually, however, we can reimburse between 50% and 80% of each
appeal.
I have personal experience with this mutual insurance plan. In
the
IRS
seized some bank accounts of mine to recover taxes I had refused to pay. This
included $813 in interest and penalties. I applied to the War Tax Resisters
Penalty Fund, which sent me a check for $649 from the amount the subscribers
to the fund pledged.
Irish Land League
When the
National
Land League launched a rent strike targeting English absentee landlords in
Ireland in , it made sure resisters knew
it would have their backs if the landlords tried to evict them. The leaders
of the League issued a rent strike manifesto from Kilmainham Jail that
declared:
If you only act together in the spirit to which within the last two years
you have countless times pledged your vows, they can no more evict a whole
nation than they can imprison them.
The funds of the National Land League will be poured out unstintingly for the
support of all who may endure eviction in the course of the struggle. Our
exiled brothers in America may be relied upon to contribute if necessary as
many millions of money as they have contributed thousands to starve out
landlordism and bring English tyranny to its knees.
One of the ways this played out was for evicted tenants to be temporarily
put up, along with their livestock if any, on the property of unevicted
tenants and sympathetic landowners, in what came to be called “Land League
Villages.” Each family was given a small monthly allowance from the Land
League.
Dublin Water Charge Strike
In , the resistance campaign against the
water charge in Dublin initiated a mutual insurance fund. One of the campaign
leaders recalls:
Obviously the council/government tactic was to try to individualise their
intimidation. By summonsing individuals to court maybe they could bypass the
mass participation that the protests against disconnections had seen. The
campaign immediately took a decision that when any individual was summonsed
to court, we would turn up and contest every case — and that we would turn up
in force. It was at this time that we made a decision which would prove
crucial to the success of the campaign. We decided to initiate a membership
of the campaign at £2 per household. This money would go into a warchest to
pay legal fees so that no individual would be left facing a legal bill. The
idea that the individuals being taken to court were representing all of us
was paramount. Within weeks 2,500 households had paid the £2 membership fee,
and within 12 months there were over 10,000 paid-up households making the
campaign without doubt the biggest to have existed in decades.
Breton Association
When Charles Ⅹ of France attempted to bypass the legislature and enact his own
taxes in , French liberals in the Breton
Association organized tax resistance and created a fund to defray the costs of
any tax resisters who were prosecuted. By the terms of the Association’s
manifesto:
We declare… [t]o subscribe individually for ten francs… This subscription
will form a common stock or fund for all Brittany, destined to indemnify the
subscribers for any expense they may be put to by their refusal to pay any
illegal contributions imposed upon the public…
And this is how the fund was to be administered:
[Elected procurators are to] receive the subscriptions, to afford indemnities
conformably to the [section quoted above], at the request of any subscriber
prosecuted for the payment of illegal contributions; to sue in his name…
for justice against the exactors by all possible means allowed by law…
War of the Regulation
The Regulator movement, a tax resistance rebellion in pre-American Revolution
North Carolina, had an oath that members took that committed each of them to
come to the aid of any others who might be arrested or whose property was
being seized for nonpayment:
I will, with the aid of other sufficient help, go and take, if in my power,
from said officer, and return to the party from whom taken; and in case any
one concerned should be imprisoned, or under arrest, or otherwise confined,
or if his estate, or any part thereof, by reason or means of joining this
company of Regulators, for refusing to comply with the extortionate demands
of unlawful tax gatherers, that I will immediately exert my best endeavors to
raise as many of said subscribers as will be force sufficient, and, if in my
power, I will set the said person at liberty…
The oath also created a mutual insurance pledge:
I do further promise and swear that if, in case this, our scheme, should be
broken or otherwise fail, and should any of our company be put to expense or
under any confinement, that I will bear an equal share in paying and making
up said loss to the sufferer.
Reformed Israel of Yahweh
Members of the small Christian group called the Reformed Israel of Yahweh
were, like its founder, conscientious objectors to military taxation. When
some of the members of the group were convicted on tax evasion charges, the
Reformed Israel of Yahweh organization paid their fines.
Pacific Yearly Meeting
A committee of the collection of American Quaker congregations known as the
Pacific Yearly Meeting administers something it calls “the Fund for Concerns:”
Its purpose is to assist members and attenders of Monthly Meetings to follow
individual leadings arising from peace, social order, or spiritual concerns.
… Up to $100 per fiscal year per person will be available to help with the
interest and penalty expenses of war tax resisters who are members or regular
attenders of a Monthly Meeting. The Monthly Meeting must indicate approval
and provide matching funds.
New York Yearly Meeting
During the Vietnam War, the New York Yearly Meeting advocated war tax
resistance and “promised financial help through special committees if [Quaker
resisters] changed jobs or refused to pay taxes in protest against the war.”
Papuan Courier
In 1919, Papua, which had been a territory occupied and run by the German
Empire until World War Ⅰ when Australia took over, began to agitate against
taxation without representation, and many people refused to pay.
The Papuan Courier, which was sympathetic to the
tax resisters,
…as evidence of its bona fides on the question, has decided, to form a fund
for the defence of any resident who may by victimised, persecuted, or
prosecuted for failure to pay the tax, and to that end we open the list with
a contribution of Five Guineas.
Tithe War
In , Irish Catholics rebelled
against paying government-mandated tithes to the Anglican church. In this
case, the Catholic church itself provided some insurance to the resisters.
The Anglican archbishop Richard Whately complained:
Every possible legal evasion has been resorted to to prevent the incumbent
from obtaining his due. A parish purse has been raised to meet law expenses
for this purpose, and the result has been that in most instances nothing
whatever, in others a very small proportion of the arrears, has been
recovered. … [One Anglican clergyman] instituted a tithe-suit which was
decided in his favour; but, instead of receiving the amount, he was met by an
appeal to the High Court of Delegates, and is informed that a continued
resistance to the utmost extremity of the law is to be supported by a parish
purse.
Addio-Pizzo Movement
In , a number of individuals and businesses
opposed to paying mafia protection money began to use a number of techniques
to interrupt the payments and to support those resisters whom the mafia was
threatening with reprisals. The mayor of Palermo, Diego Cammarata, pledged
€50,000 to assist merchants who had been victims of extortion.
Peacemakers
The group “Peacemakers,” which launched the modern American war tax resistance
movement , had a mutual
insurance component from the beginning:
Peacemakers at the Ohio cell… established the Peacemaker Sharing Fund, a
mutual aid plan designed to insure aid to dependents of imprisoned
Peacemakers and to help finance group projects. During the Vietnam war, the
sharing fund became the main vehicle for donations to meet the needs of war
resisters’ families.
Penalty Sharing Community
The Iowa Peace Network maintains a mailing list of persons who have made a
commitment to the Penalty Sharing Community
to share in the penalties assessed to individuals and families who have
chosen to resist war taxes or have participated in civil disobedience or
non-violent direct action. When a request for assistance is received, a
mailing is sent out which explains the resister’s situation and the amount of
money needed. For example, if the resister was assessed a $300.00 penalty,
each of the persons in the Community would pay an equal portion of the
$300.00. Thus if there were 200 people in the Community, each would pay
$1.50. The Iowa Peace Network will also add into the amount requested its
costs for printing and mailing. Such costs have proven to be minimal.
Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters
Members of the Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters redirected their federal taxes
into an “alternative fund” that served partially as an escrow account, and
partially as a way of redirecting some of the money to charitable
organizations. Part of the fund was reserved to help defray any legal costs
incurred by members in the course of their resistance.
“New Rush” Resisters
White miners at the “New Rush” in Kimberly, South Africa, voted in
to form “a Defence League and Protection
Association… not to assail the Government, but to protect individuals if
assailed unrighteously by the Government.” The pledge of the association said
in part:
I shall to the utmost of my power, with purse and person, protect any and
every officer and member of the League against coercion or consequences of
what nature soever arising out of the action necessitated by this pledge.
The pledge had a clause that made it binding when it would be signed by 400
men, whereupon:
The Government will be defied if they dare to touch a single claim for
non-payment of license. The diamond buyers will refuse to pay further license
and will be defended from harm.
Ruhrkampf
When the Ruhr region of Germany began resisting reparation payments to the
victorious nations of World War Ⅰ, France and Belgium occupied the region
to take the payments by force. Germans responded with a campaign of mass
nonviolent resistance, including tax resistance, and were backed up by their
own government.
One of the ways the German government supported the campaign was by paying
the strikers itself, to the tune of 715 million marks. It did this in part by
printing off more currency, which helped fuel the hyperinflation of
(itself a sort of resistance strategy that
made it difficult or impractical to account for reparations payments).
Louisiana Anti-Reconstructionists
During the “Reconstruction” period after the American Civil War, white
supremacists in Louisiana refused their allegiance to a federally-backed,
mixed-race state government, and demonstrated this through tax resistance.
Several attorneys issued a statement offering to “engage themselves, without
compensation, and as a matter of public service, to defend professionally all
[tax resisters].” A mass-meeting issued a tax resistance pledge, and resolved:
That a committee of five be appointed to draw up a plan by which the citizens
may co-operate, to employ counsel and mutually assist each other in their
refusal to pay taxes.
Satyagraha in South Africa
Gopal Krishna Gokhale, an officer in the Indian National Congress fighting
for the independence of India, pledged £2,000 a month to support Indian
satyagrahis in South Africa who were engaged in tax resistance and other
tactics under Gandhi’s direction.
Another way people can assist and show solidarity with tax resisters is by coming to their assistance if their property is seized.
Here are some examples:
Practical support
The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund was established in .
It helps war tax resisters who have had penalties and interest added to their tax bills and seized by the IRS by reimbursing them for a large portion of these additional charges.
The more people we could recruit to shoulder the penalties and interest of resisters, the lighter the burden for everyone.
With the modest help we could provide, conscientious resisters were able to keep on keeping on.
The penalty fund had the added benefit of making us all tax resisters, not just those who withheld all or a portion of their income taxes.
The base list of supporters has been as high as 800 people sharing the weight.
In nearly every appeal, at least 200 people respond, usually more.
In all we’ve paid out about $250,000 to help resisters stay in the struggle.
The story of the seizure of the Kehler/Corner home was the subject of the documentary An Act of Conscience.
When the home of war tax resisters Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner was seized for back taxes, supporters came from near and far to maintain a 24-hour occupation of the home:
[David] Dellinger and others have come from as far away as California to the Colrain [Massachusetts] house…
Mr. Kehler and Ms. Corner continued to live in the house until they were arrested by Federal marshals last December.
Since then, friends and supporters of the couple have arrived to occupy the almost empty house in week-long shifts marked by the Thursday “changing of the guard” ceremony.
Because the house was sold in a Government auction in , all who go inside risk arrest for trespassing.…
For Bonney Simons of St. Johnsbury, Vt., sleeping on a bedroll in the house is her first official act of civil disobedience.
At 72 years of age, she said, it is time to “put your body where your mouth is.”
Suffragist tax resister Dora Montefiore barricaded her home and kept the tax collector from seizing her property for several weeks in , in what came to be known as the “Siege of Montefiore.”
She noted:
The tradespeople of the neighbourhood were absolutely loyal to us besieged women, delivering their milk and bread, etc., over the rather high garden wall which divided the small front gardens of Upper Mall from the terraced roadway fronting the river.
The weekly wash arrived in the same way and the postman day by day delivered very encouraging budgets of correspondence, so that practically we suffered very little inconvenience…
A woman sympathiser in the neighbourhood brought during the course of the [first] morning, a pot of home-made marmalade, as the story had got abroad that we had no provisions and had difficulty in obtaining food.
This was never the case as I am a good housekeeper and have always kept a store cupboard, but we accepted with thanks the pot of marmalade because the intentions of the giver were so excellent.
Examples like this also proved to be vivid anecdotes that the press could use when describing the siege and the support from sympathizers.
When the U.S. government seized Amish tax resister Valentine Byler’s horses and their harnesses while he was in the field preparing for spring planting, sympathetic neighbors allowed him to borrow their horses so he could continue his work.
Other sympathizers throughout the country who heard about the case sent Byler money — more than enough to buy a new team.
An auctioneer who was dragooned into helping the government sell some of the livestock of a man who had been resisting taxes meant to pay for sectarian education in , donated the fee he had earned for conducting the auction to the resister.
During the water charge strike in Dublin, “local campaign groups successfully resisted attempts to disconnect water and in the couple of instances where water was cut off, campaigners re-connected it within hours.
The first round was won hands down by the campaign and it was back to the drawing board for the councils.”
Similar monkeywrenching is being practiced today in Greece, where activists promptly reconnect utilities of people who have been disconnected for failure to pay the increased taxes attached to their utility bills.
During the Annuity Tax resistance in Edinburgh, people sympathetic to the resisters would bid on and return furniture and other items that had been seized and sold by the tax collectors.
The Rebecca Rioters, on the other hand, were characteristically more direct in their resistance:
Warrants of distress were issued… and the constables proceeded to execute them…
The constables then went towards Talog; but when on their way there they heard the sound of a horn, and immediately between two and three hundred persons assembled together, with their faces blackened, some dressed in women’s caps, and others with their coats turned so as to be completely disguised — armed with scythes, crowbars and all manner of destructive weapons which they could lay their hands on.
After cheering the constables, they defied them to do their duty.
The latter had no alternative but to return to town without executing their warrants.
The women were seen running in all directions to alarm their neighbours; and some hundreds were concealed behind the hedges, intending to appear if their services were required.
The entire district seemed to be aroused, and awaiting the arrival of the constables, who were going to levy on the goods of John Harris of Talog Mill for the amount of the fine and costs imposed upon him by the magistrates.
There could not have been less than two hundred persons assembled to resist the execution of process, and vast numbers were flocking from all quarters, in response to the blowing of a horn, the signal of the Rebeccaites to repair thither.
Various mounted messengers were scouring the country and sounding the trumpet of alarm.…
At Maesgwenllian near Kidwelly, several bailiffs were put in possession for arrears of rent to the amount of £150, but about , Rebecca and a great number of her followers made their appearance on the premises, and after driving the bailiffs off, took away the whole of the goods distrained on.
As soon as daylight appeared, the bailiffs returned, but found no traces of Rebecca, nor of the goods which had been taken away.
A group in Olive Hill, Kentucky in followed the Rebecca model, to an extent, “in a raid… by a band of between 800 and 900 men, who forced Levi White, Collector of Taxes, to give up a stock of goods which had been seized.
The goods were then taken back to the store of Levi Oppenheimer, where the official had seized them.”
Last year in Oaxaca, the PRI said that the would “defend up to the point of injunctions those citizens who suffer from liens imposed as well as judgments in order to prevent the impounding of vehicles, considering it unconstitutional that the police will impound them to stop the driver and remove the unit if the striker does not pay the corresponding [vehicle] tax.”
The IRS auctioned off a portion of Ralph Shinaberry’s property in after he refused to pay a fine for growing more wheat on his farm than his government-assigned quota.
“I don’t believe the Government can tell me how much I can grow,” he said, explaining his resistance.
The winning bidder, Herbert Jessup, told a reporter:
“I have no intention of taking possession of the property.”
When war tax resister Cosmas Raimondi’s car was seized by the IRS in , a handful of families in his parish offered to permanently loan him their car so he could still get around, and many others loaned him their cars temporarily.
“I’ve not had to ask one person,” he said.
In Beit Sahour, when the Israeli occupation authorities seized furniture and appliances from resisters, relatives and others would loan them spares, or camping furniture to use as replacements.
