Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
Canada →
war tax resisters →
Jerilynn C. Prior
Were I a Canadian, I would be embarrassed to find my country’s judges relying on United States court precedents for their cases.
I might also be a little alarmed to find judges conducting bible study from the bench, especially if I caught them truncating Jesus’s “Render unto Caesar…” bit half way through in order to make a rhetorical point.
The Tax Court of Canada has ruled that taxpayers can’t refuse to pay taxes to be used for military purposes.
The ruling by Mr. Justice Guy Tremblay released on means that Dr. Jerilynn C. Prior of Vancouver must pay the federal government the $1,675.58 she refused to pay on her taxes.
Prior, a Quaker, agreed that she owed the government $15,957.87 for that tax year but withheld 10.5 per cent on grounds of conscience.
She said that 10.5 per cent of the federal budget was used for military purposes.
“As a person of conscience who would refuse to fight in a war on moral and religious grounds, I also refuse to pay for war on the same grounds,” she wrote the government.
“My Constitution allows me freedom of conscience.”
She sent the amount instead to the Peace Tax Fund, which was started in by Edith Adamson of Victoria.
Tremblay noted that , 315 taxpayers had deposited $85,000 in the Peace Tax Fund rather than have it used for military purposes.
The judge said that even if Prior’s freedom of conscience was infringed by the way the taxes are used, “it is the court’s opinion that the Canadian tax system, which is required to collect money to provide for the needs of the nation, which include its defence, would be a reasonable limit that must be imposed in a free and democratic society.”
He rooted his decision in a U.S. case in which a member of the Old Amish religion objected to paying social security taxes on grounds his religion forbade him to pay for or accept such benefits.
In that ruling the United States Supreme Court said some religious practices must “yield to the common good” in a cosmopolitan country where almost every conceivable religion is practised.
Tremblay quoted the following passage from the U.S. ruling:
“If, for example, a religious adherent believes war is a sin, and if a certain percentage of the federal budget can be identified as devoted to war-related activities, such individuals would have a similarly valid claim to be exempt from paying that percentage of the income tax.
“The tax system could not function if denominations were allowed to challenge (it) because tax payments were spent in a manner that violates their religious belief.”
Tremblay agreed with the U.S. court that “religious belief in conflict with the payment of taxes affords no basis for resisting the tax.”
He said he doubts that payment of the military tax is “against the spirit of Christ,” as Prior claimed.
The judge quoted Jesus’s advice to the Pharisees: “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.” He quoted St. Paul to the same effect.
“Jesus and Paul, as citizens of Judah, could not ignore that an important part of the Roman Empire’s budget was used for military purposes,” Tremblay said.
Cheryl Vickers, Prior’s lawyer, said in an interview Monday her client has three months to decide whether to appeal the ruling.
And the irony of the judge relying on that particular Supreme Court decision is that the United States government did eventually accommodate the conscientious objection of Mennonites who wanted to remain outside of the Social Security system — thus proving that it was neither impossible nor too daunting for the government to make exceptions for conscientious objectors in the tax code, contra the court’s finding.
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
The question of how Quaker meetings and other organizations ought to respond to the tug-of-war between the IRS and their war tax resisting employees was among the major concerns of Quakers in , as can be seen in the pages of the Friends Journal.
The IRS has long been trigger-happy with its “frivolous filing” penalty.
According to the issue:
Adding “signed involuntarily under penalty of statutory punishment” to the IRS form 1040 will no longer bring a fine for a “frivolous” return.
In a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union in Montana, a district court ruled that Donna Todd of Billings, Mont., was protected by the First Amendment when she typed the above on her 1040 form.
The IRS is appealing the ruling; meanwhile, it has told its agents to refrain from imposing the frivolous-return penalty against taxpayers who editorialize on their return.
The agency didn’t seem to want to learn its lesson, and was still overapplying this penalty until very recently.
See The Picket Line for for another example of the agency being forced to back down on this issue.
A profile of Barbara Reynolds appeared in the issue, penned by her daughter, Jessica Shaver.
It focused on her war tax resistance.
Excerpts:
My mother is hardly your stereotypical tax evader.
At 70, she lives on Social Security, and her sole assets are a small apartment in downtown Long Beach, California, a beat-up Chevette (bright green), an electronic typewriter, and a six-toed cat named Marmalade.
But she has been a deliberate and most determined resister of taxes .
After years of courteous correspondence, responding to explanations of her position with repeated warnings marked “Past Due. Final Notice,” the IRS quietly closed in.
One day recently, her checking account balance was $131.14.
The next day it was zero.
She tried to make an electronic withdrawal from her savings account, which had held $799.
A message on the screen reported, “Funds not available.”
She was left with $3.06 in cash.
Only days before, Long Beach City College had voted her Senior Citizen of the Year.
At a luncheon in her honor, her efforts on behalf of Indochinese refugees were lauded, and she received a pen set inscribed “Barbara Reynolds, Woman of Peace.”
, she had dinner with Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone, the Japanese government having paid her way to Hiroshima for the 40th anniversary of the first atomic bomb used on people.
Because of her many years of service to the survivors — entirely voluntary — she was the first woman granted honorary citizenship in that city.
A few months earlier, members of the War Resisters League named her their Person of the Year.
In , she was selected as one of 14 “Wonder Women” — women more than 40 years old recognized by the Wonder Woman Foundation for outstanding contributions to society.
The foundation flew her to New York for a press conference with Bill Moyers.
Polly Bergen introduced her and presented her award for “striving for peace and equality.”
So why is a little old white-haired “woman of peace” withholding taxes from the United States government?
It is precisely as a woman of peace that she withholds taxes.
She believes her stand on taxes to be consistent with her commitment to a world without war.
She doesn’t want her taxes, in whole or in part, to go for defense.
She has been up front with the IRS about her motives.
In one of her letters, she wrote, “Having spent 18 years in Hiroshima working with victims of our atomic bombs, I can only say that never, so far as it is in my power, will any portion of my income go to the government as long as it continues to base its economy and its foreign policy upon the development, stockpiling, and deployment of nuclear weapons and missile systems.”
For her, the honorable way to avoid paying taxes is to avoid owing them.
So she studiously attempts to keep her income below the minimum taxable level and gives generously to deductible causes.
In , however, Mum had to sell the old family homestead in Ohio.
In spite of her best intentions, the house had appreciated in value, and she wasn’t eligible for the one-time capital gains exemption.
She was appalled to find that she owed the government $1,189.
She paid the money but she didn’t pay it to the IRS.
She sent $667 to the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign Escrow Account and $522 to Friends United Meeting Peace Tax Fund.
CMTC calls itself “a mechanism to accept payments in anticipation of legislative action” now pending to create a federal Peace Tax Fund.
The FUM Peace Tax Fund is for members who wish their taxes to be used for life-affirming activities.
When and if such a federal fund is created, both accounts will have all individual deposits transferred to it.
In the meantime, because of penalties, she still owes more than $400.
It will be interesting to see how the IRS claims its remaining debts.
Maybe they’ll garnishee the six-toed cat.
A postscript noted: “[Reynolds] has received notice that the IRS has placed a lien on her property for $162.79 in taxes owed for and has seized $100.83 from her checking account. ”
In the issue was a fantasy by Charles R. Sides that imagined a more “user friendly” personal computer.
Excerpt:
I chose the Home Accountant which neatly arranges my expenses and income in spreadsheet form.
After booting the program I began to record my written checks.
A major expense for the month of April is my reconciliation of the past year’s taxes and the quarterly payment for the next year.
When I entered the check number, it responded correctly and asked to whom it was paid.
I entered IRS.
Next question was the amount.
I entered.
At prompting to enter my message the Corona suddenly asked, “Do you know what portion of your taxes goes to the defense department?”
“Have you contacted your congressperson concerning the World Peace Tax Fund?”
“Have you considered withholding your taxes as a protest against the administration’s military position?”
Unable to answer in good conscience, I exited the program.
Was this “user Friendly” computer going to continue its assault on my conscience?
I hadn’t counted on that possibility.
The “War Tax Concerns Committee” of New England Yearly Meeting — Cushman Anthony, Elizabeth Boardman, Alan Eccleston, Finley Perry, and George Watson — published a statement in the same issue:
New England Yearly Meeting, through various minutes, has declared that refusal to pay all or part of one’s income tax is an appropriate way to refuse to participate in war making, for those who feel led to engage in such a witness.
A number of members of the yearly meeting who have felt so called have been offered guidance and support through the Peace and Social Concerns Committee, the Committee on Sufferings, and the NEYM War Tax Alternatives Fund.
War tax resistance is usually an individual witness rising out of the Peace Testimony.
However, if one of our members who wishes to make this witness is also an employee of the yearly meeting, some additional considerations come into play.
The question presently facing us was raised by the Personnel Committee:
Should NEYM refuse to act as the federal government’s agent in collecting — by withholding and paying over to the IRS — taxes of an employee who refuses on the basis of conscience to pay war taxes?
The problem is not new.