“In Bedfordshire in community pressure persuaded a minister to return goods seized from a Quaker for non-payment of tithes.”
Moral support
When Dora Montefiore was first formulating her “siege” strategy with fellow-activists Theresa Billington and Annie Kenney, they agreed to organize daily demonstrations outside of her home while she was defending it.
Montefiore remembered:
The feeling in the neighbourhood towards my act of passive resistance was so excellent and the publicity being given by the Press in the evening papers was so valuable that we decided to make the Hammersmith “Fort” for the time being the centre of the W.S.P.U. activities, and daily demonstrations were arranged for and eventually carried out. …
The roadway was… ideal for the holding of a meeting, as no blocking of traffic could take place, and day in, day out the principles for which suffragists were standing we expounded to many who before had never even heard of the words Woman Suffrage.
At the evening demonstrations rows of lamps were hung along the top of the wall and against the house, the members of the W.S.P.U. speaking from the steps of the house, while I spoke from one of the upstairs windows.
…shoals of letters came to me, a few sadly vulgar and revolting, but the majority helpful and encouraging.
Some Lancashire lads who had heard me speaking in the Midlands wrote and said that if I wanted help they would come with their clogs but that was never the sort of support I needed, and though I thanked them, I declined the help as nicely as I could. …
The working women from the East End came, time and again, to demonstrate in front of my barricaded house…
When the IRS seized and auctioned off the home and farm of Art Harvey and Elizabeth Gravalos in , other war tax resisters and supporters were by their sides:
“I might have cried if I were alone,” Gravalos admitted.
But she was far from alone.
About 75 supporters gathered outside the building and spoke of their solidarity with Elizabeth and Arthur.
About 35 supporters turned up for the second auction, this time held at the IRS office in Lewiston, Maine.
Demonstrators read excerpts from letters to IRS officials and to President Clinton urging them to call off the auction.
In , the IRS levied 78-year-old war tax resister Ruth McKay’s social security checks to recoup the taxes she had been refusing to pay over the previous 20 years.
To show their support of her stand, 40 activists from New Hampshire Peace Action joined her for a vigil at the federal courthouse in Concord, New Hampshire.
When war tax resister Maria Smith’s wages were garnisheed by the IRS in , fifty supporters held a special church service in her honor.
“One of the Valod Vanias,” whose land was seized by the government during the Bardoli satyagraha, “who thus lost all his valuable property, celebrated the event by inviting friends and soldiers of Satyagraha to a party.”
On the other hand, some campaigns have taken the position that sacrifices for the cause are their own reward — that martyrdom is a blessing and that it would be foolish for such resisters to seek or accept recompense.
Nathaniel Morgan was speaking with someone curious about the Quaker stand on war and war taxes, and had this to say:
I told him then that I and my father had refused to pay the income tax on account of war, and had refused it on its first coming out, and withstood it 16 years, except when peace was declared, and that our goods were sold by auction to pay it.
This seemed to excite his curiosity, and made a stand to hear further, on the steps above the engine, going down to the river; asking me if we got anything by that, meaning, was anything refunded by the Society for such suffering.
I immediately replied: “Yes, peace of mind, which was worth all.”
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
There was a great deal about war tax resistance in the Friends Journal in , in part because of the occupation of the Randy Kehler/Betsy Corner home which the IRS was trying to auction off, and in part because of the IRS suit against the Journal to try to force it to pay its editor’s resisted taxes, and in part because of the Peace Tax Fund bill’s first congressional hearing.
A note in the issue pointed out that politicians were playing a name game that had apparently fooled some Quakers into thinking that the telephone excise tax had been transformed into something benign:
The telephone tax continues as a source of money for military expenditure, contrary to recent confusion about its status.
The tax, which was due to expire in , was extended under the Act for Better Child Care.
Those who proposed the act were searching for a way to finance their new program and seized upon the telephone tax as their “new” source of money.
However, the phone tax revenues continue to go into the General Fund, as always, and are not earmarked for the child care programs. More than 50 percent of the General Fund is used for military expenditure.
The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee recommends that conscientious resistance to the telephone tax continue, as it can have a powerful impact if enough people are involved.
an ad for NWTRCC in the issue of Friends Journal
That issue also had a follow-up on the “Alternative Revenue Service” protest:
In , the Alternative Revenue Service reports that individuals redirected $104,740 of their federal income taxes away from the military to areas of human need.
The total includes $12,898 redirected through the ARS, $38,416 redirected by Alternative Funds, and $53,426 that individuals redirected to social action and relief programs. The Alternative Revenue Service campaign is designed to educate taxpayers about how their federal income tax dollars are used.
The service provides the EZ Peace Form, which participants can use in registering their opposition to military spending at the time they file their taxes.
The service reports that 70,000 EZ Peace Forms were distributed nationwide last year.
This year’s form is simplified, with clearer instructions.
The issue brought the news that the Peace Tax Fund promoters had finally managed to get a Congressional Committee hearing for their bill, which was scheduled for .
“The hearing will be informational to determine the need for such legislation, not a preparation for floor action.
The need is assessed from the testimony of both individuals and religious bodies.
The hearing will support the bill by providing a permanent public record, by lending it legitimacy, by possibly attracting more serious consideration from prospective cosponsors, and by providing a record of congressional scrutiny.
The hearing will be brief, not lending itself to extended exchanges.
However, written testimony can be added and will become part of the official record.”
A follow-up in described the latest Peace Tax Fund bill as one that “would amend the Internal Revenue Code to permit qualified conscientious objectors to have part of their federal taxes — that part equal to the military portion of the federal budget — to be paid into a fund for peace-related projects.”
It encouraged readers to submit “written testimony for the official hearing record,” to publicize and perhaps attend the hearing, to contact Congressional representatives and encourage them to attend and to support the bill, and to donate money to the cause.
The issue described how the hearing before the House Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures went — “the first actual hearing held since a Peace Tax Fund Bill was first introduced in Congress .”
Excerpts:
“If we give the right to a person to withhold their body from a war as a conscientious objector, that person should be able to withhold his money as well.”
So spoke Sen. Mark Hatfield in his lead-off testimony…
…Several hundred spectators from across the country packed the hearing room.
Many attended as concerned individual taxpayers.
Others came as members of religious denominations and peace groups long associated with the Peace Tax Campaign.
Three chartered buses, one from Lancaster, Pa., two others from Philadelphia, swelled the numbers by some 150 supporters.
When the last of them filed in from a late-arriving bus to find all spectator seats occupied, Chairman Charles Rangel stopped the hearings momentarily, inviting standing-room only observers to move forward and to occupy empty seats normally reserved for officials and the press.
Many did so.
Veterans of peace demonstrations, several parents holding small children, young bearded men in simple dress, older couples from the peace churches created a colorful patchwork as they mixed with congressional aides, heads of foundations, and Capitol bureaucrats in business suits.
…Over 2,300 letters in support of the Peace Tax Fund Bill were bound in large volumes and set on a front table to be presented to the committee.
From 50–100 such letters a day continued to arrive as of the time of the hearing.
Following the introductory testimony of Mark Hatfield, lead sponsor of the bill (S.689) in the Senate, there were also presentations by four members of Congress: Andy Jacobs (lead sponsor of the bill in the House), Nancy Pelosi, and John Conyers.…
…[A] panel of religious leaders testified.
One, Thomas Gumbleton, Roman Catholic bishop from Detroit, and past president of Pax Christi, pointed out that two of the first leaders of the church, John and Peter, said that sometimes it is necessary to obey God before obeying the law.
How much better it would be, Gumbleton said, for COs to be able to pay all their taxes, knowing their money would be used for life-affirming purposes.
William Davidson, retired Episcopal bishop of western Kansas, a CO in World War Ⅱ, has actively opposed war .
“Having lived past draft age, I have been saddened and conflicted each year having to pay taxes to support war,” he said.
The Episcopal Peace Fellowship has consistently supported war tax resistance as a religious witness.
John A. Lapp, executive secretary of Mennonite Central Committee, Akron, Pa., spoke on behalf of the three historic peace churches (Mennonites, Quakers, and Church of the Brethren).
The issue of war-related taxes is one of religious freedom, Lapp said.
“Many of us feel the pain of having our religious institutions serve as tax collectors for war.”
During committee questioning, Representative Jacobs asked Rabbi [Phil] Bentley [with the Jewish Peace Fellowship], “Is [passage of this bill] going to give rise to requests for similar legislation from people who don’t want their money going for a golf course?”
…[Friends Journal] editor-manager Vint Deming, associate editor Melissa Elliott, typesetter Susan Jordhamo, and board members Robert Sutton and Sam Legg joined several hundred other citizens in packing the hearing room…
The hearing was informational, to give legislators material to use in future considerations, rather than to schedule the bill for action.
As such, it gave supporters a chance to formally present the case, get testimony in the written record, and show the depth and breadth of people’s interest in the bill.
The pace of this legislative process is frustratingly slow, but, for many of us, the hearing was a heartening experience.
There, we heard people testify in a formal legislative setting to our most deeply held beliefs.
One activist-participant said, “All my life I’ve been on the side that opposes government decisions.
It was a weird experience to see all those peace movement people in the same room with legislators.
I’ve never seen anything like that before, nor ever imagined it.
It gave me a different vision of what might be possible.”
The Peace Tax Fund Bill has come a long way , with many technical refinements, and it has a long way to go in gathering widespread support.
On we witnessed one small step in validation, acknowledgment of our beliefs, and moving the dream closer to reality.
Perhaps one day we will look back, as do those who watched the process of legalizing conscientious objection, and be glad we were involved in making it legal to follow our beliefs with our money-as well as with our bodies.
“This is not a political issue, but a moral issue of conscience,” responded Bentley…
Jacobs, in response, thanked the Rabbi and others of religious conscience who had testified.
“I am a sponsor of this bill,” he said, “but I am not a pacifist.”
He called to mind one of his favorite movies, Friendly Persuasion, and the lines spoken toward the end of the film: “It’s good to know that somebody is holding out for a better way of settling things!”
Terrill Hyde, tax legislative counsel for the Department of the Treasury, presented the Bush Administration position opposing the PTF.
She mentioned “problems of complexity, confusion, and increased administrative burden,” sure to arise if the bill were passed.
There would be no deterrent either, she said, to restrain taxpayers from inappropriately claiming CO status.
If taxpayers were allowed to designate the uses for which their tax dollars were spent, “our entire budgetary process would be undermined.”
There would likely be loss of revenue to needed federal programs.
Others, however, presented differing views.
Several speakers argued that there would likely be substantial increases in revenue as a direct result of the bill.
Many who currently refuse to pay a portion or all of their taxes would gladly pay.
Also, large costs resulting from IRS efforts to collect from tax resisters would be avoided.
Answering the criticism of how the act might increase paperwork and administrative costs, several people testified to the simple nature of the bill and of the tax filing process.
As to IRS claims that the bill raises possible legal questions, a panel of two law specialists responded.
Mark Tushnet, professor of law at Georgetown University, said, “A nation that wants to protect the religious freedom of its citizens can reasonably be expected to enact legislation to enable the freedom to be expressed.”
It seems perfectly appropriate, he concluded, that such legislation be enacted.
“It is needed in addition to the Religious Freedom Act.”
Philadelphia, Pa., attorney and war tax specialist Peter Goldberger agreed.
“Legislation of this kind has a noble history in our country,” and he quoted from a letter from then-President George Washington to Philadelphia Quakers.
The nation’s laws, Washington wrote, must always be “extensively accommodated” in cases of individual conscience.
Alan Eccleston, a Quaker and an organizational development consultant from Hadley, Massachusetts, told about how, in his own tax witness, he has endured penalties, punishments, and the threat of losing his home.
The IRS has a lien on his house right now.
“Conscience must be taken into account.
Spiritual values are real.
They are not to be treated as incidental or expendable to fit the needs of the state.
This is what the First Amendment is all about.”
Ruth Flower, legislative secretary of Friends Committee on National Legislation, emphasized that the Peace Tax Fund Act would not offer an escape to those who do not wish to pay their taxes, because they would have to pay the same amount either way.
It would, however, provide a legal way out of violating one’s religious beliefs in order to comply with the laws of the land.
Her point was born out by Patricia Washburn, who gave perhaps the most moving testimony of the hearing.
She talked about the challenge presented to each of us, and to her personally, in Micah 6:8: “…what does the Lord require of you but to act justly, to love constantly, and to walk humbly with your God?” Walking humbly requires us to acknowledge the seeds of violence in our own hearts, rather than projecting them onto someone else.
“Loving constantly” can be a discouraging and difficult task, especially in today’s climate of distrust and alienation.
“I am not opposed to paying taxes, but I find no alternative form of tax payment… Thus, I see no current alternative to withholding the military portion of my taxes… I pray that my witness is done in love and that it will help to build a bridge across the chasm of violence and fear.”
After the hearing and following the press conference, [Marian] Franz [executive director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund] gave a brief workshop on lobbying for the bill.
She pointed out that the testimony would now be entered in written record and could be referred to in the future.
She added, “the fact that we got a hearing is absolutely amazing.”
Many other pieces of legislation have not yet been so lucky, and the demand is great.
“If all members of the committee had been present, they all would have been deeply moved, and we would be a lot further down the road.”
Franz encouraged people, when lobbying, to talk in terms of conscience, as defined by Pope John ⅩⅩⅢ, who said, “Deep inside, each one of us finds a law that we did not put there.
It tells us to do this and shun that.”
That is what puts the issue of paying taxes for war in the arena of religious decisions and touches on every individual’s right to follow their faith — whether they are housewives, bureaucrats, lawyers, teachers, or politicians.
That is why it is important to keep trying to open doors and ears and minds.
Marian Franz has a suggestion for how to approach people: “Talk to aides and legislators as though you’re sharing something personally.
You will often find that when you are talking about conscience, people are moved deeply.”
The issue also plugged “Good Use: Songs of Peace, Tax & Conscience” — “a tape of War Tax Resister Songs, featuring Charlie King, Luci Murphy, Geof Morgan, Lifeline, and others.
It was produced by Don Walsh, who donates the royalties.”
The lead editorial (by Vinton Deming) in the issue concerned the ongoing Randy Kehler/Betsy Corner case:
Finding Affinity
Randy Kehler and his wife, Betsy Corner, have been tax resisters .
They have given the tax money instead to a variety of groups doing constructive community work.
the IRS has been trying to sell their house in Colrain, Mass., in an effort to collect $25,896 in back taxes — but it hasn’t been easy.
First of all, there’s been a growing tax resistance movement there in Franklin County.
Bob Bady and Pat Morse, for instance, had their house seized and auctioned in .
(They still live in the house, however, and the buyer hasn’t taken possession.)
Shelburn Falls dentist Tom Wilson had his dental license revoked when he refused to cooperate with IRS.
(He continues his practice, however; even the local sheriff remains one of his regular patients).
So when the word got out that IRS planned to auction Betsy and Randy’s house, supporters in large numbers turned up on the announced day to oppose the sale.
There were lots of signed bids (such as an offer to clean the teeth of an IRS agent, others pledging to do community work or to be peace activists for life) — but no cash buyers came forward.
Not a one.
So, in , IRS upped the ante.
Betsy, Randy, and daughter Lillian, 12, were given an eviction notice.
When Randy decided to stay, he was held in contempt and tossed in the county jail for 6 months.
This didn’t go unnoticed by friends and neighbors, however.
A sign-up sheet got circulated, and volunteers committed themselves to stay in the house around the clock.
There’s been a continuous presence there .
Groups from as far away as Washington, D.C., have signed up to come and help out.
In , members of Mount Toby (Mass.) Meeting formed such an affinity group for a week.
Meanwhile, Randy stays in jail and makes the most of his time there.
He has made friends with many of the prisoners, has organized a chess tournament, and does what he can to interpret his tax witness.
Allan Eccleston, member of Mount Toby Meeting, has been approved as the meeting’s official minister and visits Randy twice a week.
So what’s next?
IRS has scheduled another auction, this time out of the area in Springfield, Mass. — in the hope, it seems, of attracting a buyer for the house, someone who doesn’t know about this whole chain of events.
Randy will not be there to talk about it, but lots of his friends will.
Even if the house is sold, the issue will be far from over.
The house is part of a land trust (Randy and Betsy own the house but not the land on which it stands) — and there’s the likelihood of a continuing nonviolent presence in the house to welcome any potential new buyer.
How might Friends respond?
I asked this question in of Francis Crowe, long-time head of the American Friends Service Committee office in western Massachusetts and a supporter of Randy and Betsy.
She suggests:
Form an affinity group to help sustain the presence in the house.
(To be scheduled, contact Traprock Peace Center…
Funds are also needed to support the action (checks made out to “War Tax Refusers Support Committee”…).
Letters to the editor on the subject of taxes and militarism are always helpful.
More sponsors are needed in Congress for the Peace Tax Fund bill.…
At a rally in support of Betsy and Randy, Juanita Nelson — who, with husband Wally, has been a tax refuser for decades and is known to many Friends — offered these words by Goethe: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has Genius, Power, and Magic in it.”
Good advice as another tax season is upon us, when many of us seek to find our way on this difficult question of taxes for war.
In a later issue, David Zarembka reported in a letter-to-the-editor about how the occupation / blockade of the Kehler/Corner home was proceeding:
On , federal marshalls arrested seven members of the Flowing River Affinity Group who were occupying the Kehler/Corner home and removed the furniture into storage.
At , the IRS sold the house to the highest bidder in an auction for $5,400. The seven affinity group members were released from jail later in the afternoon.
So was Randy, who had served two months of his sentence.
Do not think, however, that Betsy and Randy have lost their home in an exotic cause!
As soon as the federal marshalls left the house, an affinity group reoccupied it, and other groups, including one from Washington, D.C., of which I am a member, have continued to occupy the house on a 24-hour basis.
Affinity groups, which occupy the home for a week each, have been organizing , but new ones are still being formed…
The “buyers,” a young couple with a two-month-old son, have visited the house several times but have not as yet forced the issue.
They are consulting with their lawyers.
Betsy and Randy have become members of the Colrain Neighbors Affinity Group, which will occupy the home for the week beginning .
They and their twelve-year-old daughter, Lillian, will move back into their home when they can comfortably live there once again.
I would hope that this action would lead Friends to consider how their cooperation with the federal tax collection process — even those who are symbolic tax resisters or those who force the IRS to take their taxes from them — allows the present military system to thrive.
A report in that issue on the Canadian Yearly Meeting that had taken place noted that:
Canadian Yearly Meeting, in its role of employer, was asked to refuse to remit that portion of its employees’ taxes that will be used to support the military.
Concern was expressed by the yearly meeting’s trustees, who would bear the legal results of such actions.
Although the yearly meeting came close to supporting a minute for this action, it agreed to seek clearness with the trustees and monthly meetings and return to this issue next year.
an ad from the issue of Friends Journal
The issue was largely devoted to war tax resistance.
It began with an editorial from Vinton Deming concerning his war tax resistance and the response of his employer, the Journal.
Excerpt:
From the outset, I knew it wasn’t a very practical thing to do.
The government was too powerful, and all the tax laws were against me.
I’d just end up paying much more in the end, so why not choose a better way to work for peace?
A good letter to my congressman, for instance, or a tax vigil at the federal building on Apri1 15.
But this was in .
Our war in Vietnam was just over, but the Cold War continued.
As the Reagan years unfolded, with still larger military expenditures and big cuts in domestic programs, I became even more clear: I must resist as fully as possible the payment of taxes for war.
The Journal board was always supportive of my witness.
It refused twice to honor IRS levies on my wages.
In doing so, Friends openly accepted the possibility of being taken to court one day and fined severely.
The board wrote to IRS: “Our position of noncompliance to the requests of the Internal Revenue Service is not an easy one.
We do not question the laws of the land lightly, but do so under the weight of a genuine religious and moral concern.”
Well, as they say, “What goes ’round comes ’round.”
, Friends Journal was told by the U.S. Justice Department to pay up or we’d be taken to court.…
I am grateful for the steadfastness of the Journal’s board of managers.
, it has been faithful to the Quaker peace testimony.
The road has been an uncertain and confusing one at many points, but Friends have shown courage in continuing.
In my own personal war tax journey, these words by John Stoner have served to guide: “We are war tax resisters because we have discovered some doubt as to what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God, and have decided to give the benefit of the doubt to God.”
Sam Legg, clerk of the Friends Journal Board of Managers, gave his take on the Deming situation and on why the Journal had decided to throw in the towel and pay the IRS’s demands.
Excerpts:
… Vinton refused to pay any federal taxes.
Each tax year he sent a blank 1040 along with a letter to the president explaining his opposition to war and his unwillingness as a Friend to pay for it.
Since there was no Peace Tax Fund, Vinton reasoned, he would instead contribute the money to worthwhile projects and see that it was used for peaceful purposes.
In , the IRS served a levy on Friends Journal for $22,714.16, Vinton’s taxes for the period, plus interest and penalties.
The IRS asked Friends Journal to withhold part of Vinton’s salary each month, but the Journal Board refused, writing that “We… are in support of Vinton Deming’s conscientious witness.”
In , Friends Journal received a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice reminding us of the levy on Vinton’s salary and asking us to try to “resolve this matter short of litigation.”
That is, to pay the original assessed amount plus interest and a possible 50 percent penalty on the total.
We were given until to respond.
If we were to continue refusing to honor the levy, an immediate court action would follow.
The U.S. Supreme Court decision, Smith vs. Oregon, as Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and the American Friends Service Committee have learned, teaches us that there is no way we could win such a case in court, nor could our assets be protected from seizure.
More troubling, this seizure could make others who are not involved in our decision, undergo unwelcome investigation.
Finally, a court case offers IRS the opportunity to set a legal precedent requiring the payment of the 50 percent penalty (which a sympathetic judge excused in the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting case last year).
We fear that the inevitable negative decision could establish that precedent and thereby restrict other individuals’ or groups’ religious freedom.
And so, most reluctantly, the Friends Journal Board has agreed to negotiate with IRS and to pay the least amount IRS will accept ($31,300) as settlement of this claim.
Our painful recognition of failure is heavy upon us.
We have to accept that our witness in its present form can no longer serve a useful purpose.
We can hope Vinton’s action and our support will have brought the issue of tax refusal to the attention of others, thereby becoming a part of the tradition of citizen pressure that in the long run eliminates or diminishes social evils such as slavery and war.
Our protest is on record.
What we will do now is support the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of … which aims to reestablish the first amendment religious rights lost in the Smith vs. Oregon decision.
We also urge support for the U.S. Peace Tax Fund Bill… which makes the same witness, but provides money to finance peace-enhancing projects.
(Needless to say, if there had been a Peace Tax Fund in , Vinton’s taxes would have been paid gladly, and there would have been no need for an IRS levy.)
We ask all those who share our concerns to join in these legal approaches to the continuing effort to convince ourselves and others of the futility of armed conflict and the necessity of finding other means to resolve human disputes.
The immediate financial challenge to the Journal is a very real one.
In a year in which we already face a substantial budget deficit, the payment of such a large lump sum adds an enormous burden.
Vinton has engaged to repay the Journal through payroll deductions over time.
We have been heartened as well, as word of our tax witness spreads, to receive gifts of support from our readers.
One contributor writes: “I hope everyone at the Friends Journal can be made aware of Friends’ approval of [your] Board action.
To help this happen, I encourage the Journal to go as public with the story as is consistent with respect for Vint’s privacy and the Journal’s limited resources.
I am convinced that other Friends will wish to help financially when so informed.”
For such words, and unexpected gifts, we are most grateful.
Readers wrote in with their feedback about the Journal’s decision, and some of their letters were printed in the issue:
Duane Magill wrote to “applaud” and “sympathize” with the Journal’s stand.
“As a war tax resister myself for the past quarter of a century, I have had some brushes with the IRS myself and know what it is like.
I also appreciate your giving publicity to the subject.
I know that not many Quakers take this position, and giving the matter this extensive coverage just might encourage more to take this stand.”
Yvonne Boeger wrote in on behalf of the Live Oak (Texas) Meeting to say that the meeting had recently “discussed the importance of war tax resistance as a means of witnessing to Friends’ long-standing opposition to all forms of war and violence” and that the Meeting was supportive of the Journal’s (and Deming’s) action.
“We send the enclosed check as a token of our support and solidarity in Friends’ resistance to war.
Thank you for the example you have set for us all.”
Lillian and George Willoughby wrote to express gratitude for the Journal’s “courage in standing in support of Vint Deming.”
They wrote: “Most important is the example of a Quaker religious employer providing support to staff who endeavor to live according to Friends’ teachings.
The Journal has run considerable risk and incurred heavy expenses.
We enclose our check as a demonstration of our support.
We think that many other Friends will want to help carry the financial burden of this witness.”
An editorial note in the letters column expressed “thanks to all those who have sent checks!” and a later editorial note (in the issue) said that they had received “$8,000 from individuals and meetings, $7,000 from a Sufferings Fund of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting,” and almost $4,000 from Deming himself.
Mennonite war tax resister (and, according to his author bio, “itinerant prophet and spiritual retreat leader”) John K. Stoner wrote about the call he got from an IRS employee.
Excerpts:
We talked for about ten minutes, as I explained why Janet and I had said “no” to paying the full amount of our income tax.
The man could not understand why anyone would invite the collection pressures of the IRS upon themselves by withholding some taxes.
But by the time the conversation was over, he was a little closer to understanding that this was, for us, a matter of faith and a question of the practice of our religion.
It was a Mark 13:9 kind of experience of being called before the authorities, “before governors and kings,” because of Jesus, as a testimony to them.
By the sound of Mark 13, Jesus expected this kind of thing to happen regularly to his followers.
Mark 13 is a good text to remember when everybody around you is quoting Romans 13.
The Christian Peacemaker Teams organization is promoting symbolic war tax refusal as a way to make a clear witness in the matter of war taxes.
Taxes for Life is a plan to have taxpayers redirect to education an amount equivalent to 1 penny for every billion dollars in the military budget.
For tax year this is $3.03, which can be mailed to Christian Peacemaker Teams… Listen to your conscience when you pay your taxes.
Write a letter of witness to the IRS, with copies to Congress and your local newspaper.
Redirect some taxes to education through CPT.
If the IRS calls, tell them that it makes you a little bit nervous to break their law and that you do not enjoy being harassed by the collectors of blood money.
Go on to say that you are far more apprehensive, however, about breaking God’s law.
Tell them that you hear God’s warning rising up from the bulldozed mass graves of Iraqi conscripts, fathers and husbands, and the nightmares of their children.
Explain that you are really afraid to harden you heart to the cry of the victims and that you have decided you will not take their blood upon your hands.
When Randy Kehler was thrown in prison on contempt of court charges for refusing to vacate the home that had been seized by the IRS, he prepared a statement that he hoped to read.
The court denied him permission to address it.
The Journal printed the statement he’d hoped to have made, which is a good thing: it would be a shame if such an articulate statement was left to sit unread in a file folder somewhere.
My refusal to give up our home is not an act of contempt or defiance of your court order.
I regard it as an act of conscience and also an act of citizenship.
The two go hand in hand.
The first obligation of responsible citizenship, I believe, is obedience to one’s conscience.
Obedience to one’s government and to its laws is very important, but it must come second.
Otherwise there is no check on immoral actions by governments, which are bound to occur in any society whenever power is abused.
I want to assure you, however, that I am not someone who treats the law lightly.
Even when a particular law seems at first to have no clear purpose or justification, I try to give it — that is, give those who created and approved it — the benefit of the doubt.
In an ideal sense, I see law as the codification of those rules and procedures by which the members or citizens of a community, be it local or global, have agreed to live.
A decent respect for one’s community requires a decent respect for its laws.
At their best, such laws express the conscience of the community, causing conscience and law to coincide.
The international treaties and agreements that my wife, Betsy, and I cited in the legal documents recently submitted to, and rejected by, this court are wonderful examples of the coincidence of law and conscience.
These agreements, each one signed by our government, include the United Nations Charter, which outlaws war and the use of military force as methods of resolving conflicts among nations; the Hague Regulations and Geneva Conventions, which prohibit the use or threatened use of weapons that indiscriminately kill civilians and poison the environment; and the Nuremberg Principles, which forbid individual citizens from participating in or collaborating with clearly defined “crimes against humanity,” “war crimes,” and “crimes against peace,” even when refusal to participate or collaborate means disobeying the laws of one’s government.
These international accords — which, as you know, our Constitution requires us to regard as “the Supreme Law of the Land” — are at least as much affirmation of conscience, rooted in universal moral standards, as they are statements of law.
Betsy and I regret that you chose to deny our request for a trial, which would have allowed us to argue the relevance of these international laws before a jury of our peers.
Even in the absence of such laws, however, I believe that citizens would still have an affirmative obligation to follow their conscience and refuse to engage in or support immoral acts by governments.
It is not true, as is commonly thought, that if large numbers of people put conscience ahead of the law and decided for themselves which acts of government were immoral, civilized society would break down into violence and chaos — that is, greater violence and chaos than there is now.
In fact, the opposite would likely occur.
There would likely be greater compliance with those laws that are fundamentally just and reasonable — in other words, most laws — and there would be greater public pressure to abolish or reform those laws (and policies) that are unjust or unreasonable.
There would be exceptions for the worse, of course.
In the name of conscience, certain individuals would, no doubt, do some terrible things and cause much injury and death, which happens now.
On balance, however, the historical record is clear: from the Spanish Inquisition and the African slave trade, to Stalin’s purges, Hitler’s Holocaust, the genocide of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and our own devastation of Vietnam and Iraq, far more killing and suffering, has resulted from people following “legal” orders and obeying the law than from people refusing to do so in obedience to conscience.
My own refusal to kill (which led me to spend nearly two years in federal prison rather than cooperate with the Vietnam draft), Betsy’s and my refusal to pay federal taxes used for killing (which caused the IRS to seize our home), and now our refusal to turn over our home in lieu of taxes, are all acts of conscience.
It has not been easy for us to deliberately violate the law in these instances, and in so doing incur the anxiety and disapproval of some of our friends and family, as well as the scorn and censure of many members of the community.
We are painfully aware that even though we do pay our town and state taxes, and even though we have given away to the poor and to the victims of our war-making in other countries every cent that we have withheld from the federal government, nevertheless we are still regarded by some as irresponsible and not contributing our fair share.
These are times, however, when all of us are confronted with difficult choices.
Betsy and I, and many others like us, feel we must choose between knowingly and willingly paying for war and killing, and openly and nonviolently breaking the law with respect to federal taxes.
Our consciences compel us to choose the latter.
For me, the issue is larger than simply the taking of another human life, or even the instance of a particular war in which many lives are lost.