Action has already been taken by other organizations, including Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, London Yearly Meeting, American Friends Service Committee, and the General Conference Mennonite Church.
Each of these organizations has wrestled with it for a number of years, and after careful consideration, each refused to withhold taxes.
Nobody yet knows the full consequences of any of these decisions.
There are difficult questions involving individual conscience on both sides.
We note some of the concerns and reasoning of the Meeting for Sufferings of London Yearly Meeting in taking this step.
Some Friends saw the Society as having become a little too comfortable in its peace testimony and saw in this witness a gesture to all peace loving people.
It was noted that since Quakers are people who put principles into practice, the yearly meeting as an employer of conscientious objectors should assist them in their witness.
On the other hand, concerns were raised that should a witness be made, there would be criticism that “it was neither logical to juggle with the mathematics of tax monies, nor moral to opt out of the give and take of a democratic society.”
Another observation was that Friends “from John Woolman to draft resisters had been careful to place no one but themselves at risk,” whereas this refusal to withhold would place the yearly meeting itself at risk.
In a letter to the Board of Inland Revenue (), the clerk of the Meeting for Sufferings of London Yearly Meeting noted, “The name Meeting for Sufferings derives from when Friends met to give support to those of their members who suffered in diverse ways for conscience’s sake and that at various times the Society of Friends corporately has recognized a religious obligation to stand with individuals whose commitment of conscience may not currently be recognized by the laws of this country.”
In deciding this question for ourselves as a yearly meeting, there is a case for joining the witness as an employer by refusing to withhold income tax money or refusing to forward withheld money to the IRS; and there is a case for continuing to withhold and to forward money to the IRS as required by law.
The Case for Continuing to Withhold as Required by Law
The United States has one of the most effective tax systems in the world.
Its success rests on the voluntary compliance of U.S. citizens.
Undermining this system by noncompliance with the law does great harm to the system.
Refusing to pay withheld taxes to the government would put us in opposition to the Internal Revenue System.
Our real dispute, however, is with the Department of Defense.
Consequently, this effort misdirects our energy and our witness away from that portion of governmental power which we would choose to oppose.
Failing to pay all of the tax money would not directly reduce the war making budget.
By legal process, the IRS would almost certainly collect the money plus penalties.
Even if it did not, the military would get its full appropriation anyway and would be unaffected by the witness.
This action could well jeopardize some assets of the yearly meeting, the standing of the yearly meeting as a taxdeductible organization, and the officers of the yearly meeting.
Since some members of NEYM are not in agreement with the war tax objection position, they should not be asked to put themselves and the yearly meeting in jeopardy for a cause in which they do not believe.
The yearly meeting is supporting and should continue to support individual war tax witness actions.
If the yearly meeting does not join the witness as employer, its employees will not be placed in any worse position than Quakers employed elsewhere.
A number of members of the yearly meeting feel required by their consciences to pay all the taxes which they owe to the federal government.
A decision by the yearly meeting to refuse to pay employees’ withheld taxes would violate the consciences of these Friends.
The Case for Joining the Witness as Employer
We live in a world where there are in excess of 15 million deaths a year by starvation (41,000 a day) while $660 billion goes to military expenditures.
It is estimated that just $60 billion, or less than 10 percent of all military expenditures, would eliminate starvation on this planet.
Purchasing weapons of war not only increases the likelihood of killing, it causes thousands of deaths each day by depriving people of the sustenance needed for their survival.
As a religious organization in a country that is one of the leaders in the arms race, we have a clear responsibility to address this issue.
Joining a witness as employer gives the yearly meeting an opportunity to take concrete action as a religious body on this critical problem.
Taking this position is not a threat to the voluntary tax system, since it is an open and honest witness, and tends to encourage others to be open and honest in their dealings with the IRS.
It is the creeping tendency to be dishonest in declaring one’s financial situation that threatens to undercut our tax system.
If this witness is viewed as a threat to the voluntary tax system, there is a remedy at hand — passage of the World Peace Tax Fund Act in the U.S. Congress.
New England Yearly Meeting’s action would work towards passage of that act, which would benefit individuals in the Society of Friends, as well as our country as a whole.
Friends’ testimony on peace is one of our central experiences of truth.
The weight of this issue in our world calls us to act with clarity and resolve, regardless of risk and possible complications.
The fact that the tax may be collected does not diminish the value of this conscientious objection to war.
Taking this action as a yearly meeting gives us an opportunity to define the differences between our beliefs and those of the U.S. culture in general.
This could then strengthen the resolve in individual Friends to speak out and take action in regard to our war making society.
Other Quaker organizations have already begun this witness, and our standing with them adds our testimony to theirs.
This amplifies the message to the world of Friends regarding war and peace, and at the same time will contribute to the unification of Friends.
We urge all Friends to weigh these considerations prayerfully and to seek clarity on how the yearly meeting should respond if one of its employees requests that it support him or her by refusing to pay withheld taxes to the government.
As an example of Friends weighing such considerations, the same issue reported on a meeting of 35 people from 21 Friends organizations at the Pendle Hill center “to discuss their responsibilities when employees are conscientious objectors to the payment of war taxes.”
Excerpts:
Wallace Collett, clerk of the Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns which organized the conference, noted that this may be the first time so many Quaker organizations have come together to deal with the issue of how individual conscience flows into our corporate organizations.
In a talk formed by images of “Stones and the Builder” drawn from 1 Peter 2, Kara Cole, Administrative Secretary of Friends United Meeting, noted that Scripture shows how the lonely and isolated find themselves formed into a community which is the temple of God.
The issues for the conference revolved around choices, risk, and obedience, as they relate to appropriate use of our taxes.
Kara pointed out that when we choose Jesus, we choose to be with one who was alone in prayer, who was misunderstood, who was the living stone rejected by people.
However, we also find that we become living stones.
Not only can we find the temple in one another, we also find one another in the temple.
This image set the tone for the remainder of the conference, as participants sought ways to allow our institutions to be incarnated as communities under the influence of religious concern.
Representatives from the Friends Journal, the Friends World Committee for Consultation, Friends United Meeting, London Yearly Meeting, the American Friends Service Committee, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, and other Quaker organizations and groups were able to share firsthand experience with ways Quaker employers have responded to staff members’ conscientious objection to payment of war taxes.
A panel of three lawyers presented a particularly helpful analysis of the legal situation.
These materials and some queries and advices that emerged from small group discussions will be revised and made available by the Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns.
While participants struggled with complex technical issues associated with war tax resistance, there seemed to be agreement that Quaker institutions have a corporate responsibility to assist their employees in responding as openly and honestly as possible.
Employers were admonished to develop policies to clarify the situation for the employees.
Employees and employers were urged to work together to avoid any form of tax evasion.
Employers need to develop policies so that their employees are not put in the position of having to commit fraud to gain control of income that would be subject to withholding.
Employees need to practice full disclosure of their actual tax liability and redirect refused taxes to constructive programs.
Individuals were urged to seek clearness with their faith community (monthly meeting or church) before engaging in this witness.
A letter received from Marion Franz, Executive Director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, told Friends of the importance of corporate witness on war taxes.
She finds that most Congressional staffers — who are rarely asked to consider rights of individual conscience — sit up and take notice when informed that the issue is not just of concern to some individuals, but that organizations have begun to take stands in cooperation with their employees.
Bob Hull, of the Mennonite General Conference, reported that New Call to Peacemaking has tentative plans to hold a conference on war tax concerns for Mennonite, Brethren, and Quaker employers in .
This conference, somewhat delayed, was announced in the issue:
The Challenge to church organizations from employees requesting their federal taxes not be withheld will be the topic of a conference jointly sponsored in by New Call to Peacemaking and the Quaker War Tax Concerns Committee.
A note in the back of the issue said:
Conscientious tax resisters who are forthright in their dealings with the IRS are unlikely to face a criminal penalty, according to Peter Goldberger in War Tax Concerns: Options and Consequences.
This booklet offers the layperson an overview of the IRS tax collection process for those who may be considering war tax resistance…
A second note concerned the booklet Taxes and Idolatry which concerned “the forgotten biblical witness in which taxation is seen as an affront to God.”
The issue included an article that noted in passing that at the London Yearly Meeting “[i]n recent years… two clerks were threatened with imprisonment on the issue of whether the yearly meeting should withhold for taxation purposes a part of employees’ pay.”
That issue also announced an “seminar/lobbying day” on behalf of the Peace Tax Fund, and an “National War Tax Resistance Action Conference” — which is to say, a NWTRCC gathering.
A letter from Geoff Tischbein in the issue is a good and rare example of the fourth variety of war tax resister I mentioned in my typology of the American war tax resistance movement back in .
Tischbein takes issue with the assertion in the article from the War Tax Concerns Committee of New England Yearly Meeting that their real dispute is with the Department of Defense, not the IRS.
As a war tax resister, I’ve often struggled with this question, and for myself, I do not feel that my dispute is with either.
Most immediately, my dispute is with the U.S. Congress and its refusal to grant conscientious objectors to military taxes the same right of conscience granted to conscientious objectors to military service.