I have increasingly come to see the larger issue as war itself.
Whereas there has always been a moral imperative to end war and refrain from killing, today the imperative is much greater.
Today the logic of peace, the logic of nonviolence, is also the logic of survival.
It is impossible to dis-invent today’s nuclear, chemical, biological, and so-called conventional weapons of mass destruction.
Therefore, we have no alternative but to effectively abolish war.
This is the one essential adaptation the human species must make — and, I firmly believe, can make — if life as we know it is to continue.
War today is the scourge of the planet.
It is tragic enough that war is daily claiming the lives of people, maiming more, leaving orphans and widows, and destroying homes, schools, and hospitals — to say nothing of the irreplaceable treasures of human civilization destroyed in Baghdad last year and in Dubrovnik over the past several months.
What makes war today even more tragic, more horrible, are the incalculable economic, social, and environmental costs that go along with it.
Instead of using our human and material resources to produce food, medicine, housing, schools, and other desperately needed commodities, the world’s nations, led by our own, are annually spending trillions of dollars to purchase more and more weapons of even greater destructive capability.
The hundreds of millions of children, women, and men whose lives are ravaged by poverty, hunger, and homelessness — around the world and here in the States — are as much victims of our addiction to war and militarism as are those who are hit directly by the bullets and bombs.
While the awful gap between the rich minority and the poor majority of the world’s people grows wider and wider, war’s assault on the earth — the earth that sustains us all — becomes more savage and less reversible with each new armed conflict.
The severe and longterm ecological damage to the Persian Gulf region that resulted from only a few weeks of war last year is just the tip of the iceberg.
The cumulative impact of the many smaller, less publicized wars elsewhere around the globe is no less severe and, ultimately, no less threatening to the well-being of people everywhere, including the United States.
Furthermore, here at home, where ecological damage to our own environment is proceeding at a frightening pace, the single largest polluter by far, producing more toxic and radioactive waste than any other single entity, is the U.S. military.
I am not at all suggesting that our country bears sole responsibility for the global state of affairs.
But we bear a good deal of it, and therefore any steps we take to move away from war will have great influence upon other countries around the world.
Even before the collapse of the Soviet Union, we had the most powerful armed forces in the world, the most sophisticated weaponry, and by far the largest number of military bases outside our own borders.
Since World War Ⅱ, we have used our military might to bomb, invade, or otherwise intervene in more countries around the world than any other nation.
We were the first to develop the atomic bomb, and we are the only nation ever to use it.
For years we have led the Soviets in atomic test explosions, and we ani continuing these tests even though Soviet testing has stopped.
In addition, we have long been the world’s largest arms merchant, today supplying 40 percent of the entire overseas arms market.
We have been told that all of this is necessary for our security, but the opposite is true.
This military colossus we have created has greatly undermined our security — by creating more enemies than it destroys, by wasting our precious resources and poisoning our environment, by degrading our democracy with “national security” secrecy, covert actions, and official lying, and by undercutting our highest Judeo-Christian values with the insidious doctrine of “might makes right.”
Betsy’s and my actions that have brought us to court are testament to our belief that there is another way for us to live in the world, and another way for us to resolve our conflicts with our fellow human beings.
It is a way that is rooted in the best of our values: the values of generosity and justice, of human dignity and equality, of compassion and mutual respect.
The seeds of this alternative way — the way of nonviolence that Dr. Martin Luther King tried to teach us — already exist within our society, and within each person.
We have only to honor and nurture those seeds, individually and collectively.
This is a prescription based not on wishful idealism, but on practical necessity.
It is our only real hope for survival.
The transformation required cannot be accomplished without our accepting some measure of personal responsibility for the mess we are in.
It would be futile to expect our government, or any other, to initiate it.
In any event, we cannot afford to wait.
The transformation must begin with us.
Because we profess to be a self-governing people, it is all the more our responsibility.
We can exercise this responsibility by means of the choices each of us is called upon to make.
For example, we can choose to speak out publicly against governmental practices and priorities that we know to be wrong.
Many of us can also choose not to hand over to the federal government some part of our tax money — instead redistribute it to those in need, until such time as those in need become our government’s first priority.
And each of us can choose to continue leading lives based on materialism, consumerism, and environmental exploitation, or we can find ways of living based on simplicity, sharing, and respect for the Earth.
The choices we make as individuals will determine the choices we make as a nation.
This is, no doubt, a dangerous and ominous time to be alive in the world.
Yet it is also a very exciting time to be alive.
People all over the world, despite the opposition of their governments, are taking initiative to bring about momentous and long overdue changes.
These winds of change are sweeping the planet, and they are not likely to stop at our borders.
If the people of Prague and Moscow can overthrow Soviet communism and bring about democracy and human rights; if the people of Soweto and Johannesburg can abolish South African apartheid and establish an egalitarian, multi-racial society; then, I feel sure, it is equally possible for us to dismantle U.S. militarism and replace it with attitudes and institutions of nonviolence.
It is my great hope, my silent prayer, that Betsy’s and my struggle to see that the fruits of our labor are used for nurturing and healing, rather than for killing and war, will somehow contribute to that process.
Following this, Christopher L. King had a piece promoting the Peace Tax Fund.
He described it as the brainchild of David Bassett, who some twenty years before had come up with the idea of allowing taxpayers to perform “alternative service” money the way conscientiously objecting draftees could with their labor.
King wrote that he was surprised to find little awareness of the bill in Quaker circles and described some of the work that he and his comrades were doing for the bill.
Those of us who meet each month and a quiet group of supporters in the surrounding communities believe in our consciences that war and militarism are wrong.
We don’t believe they should be the major tools of our foreign policy.
We sympathize with citizens like Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner of Colrain, Massachusetts, who have chosen to pay no taxes because they are pacifists.
We empathize with those brave souls who choose alternative lifestyles so they can keep their income below taxable levels.
It often means their children must learn to sacrifice at an early age.
It means stepping out of the mainstream culture.
Most of us don’t want to change our lifestyles radically or go to jail for our beliefs.
Some might argue that if we are true to our faith, we have no other choice.
On the other hand, there is a need to resist the fundamental tyranny that requires that we must become rebels if we wish to stand firmly for peace.
King’s article was pretty vague on the mechanics of what the Peace Tax Fund bill would actually accomplish, and it was written as if there were no reason why a conscientious objector to paying to war might not find it a satisfactory solution.
The issue included a brief review of the video Paying for Peace: War Tax Resistance in the United States, which was produced by Carol Coney.
Excerpt:
Among those interviewed are Brian Willson, a war tax resister and Vietnam veteran who in was run over by a train while blocking munitions shipments at the Concord naval weapons plant in California.
Also interviewed is Maurice McCrackin, a minister who was sentenced to jail for war tax resistance in ; Ernest and Marion Bromley, who have lived under the taxable income level to avoid paying taxes for military purposes; and Juanita Nelson, an early civil rights organizer who was the first woman to spend a night in jail for war tax resistance.
The issue included an op-ed from Allan Kohrman suggesting Quakers ought to be more patriotic, perhaps singing “God Bless America” during their Sunday meetings, and in particular should rethink their permissive attitude toward civil disobedience and war tax resistance.
“Many Friends seem to define civil disobedience as breaking any law they feel is morally wrong.
Some will not pay war taxes, testifying that God has called them to resist.
I would argue that paying taxes is a basic responsibility of citizenship, a function of my almost mystical relationship to my country.
God calls me to pay my taxes much as God calls others to resist them.”
That’s what “an almost mystical relationship to my country” will get you, I guess.
Another note in that issue concerned two Quakers in Germany — Christa & Klausmart Voigt — who had been prosecuted for war tax resistance.
“About 40 Friends from all over Germany attended the hearing, which was overseen by five judges.”
Klausmart had “placed his money in an account for a peace tax initiative,” and at press time they were still awaiting the court’s decision.
There was another note about the Tax Resisters’ Penalty Fund in the issue, which described it this way: “When a request for assistance comes in, the committee that oversees the fund takes it under consideration, then notifies people who have agreed to participate of the amount each would need to contribute to cover the tax resister’s penalty and interest debt.
Contributions are not used to cover the tax liability itself.
The fund is administered in cooperation with the North Manchester (Ind.) Fellowship of Reconciliation.”
V. Schneider’s take on the ramifications of the Affordable Care Act for war tax resisters.
I’ve shared some of my experiences with the Act’s provisions as a low-income, return-filing resister here at The Picket Line.
Ms. Schneider writes about the challenges of the Act from the perspective of a resister who does not file returns, and therefore has no clear way of proving that she qualifies for the Act’s insurance subsidies.
Schneider has some helpful recommendations for non-filling resisters who cannot afford non-subsidised insurance.
Some notes on the new federal standard deduction and personal exemption amounts for the upcoming tax year, on the new IRS program that allows you to download some of the files the agency keeps on you, on a new website that keeps track of the legal aspects of alternative currencies, and on the troubles of the increasingly overwhelmed and under-budgeted IRS.
Some war tax resistance news, including a report of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day war tax resistance display at a recent anti nuclear weapons protest, a mention of some recent honors given to war tax resisters Robin Harper and Joanne Sheehan, and a brief note on the conviction and jailing of Quaker war tax resister Joseph Olejak.
You can find more about the Olejak case in this recent article from the Times-Union.
Olejak is spending several consecutive weekends in prison, and has agreed (in a plea bargain) to partially and incrementally pay the $242,684 the IRS says he owes since he stopped paying in .
The group is looking for people who want to serve on its Administrative Committee.
The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund — which helps to reimburse any penalties and interest seized from a war tax resister by the government — is now under new management.
The next NWTRCC national gathering is scheduled for and will be held in San Diego, California.
Robin Harper reflects on the development of “redirection” as a war tax resistance tactic: “I think it is fair to say that the essence and origins of the very widespread practice today of WTRs conscientiously redirecting their refused taxes into channels of constructive activism, community building, and addressing human needs, can be traced to [his own case in] .”
The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund is a mutual aid/insurance program for war tax resisters.
People who participate in the fund help to reimburse resisters for any penalties & interest that the IRS successfully seizes from them.
If you would like to participate in this mutual aid program, I encourage you to follow the link above, or to view their recently-released Appeal in which they are raising $10,410 to help pay the interest & penalties seized from three resisters: Larry Bassett, John Lindsay-Poland, and John Marley.
To reach this total, they are asking all of the participants in the fund to contribute $30.
NWTRCC National Gathering in San Diego, California.
There was a focus at this gathering on exploring the connections between war tax resistance and other struggles in the peace-and-justice milieu: the back-room antidemocratic negotiations for the TransPacific Partnership, the criminalization of immigration, the war on drugs, the militarization of schools, and so forth.
We heard from several local activists who are concentrating on various of these facets.
We also discussed our own experiences as war tax resisters and various challenges we were encountering.
One woman talked of being targeted by an unusually zealous IRS agent who succeeded in attaching 50% of her social security (it is more typical for the IRS to seize 15% from recipients who have tax debts).
There was concern that some obscure language slipped into a recent farm bill might have eliminated the statute of limitations that has prevented the IRS from going after the tax debt of many war tax resisters when it has remained uncollected for ten years (the bill’s language is difficult to interpret, but in any case we haven’t seen evidence of any IRS policy change in this regard yet).
NWTRCC’s social media consultant Erica Weiland shows us how to spread the word about tax resistance using social media tools
We talked about the new challenges associated with Obamacare.
For example, those resisters who have been refusing to file tax returns as part of their resistance are thereby locked out of the insurance premium subsidy program and find it harder to participate in the insurance marketplace.
Also, those resisters who are married filing separately as a way of partially shielding their non-resisting spouses from the consequences of their resistance, are also finding that this locks out both spouses from the program.
One resister spoke of the difficulties he was having in finding an accountant or tax advisor who was capable of understanding the particular concerns and goals of a tax resisting client.
Peter Smith gave us an update on the newly-revitalized War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund, which just completed its first appeal, which achieved a 79% reimbursement of penalties and interest for three resisters in one month.
The new policy of the Fund puts a one-month deadline on appeal responses, but carries over any unreimbursed amount to the following appeal, so resisters who apply to the fund for reimbursement of penalties and interest can expect to eventually have the full amount reimbursed.
We also talked about a number of NWTRCC-internal projects: a report from our strategy and message retooling subcommittees, a look at a new crowdfunding project that the fundraising team will be pursuing shortly, and a new initiative to make sure our group is better-represented at conferences and gatherings of allied organizations and movements.
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund has sent out its Summer 2014 appeal.
They’re aiming to bring in $6,341 from fund subscribers to reimburse three war tax resisters who have lost penalties and interest in addition to the amounts they had refused to pay.
Subscribers are being asked to pay $30 each towards this amount.
In its last appeal, sent out in , the fund successfully raised $8,170 of the $10,410 it sought (this roughly 80% success rate is pretty typical of the fund — some subscribers move and can’t be reached, and others drop the ball, but most come through).
The number of Americans who are taxpatriating — abandoning their U.S. citizenship or residency status in order to get out from under the thumb of the IRS — continues to rise.
IRS head John Koskinen spoke at the National Press Club about how hiring freezes, low morale, and funding cuts have made it difficult for the agency to attract younger workers.
Excerpts:
Koskinen said that over half of IRS staffers are over 50, and that roughly two in five employees will be eligible for retirement by .
On the flip side, the agency only has around 1,900 staffers under 30, which amounts to roughly 3 percent of the workforce.
“Essentially, the IRS is facing its own version of the baby bust,” Koskinen said.
Not long ago the news was full of interest about Facebook gazillionaire Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to launch a new enterprise dedicated to making the world a better place, and his decision to fund it with 99% of the Facebook shares he owns: about $45 billion worth. Cynics were quick to see this as a tax dodge.
It’s not obvious to me that the tax advantages are quite as enormous as some are making them out to be, but even so, as Simon Black points out, if Zuckerberg managed to avoid taxes on any of that $45 billion, that alone would contribute to making the world a better place!
Jason Rawn, at NWTRCC’s blog, urges climate change activists to divest from the Pentagon to fight the single biggest contributor to fossil fuel consumption.
NWTRCC is again collecting names for its War Tax Boycott.
If you’ve signed on in the past and you’d still like to be considered part of the boycott, sign on again as they’ve started with a clean slate.
Many people think if you refuse to pay taxes you’ll end up behind bars, but this is actually very rare.
Of the tens of thousands of people who have resisted war taxes over the past 75 years, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, or NWTRCC, knows of only 30 who have done time.
Although [Peter] Smith has refused to pay for over 40 years, he said he’s never faced jail or criminal charges because of it.
“The IRS would just as soon collect the money and sock you with fines and interest,” he said.
That’s where the Penalty Fund comes in.
It fully reimburses resisters for penalties and interest, thereby taking the sting out of IRS reprisals.
The IRS often fails to collect penalties, interest, or anything at all from determined resisters.
Some resisters live lives of voluntary simplicity and have nothing for the IRS to seize (or owe no income tax in the first place).
Others hide their assets.
And sometimes the IRS drops the ball and lets the statute of limitations expire without attempting to collect.
An informal poll at a national gathering of resisters in found that the IRS had taken only about a quarter of the hundreds of thousands of dollars those resisters had refused to pay over the years.
Some links that have flashed by my browser in recent days:
IRS
Follies
It takes so long to reach the IRS by phone that a company has gone into business selling places in the phone queue.
That’s right.
They have many lines on which they call the IRS and stay on hold, and then you call them and buy the line that has been on hold longest so you don’t have to wait so long.