The legal arguments are manifold and include, among others, free exercise of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment and international law which involves Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution and the Nuremberg principles.
Indeed, much of the thinking and correspondence of the founding fathers indicates that freedom of conscience was a principle they strongly believed in, but one they did not specifically list in the Constitution.
I suppose, if I were to follow the thread of responsibility to the spool, it would ultimately lead to the entire population of the United States that, in some macabre contortion of expediency, has put the welfare of the state above the rights of the individual, more closely a description of communism than of Western-style democracy.
Ultimately, I feel that war tax resistance is a religious issue and no governmental power has any authority in the case; it is strictly a personal concern to be resolved, individually, with God.
Thus our goal, as I see it, is to convince Congress of the religious nature of this issue.
The “Sufferings” column in that issue concerned Jerilynn C. Prior:
[Prior], a member of Vancouver (Canada) Meeting who paid into Conscience Canada’s Peace Trust Fund that portion of her Canadian federal income taxes which goes for military purposes, has had her appeal to the Tax Court of Canada rejected.
In , Revenue Canada assessed the amount of tax that Jerilynn had withheld from her income tax.
She appealed the assessment, but was denied the appeal.
The forthcoming hearing will be in Vancouver; the case will eventually go to a Federal Court of Appeal and then to the Supreme Court of Canada as a test case of the Charter of Rights provisions for freedom of conscience and religion.
Legal costs will probably exceed $100,000. Donations, payable to the Peace Tax Legal Fund, may be sent to The Society for Charter Clarification…
Prior’s case got a more in-depth look in the issue.
Excerpts:
Jerilynn Prior, a member of Vancouver (B.C.) Meeting, will be the first person to claim in court that the new Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms provides the right not to pay for war, and she is prepared to follow this claim through the courts to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Her first war tax resistance was in with refusal to pay the 10 percent telephone tax which was reimposed specifically to support the Vietnam war.
Throughout the time she had an income in the United States she withheld various kinds of taxes and put the money into recognized charities when there was no peace trust fund.
She became a Quaker in Cambridge (Mass.) Meeting in .…
She went to Canada in and became a Canadian citizen in .
Beginning in (which was the year the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enacted) she consistently refused to pay the government that portion of her federal income tax which would otherwise be spent for war purposes.
She paid this money into Conscience Canada’s Peace Tax Fund.
Her decision to withhold the portion of her income tax which would otherwise be spent for war purposes and to deposit it in a Peace Tax Fund was made from a deep-felt conviction that war is wrong.
Her appeal in the tax court in against a ministerial decision that she should be assessed the amount she deducted in was pursued with the same spiritually-based conviction.
And when the tax court ruled against her, her decision to take the case through the federal court system was with the conviction that she could not honestly teach peace to her children while paying for war.
She feels that to have a strong belief and not to act on it is hypocrisy.
She insists that her action is not a political one and maintains she is not trying to change the government or the Income Tax Act.
She affirms the government of Canada and is proud to be in that country.
She does not wish to change government policy on taxation but merely wants a way in which to pay taxes and at the same time uphold her conscience and religious beliefs.
When asked if the government could assure her that none of her tax money would go to military purposes, would she pay the full amount of tax to the government, she replied, “I certainly would.”
Jerilynn has specifically asked that these legal proceedings not be referred to as “her test case,” for her action is being upheld by many others and is taken on behalf of all.…
A great deal of media attention was aroused when the decision by the tax court judge was made public.
No doubt an even greater media coverage will be given to the next court decision.
Such publicity gives to those who disagree an opportunity to voice their opinions, to hear responses, and to give the subject more thought.
When it increases public awareness of the urgent need for nonviolent solutions to disagreements, that is, in itself, an accomplishment.
We hope that the final Supreme Court decision will be affirmative and will set the stage for other equally sincere efforts in Canada, and perhaps elsewhere, toward a more peaceful world.
Prior’s Federal Court appeal was denied in and the Supreme Court declined to take up her case in .
She appealed further, to the UN Human Rights Committee, but they too refused to hear her appeal.
Another article in the issue concerned the Norway Yearly Meeting. Excerpt:
A growing feeling of guilty conscience among members led to drafting a letter to members of the government and various peace groups about the peace tax issue.
The meeting asked that ways be found to direct tax money from those who wish to humanitarian, ecological, or promoting peace instead of to the defense budget.
Leah B. Felton had a letter-to-the-editor printed in the issue that covered little new ground, and discussed war taxes (though not war tax resistance) and promoted the Peace Tax Fund as if nobody had ever heard of these things before.
It’s notable perhaps only for the opening phrase: “No doubt the overwhelming majority of Friends pay income tax…”
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
There were several references to tax resistance in the Friends Journal in , but many of them referred to some other time or country or religious denomination, and those that referred to American Quakers in the here-and-now lacked much urgency or enthusiasm.
Journal editor Vinton Deming marked the passing of Colin Bell in his opening editorial in the issue, and noted:
One spring at yearly meeting he spoke very movingly in support of young Friends faced with the draft.
He challenged some of us over draft age to consider that not only our young people were being drafted; our federal taxes were being conscripted for the war as well!
I visited him once at Davis House in Washington with a friend whose house was threatened with IRS seizure for unpaid war taxes.
Colin was keenly interested, shared a generous amount of time from his busy schedule, and was very supportive.
As we left he walked us to our car.
I still hear the cheerful sound of his words (and see the twinkle in his eye) as he leaned in the car window, shook our hands, and said, “Good bye, Friends.
Take care of your spirit!”
In a letter-to-the-editor in the issue, Carole Hope Depp split hairs over whether or not war tax resistance is civil disobedience — claiming that since the Constitution, the highest law in the land, protects freedom of religion, then a law that purports to force people to violate their religious scruples by paying for war must be void, and so those who resist it are not being disobedient at all.
an ad from the issue of Friends Journal
In the issue, Paul Zorn took issue with “some traditional Quaker attiudes and institutions,” including war tax resistance, as representing “an attitude that somehow Quakers are different from the bulk of society, and that much of our institutional effort should go to maintaining that difference… [and] that maintaining certain aspects of our uniqueness is more important than finding a larger consensus in society.”
Excerpt:
…Philadelphia Yearly Meeting is resisting an IRS levy on salaries of two employees to recover unpaid federal taxes because those funds would be used for military purposes.
The more I have talked with individuals and attended large and small groups, both in my monthly meeting and in the yearly meeting’s Representative Meeting, the more troubled I am with the policy, although I realize it has been fashioned with much care and concern for the Spirit over 15 years or more.
As I understand it, a tax refusal contest with the federal government usually ends with the government getting the money.
The main result of refusing taxes is to make a public witness, and to ease a conscience that is troubled by voluntarily supporting the military.
I am troubled that part of the public witness consists of breaking the law and attempting to justify it, especially when tax refusal is as likely to reduce funds for low-cost housing, etc., as it is to reduce funds for the military.
Regarding voluntary support of the military, I think it is part of the irony, tragedy, or reality of modern life that despite our best efforts, institutions to which we belong act on our behalf in ways that we consider wrong, evil, or disastrous.
At the present time, we cannot effectively separate ourselves from all such institutions, and we would lose some of our humanity if we did.
He suggested that Friends consider “rethinking how much corporate energy we should put into tax refusal as an aspect of our peace testimony” and instead “trying to deal directly with some of the major problems of society rather than trying to insulate ourselves from them.”
The issue also described the war tax resistance of Sharon Bienert, who wrote letters to the IRS, agitated for a legal peace tax fund, and meanwhile split her resisted taxes between a Quaker-run peace tax fund and an escrow account.
That issue also mentioned that war tax resistance was “strongly supported” by the Lafayette, Indiana, Mennonite Fellowship.
Fellowship member Ken Nagele redirected a military-percentage of his income taxes to a low-income loan program; Mary Ann Zoeller redirected hers to Amnesty International; other families have donated income to the church to keep their income low and resist taxes that way.
That issue also brought news of a peace tax fund legalization campaign in Australia which “would allow conscientious objectors to pay 10 percent of their income taxes into a fund to be used for nonmilitary purposes” but which had only gained the support of eight of the 76 Australian Senators thus far.
In the issue, Carolyn Stevens reviewed two books published by the Friends World Committee for Consultation’s Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns: Handbook on Military Taxes & Conscience and Fear God & Honor the Emperor which were collaborative efforts edited by Linda Coffin, Peter Goldberger, Robert Hull, and J.E. McNeil.
The first of these books concerned “the history of military tax refusal among Friends and biblical teachings on the subject[,]… personal stories of military tax resisters, one about international war tax refusal campaigns, and another that chronicles efforts to enact Peace Tax Fund legislation.
The book concludes with a series of study questions and a resource list.”
The second “tackles the difficult question of how religious employers may be called to corporate witness of military tax refusal, either organizationally or in support of staff members who are conscientious objectors.
There is a survey of minutes, resolutions, and guidelines adopted by church bodies, Quaker and otherwise.