Somewhere, a star on Obama’s economic team is tallying this up as “innovative job creation.”
Padamsee claimed that he always does everything legal and correct.
He said, “I checked with lawyers.
We are a group of like-minded people, and the tax paying population of this country, and they said, anyone who works together could form a union.
And by law, a union is allowed to strike.
We will strike by not paying tax.
We plan to assemble a million people with a fee of Re 1 each, but all this is at the planning stage.
We are talking with senior lawyers and will have them on board.
Our main aim will be to make the government accountable.
If there are any recommendations, people can contact me.”
However, it is not yet specified which tax the Tax Payers’ Union will not pay, as there are various taxes in India, and most of them are indirect tax, which one pays in form of service, or while buying products.
The other important taxes which concern an individual directly, include income tax and professional tax.
This idea seems to be catching on.
Justice Arun Chaudhari, from the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court, in a ruling during a recent corruption case, said:
In my considered opinion, corruption can be beaten if all work together.
To eradicate the cancer of corruption — the “hydra-headed monster,” it is now a high time for the citizens to come together to tell their governments that they have had enough.
That is the miasma of of corruption.
If the same continues, taxpayers may resort to refuse to pay taxes by “non-cooperation movement.”
Tommaso Cerno, a journalist and gay rights activist in Friuli, Italy, has made waves by announcing, in a letter published in Repubblica, a tax strike for gay rights.
If the government does not allow us the freedom to direct our taxes toward more enriching and sustainable funds, we will begin the process of taking that freedom for ourselves.
We will discontinue paying taxes to the government, and instead redirect our money into a community fund that distributes our income in a way that serves all of us.
As long as we continue paying for the current system in the form of taxes, we are complicit in the violence and corruption committed by it.
By withdrawing our funding of it, we withdraw our consent of its actions.
Bernard J. Berg recalls how he came out of the U.S. military doubtful that what he was doing deserved to be called “service”:
I too served in the Navy, just before Vietnam, helping to keep the sea lanes safe for United Fruit Co. and the Dulles brothers.
I later joined the war tax resistance effort sponsored by Lehigh-Pocono Committee of Concern.
Money which should have gone to the IRS to pay for our war crimes went into the fund to be used for worthy causes.
But the IRS had the last laugh as it garnered my bank account and got more money for illegal wars with the fines it extracted from me.
Miscellany
I just learned about the following presentation which was made at the 2013 Bitcoin Conference, and features Angela Keaton from AntiWar.com, Carla Gericke of the Free State Project, and Teresa Warmke of Fr33Aid, discussing how nonprofits can benefit from using BitCoin:
The number of U.S. citizens who are renouncing their citizenship is climbing, continuing a dramatic trend since 2008.
is the deadline for filing
U.S. federal income
tax returns — “Tax Day” — which is also a traditional day of action and
publicity for American war tax resisters. Here is an overview of some from this
year:
The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund sent out its Spring Report.
The fund distributed $9,988 to war tax resisters last year to reimburse them for any penalties and interest the IRS had managed to seize from them.
Catherine McKenna has been documenting the filthy state of the streets in her neighborhood and now says she will refuse to pay council tax until the Croydon Council gets its act together and starts providing decent services in return.
The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund (WTRPF) is a mutual aid program that reimburses war tax resisters for penalties and interest taken by the IRS in the course of their resistance.
While many resisters manage to avoid having the IRS seize money from them, some are less lucky, and some resist in a way that either makes them vulnerable to such seizure, or does not attempt to avoid it.
The fund makes it easier for people to refuse to pay taxes for war, as the worst that is likely to happen to them financially is that they lose through seizure the amount they had refused to pay in the first place — if the IRS adds penalties and interest to that amount, the WTRPF covers it.
The Fund raises the money to pay these amounts from people who subscribe to it, typically because they are sympathetic to war tax resistance or are resisters themselves.
The WTRPF has recently put out a new appeal for funds.
They are asking subscribers to send $30 apiece to reimburse David Zarembka for penalties and interest added to war taxes he resisted in .
He has been a resister since , and they’re only catching up to him now by seizing his Social Security.
If you would like to contribute, there’s a donation button on the WTRPF website with which you can use PayPal or a credit card, or you can send a check to the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign, P.O. Box 2096, Mars Hill, NC 28754.
“Were you able in 1983 to find the resources to support religious, charitable and peace efforts equal to the taxes you were required to pay for the military establishment?”
The Friends Committee on National Legislation uses this question to encourage people to examine the consistency of their peace witness while filling out income tax forms.
In current military expenditures consumed 33 percent of federal appropriations, or 46 percent if the cost of past wars (interest on the national debt and veterans programs) is included, reports Delton Franz of Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section Washington Office.
During each Monthly Meeting (similar to an individual congregation) in the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (similar to a conference body) was asked to examine this question:
Is the voluntary payment of war taxes consistent with the Quaker peace testimony?
When the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting convenes its annual session in , this question will be on the agenda.
Concern about “war taxes” is reaching beyond the traditional peace churches.
The United Church of Christ and the United Methodist Church have adopted statements of support for members who conscientiously oppose payment of taxes for military purposes.
The United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. has initiated a churchwide study on war tax resistance.
While the religious community in the United States has moved toward greater support for conscientious objection to paying taxes for military purposes, the Internal Revenue Service has beefed up its efforts to penalize tax “protests” of all kinds.
An estimated 4,700 taxpayers were fined $500 each during for expressing their religious, moral or political views on their income tax forms.
Congress enacted this automatic $500 fine as a provision of the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of .
The Internal Revenue Service began enforcing the penalty soon after its passage by Congress.
At least 30 people, including those of Mennonite, Quaker, Catholic and other religious backgrounds, are challenging the constitutionality of this regulation in court.
Lawyers believe that the penalty violates freedom of speech and that the expression of religious convictions on income tax forms is not “frivolous.”
Courts are expected to issue summary judgments (decision made by a judge only, no jury) in a number of cases in the coming year.
Internal Revenue Service officials invited Mennonite representatives to meet with them in to discuss the application of the penalty for “frivolous” returns.
IRS officials told U.S. Peace Section staff that the penalty is a processing penalty, designed to protect the efficiency of processing millions of tax returns.
People who have filled their tax forms out correctly and have simply not paid the full amount of taxes owed are not subject to this penalty.
However, taking a “war tax” credit or deduction or writing other comments on the tax form itself can result in a penalty.
The IRS officials agreed that the World Peace Tax Fund bill would be a solution if it were enacted.
Abatement of the penalties already imposed is highly unlikely, but senators who helped formulate the legislation remain concerned about its application against Mennonites and Quakers in particular.
The Fellowship of Reconciliation group in North Manchester, Ind., has organized a Tax Resister’s Penalty Fund to ease the financial burden on conscientious tax resisters.
People can submit a request for financial assistance to cover interest and penalty charges resulting from not paying military tax.
If the request is approved, an appeal letter is sent to all people who have expressed interest in contributing to the fund.
In this way, the cost of a $500 penalty could be distributed among 200 people if each paid only $2.50.
In , 250 people were on the Tax Resister’s Penalty Fund mailing list.
In MCC U.S. Peace Section approved guidelines for a “War Tax Witness Relief Fund.”
This fund was established to provide financial assistance to people within the MCC constituency who face hardship from court cases resulting from a war tax witness.
People in financial straits because they contributed the military portion of their taxes to a charitable organization and then had to face an IRS levy, property seizure, or garnishment of wages would also be eligible for assistance.
To date, no money has been budgeted for the U.S. Peace Section War Tax Witness Relief Fund and the existence of the fund has not been publicized.
U.S. Peace Section, however, will consider aiding those who are unable to acquire assistance from their congregation or conference.
U.S. Peace Section continues to accept contributions of redirected telephone and federal income tax money to its “Taxes for Peace” fund.
Donations to this fund have supported special projects and the ongoing work of U.S. Peace Section.
“The payment of taxes in the service of our common life is a necessary and a good thing.
It is therefore unusual and inappropriate to refuse tax payment,” begins a declaration printed in several national daily newspapers in the Netherlands on and signed by 69 Amsterdam area ministers, including at least seven Mennonites.
The statement, pointing out the Dutch government’s agreement to place nuclear weapons in the Netherlands, goes on to say, “In this critical phase we consider tax objection as a necessary means of protest.
We wish tax monies no longer to be misused to continue along this dead-end road.”
The edition brought readers up to date on the story of John Dyck, a Canadian war tax resister whose story had been introduced :
Like the rest of us, John R. Dyck of Rosthern, Sask., files his tax return.
But unlike most of us, he sends Revenue Canada a check for only 90 percent of his unpaid taxes.
And he includes a letter informing the Canadian government that, for reasons of conscience, a check for the balance has been sent to the Peace Tax Fund in Victoria, B.C.
The second check represents the estimated portion of Canadian taxes designated for the military.
This is in that John and Paula Dyck quietly insisted on not having their taxes spent on bombs and guns.
They believe that Christian non-resistance means more than simply refusing to fight in a war.
It also means not paying others to arm and fight for you.
A small but growing number of Canadians are sending a portion of their taxes to be held in trust by the Peace Tax Fund.
They are hoping that the Canadian government will recognize their conscientious objection to military taxes and provide an alternative.
As a retired pensioner, Dyck must calculate the taxes he owes and forward that amount with his income tax return.
Every year he checks with Ernie Regehr at Project Ploughshares (a peace research group) on the exact percentage of Canada’s budget that goes to the Department of National Defense.
Last year it was 10.5 percent.
He subtracts the military percentage and encloses a letter informing Revenue Canada of his actions, his reasons and the number of his account at the Rosthern Credit Union.
“I tell them, ‘If you want it, take it.’ But I won’t send it myself.”
Consequences.
Last year Dyck found out the hard way what happens when the government wants to collect unpaid taxes.
He says he was prepared to accept the consequences of his actions, but not for the ruthless, impersonal way Revenue Canada operates.
One day the Credit Union manager showed him an official letter that had arrived that morning garnisheeing his account.
His personal notice of the action did not arrive until a week later.
And even though the credit union account held sufficient funds, a second bank account in Saskatoon was also garnisheed.
Then, without notice, his two pension checks stopped coming.
The government ended up with $360 more than was due and Dyck has not heard from them since.
Presumably his “credit” at Revenue Canada will be used to cover the taxes he won’t pay for .
When Dyck visited the Revenue Canada office in Saskatoon to ask why he had not received a notice about the diversion of his pension checks, he was treated rudely.
“The man used some pretty rough language.
He gave me the impression that he would walk over anyone to get the money.”
Although he can recall the money in the Peace Tax Fund trust account if he wishes, he would prefer to have that money used in a hoped-for court challenge, based on the new Canadian Charter of Rights.
“On principle, I don’t mind paying twice,” he says.
The Conscience Canada organization, an outgrowth of the Peace Tax Fund Committee, expects such a challenge to cost at least $50,000.
Dyck himself is not inclined to get involved in a court case.
He has had trouble finding a lawyer who is sympathetic.
Besides, “the court route should be taken by some organization that has enough money and can do it right.”
What is Caesar due?
John R. Dyck is not a man to get up on a soapbox and trumpet his cause.
But the word gets around.
There are Mennonites in his hometown who don’t agree with him and others who ignore him.
His pastor chooses his words carefully when talking about the subject.
“I don’t suppose he has a great deal of support in the church; people feel we should obey the government.”
Dyck is now 70 years old.
When asked why he has taken such a stand when others rest in quiet retirement, he begins to talk about a lifetime spent in church-related service, of the example of his parents, about the books he has read and the years spent overseas with Mennonite Central Committee in Paraguay, India, Korea and Jordan, where he observed the effect of Western militarism.
“They all left their mark on me.”
He is committed to a vigorous, active faith based on a personal experience of God’s salvation and presence.
John doesn’t mind if people disagree with his stand.
“I don’t have any corner on the truth.
I know what it is for me at this moment.
A person should stay true to one’s convictions.”
About his critics he adds, “People say, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
I know that.
I have no illusions that anyone in Ottawa is listening — at the moment.
It has to start small, and I want to support this movement.”
But aren’t we supposed to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s?
“Sure. But does Caesar deserve all he asks for?”
A letter to Revenue Canada from Annie Janzen of Victoria, B.C., indicated that she was joining John Dyck in his protest.
“I object on conscientious grounds to my taxes being used for war purposes…
I have sent 12.2 percent (of income tax owed to Revenue Canada) of the net federal tax payable to Conscience Canada.”
“Form 1040 is the place where the Pentagon enters all our lives and asks unthinking cooperation with the idol of nuclear destruction.
I think the teaching of Jesus tells us to render to a nuclear-armed Caesar what that Caesar deserves: tax resistance.”
These are the words of Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen (right), who two years ago decided to withhold half of his federal income tax and thereby helped launch a religious “war tax” resistance movement that is growing rapidly.
According to the Internal Revenue Service, war tax resistance has increased nearly fivefold in the last three years.
War tax resistance groups say that actual numbers are higher, that IRS tabulations miss many people, including those who simply don’t file or who don’t specify reasons for underpaying.
In the edition, Donald E. Martin wrote about “sponsoring” children from war-torn areas, and noted that doing so “helped to cut down the amount of money we spent on ourselves and the amount of taxes we paid toward paying for war.”
There were also several passing mentions of war tax resistance here and there that I didn’t think were worth excerpting here.
While I’ve been delving through the archives of Gospel Herald, links have been backing up in my bookmarks.
Here are some that concern war tax resistance in the here-and-now:
The Trump administration has decided it enjoys provoking trade wars, which perhaps have the blessing of distracting them from getting their jollies by provoking real wars.
But the prime mechanism — tariffs — is also a revenue source for the government.
Which leads war tax resisters like Lincoln Rice to ask, are these tariffs for war? and if so, what can war tax resisters do about it?
Thirty-Eight Years of Refusal — Erica Leigh, Georgia Pearson, Larry Bassett, and Bill Ramsey review the history of the recently-closed Conscience and Military Campaign Escrow Account, which was responsible for coordinating tens of thousands of dollars in war tax redirection.
Counseling Notes — News about government policies towards war tax resisters, including the use of private debt collectors, IRS summonses, passport revocations, and a sharp decline in levies.
Colrain After 25 Years — A 25th Anniversary celebration of the actions surrounding the Corner/Kehler house seizure, coinciding with the New England Regional Gathering of War Tax Resisters.
War Tax Resistance Ideas and Actions — Including the Maine War Tax Resistance Gathering, and obituary notices for war tax resisters Ray Gingerich and Naomi Paz Greenberg.
NWTRCC News — Including an announcement of the NWTRCC national gathering in Cleveland.
Adrienne Maree Brown writes about her war tax resistance in the wake of a wage levy, and reflects on the disadvantages of going it alone as opposed to resisting as part of a supportive group. Excerpt:
i still deeply agree with the politics that led to this action, but i know now that i didn’t do it the right way.
i acted as an individual, as if my singular act of rage should be respected, as if it could have meaningful impact on the systems of oppression that lead to the military spending i want to divest from.
it helped me sleep well at night, but it wasn’t tied into a collective strategy, a system of accountability around whether it was effective.
someday i hope to be part of larger direct action efforts around debt and taxes, but from this struggle i have learned in a most personal way the importance of the collective.
Is there a war tax resistance movement?
According to a pseudonymous author in a back issue of Conscience (the newsletter of the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign), “War tax resistance is real, but the war tax resistance movement is fiction.”