A chapter on legalities, co-authored by Peter Goldberger and J.E. McNeil, calmly raises and responds to difficulties, real and imagined, that employers face when supporting a witness against military taxes.
Robert Hull’s chapter on discernment blends a secular management perspective with traditional religious concerns.”
Stevens was enthusiastic about the first book (a “high level of sincerity and scholarship [that] gives us wonderful assistance”), less so about the second, which she described as “awkward,” “clumsy,” and “defensive” though “rich in necessary information.”
The issue brought an update on Canadian war tax resister Jerilynn Prior’s test case in which she was trying to get conscientious objection to military taxation legalized under the freedom of conscience portion of the (relatively) new Canadian Constitution.
She wasn’t having any luck in the courts.
The article claimed that “[m]ore than 500 Canadians withhold the portion of their federal taxes that would otherwise go toward military expenditures.
Many instead allocate the money to Conscience Canada’s Peace Tax Fund.”
Beit Sahour
The story of the nonviolent tax resistance campaign against the Israeli military occupation of Palestine in Beit Sahour got some coverage in the Journal.
Editor Vinton Deming wrote an article for the issue that was hopefully subtitled: “Nonviolent strategies may help to bring an end to the Israeli occupation.”
It was based on his conversations with Mubarak Awad and Nancy Nye.
Awad founded the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence in and published a blueprint for nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation.
“At first, people thought we were a bit crazy, that perhaps I had come back from my time in the U.S. with some strange notions.
We started with just five people.
We would sometimes go to a public place and carry a sign that said ‘Down With the Occupation,’ or, ‘Don’t Pay Taxes.’
People at first would laugh and make fun of us.”
The Center later advocated a set of tactics, including “a boycott among the Arab population of all Israeli-made products; refusal to pay taxes or to work for Israelis; insistence that all mail be addressed to people by using the Palestinian language, not Hebrew; and the initiation of many self-help projects.”
Beit Sahour was an example of where Palestinians decided to try out some of these ideas in service of the intifada.
“People there,” said Mubarak, “to show their support for the uprising, decided they would refuse to pay taxes to Israeli authorities — no taxes at all.
The Israelis wanted to punish them so they came and confiscated the ID cards of a number of the business men.”
So what was the community’s response?
“Well,” Mubarak continues, “without your ID card you are stuck, you cannot go any place.
When people in the village heard about this, they said, ‘If they are going to take the ID cards of these businessmen, we are going to turn in our ID cards too.’
And they did.
So the Israelis called a curfew in the village and they said, ‘Here, please take your ID cards;’ they gave them all back!”
And the news of this incident spread to other communities?
“Yes,” Mubarak says, “everybody began thinking it was a good idea to do it.
You say, ‘OK, I’m not going to hurt the Israelis, but this is what I’m going to do.’
And people will get together and say, ‘Let’s do it.’
Palestinians are what I would call ‘trial and error’ in their approach.
Like, if this works, well, we’ll try it and continue to do it; if it doesn’t, it’s all right, we’ll do something else!”
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
By the coverage of American Quaker war tax resistance in the Friends Journal makes it seem pretty weak — not a lot of activity at all, and what there is of it is half-hearted symbolic measures or pathetic attempts to get Congress to pass a “Peace Tax Fund” scheme.
There was almost more news about war tax resistance in Canada than in the United States.
The issue made note of another lobby day for the Peace Tax Fund bill, and of a new “EZ Peace Form” that the “Alternative Revenue Service” was encouraging tax filers to fill out:
The Peace Form has a similar format as IRS forms, with a section for figuring one’s tax share, a section that shows the percentages going to various government programs, and a section in which one can indicate where to redirect one’s tax contribution.
Forms are to be returned to the Alternative Revenue Service so it can announce the number it receives and the amount of taxes redirected from financing war to providing for human needs.
Another note told readers how they could obtain transcripts of the Congressional hearing on the Peace Tax Fund bill, and noted: “The hearing was attended by several hundred Friends, Mennonites, Brethren, peace activists, and pacifists of all faiths.… The hearing received more than 2,300 letters of written testimony from people across the country, from which a selection is published in the transcript.
Some of the voices are from Friends Journal, Friends United Meeting, the American Friends Service Committee, a number of yearly meetings, and many other denominations and organizations.”
A letter from John K. Stoner of the “New Call to Peacemaking” in the issue asserted that “Some day in the future the true heroes of our time will be named.
They will be the people who refused to pay war taxes, who vigiled, prayed, and demonstrated in front of weapons plants, who resisted in whatever way they could the insidious, relentless pressure to conform to the mentality of deterrence, the idolatry of redemptive violence, the rule of the gun, and the economy of death.”
An article in that issue mentioned that the Congressional hearing concerning the Peace Tax Fund bill was the product of a great deal of work: “[T]o arrange for that hearing,” the article said, “FCNL lobbyists worked with the Peace Tax Fund Campaign for eight years!”
The issue included two articles on war tax resistance.
One by Robin Harper that I mentioned in an earlier Picket Line, and a second: “What Do We Owe Caesar?” by Marguerite Clark.
It gave a sort of fresh, starting-from-scratch overview of the war tax issue and at how Friends had tried to meet it, but was overwhelmingly pessimistic, asserting that there’s no satisfying way to practice war tax resistance because the government has the power to inevitably get its hands on the money eventually (Clark used the case of the Friends Journal capitulating and paying Vinton Deming’s taxes as a case in point).
She ended her piece by hoping Quakers would “take a stand” by supporting the Religious Freedom Restoration Act as a hopeful first step in legalizing conscientious objection to military taxation (that Act eventually passed but has so far been of no help at all in legalizing such conscientious objection).
A letter from Edwin A. Vail in response to Harper’s article trotted out the familiar argument that it’s wrong to withhold your taxes from the government on the grounds that the government might spend the money improperly for the same reason that it’s wrong to refuse to repay a debt because you think the person you owe money to might spend the money unwisely.
The issue brought news of a new group, calling itself “The Peace Taxpayers” —
The Peace Taxpayers are available as counselors for people wishing to experience “the joys of peace taxpaying.”
The organization works to change existing U.S. tax codes which force all income taxpayers to be supporters of war and preparations for war.
The counselors can help with questions about Internal Revenue Service regulations, how to redirect war taxes, and how to reduce taxable income.…
The Peace Taxpayers organization is accepting submissions for a new book, The Joy of Peace Taxpaying.
They are looking for writings of any style and length that describe paths taken and personal experiences of those who have acted on their opposition to paying for war.…
Michael Fogler and Ed Pearson were given as contact persons for the group.
“The Peace Taxpayers” was still somewhat active as late as , and I’ve seen references to it dating back as far as .
International news
An obituary notice for Albert E. Moorman in the issue mentioned that “[i]n he and his wife immigrated to Canada to free themselves from paying taxes to the United States government, whose foreign policy they had long been at odds with.”
A note in that issue also asserted that “It is possible to divert one’s military taxes to selected charitable donations in Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia, Canada.
Under recent Ontario law, donations to Conrad Grebel College, University of Waterloo Foundation for Peace Studies, qualify as ‘gifts to the crown.’ ” However, a letter-to-the-editor in the issue threw some cold water on that:
A news item in your issue gives the impression that directing military taxes to peace in Canada is possible and simple, by making donations to the Crown (all levels of government).
We wish it were so, but there is no provision in the Income Tax Act so far to exempt us from paying a proportion of our taxes to the military, as in the States.
We have been advocating making donations to charitable organizations, political parties, and to the Crown to reduce all taxes, including military taxes, but one would have to donate very large amounts to eliminate taxes altogether.
Most of us probably would not want to do so, as we benefit from medicare, pensions, social assistance, etc., all paid for with our taxes.
Ray Funk’s Private Member’s Bill was scheduled to be debated in the House of Commons on , but the government recessed the House on , and we are now headed for an election on .
Jean Chretian [sic.], the leader of the main opposition party, has suggested to us that we might be able to direct our war taxes to the Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security, which he intends to reestablish, if elected.
So we are hopeful that, in the next Parliament, some progress will be made.
Edith Adamson Conscience Canada, Inc.
Canadian war tax resister Jerilynn Prior, who had been pursuing a long and fruitless court battle to try to get conscientious objection to military taxation recognized as a right under the new Canadian Constitution, wrote a book about her stand — I Feel the Winds of God Today — that earned a brief review in the issue.
“The author describes the influences in her life that led her to become a war tax resister… she talks about the difficulties in the [legal] process and her disappointment at not receiving a hearing at court.
Interwoven with this is an account of her conscientious leadings regarding her career in medicine and her vocation as a mother.
She also refers to the troubles of Canadian Yearly Meeting in following requests of employees who with to become war tax resisters.”
The London Yearly Meeting, according to the issue, was spurred to “renewed action,” as the Journal called it, “in the form of a letter writing campaign, to express objection to paying taxes for military purposes.
A monthly letter to the Inland Revenue, expressing London Yearly Meeting’s position, is now being supported by an effort to reach the members of Parliament.
However, help is needed.