War tax resistance is a tactic, says the author, whereas movements coalesce around goals, so there will never be a war tax resistance movement, though there may be movements that incorporate war tax resistance.
Erica Leigh looks back at the Beit Sahour tax strike as it was covered at the time, in a two-part series of excerpts from Conscience (part 1 and part 2).
Leigh writes: “The tax resistance in Beit Sahour was due to a high level of community cohesion, organization, education, and solidarity, something that’s missing from our scattered war tax resistance organizing around the United States.
Most of our finest moments in US war tax resistance arose from such concentrated and dedicated efforts in a small geographic region, even when the total number of resisters was small.
Food for thought!”
The Wendell Post, a cute, typewriter-layout-style zine that covered the scene in Wendell, Massachusetts for several years, not infrequently featured articles on war tax resisters.
The following example, an article by Floyd Borakove, comes from its issue:
Wendell may be unique in the high concentration of war tax resisters.
War tax resisters’ techniques vary from intentionally keeping their income below the taxable level to openly refusing all Federal tax.
Many of us have experienced the collection of penalties and interest.
At times these penalties and interest amount to a great burden and makes it more difficult for our witness.
In the War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund was started by members and friends of the North Manchester Fellowship of Reconciliation.
The founders invited sympathetic people to form a broad base that would help sustain and support war tax resisters.
Resisters needing assistance with interest and penalties which have already been collected by IRS submit requests to a committee for review.
Documentation must include a copy of the IRS collection form, [and] a copy of their original letter of conscience to IRS or Congress.
Approximately three times per year the committee combines requests for reimbursement and sends out an appeal to all names on their mailing list.
The fund does not reimburse any taxes collected, just the penalties and interest.
For example, if the requests totaled $2000 and the fund has 500 names they ask participants to send $4.00 ea[ch].
To date the fund has reimbursed over $50,000 to more than 100 war tax resisters in 24 states.
Stephen Broll is behind bars, the latest of a goodly number of Wendell citizens who have been jailed in recent months for vigiling in Colrain.
The Wendell father, teacher, Post staffer, and war tax refuser violated parole on a conviction of “wanton destruction of property.”
(He had helped repair — not destroy — the roof of the Colrain house seized by the IRS from Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner, but the roofing work was without authorization from its new inhabitants.)
His parole violation was in keeping with the theme of nonviolent tax refusal that has been a large part of his life for the past dozen years or more: vigiling last summer against a court injunction, “too near” the Colrain house with other protesters, then refusing to leave when warned to by police.
Also convicted with him for that episode of nonviolent expression of belief were Bob Bady, Michael Klein, and Vince O’Connor.
A domino-arrangement of court and administrative decisions now keeps Randy and Betsy out of their house.
There’s a chance this latest injunction will be struck down by the same legal processes that issued it, once the constitutional rights of free speech and assembly are weighed more carefully against the new occupants’ disputed claims to the land — owned by the land trust — which Steve and his companions were vigiling on.
Meanwhile, for their dubious crime and the parole violation it represented, Steve and Bob started serving 15-day sentences on .
A patient and procedurally liberal judge, brought in from another jurisdiction, heard the trial.
This removed the tension of a heavy court schedule.
As the arresting officers testified, and as Steve and his codefendants spoke, the elements of the growing knot of issues — war tax refusal itself, the IRS’s seizure of property, and the ongoing civil disobedience in Colrain — shone clear.
In an atmosphere of the best the law has to offer, the IRS’s reliance on threat and obedience stood in a kind of contrast.
There is no provision for conscience in the realm of federal income taxation.
My mind wandered as I wondered: does it injure all people to define pacifists as outlaws?
Does this represent the sort of aggression against the spirit that precipitates physically violent crimes — child abuse and drive-by shootings, to name the current showcased symptoms?
The Selective Service has provisions for conscience; why not the Internal Revenue Service?
Money has the curious effect of “laundering” conscience; maybe that’s why the American people haven’t insisted on a Peace Tax Fund.
In that courtroom, the hidden essence of our governmental/legal system showed itself to be distrust and delegation of authority — kind of a Cold War against the conscience — and while some of us felt it, and even saw the hint of an alternative right in that courtroom, I think others had to fight not to.
The IRS, by failing to recognize that land trust property is not the usual kind of property that can be simply bought and sold with a direct exchange of money and pieces of paper, made a big mistake in seizing this particular property in its showcase action.
Defendant Vince O’Connor made it clear that the question of who has the right to control the land around the house is, at the very least, an unsettled question, injunction or no injunction.
The presiding judge had to rather lamely pass the buck by saying the copy of the injunction he held was a “certified copy” — therefore legal.
He couldn’t question the merits of the injunction, he said.
Even if a court someday upholds that injunction — or confirms the IRS seizure and auction of the house as well as the leasehold — the question will remain, in a space beyond legalism: if a land trust is created specifically to introduce stability into property use and ownership, by requiring transactions to take more than just a willing buyer and a willing seller, can even a branch of the federal government override it?
Many land trusts are created to modify the excesses of the free market; by what authority may the government smash them?
Finally, Steve’s court case spotlighted the ratcheting-up of the drama between our authoritarian tax system and people who simply ask to be allowed to live free with their consciences intact.
The law enforcement apparatus finds itself having to choose between disobeying its own strictures and locking up for ever-increasing periods of time people expecting/demanding to be permitted to live less violent lives.
State police and courts are apparently learning to accept the sincerity of this dogged new kind of tax “criminal” in Colrain; there are no fire hoses or Mace attacks.
It’s impossible to predict, but maybe some real gains are being made here in Western Massachusetts to bring authority back home, shifting toward personal and away from delegated risk, toward the inner and away from the institutional… toward a more complete society of more completely functioning (and deeply non-violent) people like my friend Steve Broll.
Jonathan von Ranson
Again in , only the Messenger (of those Brethren periodicals I reviewed) covered war tax resistance, but they did so often.
In a Brethren church in Indiana hosted a war tax resistance workshop:
A concern for active Christian peacemaking was the motivation for the gathering of over 50 people from at least seven religious traditions .
The event, sponsored by the Peace Action Committee of the Northern Indiana District and held at Prince of Peace Church of the Brethren, was a war tax resistance workshop led by Dale Aukerman of the Brethren Peace Fellowship.
The two main body presentations dealt with “our peacemaking and the end of the world,” and “war tax resistance as seen from the perspective of Matthew 18:15–17.” Participants were called to “claim the sovereignty of God and take our Christian discipleship seriously.
The key to our peace witness is to strive to be faithful to God.”
The workshop is one of a growing number being held throughout Brethren churches, often in conjunction with other denominations.
The groups explore nuts-and-bolts alternatives of withholding taxes and support each other in maintaining the witness under Internal Revenue Service pressure, as well as sharing the vision of peace inherent in faithfulness to God.
“Participants in the war tax resistance workshop led by Dale Aukerman (lower left corner) explore peacemaking theology and alternatives of withholding taxes.”
Kevin Zimmerman shared the thinking that went into his war tax resistance in the issue of Messenger (source).
Excerpt:
Although my body is not being conscripted to support war, my tax money is, and at this point in history which do the military powers need more?
My money!
As Dale Brown notes, “If it becomes possible through automated warfare to kill and destroy with unmanned aircraft and minimal personnel, then the witness of withholding economic support may become an issue of even greater importance to the conscientious Christian peacemaker.”
I am not opposed to supporting my government or paying taxes to my government.
But I believe when our government goes directly against Christ’s teachings we are to follow Christ.
Peter and the apostles found themselves forced to resort to civil disobedience in an attempt to fulfill Christ’s teachings and, when arrested, responded, “We must serve God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).
I would like to see Congress pass the bill supporting the World Peace Tax Fund.
That portion of my taxes supporting our military could instead be put into this fund to be used for such peaceful purposes as United Nations activities, research into nonviolent solutions to international conflicts, disarmaments efforts, and international education and welfare.
In this way I can support my government as well as the peaceful lifestyle demonstrated by Christ.
Christianity has never been and will never be a spectator sport.
We are commanded to go out and spread the word by helping our neighbors and sharing their burdens, but also by letting our government know too, by letter or by civil disobedience, when they have broken God’s laws.
By sharing my feelings, I hope others will seriously and prayerfully consider how their tax money is being spent, their role in our military machine, and Christ’s teachings to “love our enemies.”
The issue covered the Supreme Court ruling against Old Order Amish who wanted their conscientious objection to the social security system allowed by law (source).
Excerpt:
When the case reached the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger agreed with the IRS, saying, “The tax system could not function if denominations were allowed to challenge tax systems because tax payments were spent in a man-er that violates their religious belief.”
Such an attitude could seriously hamper efforts to establish an alternate peace fund into which conscientious objectors could channel taxes that now fund military budgets.
That issue also announced the formation of a “Tax Resister’s Penalty Fund” (still going strong today as the War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund):
Dave Leiter, of North Manchester, Ind., is heading up a network of people interested in distributing the burden of penalties or interest levied against military tax resisters.
An example of such support would be for 200 people to share a $500 penalty by each contributing $2.50. If interested, write the Tax Resister’s Penalty Fund…
Another article in the same issue, on possible responses to the nuclear arms race (source), recommended war tax resistance as one of the possibilities:
Refuse to pay some of your Federal income taxes as a witness to your faith.
If you’re scared, try a small amount like $7.77. If that’s too scary, at least send a letter describing the difficulty of praying for peace and paying for war.
Mike and Carol Zuercher Stern shared their war tax resistance journey in a letter-to-the-editor in the issue (source):
The way a person spends money is an indicator of one’s personal priorities.
In the past year (perhaps more clearly than any other time in recent history) our country has corporately demonstrated what it considers to be most important by how it spends money.
Top priority is military superiority over all other nations — bigger and better bombs, submarines, missiles, and napalm.
As Christians and conscientious objectors to war, we cannot accept this national priority as though it were our own.
We oppose the building of weapons whose ultimate use means the shedding of human blood.
Each April 15 we are reminded of our personal participation in funding a national priority which we believe stands in direct contradiction to our Christian faith.
Our response each year has been to file all the legally required tax forms while witnessing by a variety of symbolic protests against the use of tax dollars for weapons of war.
This year we felt compelled by conscience to refuse to pay the entire amount of taxes which had not been withheld already from our salaries.
This $438, less than 25 percent of our total tax obligation for the year, will be given instead to charitable organizations.
In doing so, we affirm our commitment to the gospel of love, healing, and reconciliation.
That issue also reported on Ralph Dull’s theatric tax resistance protest:
Ralph Dull, of the Brookville, Ohio, Church of the Brethren, has refused to pay a portion of his income taxes each year as a protest against military spending.
This year he chose a new way to draw attention to the issue.
On he pulled up in front of the Federal Building in downtown Dayton to offer the Internal Revenue Service 325 bushels of corn in lieu of taxes owed.
The action was “to dramatize and emphasize the need for the Federal government to turn its priorities around and support constructive people programs,” Dull said, “rather than use our resources for an arms race that is murderous and suicidal.”
He asked the IRS to sign a statement acknowledging the value of the grain and guaranteeing that its value would be used only for non-military purposes.
When the IRS refused to sign.
Dull sold the corn to a local elevator.
A check for about $777 was made out to Church World Service and given to the National Farmers Organization’s Food for Poland project.
“Apart from the religious aspect of this issue,” said Dull, “what this symbolic action lifts up for consideration is human decency.
It is vulgar to squander material and human resources while there is so much opportunity to relieve existing human misery.”
a classified ad from the issue
An article from the issue, focused on resistance to draft registration, noted in passing that “The United Methodist Church… said [in ], ‘We… support all those who conscienttiously object to preparation in any specific war or all wars; to cooperation with military conscription; or to the payment of taxes for military purposes; and we ask that they be granted legal recognition.”
A report on the Annual Conference in that same issue noted that war tax resistance was a last-minute addition to the agenda:
Brethren war protesters who decide to withhold tax money going to war purposes may find their employers less than enchanted with the idea.
Brethren employers may be sympathetic to the idea but are up against federal regulations to withhold taxes.
So what’s a body (such as Annual Conference) to do?
Acting on a late-breaking query from Northern Indiana District, Annual Conference elected a committee of five to study the problem and report in .
The committee is charged to come up with helpful guidance for church institutions so they can adequately respond to their employees employees who wish to withhold their “war taxes.”
The study was approved, despite at least one speaker grousing that he hadn’t “heard one good thing about the US government this week.”
Chances are he was correct.
The Annual Conference of the Church of the Brethren will not be remembered as an exercise in flag-waving patriotism.
For the majority of the delegates to Wichita, judging by the voting record, patriotism was best evinced in responsibly and prayerfully calling one’s government to account in the areas of justice and peace.
That committee would include Dale W. Brown, William R. Faw, Ramona Smith Moore, Phillip C. Stone, and Marty Smeltzer West.
In the issue, Ingred Rogers reported on a war tax resisters’ alternative fund that her Brethren church established:
The Manchester Church of the Brethren has established a “Fund for Life” as an expression of support for those who feel moved to refuse payment of war taxes.
This was a significant step in a long process of soul-searching and consciousness-raising.
The process began in when several members formed a tax-concerned group.
Driven by the conviction that to contemplate nuclear holocaust is sin against God and humanity, we came together to discuss how to express our conscientious objection to war taxes.
Careful reading of the Bible convinced us that the Scriptures give no single, absolute statement about payment of taxes.
But we are indeed called to obey God above all, and trusting in weapons of mass destruction is clearly idolatrous.
From the beginning, we saw our action as an effort to maintain faithfully the Brethren peace testimony.
It became increasingly important to us to allow the church to make a witness on behalf of tax resisters.
Our denomination as a whole had already committed itself to recognition of war-tax resistance as a form of conscientious objection.
Now it was a matter of asking for support from the local congregation that had nurtured us and had had a vital influence on tiie formation of our peace position.
After the first church board discussion on the issue, the tax group prepared a proposal for a Fund for Life.
The original draft provided that resisters would deposit in the fund the money withheld from taxes.
Money unclaimed by the Internal Revenue Service was to become the property of the Manchester church as a completed gift by the original depositor and used for peace work.
As in an escrow account, money up to the amount deposited could be returned to the individual if the IRS should claim the sum.
The church board raised two objections.
If the money can be returned in full to the original depositor once the IRS demands it, where is the witness, the risk, the sacrifice?
If the church holds money owed to the government, might the whole congregation legally be implicated?
The board decided to bring the proposal to the next council meeting for discussion, and to delay a final vote for another six months to allow the congregation to reflect upon the issue of war-tax resistance.
The resulting education program was thorough and rewarding.
As expected, we met with disagreement and heated debate.
A second draft suggested that the money should be a completed gift from the beginning without strings attached.
Also, money deposited would not necessarily have to be withheld from taxes; anyone could contribute as an expression of support.
The tax group found this second draft more true in some ways to the original intent.
Both drafts were presented in Sunday school classes.
After three more modifications, the group settled on this wording:
The congregation leaves the withholding of war taxes to the individual conscience of each member or friend.
Any member or friend of the Manchester Church of the Brethren may contribute money to the Fund for Life.
The income from said gifts and the gifts themselves shall be used by the church for activities that are expressly peace-making, including the support of those persons mentioned in item four.
None of these gifts or the income from said gifts shall be used for the operating budget of the church.
Upon request, our congregation shall financially assist any member or friend who withholds war taxes if the Internal Revenue Service presses for collection of his/her tax liability.
Such contributions shall come from the fund or from special contributions of individual members of the congregation.
This latest version was adopted by the church in the .
Our need for education and discussion on this subject increases.
Every year we are painfully made aware of the shift in priorities in our national budget; every year more billions are sacrificed for weapons which will destroy God’s creation.
The Fund for Life has been an attempt to seek alternatives to quiet acquiescence.
It is a small but significant step in accordance with the faith we proclaim.
The study of peacemaking has led some Brethren to question the payment of taxes that support the military system.
Southern Ohio has a special committee on the World Peace Tax Fund.
Michigan’s district conference in will act upon a resolution that urges congregations not to pay telephone taxes.
Manchester (Ind.) church has created a Fund for Life (see [above]).
Galen and Wanda Miller, of Oregon/Washington District, divide their Federal tax into two checks — one made out to the Department of Health and Human Services and one to the Internal Revenue Service — and include a letter stating that they don’t object to paying taxes for constructive programs.
In , two Brethren-linked groups started war tax resisters’ penalty funds, and the Annual Conference considered two queries on whether or how Brethren churches should refuse to pay the excise tax on their phone bills.
No one in the crowd offered bids for the Subaru station wagon, which was being auctioned by the Internal Revenue Service.
The IRS had seized it from Stephen and Phyllis Senesi as partial payment of taxes that the couple has refused to pay.
As conscientious objectors to paying taxes that fund the US military, the Senesis have withheld about $6,500 over the past five years.
Several area peace groups had organized the nonviolent protest at the auction.
When the IRS agent called for bids on the car, the crowd responded first with silence, and then with “We choose life over death.” Phyllis Senesi is a member of Skyridge Church of the Brethren, Kalamazoo, Mich.
A letter-writer in the issue tried to turn the tables on the tax resisters, saying their refusal to pay “could mean one less defensive hour by a protective policeman. This failure to defend could result in the undefended death of some person. The person who machinated the tax resistance is an indirect killer; category, murder.” (source)
The Midland (Mich.) congregation has voted to withhold the federal excise tax on its telephone bill, saying, “We do not believe that paying for war is loving.” The money withheld will be used to buy peace literature for their library.
Since the congregation wants its action to be done publicly and submissively, the witness commission will enclose letters with the monthly payment.
And another on the same page:
Chuck Boyer, peace consultant for the denomination, is compiling a list of people willing to be contacted when someone faces grave financial need because of faithful witness to Christ.
Such instances include Brethren who suffer loss because of conscientious objection to payment of war taxes.
To join the list, write to Chuck Boyer…
My conscience of recent months has given anguish and now distress, because I do not want to pay the military part of my federal income taxes.
I am now a redirector of my war taxes to peace.
My dilemma is that I am treated as a criminal with a lien.
I am not a tax dodger or evader.
I wish to pay all my taxes for peace.
My correct amount has been reported.
The World Peace Tax Fund bill… is one way out of this dilemma.
Its goal is a law permitting people morally opposed to war to have the military part of their taxes allocated for peacemaking.…
Two Brethren-related peace organizations have begun tax resister’s penalty funds to support those who conscientiously choose to withhold war taxes.
In both cases, the fund reimburses those who have been fined by the Internal Revenue Service, and supporters of the fund share the total cost.
The two groups are the North Manchester, Ind., chapter of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Iowa Peace Network. For more information, write…
That issue also brought a preview of coming attractions at the upcoming Annual Conference (source):
The Michigan query points out the use of the federal telephone excise tax to pay for past and present military expenditures and states that Michigan District will withhold the tax, redirecting the amount to a peace tax fund.
In commending this witness to Annual Conference for study and prayerful consideration, the district is asking for affirmation of the action.
The General Board query asks for the appointment of a committee to study and recommend how Brethren should respond to the dilemma of paying taxes for war.
Walter Fitzsimons wrote an opinion piece for the issue that talked all around the issue of war tax resistance, seemed to conclude that such resistance was futile because it would not stop the march of militarism, then took an about-face and said that even if that is true it could be a worthwhile action of persuasion, but then ended on a write-your-congressman note without taking a stand either way (source).
“Church of the Brethren student Mike Yoder (right), of Morgantown, W. Va., helps carry a ‘Bread not Bombs’ banner in a tax-time peace witness. The event was ‘an act of faith,’ said one participant. ‘I am trying to bring evangelism and social action together.’ ”
For some Christians, paying the percentage of federal income taxes that goes toward the military is a dilemma.
This year, a Harrisonburg, Va., group called Christians for Peace gathered at the regional office of the Internal Revenue Service in Staunton to register their concern.
They brought a truckload of food, bought with the money withheld from their tax payments.
“We seek to follow Jesus’ call to be peacemakers by directing our resources away from the instruments of death and toward life,” explained Wendell Ressler, one of the organizers of the event.
“We cannot reconcile Jesus’ call to love our enemies with our government’s call to help pay for our enemies’ destruction.”
In a short statement to onlookers, he said, “We gladly pay taxes which are used to enrich the lives of others, but it is immoral for our government to play Russian roulette with the future of our planet.”
IRS officials were cordial, but explained that they could not accept the food.
The bags of groceries — including more than 1,000 pounds of canned goods — were presented to the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank.
Another article on the same page noted that a Portland, Oregon “Peace” congregation had “voted to withhold the federal excise tax on its telephone bill as a way ‘to say no to militarism and yes to life-affirming programs.’ The money will be sent to the Brethren World Peace Academy…”
The pastor of that Peace Church, Rick Ukena, and his wife Twyla Wallace were profiled in the issue (source). Excerpt:
Just before Rick left the pastorate of Peace Church of the Brethren in Portland, Ore., he and his wife, Twyla Wallace, discussed with me their refusal to pay war taxes. “Refusing to pay that portion of our taxes that goes for military purposes is merely an extension of the decision I made in [to become a conscientious objector],” Rick says. “Paying taxes for war is no different from providing bodies for military purposes.”
Rick likens their present witness to that of past Brethren:
“Historically, the Church of the Brethren youth have been conscientious objectors to military service.
Military tax resistance is an equally important statement for peace.”
, Rick and Twyla have redirected a portion of their federal taxes as an effort to lift up their opposition to current priorities of the federal budget.
With the filing of their returns, they sent that portion to Health Help, a low-income health clinic in Portland.
“Nevertheless,” says Rick, “the IRS, during that time, has seized over $1,000 from our checking account for non-payment of taxes.”
A lien was also threatened against the Portland congregation, since the IRS ordered the church to pay Rick and Twyla’s taxes.
In a specially called members’ meeting, the IRS demand was turned down by a unanimous vote.
“We were joyed with the support that we received from the congregation as it was placed in a position of choosing between compliance with human laws aimed at destroying life and a higher order that commands us to love one another, even our enemies,” Rick says.
As mentioned above, there were two items concerning war tax resistance on the Annual Conference agenda in .
The issue tells us how they fared (source):
The delegates established a committee to study and recommend how the Brethren should respond to the dilemma of paying taxes for war.
Brought by the General Board, the query on taxation for war said that “our government continues to put its faith in weapons that can destroy all human life on our planet.”
The query also pointed out that expenses for present and past military efforts currently total about one-half of all federal expenditures.
The concern of the related query, a Michigan District resolution on telephone tax redirection, was adopted by the delegates, and the issue of telephone tax withholding was assigned to the war tax committee.
Michigan District voted in to withhold federal excise taxes on district telephone bills, and to inform the Internal Revenue Service of the action.
It’s hard to believe that at this point there was much more for yet another a committee to say on the issue, so many similar committees had been formed and had issued reports in recent years.
This committee would consist of Philip W.
Rieman, Arlene E.
May, Violet Cox, Richard O.
Buckwalter, and Gary Flory.
The Church of the Brethren stood firm and refused to honor an IRS levy filed against pastors Louise & Phil Rieman in , and the church’s Messenger magazine also brought news of war tax resisters from other denominations.
There were several passing references to war taxes in the early issues of Messenger, but it wasn’t until the issue that there was anything substantial.
That issue brought a brief update on Presbyterian war tax resister Maurice McCrackin (source):
The Presbyterian Church (USA) has publicly asked the forgiveness of an 81-year-old Cincinnati minister who was defrocked 26 years ago for his anti-war activism.
The Rev. Maurice F.
McCrackin, pastor of the non-denominational Community Church of Cincinnati, was deposed from the ministry by the Cincinnati Presbytery in after he refused to pay the portion of his income taxes that would have gone for military spending.
The denomination’s General Assembly in formally confessed error and endorsed an action to restore him to clergy status.
, more than $40,000 in tax-resistance fines has been covered by a network of people who contribute to a “Tax Resisters’ Penalty Fund (TRPF).[”] The fund, which aids those who refuse for conscientious reasons to pay taxes for war, issued its 11th appeal for funds in .
Founded in by Dave Leiter, then coordinator of the North Manchester Fellowship of Reconciliation, in Indiana, the TRPF provides financial and moral support to war-tax resisters, allowing those who do not directly resist war taxes to support those who do.
War-tax resisters resist funding militarism by refusing to pay all or a portion of their income taxes.
They are not tax evaders, says the TRPF committee, because they do not use withheld money for personal benefit.
Many channel the withheld taxes to organizations that work for peace and justice.
Using US federal budget figures, the committee says that 62 percent of income tax monies go to pay for current and past military expenses.
, the Internal Revenue Service has levied $500 in penalties on deductions it considers “frivolous,” including war-tax deductions.
Resisters submit requests for reimbursements of such charges to the Penalty Fund.
The TRPF does not pay the original tax burden — only penalties and interest.
Between two and four times annually, requests are evaluated and tabulated by a committee of eight people, and an appeal is sent to supporters of the fund.
The amount of the appeal is shared equally by supporters.
The 11 appeals issued have ranged from $1 to $15 per supporter.
The fund has about 570 supporters and has given more than $40,000 to more than 80 war-tax resisters, according to the committee.
The next appeal goes out .
The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund is still in operation today and still operates much as described in the above article.
At the Annual Conference, the committee that had been set up to yet again study the war tax issue and make recommendations announced “that it was choosing not to write a new statement on the issue of conscientiously opposing paying taxes that go for military purposes.”
Instead, they recommended that Brethren go back and study the previous reports issued by previous committees, and heed the calls from previous conferences to seriously study the issue.
(source)
The Church of the Brethren stood firm against an IRS levy in , as reported in the issue:
The Internal Revenue Service has issued a tax levy on funds the General Board holds for Phil and Louise Rieman, co-pastors of the Ivester Church of the Brethren, Grundy Center, Iowa.
The action is a response to the Riemans’ tax withholding as a conscientious objection to paying taxes that are used for war.
The levy requires the General Board to take money held on their behalf from the Pastor’s Housing Fund and send it to the IRS.
If the board fails to do this, the IRS has declared its intention to levy the board’s bank accounts and take the amount plus a 50-percent penalty.
The Executive Committee voted not to send the required amount and to file a protest letter that supports the Riemans’ right to engage in tax resistance.
The committee also told the IRS that the Pastor’s Housing Fund is of such a nature that the government does not have the right to levy against it.
In , representatives from Brethren, Mennonite, and Quaker groups had come together for a three-day conference about war taxes, sponsored by a “New Call to Peacemaking.”
“People who express opposition to war need to consider conscientious objection to paying for it,” stated Chuck Boyer, General Board peace representative, after returning from a three-day discussion of war tax issues.
Thirty-six historic peace church members — Brethren, Mennonites, and Friends — including Boyer, and Julie Garber, of the Manchester Church of the Brethren, North Manchester, Ind., met to discuss issues surrounding withholding of war taxes.
Prior to that consultation, 18 leaders from the historic peace churches met to discuss how best to work together for peace.
It was the first meeting of the heads of the peace churches in more than 10 years.
The simple fact that the leaders met and got to know each other better was the highlight of the meeting, said Donald E. Miller, general secretary of the Church of the Brethren.
In addition to Miller, General Board executives Joan Deeter, Melanie May, and Roger Schrock; board chairwoman Anita Smith Buckwalter; and church historian Donald F. Durnbaugh represented the Brethren.
Both meetings were sponsored by New Call to Peacemaking, a cooperative peace church organization.
The war tax consultation focused on options and consequences for church agencies that refuse to withhold employees’ federal income taxes.
One Mennonite and two Quaker agencies already have policies of breaking the law by not withholding federal taxes of employees who oppose paying the military portion of their taxes.
The Church of the Brethren has not dealt directly with this issue, said Boyer, since no General Board employees have asked that their taxes not be withheld.
At the St. Louis Annual Conference, however, the larger issue of corporate civil disobedience will be discussed.
Of greater interest to the Brethren was lengthy discussion of the US Peace Tax Fund bill in Congress.
Consultation participants agreed to organize a group of leaders to visit Washington, D.C., to register concerns about tax withholding and to support the bill.
Boyer has begun organizing “Six-by-Six” clubs of Brethren to promote the bill.
Groups of six will visit their legislators in Washington or at local offices six times to promote the bill.…
The Peace Tax Fund bill would allow conscientious objectors to put the portion of their taxes that would support the military (presently about 53 percent) into a special fund to promote peaceful programs.
Conscientious objectors could then pay all their taxes without violating their consciences.
The issue reported on the policy the General Board of Friends United Meeting had adopted of refusing to withhold taxes from the paychecks of employees who were conscientious objectors to military taxation (source).
The issue followed by reporting on a similar action by the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (of Friends), which decided “to withhold but not forward to the Internal Revenue Service the estimated military portion of its employees’ federal income taxes” (source).
The issue brought the news that the Church of the Brethren General Board’s Executive Committee “is studying whether the board can withhold the telephone excise tax as a protest against military expenditures” (source).
The issue reported that the Mennonite Church was jumping on the bandwagon too: “The General Board of the Mennonite Church has recommended that church agencies honor the requests of employees who wish to withhold payment of taxes used for military purposes” (source).
That issue also reported on the Brethren Revival Fellowship, which was trying to prod Brethren back in a more conservative direction (source).
It quoted their newsletter on the tax resistance issue:
“We believe that those who are loyal to Christ are bound by the biblical mandate to respect the government of the land in which they reside, and should pay their taxes when due.
What the government does with the money is no longer their responsibility.”
I did, however, find this article in the Indianapolis News:
“Standing Firm: Beverly Weaver and her husband, Duane Grady, pastors of Northview Church of the Brethren, have continued their tax protest despite IRS liens on their savings.”
Waging peace for husband-wife pastoral team means fighting feds by rejecting part of tax bill
Couple is part of national network advocating diversion of revenue from defense to social programs.
by Judith Cebula Staff Writer
Beverly Weaver and Duane Grady believe the U.S. government has the power to do good — to help educate children, feed the hungry, and take care of the elderly and the sick.
But because of their Christian commitment to peace, they oppose the government’s power to wage war.
So they don’t pay taxes that support the U.S. Department of Defense, veterans benefits, and government debt related to defense spending.
It’s a step this married couple has taken annually for nearly 15 years.
According to their calculations, roughly half of their federal income tax support these programs, so they withhold that amount each year.
Instead of paying the government, they donate the amount to the Iowa Peace Network, an inter-faith group dedicated to peace activism and education, Grady said.
Pacifist history
Together Grady and Weaver pastor Northview Church of the Brethren on the Northeastside.
Along with Quakers and Mennonites, the Church of the Brethren is known as a peace church because pacifism has been a core teaching throughout its nearly 300-year history.