Friends are asked to use these monthly letters, and their law-quoting responses, to show the dilemma which arises when an employer with 300 years’ heritage of peace witness is required to collect and hand over money which pays, in part, for war and war preparations.”
New Society Publishers began in to bring out a “Barbara Deming Memorial Series” of books meant to highlight women involved in nonviolent action.
The first book in the series was You Can’t Kill the Spirit by Pam McAllister, which included a chapter on women tax resisters, and another separate section on the Igbo Women’s War, which was also a tax resistance campaign in part.
Here are some excerpts from this book:
Injustice, Death and Taxes: Women Say No!
The world just didn’t make sense to thirty-two-year-old Hubertine Auclert.
On the one hand she was considered a French citizen expected to obey the laws of her country and to pay property taxes.
On the other hand, she was denied the citizen’s right to vote simply because she was a woman.
The male rulers couldn’t have it both ways, Auclert decided.
She began plotting a way to unhinge the system.
On election day in , Auclert and several other tax-paying women of Paris initiated the first stage of the action.
They stomped past a line of startled men and presented themselves for voter registration.
They demanded that they be recognized as full citizens of France with rights as well as responsibilities.
They demanded an end to the injustice of taxation without representation.
The men were amazed: there was nothing wrong with the system’s inconsistencies as far as they were concerned!
The women were turned away.
It was time for stage two.
Taking advantage of the publicity the women had generated, Auclert called for a women’s “tax strike.”
She reasoned that, since men alone had the privilege of governing the people and allotting national budgets, men alone should have the privilege of paying taxes.
“Since I have no right to control the use of my money,” she wrote, “I no longer wish to give it.
I do not wish to be an accomplice, by my acquiescence, in the vast exploitation that the masculine autocracy believes is its right to exercise in regard to women.
I have no rights, therefore I have no obligations.
I do not vote, I do not pay.”
During the tax strike, Auclert was joined by twenty other women — eight widows and the rest, presumably, single women.
When the authorities demanded payment, all but three of the women ended their participation in the strike.
The remaining women continued to appeal the decision.
But when law enforcement officers attempted to seize their furniture, Auclert and the others gave in.
They decided they had done the best they could to call attention to the injustice.
Auclert was not the first woman to organize against the taxation of women without government representation.
Mid-nineteenth-century United States saw a number of women’s rights tax resisters.
In … Lucy Stone decided to publicize the injustice of government taxation of women who, because they were denied the vote, were without representation.
, Henry David Thoreau had spent a night in jail for his refusal to pay the Massachusetts poll tax, an action he had taken in opposition to the U.S. war with Mexico.
Now Lucy Stone decided to use the same tactic to publicly draw attention to women’s oppression as voteless taxpayers.
When she refused to pay her taxes, the government held a public auction and sold a number of her household goods.
Like Lucy Stone, [Lydia Sayer] Hasbrouck’s radicalism led her to become a tax resister, refusing to pay local taxes in protest against the denial of her right to vote.
A tax collector, so the story goes, managed to steal one of Hasbrouck’s Bloomer outfits from her house and advertise it for sale, the proceeds to go toward the taxes she owed.
Abby Kelly Foster had always been an active worker and speaker for women’s rights, but, in , at the age of sixty-three, she was newly inspired.
She had just heard about Julia and Abby Smith, two sisters in neighboring Connecticut, who were refusing to pay the taxes on their farm in order to protest the denial of suffrage to women.
This was just the sort of nonviolent direct action that appealed to Abby.
Her husband, Stephen, agreed.
That year, they refused to pay their taxes on their beloved “Liberty Farm” in order to give voice to the urgency and justice of women’s suffrage.
When they refused again in , the city of Worcester, Massachusetts took action.
The farm was seized and put up for auction to the highest bidder.
Letters of support for the Fosters’ tax resistance poured in from the progressive leaders of the day.
Boston abolitionist Wendell Phillips wrote, “Of course I need not tell either of you at this late day how much I appreciate this last chapter in the lives full of heroic self sacrifice to conviction.”
Lucy Stone and Elizabeth Cady Stanton sent words of encouragement.
William Lloyd Garrison, a pacifist abolitionist, wrote, “I hope there is not a man in your city or county or elsewhere who will meanly seek to make that property available to his own selfish ends.
Let there be no buyer at any price.”
Unfortunately, Osgood Plummer, a politically conservative neighbor, bid $100 for the farm, but he retreated when Stephen Foster chided him.
Later, Plummer wrote a letter to the local newspaper explaining that he had only wanted to teach the Fosters a lesson about obeying the law.
With no other bidders, the deed to Liberty Farm reverted to the city.
For the next few years, Abby and Stephen lived with the fear and uncertainty of losing the farm, but they continued their tax resistance until Stephen’s ill health became an overriding concern.
In , the Fosters ended their protest and paid several thousand dollars to save the farm.
The point had been made.
In , the Women’s Tax Resistance League of London published a little pamphlet entitled Why We Resist Our Taxes… “The government of this country which professes to be a representative one and to rest on the consent of the governed, is Constitutional in its relation to men, Unconstitutional in its relation to women,” wrote Margaret Kineton Parkes, author of the pamphlet.
Parkes did not mean all women, however.
She hastened to reassure the reader that the tax resisters were not in the least radical but only fair-minded, concerned with votes only for women householders, certainly not for all women.
The League, she claimed, was about passively resisting the unconstitutional government ruling England.
Because they had been granted the municipal vote, women tax resisters were more than willing to pay local “rates,” and they promised they’d have equal willingness to pay “imperial taxes” as soon as they were granted the parliamentary vote.
The London tax resisters devised a new way to reach beyond those already enlightened members of the public who attended suffrage meetings.
They began making suffrage speeches at public auctions, a tactic that had unexpectedly good results.
Many people were converted to the suffrage cause once they had the chance to hear the argument from the resisters themselves.
The auctioneers not only permitted the women to make their speeches, but sometimes actively invited the speeches and even addressed the cause in their own words.
One auctioneer who openly supported the tax-resisting suffragists ended his remarks by saying: “If I had to pay rates and taxes and had not a vote, I should consider it a great disgrace on the part of the Government, but I should consider it a far greater disgrace on my part if I did not protest against it.”
Since the granting of suffrage, women’s tax resistance has most often been undertaken to protest a government’s military spending or its involvement in a specific war — such as the U.S. war in Vietnam.
For part of her life, Barbara Deming was a war tax resister.
In her essay “On Revolution and Equilibrium,” she explained the rationale for this form of nonviolent noncooperation.
Words are not enough here.
Gandhi’s term for nonviolent action was “satyagraha” — which can be translated as “clinging to the truth…” And one has to cling with one’s entire weight… One doesn’t just say, “I don’t believe in this war,” but refuses to put on a uniform.
One doesn’t just say “The use of napalm is atrocious,” but refuses to pay for it by refusing to pay one’s taxes.
At , Juanita Nelson threw on the new white terry cloth bathrobe she’d recently ordered from the Sears-Roebuck catalog and answered her door.
Two U.S. marshals informed her that they had an order for her arrest.
What a way to start the day.
Juanita and her husband Wally, who was out of town that day, had not paid withholding taxes nor filed any forms for , so it was, in one sense, no big surprise that the government wanted to see her.
“But even with the best intentions in the world of going to jail,” she later wrote, “I would have been startled to be awakened at 6:30 a.m. to be told that I was under arrest.”
She explained to the bright-eyed government men that she would be glad to tell the judge why she was resisting taxes if he’d care to come see her.
Then she proceeded to explain why she would not willingly walk out of her door to appear in court.
I am not paying taxes because the overwhelming percentage of the budget goes for war purposes.
I do not wish to participate in any phase of the collection of such taxes.
I do not even want to act as if I think that anyone, including the government, has a right to punish me for an act which I consider honorable.
I cannot come with you.
The government men were not moved.
They called for back-up assistance while Juanita considered her situation.
Should she get dressed?
Would getting dressed be a way of cooperating?
Quickly she called a friend on the phone to let others know what was happening to her, and just as quickly she was surrounded by seven annoyed law enforcement officers.
There was a brief exchange about her still being in her bathrobe, and one uncomfortable officer asked her whether or not she believed in God.
She answered in the negative.
(“He did not go on to explain the connection he had evidently been going to establish between God and dressing for arrest,” Juanita later reported.)
Suddenly, a gruff, no-nonsense officer said, “We’ll just take her the way she is, if that’s the way she wants it.”
He slapped some handcuffs on her and lifted her off the floor.
In maneuvering her into the government car, he apparently tried his best to expose the nakedness under her bathrobe while another officer tried to cover her.
As the car carried her into the heart of Philadelphia, she tried to think.
“My thoughts were like buckshot,” she wrote of her experience, “so scattered they didn’t hit anything or, when they did, made little dent.
The robe was a huge question mark placed starkly after some vexing problems. Why am I going to jail?
Why am I going to jail in a bathrobe?”
The only thing she was sure of at that moment was that, until her head cleared, she would refuse to cooperate with her jailers.
When the car stopped, she was yanked from the back seat, carried into the federal court building, dragged up a flight of stairs, and thrown behind bars.
[S]everal friends stopped by to visit her.
(Her phone call had been a good idea.)
The first visitors were two men, tax-refusing pacifists like herself.
They thought it best, for the sake of appearances, to go to court in the proper clothes.
They offered to get some clothes for her, and she agreed — just in case she decided she’d feel more at ease in them.
After the men left, a woman friend stopped by.
“You look like a female Gandhi in that robe!”
she said.
“You look, well, dignified.”
Juanita grinned.
When they finally came for her, Juanita, still refusing to walk, was wheeled into the courtroom in her bathrobe.
The clothes the men had brought were left behind in a brown paper bag.
The judge gave her until to comply with the court order that she turn over her financial records or be subjected to a possible fine of $1000, a year in jail, or both.
Juanita Nelson went home.
came and went.
Many Fridays came and went.
The charges were dropped and she heard nothing more.
Every now and then, the Internal Revenue Service sends her a bill or tries to confiscate a car, but so far the government has met a wall of nonviolent noncooperation.
They should have known when they saw Juanita in her bathrobe: nothing will make her pay for war.
Most people who take any notice of my position are appalled by my lawbreaking and not at all about the reasons for my not paying taxes.
Instead of trying to make me justify my civil disobedience, why do they not question themselves and the government about a course of action which makes billions available for weapons, but cannot provide decent housing and education for a large segment of the population?
Like the ascetics of old, Eroseanna (Rose or Sis) Robinson was singularly unburdened by material possessions.
She had no bank account, owned no real estate, and when the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tried to seize her personal property, they found that all she had was an ironing board, a clock, a quilt, and some clothes.
Robinson took seriously her membership in Peacemakers (an organization founded in to promote radical, nonviolent direct action).
She had been a war tax resister since the early fifties, filing no statements of income and ignoring the various notices and certified letters sent by the IRS.
In , thirty-five years old, single and black, Robinson was a skilled artist and athlete; creative, too, in finding ways to live in the United States without paying for the U.S. military.
She tried to keep her earnings below the taxable level and for a period managed to spend less than $3 per week for food.
She also arranged to earn a withholding-free income from several different work situations.
Even with the little money she made, Robinson regularly sent sums greater than the taxes she owed to groups that worked for peace and social justice.
On , federal marshals descended on Robinson at a community center in Chicago and demanded she come with them.
When she refused, they carried her bodily out of the center and to the district court where she was seated on a bench before a judge.
She refused to accept the services of a lawyer and asked instead that they lay aside their roles as judge and defendant and speak to each other as two people with genuine concerns.
When the judge agreed, Robinson talked.
“I have not filed income taxes,” she said, “because I know that a large part of the tax will be used for militarization.
Much of the money is spent for atom and hydrogen bombs.
These bombs have a deadly fallout that causes human destruction, as it has been proved.
If I pay income tax, I am participating in that course.
We have a duty to contribute constructively to life, and not destructively.”
After making this statement, she was handcuffed, put in a wheelchair because she refused to walk, and taken to jail.
The next day she was wheeled into court again, where she encountered a different judge.
This judge ridiculed her and her supporters who were standing in a vigil in front of the courthouse.
He accused her of having an attitude of “contumacious criminal contempt.”
He committed her to jail until she would agree to file a tax return and show records of her earnings.
Not only would she not agree to file a tax return, she also would not agree to cooperate in any way with the prison system.
She would not walk.
She would not eat.
She did agree to see one visitor one time — her friend Ernest Bromley, a radical pacifist and member of Peacemakers, who had come to see her in Cook County Jail.
He wrote while she dictated a message for all her supporters on the outside:
I see the military system and jail system as one thing.
I don’t want to give up my own will.
I will not compromise by accepting a lawyer or by recognizing the judge as judge.
I would rather that no one try to make an arrangement with the judge on my behalf.
I ask nothing from the court or the jail.
I do not want to pay for war.
That is my main concern.
Love to everyone.
On , Robinson was again wheeled into court.
It was clear that she would not compromise her principles to spare her own discomfort.
The judge sentenced her to jail for a year and added an extra day for “criminal contempt.”
On , she was moved to the federal prison in Alderson, West Virginia.
There she continued her fast, though prison officials began to force-feed her liquids through a tube inserted into her nose.
She refused to cooperate in any way with her own imprisonment nor did she try to send letters through the system of prison censorship.
Ten members of Peacemakers, including long-time activist Marjorie Swann, set up their tents just beyond the gates at Alderson and issued a press release on .
They explained that they were there to show support for Robinson and that most of them intended to fast just as she was fasting.
They invited anyone who wanted to talk to stop by the gate where they were camping.
The pacifists propped up signs along the stretch of dusty road — “No Tax for War,” “Peace Is the Only Defense,” “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” and “Rose Won’t Pay Income Tax.”
After fasting for , Robinson was suddenly and unconditionally discharged from prison on .
The judge who ordered her release said Robinson had become a burden to the prison medical facilities, adding that he felt she had been punished sufficiently.
He didn’t mention the picketers camped outside.
When Robinson was released from prison late afternoon, the first thing she saw was a huge banner held high by her friends — “Bravo Rose!”
A number of women have become war tax resisters in reaction to a specific war.
Mary Bacon Mason, a Massachusetts music teacher, became a war tax resister in after World War Ⅱ.
She told the government she would be willing to pay double her tax if it could be used only for aid to suffering people anywhere, but would accept prison or worse rather than pay for war.
The only possible defense, she said, is friendship and mutual help.
Of World War Ⅱ she said:
I paid a share in that cost and I am guilty of burning people alive in Germany and Japan.
I ask humanity’s forgiveness.
In , Caroline Urie of Yellow Springs, Ohio, bedridden and elderly, gained national attention and inspired many people to consider war tax resistance when she withheld 34.6 percent of her tax.
She sent an equivalent amount as a donation to four peace organizations and wrote an open letter to President Truman and the IRS
Now that the atomic bomb has reduced to a final criminal absurdity the whole war system, leading quite possibly to the liquidation of human society, and has involved the United States in the shame and guilt of having been the first to exploit its criminal possibilities, I have come to the conclusion that — as a Christian, Quaker, religious and conscientious objector to the whole institution of organized war — I must henceforth refuse to contribute to it in any way I can avoid.
Eighteen years later, and in response to a new war, another woman from Yellow Springs, Ohio, Doris E. Sargent, wrote to the Peacemakers newsletter with a new war tax resistance tactic.
She noted that the government had reintroduced a federal tax attached to telephone bills.
The money was earmarked specifically for U.S. military expenses.
Sargent proposed a radical response — that all those who demanded an end to the fighting in Vietnam ask the phone company to remove their phones in protest.
If everyone who opposed the war were willing to make such an extreme sacrifice, real pressure could be put on the government.
Then Sargent suggested a less extreme idea — that people keep their phones and pay their bills but refuse to pay the federal tax.
Phone tax resisters could send a note with their bills each month, stating that the protest was not directed at the phone company but at the government which was using the phone tax to support war.
The idea caught hold, and phone tax resistance became a popular way to protest the war in Vietnam.
It is still used as a form of war tax resistance.
The war in Vietnam turned many people into war tax resisters.
Pacifist folksinger Joan Baez set an example as a tax resister early in the war years by withholding 60 percent of her income tax.
She was instrumental in persuading countless others to follow her example.
In , she explained:
We talk about democracy and Christianity — and we try out a new fire-bomb.
We talk about peace and we move thousands more men and weapons into Vietnam.
This country has gone mad.
But I will not go mad with it.
I will not pay for organized murder.
I will not pay for the war in Vietnam.
In , life-long Quaker Meg Bowman wrote a letter to the IRS to explain why she had decided once again not to pay her federal income tax.
“Do you carefully maintain our testimony against all preparations for war and against participation in war as inconsistent with the teachings of Christ?”
― Query, Discipline of Pacific Yearly Meeting, Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).
The above quotation is from the book that is intended to give guidance to members for daily living.
The book repeatedly stresses peace and individual responsibility.
It is clear to me that I am not only responsible for my voluntary actions, but also for that which is purchased with my income.
If my income is spent for something immoral or if I allow others to buy guns with money I have earned, this is as wrong and offending to “that of God in every man” as if I had used that gun, or planned that bomb strike.
When I worked a five-day week it seemed to me that one-fifth of my income went to taxes.
This would be equivalent to working one full day each week for the U.S. government.
It seemed I worked as follows:
Monday for food.
I felt responsible to buy wholesome, nourishing items that would provide
health and energy, but not too much meat or other luxuries, the world supply of which is limited.
Tuesday for shelter.
We maintain a comfortable, simply furnished home where we may live in
dignity and share with others.
Wednesday for clothing,
health needs and other essentials and for recreation, all carefully
chosen.
Thursday for support of causes.
I select with care those organizations which seem to be acting in such a
way that responsibility to God and my brother is well served.
Friday for death,
bombs, napalm, for My Lai and overkill.
I am asked to support a
government whose main business is war.