Weaver and Grady are among an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 Americans who withhold a portion of their tax dollars because of peace activism, said Karen Marysdaughter, director of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.
In , the couple learned that the Internal Revenue Service had put a lien on their savings account to collect $2,200 in back taxes plus interest and penalties.
Grady and Weaver aren’t fighting the lien.
“This is part of the price of my belief,” Grady said.
“I don’t oppose taxes.
I just oppose the way taxes are being used.”
This is the third time that the IRS has come calling to collect from the couple.
Each time, Weaver and Grady have paid the taxes themselves and received help from other war tax resisters in paying the fines and interest on the taxes.
They belong to a national coalition of resisters who pay into a relief fund.
Grady and Weaver are requesting help this year.
They have sent a copy of their tax return and the IRS collection notice to the director of the fund, along with a statement of their religious commitment to peace.
Based in Indiana
Ken Brown helped start the War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund about 25 years ago.
He directs the peace studies program at Manchester (Ind.) College, a Church of the Brethren affiliate.
Brown said about 300 people throughout the country are part of the network.
Fund members include Mennonites, Quakers and Brethren, mainline Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, and peace activists of no religious affiliation.
In addition to supporting the War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund, Grady and Weaver also support the creation of a “peace tax fund.”
It would require changes in U.S. tax laws to allow conscientious objectors to divert their tax dollars from war and defense program to humanitarian governmental projects.
“All of this is an effort to be a little more consistent in our faith,” Weaver said.
“It’s an issue of not wanting to pay for war when I am praying for peace.”
The issue of The Catholic Worker summarized the state of the art of war tax resistance at that time:
Resisting War Taxes:
On Telephones
The federal excise tax on telephone service has been associated with war spending throughout its history.
It was first imposed by the War Tax Revenue Act of .
Repealed in , the Act was then reimposed in .
During World War Ⅱ, long distance calls were taxed 25%, local service 15%.
In , the tax was reduced to 10% on all phone service, and then further reduced in to 3%, with elimination planned for .
Before this could happen though, the Vietnam War required that the revenue continue.
With military spending continuing at a high level after the Vietnam War, the tax was still retained, and in raised from 1% to 3%.
Currently, the federal government collects nearly two billion dollars a year through the telephone tax.
The tax is itemized on every phone bill (both for local service, and for all long distance companies).
To refuse this tax, one can simply deduct the amount of the tax, and pay the balance.
One should include a note each month explaining that one is not paying the tax in protest against military spending.
If this is not done, the tax will continue to appear on future bills as balance due.
“Telephone tax resistance" cards to enclose with your bill, explaining the protest, are available from several groups, and simplify the notification procedure.
No telephone company can legally disconnect one’s service for nonpayment of the excise tax.
If it does, it can be fined by the Federal Communications Commission.
A telephone company, once notified, should credit your account to eliminate the unpaid amount of the tax, and notify the IRS of your resistance.
The IRS may then send a routine computer notice asking for tax payment, but this rarely happens, since the amounts are small.
If the IRS takes action to collect the tax, many options are afforded the resister.
A war tax resistance counselor can help explore these options, and their consequences.
For information, contact the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, P.O. Box 2236, East Patchogue, NY 11772, (516) 654‒8227.
On Income
The primary way the United States pays for its wars and war preparations is by taxing income.
And, as long as there has been federal income tax, there has been resistance.
In , this meant resisting the payment of 63% of the income tax assessed, since that was the percentage of the federal budget devoted to military spending.
Various options are available, with different consequences following from each, for those wishing to resist these war taxes.
If one wishes to file tax forms as usual, one can simply include payment for less than is assessed; a “military credit" can be taken on the 1040 form; or a “military deduction” can be taken on Schedule A for miscellaneous deductions, all leading either to the non-payment of a token amount, or the amount which would go to the military, or all income tax (since any portion of what is paid then goes to the military).
Others may elect to either file a blank 1040 return, or no return at all.
Finally, a number of people close the Catholic Worker throughout the years have decided to resist war taxes by living under the taxable income.
While this is by no means easy these days, it has the benefit of incurring no penalty from the IRS, and of bringing one closer to the poor through the voluntary poverty which Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day long practiced and recommended.
Before attempting any form of federal tax resistance, one should become familiar with the various options available, and their consequences, including the different ways to avoid tax withholdings, which are a major impediment to resistance.
The War Resisters League, 339 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10012, (212) 228‒0450, has just published a completely revised edition of its Guide to War Tax Resistance, which remains the best resource book available.
It is $8, plus $1 for postage and handling.
The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, P.O. Box 2236, East Patchogue, NY 11772, (516) 654‒8227, has a variety of resources available, including a selection of booklets and a slide show on tax resistance, and can help make referrals to counselors and lawyers.
An article reflecting on direct action and on the Luddite movement, by Katharine Temple, in the issue of The Catholic Worker included this section on tax resistance:
Then there is tax resistance.
This route may not seem as dramatic as smashing the looms that spell unemployment; still, it does strike, nonviolently, the life-line sustaining the corporate-military mechanism.
(Certainly, the State takes it seriously.
Consider the lengths they go to collect meager amounts from people who openly withhold money to protest military spending.)
Refusing to pay the piper may be the most direct and non-confused way to say “No!” to the forces that enslave.
Ways to Resist
Most of us don’t stop to think how many ways tax resistance can be practiced.
At one end of the spectrum is the public and outright refusal to pay, a stance that limits employment possibilities and risks heavy fines or jail.
At the other end is the decision, equally fraught with hardship, to live below the taxable limit.
In between, lie other, less extreme options, such as a partial withholding, working within a lower tax bracket, avoidance of the telephone tax collected for military debts, exchanges of labor without money transactions, rationing (or even giving up!) highly taxed goods, etc.
Given that more than half the federal government budget goes to military expenses and hardware, every tax avoided through pure means is a moral and political statement of the highest order.
These decisions are not to be taken lightly, for the consequences can bear a heavy price.
Any wise builder, we are told, will “first sit down and count the cost whether he has enough to complete it” (Luke 14:28).
Presumably, it is not the best idea to act only in confused, midnight encounters nor to make costly gestures frivolously.
At the same time, if we dismiss tax refusal out of hand, just as when the Luddites have been dismissed, the concern is not always about violence, nor the cost, but the futility.
Isn’t it all doomed to failure?
The die is cast, so that neither demonstrations nor symbolic action nor direct refusals will make the slightest difference.
This is what stops us from even the smallest actions.
The assessment of failure, though, is always a later one, and we shouldn’t give in to historical determinism.
“Our only criterion of judgment should not be whether a man’s actions are justified in the light of subsequent evolution.” (E.P. Thompson)
Furthermore, as Christians, we must hold to belief in the economy of good, that no good action, no matter how seemingly inconsequential, is lost in God’s plan.
The issue of The Catholic Worker announced a war tax resister’s penalty fund:
Tax Resister’s Penalty Fund: A Little Help from Their Friends
By the time this issue of the paper reaches you, , may have come and gone, and so it may be too late to urge again income tax refusal.
It is not too late, however, to take some other steps.
For example, a project has been set up to provide financial and moral support for war tax resisters and to provide a way for those who are not yet able to take that path to support those who have.
Basically, the Tax Resister’s Penalty Fund (TRPF) seeks to reimburse those who suffer financial loss when the IRS levies penalties and charges (over and above the original tax money demanded) against resisters.
The TRPF is sponsored by the North Manchester Fellowship of Reconciliation, which evaluates each request for assistance and requires documentation showing that the penalty has already been collected by the IRS as a result of one’s refusal to pay military taxes.
The fund was established in and, in , reimbursed nineteen war tax resisters for a total of $8,976.76.
As the number of requests increases, it is important that the number of contributors keeps pace.
You can help by joining, sending a donation of any amount, and also by spreading the word.
War tax resisters are taking a brave stand, and they need a little help from their friends.
For further information, please write to: TRPF, North Manchester Fellowship of Reconciliation, P.O. Box 25, North Manchester, IN 46962.
Yesterday I was on a panel concerning “Resisting Taxes in the Trump Era” at the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee’s spring gathering.
Below is a summary of my remarks:
We can no longer reliably extrapolate from long-standing precedent about how the government operates, or how it responds to tax resisters, to anticipate the near future.
While past tax policy changes have been slow, gradual, and predictable, near-future changes are likely to be abrupt, arbitrary, and unstable.
This presents us with new challenges but also new opportunities.
I want to consider five areas the war tax resistance movement in the U.S. should be aware of, observant about, and prepared for.
But it’s too early to draw strong conclusions about any of them:
Changes at the IRS
The possible end of the federal income tax
Expanded government information-sharing
Anti-Trumpery tax resistance
How to resist tariffs
Changes at the IRS
First: the IRS is being significantly degraded and is in disarray.
There have been four acting IRS commissioners already in the first four months of the Trump Administration, serving between four days and six-and-a-half weeks each.
There is no Senate-confirmed commissioner.
In addition there have been thousands of dismissals of probationary IRS employees, and many others have accepted buyout offers to retire early.
Furthermore, the recently-released presidential budget assumes a further 25–50% headcount reduction at the agency.
The enforcement & collection branches have not been spared from this slaughter.
The agency was already on-the-ropes before all this happened.
For years they have lost headcount and their budget has dwindled, even as their responsibilities and the number of taxpayers has increased.
There was briefly some hiring and a budget boost at the agency during Biden’s term, but that hardly had begun to take effect before Trump’s crew came in and eviscerated it.
As a result, we can predict that the already feeble agency will be further incapacitated.
Second: there has been a collapse of the post-Nixon consensus that put a firewall between IRS enforcement and political appointees.
For the last 50 years it would have been considered a serious taboo for the president or one of his political appointees to try to go to the IRS and say “you should audit so-and-so; I think they’re up to something (or: I don’t like them).”
IRS enforcement decisions were firmly in the hands of career IRS employees, not political appointees.
Trump is putting an end to that.
He’s put a political appointee in charge of the IRS Criminal Investigation Division.
He’s being aggressive in using his powers to punish political enemies or to shake down deep-pocketed victims.
We can expect that he will use the IRS in this way, too.
Will this affect American war tax resisters?
Probably not right away.
I don’t think we’re on Trump’s enemies radar, and we’re not attractive shakedown targets.
But if tax resistance becomes a more prominent part of the anti-Trumpery movement, then, yes: expect politically-motivated reprisals.
The possible end of the federal income tax
Trump has repeatedly claimed that he plans to replace the IRS with an “External” Revenue Service, and replace income taxes with tariffs.
Of course, Trump claims a lot of things, and that’s never been a good reason to take those claims seriously.
But there are some other lines of evidence that suggest this may be for real.
Trump’s nominee for IRS Commissioner, Billy Long, when he was in Congress, co-sponsored legislation to abolish the IRS and replace the federal income tax with a sales tax.
This idea of replacing income taxes with consumption taxes has been floating around conservative circles for decades, but hasn’t had enough traction to go anywhere yet.
The “serious people” mostly ignore these proposals as being too onerous to accomplish and too likely to go very badly, but Trump shows strong signs of being willing to do very disruptive things and to not care much if they’ll go badly, so I think we have to consider the possibility.
This is not something Trump could do directly by fiat.
Congress would have to act to eliminate the federal income tax or the Internal Revenue Service.
But potentially Trump could force their hand by 1) unilaterally enacting tariffs, as he can do and has done, and 2) making the IRS so dysfunctional that it can no longer effectively collect income taxes, as he seems to be doing.
At that point, Congress might be faced with a fait accompli and might believe that if it wants to continue to have a budget to spend, it must allow Trump to raise tariffs (or other consumption taxes) to make up for what the IRS is unable to collect.
This is probably not happening right away.
The current Trump budget and tax proposals are for income tax cuts and for cuts to the IRS but not elimination of either.
Where would this leave war tax resisters, who tend to concentrate on the federal income tax as the most important source of war funding?
We would have to retool to resist these new taxes in new ways. (More on this below.)
Expanded information-sharing among federal agencies
A variety of legal firewalls, bureaucratic hurdles, and incompatibilities have prevented federal government agencies from sharing information with each other.
Some of that fell away during the consolidation of the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11.
Now many of the remaining firewalls seem to be dropping to DOGE.
Most news I’ve seen about this is in the immigrant-crackdown context.
For example, the IRS is sharing info from people’s tax returns, and the postal service is sharing information about people’s mailing addresses, to help ICE find immigrants to deport.
Potentially this could make it easier for the IRS to find assets or previously shadowy income.
There’s no sign that this is happening yet, and it would be yet another task for a gutted IRS to try to tackle, so maybe it’s unlikely, but it’s worth keeping on the radar, and we should raise the alarm if anyone notices anything.
Anti-Trumpery tax resistance and war tax resistance
There’s a lot of eagerness among anti-Trumpery activists for some strong, collective action, which could include tax resistance (see for example the National Tax Strike under the Choose Democracy umbrella).
Where does the war tax resistance movement fit in?
Anti-Trumpery tax resistance isn’t “war” tax resistance.
Sure, you can stretch “war” metaphorically to cover deportations, civil liberties collapse, evasion of due process, Constitutional crisis, willful malgovernance, fascism, white supremacy, and so forth, but it’s awkward.
Most of NWTRCC’s outreach and educational material assumes that war and militarism are the focal concern of tax resisters, and to these new resisters this has the potential to be alienating at worst or confusing at best.
Of course, if Trump invades Greenland or Canada or something, then the anti-Trumpery movement will probably develop a strong anti-war focus, and then war tax resistance rhetoric will fit right in.
I suppose we can’t rule that out.
It’s an encouraging sign that the War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund mutual aid program now explicitly welcomes anti-Trumpery tax resisters as well as traditional war tax resisters.
Maybe we can learn from the process they went through as they decided to become more accommodating to a new set of resisters.
Correction: the WTRPF board has since released a statement that says they are not going to extend the fund to cover tax resisters who are not resisting from anti-war motives.
I had based what I said here on a statement from a member of the WTRPF board who apparently misstated the position of the organization.
How to resist tariffs
Trump would seemingly prefer that tariffs permanently make up a predominate portion of federal government income (and therefore military budget income), as they did in the 19th century.
How could war tax resisters continue to resist if this were to come to pass?
Tariffs are taxes that apply to imported goods and that are paid by the U.S. importer.
So you can resist to some extent simply by not importing anything so that you personally do not pay the tax.
But the typical American is going to be paying tariffs indirectly as a consumer of goods whose prices include the costs of tariffs to the importer or manufacturer.
Note that tariffs apply not only to consumer-ready goods (like imported cars) but also to imported raw materials and intermediate manufacturing goods.
For this reason, the prices of many “domestic” products will embed tariffs just as much as do imported ones.
A tax resistance strategy of consuming only “Made in the U.S.A.” domestic goods will not be effective.
Some tactics that might be worth considering if tariffs make up a large amount of military income include:
Smuggling: if tariffs are high, smuggling will become highly profitable and will certainly emerge. We can help nourish that and can redirect our own consumption to smuggled goods.
Domestic manufacture: try to produce and market goods that deliberately and carefully avoid tariffs. Spread awareness about tariff-free goods.
Promote avoidance strategies: there will certainly be loopholes that can be exploited to reduce or eliminate tariffs; we can help importers learn about and use them.
Disrupt the tariff-collection bureaucracy: anything we can do to make the tax collectors’ work more difficult and less efficient will give the Pentagon less to play with.
These tactics (or similar ones) apply also to other consumption taxes that might be in the cards (e.g. a sales tax or use tax).