Though the above is oversimplified, the point is clear.
I cannot work four days a week for life and joy and sharing, and one day for death.
I cannot pay federal taxes.
I believe this decision is protected by law as a First Amendment right of freedom of religion.
If I am wrong it is still better to have erred on the side of peace and humanity.
Sincerely, Meg Bowman
“The only thing of which I’m guilty is financially supporting the war in Southeast Asia against my better judgment until ,” said Martha Tranquilli when she was charged with the criminal offense of providing false information on her income tax forms.
At , Tranquilli stood on the steps of the state capitol building in Sacramento, California and addressed the 100 supporters who had gathered.
After a short Unitarian service held on her behalf, the aging white woman with a long gray braid told them in her calm, soft voice that she envisioned the day when scientists and workers would join in refusing to pay war taxes or do war work.
I was very much afraid of going to prison, but I think I have overcome that fear.
I plan to read, write letters, and meditate as much as possible.
I’m going to try my best to make an adventure out of this thing.
One after another, friends and strangers attending the rally came up to embrace Tranquilli and offer words of encouragement.
After some spirited singing, they accompanied her to the federal building where she turned herself in to the federal marshals.
Hers was a media image made to order.
“63-Year-Old Tax-Resisting Grandma Goes to Jail” shouted the headlines, and the war tax resistance movement didn’t mind the national publicity Martha Tranquilli generated.
Tranquilli was opposed to the Vietnam War and all the suffering the war was inflicting on the people of Vietnam, the people of the United States, and on the earth itself.
She had therefore decided to withhold the 61 percent of her income taxes (amounting to approximately $1,100) which she believed would go to pay for the war.
It was in Mound Bayou, Mississipi that Martha was tried and sentenced for tax fraud in .
Like other war tax resisters, Tranquilli withheld her taxes by listing unusual dependents.
Tranquilli listed seven peace organizations as dependents, including War Resisters League, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the American Friends Service Committee.
(Another war tax resister in claimed 3 billion dependents, explaining to the IRS that he felt the population of the earth depended on him and on others to refuse to pay war taxes.
That case went to court and the tax resister was acquitted by a court of appeals of the charge of willfully filing a false and fraudulent W-4 form.)
Tranquilli was found guilty of tax fraud, but the judge was reluctant to send her to jail and indicated he’d give her a suspended sentence if she would only apologize and promise not to do it again.
When Tranquilli refused this offer she was sentenced to nine months in prison and two years probation.
The Mississippi Civil Liberties Union helped her appeal the case and, while the appeal was pending, she moved to California.
Both the Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear her case.
On , after making national headlines and being cheered on by supporters, Tranquilli began her stay at Terminal Island Prison in San Pedro, California.
She quickly got involved in the life of the prison community…
After her release, Tranquilli wrote to a friend: “Be sure to say that I did not suffer in prison.
It was a learning experience.”
Tranquilli continued her tax resistance as well as her work for peace and justice until her death in .
For Mason and Urie it was the Second World War.
For Baez, Bowman, and Tranquilli it was the war in Vietnam.
it is the U.S.-backed war against Nicaragua that motivates many new war tax resisters.
In in Brooklyn, New York, tax resister Donna Mehle wrote an open letter to the IRS which was published in the local newspaper.
She cited a religious basis for her tax resistance, protesting the war against Nicaragua.
The decision to come into conflict with the laws of my country is very difficult, but it is a decision rooted in my Christian faith.
As a Christian, I am called to affirm life and reject violence… My commitment to tax resistance deepened in the past year when I travelled to Nicaragua.
There I saw first hand the effect of my tax dollars ($100 million in Contra Aid ).
I vowed to myself and to the Nicaraguan people I met that I would not be complicit in the U.S. backed Contra war, a war which targets innocent civilians and children.
Mehle informed the IRS that she intended to redirect the money she would have owed in taxes to an alternative fund “which supports life-affirming projects in New York City.”
In , some women in the United States proposed a specifically feminist perspective on war tax resistance.
In New York City, the Women’s Tax Resistance Assistance distributed a brochure which read in part:
We can’t keep working for disarmament, for women’s rights, including an end to lesbian oppression, and for racial equality while paying for a male-dominated government which impoverishes and exploits us now and threatens to eliminate the world’s future.
On , this group performed street theater on the steps of Federal Hall.
Some of the women dressed up as pieces of the federal budget “pie” while others, dressed as waitresses, explained the military menu to passersby and handed out leaflets.
In Canada in , sixty-eight-year-old Edith Adamson made headlines with her tax resistance.
A lifelong pacifist and the coordinator of the Peace Tax Fund Committee of Canada, Adamson was one of approximately sixty Canadians who hoped to prevent the government from using their money to make war.
Not that Adamson and the others wanted to keep the money for their own use: they wanted to redirect their dollars into a peace tax fund.
With the adoption of the new Charter of Rights in the Canadian Constitution, there was a guarantee of freedom of conscience.
“This means,” Adamson explained for news reporters, “that the government should provide a legal alternative to war taxes for those who object to killing on religious or ethical grounds.”
Since , Canadian war tax resisters — who call themselves “Peace Trusters” because they trust in peace, not war — have petitioned their government to develop a peace tax fund which would allow citizens the option of directing their money away from the military budget.
They asked for a simple tax form which would allow taxpayers to check whether they want a portion of their taxes to go for warmaking or peacemaking.
In , Edith Adamson explained her involvement:
In a nuclear war, you wouldn’t have a chance to be a conscientious objector.
And, being an old lady, I wouldn’t be drafted, so it seemed the peace tax fund idea was a sound way to get at the root of the problem.
I not only want to exempt myself from the killing, but I want to try to influence the government to look at this problem — and other people as well to examine their consciences.
A nuclear war would involve everybody and mean total destruction and I couldn’t just hide under my little exemption and stay alive.
This peace tax would be an extension of conscientious objector status for the military.
It’s more appropriate today because war now depends more on money than on personnel; it only took twelve men to drop the bomb over Hiroshima, but it took millions, perhaps billions of taxpayers’ dollars in Canada, Britain, and the United States to develop that bomb.
By there were approximately 440 Peace Trusters in Canada who were withholding a portion of their taxes and putting that money into a peace tax fund.
They had agreed to waive the interest on this money in order to pay the court fees involved in taking on a test case to establish the legality of the peace tax fund.
The claimant Jerilynn Prior, a physician and Quaker originally from the United States where she was also a tax resister, now lives in British Columbia.
In a press release, Prior said that paying for war violates her freedom of conscience and religion.
This deep conviction rises from my commitment to work for peace.
I try to live my life that way — as a mother, a physician, a teacher, a woman, a citizen of this world community.
It would be hypocrisy to voluntarily allow my tax contribution to be used for war or the military or pamphlets about bomb shelters…
Each of us can work for peace in our own life, with our own resources, and in our own way.
This tax appeal is the way I must work for peace.
Nigerian women used song in to ridicule, protest, and pressure a man and, by extension, the system he represented.
In , women streamed into Oloko, Nigeria from throughout Owerri Province.
Word had been sent via the Ibo (Igbo) women’s network that it was time to “sit on” Okugo, the arrogant warrant chief of the Oloko Native Court.
“Sitting on a man” was the figurative expression given a traditional process of punishment during which women gathered in front of a man’s home to sing songs which outlined the women’s grievances or insulted the offender.
The women would dance and sing all day and all night, and sometimes, for the most serious and unrepentant offenders, give added impetus to their words by dismantling the roof of the hut until the man promised to cooperate.
On , the women prepared as their mothers and grandmothers before them had prepared for the traditional settling of grievances: they bound their heads with ferns, smeared their faces with ashes, and put on the short loincloths tradition ordained.
Each woman picked up a sacred stick wreathed with young palm fronds.
These sacred sticks were necessary for invoking the spirit and power of their female ancestors.
Thus attired, they massed on the district office to “sit on” Okugo until he got the message.
Just days before, the women had met in the market to discuss the new taxation rumors.
They remembered that , after promises to the contrary, the British had taken a census and begun collecting taxes from the men.
The women were worried that taxes would soon be imposed upon them as well, especially since a district officer had ordered a new census in which they and their property would be counted.
At the marketplace meeting the women had agreed to spread the alarm and act if any of them were approached for information.
And could anyone doubt their cause for alarm now?
Just Warrant Chief Okugo had approached Nwanyeruwa, a married woman.
He had asked to count her goats and sheep.
She had spat back an insult, “Was your mother counted?”
In anger, Okugo had attacked Nwanyeruwa who had immediately set in motion the women’s network.
Now the women were ready to act.
Nwanyeruwa’s name became the watchword, Nwanyeruwa herself the catalyst.
Carrying their sacred sticks high, thousands of women marched on the district office.
They danced.
They sang songs of ridicule and protest, they chanted, and they demanded Okugo’s cap of office, taking from his head the symbol of his authority over them.
A British officer who witnessed the event claimed that the cap, tossed into the crowd of women, “met the same fate as a fox’s carcass thrown to a pack of hounds.”
After several days of such protest, the women secured written assurances that they were not to be taxed.
They also succeeded in having Okugo arrested, tried, and convicted of physical assault and of unnecessarily worrying the population.
When the news of this victory spread through the women’s networks, thousands of other women throughout the region organized to “sit on” their local warrant chiefs.
The protest spread to Aba, a major trading center along the railway.
The women in Aba, like those in Oloko, dressed in their traditional ferns, ashes, and loincloths and carrying the sacred sticks to invoke the mothers, gathered to dance, sing, and demand the cap of the warrant chief.
This is the thirty-third in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite.
Today we continue through the middle-1980s.
War tax resistance grew to be a front-and-center concern of the General Conference Mennonite Church in the 1970s, but by the mid-1980s interest in the topic began to suddenly decline.
I noticed a similar thing when I looked at how war tax resistance rose and fell in the Society of Friends.
Perhaps the topic had been talked-out and people felt there was little more to add to the arguments that had already been made: everybody had the chance to learn about the issue and take their stand, and there wasn’t much left to talk about.
Or perhaps the topic had left the pages of The Mennonite for other publications — like God and Caesar (a specialty publication for war tax resisters put out by a Mennonite group), or the newsletter of the recently-founded National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.
The energy Mennonites were putting into the fools’ errand of World Peace Tax Fund legislation was certainly a distraction.
Certainly there were Mennonites who would have contemplated conscientious war tax resistance or argued for it, but who were instead content to lobby Congress to give them a box to check.
John R. Dyck wrote in with concern about this lapse of interest:
Thank you for picking up this important issue [military taxes] again (see issue) at a time when many of our people hoped it was a thing of the past.
Must we look to other denominations or people than our own to take a bolder leadership position when it comes to dealing with governments?
We have almost fallen asleep in the quietness and relative peace in our country, and the fairly consistent drop of dollars into our coffers has been an effective tranquilizer.
One of the articles in that issue was Edith Adamson (of Conscience Canada) and Marian Franz (of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund) promoting the Peace Tax Fund law idea.
Such a law, they said “would remove the agonizing dilemma that forces conscientious objectors to either disregard their deepest beliefs or disobey the laws of their country.”
They claimed the proposed law would “rechannel[] some tax dollars away from the military and into human needs programs,” and would raise awareness of “nations’ misplaced priorities.”
The Tax Court of Canada, in a recent 28-page ruling, held that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not permit taxpayers to withhold the “military portion” of their taxes.
Jerilyn Prior, a Vancouver physician of Quaker faith who brought the case, had withheld 10.5 percent of her taxes and sent them instead to a peace fund.
The court concluded, “Even if the assessment were objectively and in reality an infringement upon the appellant’s freedom of conscience and religion… the Canadian tax system… would be a reasonable limit which must be imposed in a free and democratic society…”
taxes for peace fund
Titus and Linda Peachey are directing a Pennsylvania project supported by Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Peace Section.
Taxes for Peace is for those wishing to designate a portion of their tax dollars for a peaceful purpose.
The section is also offering a packet of information about military tax opposition.
This year’s Taxes for Peace fund supports the Lancaster County Peacework Alternatives Project, addressing peace and militarism issues in Lancaster County, where 50 companies held prime military contracts worth $150 million with U.S. military agencies in .
The Peacheys hope to raise public awareness of the nature and extent of militarism in the Lancaster area and to work with local churches and groups about the theological and ethical questions of militarism.
They also want to help defense employees deal with the ethical dilemmas posed by defense-related jobs and begin a dialogue with managers of local military-related industries.
Peace Section hopes that this one-year pilot project will serve as a model and inspiration for other peace groups interested in initiating similar projects in their communities.
In more than 40 people contributed $4,645.85 to the Taxes for Peace fund.
This money was forwarded to a project in Guatemala that aided victims of violence.
European Mennonites: “as important as conscription”
Tubingen, West Germany (MCC)—
Green party parliamentarian Petra Kelly called on governments to heed the example of Christian communities and churches during the opening address at the First International Conference of Military Tax Resisters and Peace Tax Campaigns held here .
In particular she lauded the decision of the General Conference Mennonite Church not to force its employees to pay war taxes against their conscience.
Over 80 people representing most Western European countries, Australia, Japan, Canada and the United States attended.
Most of those at the conference were tax resisters.
Some redirect the military part of their income tax to peace-making purposes, others live below a taxable income level, and others symbolically withhold some of their taxes.
In West Germany and the Netherlands, for example, many take a first step by redirecting 5.72 German marks or Dutch guilders as a sign of their opposition to the deployment of the 572 U.S. Pershing and cruise missiles in Western Europe.
They believe that the conscription of their money is as important as the conscription of young men in preparing for and fighting war.
Several participants shared their experiences with tax resistance.
Arthur Windsor, a white-haired and mild-mannered Quaker from Gloucester, England, told how he could not reconcile his faith in Christ with paying tax monies that built nuclear and traditional weapons for oppressive Third World regimes.
He smiled when he remembered the remark of the constable who came to take him to jail, “The law is not the same as justice.”
Work groups met on to discuss “Law and Conscience,” “Symbolic Actions and Publicity” and “International Cooperation.”
Susumu Ishitiani, a Quaker from Japan, preached the final sermon in the Stepahanus Church, which hosted the conference.
Sponsors of the event included the German Mennonite Peace Committee, the German Quaker Peace Committee and the German Branch of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation.
Mennonite participants included Marian Franz, executive director of the U.S.-based National Campaign for a World Peace Tax fund, Wolfgang Krauss of the German Mennonite Peace Committee and Andre Gingerich of Mennonite Central Committee in West Germany.
In there had been something of a purge of gay Mennonites from leadership positions, after a resolution at the Saskatoon conference unambiguously condemned homosexuality.
Robert Hull wondered why Mennonite institutions were being so selective about which sins they were going to condemn in this manner:
I… pointed out that the GC triennial sessions at Fresno, Calif. in declared that “all war and all that contributes to war is a sin.”
Yet some GC congregations accept as members people who have served in the military and not publicly repented, who work in defense industries, who pay federal taxes.
A new video program on war tax resistance is available for free loan from the Mennonite Central Committee Resource Library… War Tax Resistance Seminar includes a lecture and panel discussion presented in in Lancaster County, Pa.
The General Assembly of the Mennonite Church (confusingly not the General Conference Mennonite Church) took place in .
According to The Mennonite:
“Nearly all 260 delegates representing 22 conferences in the United States and Canada encouraged the church’s governing body to find a way for church institutions to respond to the consciences of employees who object to paying that portion of their taxes destined for military use, even if such action involves civil disobedience.”
Marian Franz wrote in the edition that in her experience war tax resistance and work on peace tax fund lobbying was a good form of outreach for the anti-war message.
Excerpts:
In the national capitals.
When you in the local areas and we in Washington and Ottawa continue to press the issue of conscience, our single acts have widespread reverberations.
Often members of government and their legislative assistants feel compelled to examine their consciences.
In my experience, as we explain why people cannot pay the military portion of their taxes, the member of government or the aide feels compelled to explain why their conscience does not agree with ours (something we did not come there to ask) or to admit that our witness has caused them to listen to their conscience in a new way.
Among religious bodies.
The fact that a sincere expression of conscientious conviction is infectious is demonstrated by the burgeoning examples of conscientious statements among religious bodies.
In North America a new “peace church” is emerging that spans virtually every denomination, confession and constituency.
Most of the major church bodies and bishops’ conferences have made statements, many surprisingly forceful, against nuclear weapons and the spiraling arms race.
At the congregational and parish level, Bible study, prayer and discussion around the nuclear question is occurring across Canada and the United States.
Old distinctions between pacifists and just-war proponents are breaking down.
The threat of nuclear war has raised, for an increasing number of Christians, a crisis of conscience.
At the corporate level.
Until now in our history, conscientious objection was considered only an individual matter.
Conscientious objection to paying taxes for military force was a matter between the individual and God, the individual and conscience, the individual and the courts, the individual and revenue collection agencies.
Now another dimension has been added to the picture.
It is called corporate military tax resistance.
Even in the face of large maximum penalties ($25,000 fine for each person and/or 10 years in prison), religious bodies are beginning to ask if they as corporate entities can any longer in good conscience withhold taxes from the salaries of those employees who ask for reasons of conscience that they not be withheld.
To date such corporate action has been taken only by small groups in historic peace churches (e.g. the General Conference Mennonite Church; Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, a six-state region of Quakers; and the Friends World Committee on Consultation).
But that action is now under consideration by some of the largest denominations.
When we mention such corporate actions and considerations in Congressional offices, new interest is sparked.
Conscientious objection as a matter of individual conscience is one thing, but when it occurs on a corporate level it draws a different quality of attention.
At an international level.
The Canadian and U.S. Peace Tax Fund efforts are a small campaign as lobbies go.
Yet small seeds continue to sprout and blossom.
The exact wording of the U.S. Peace Tax Fund Bill now appears in legislation introduced in the parliaments of several nations.
How could David Bassett, a Quaker physician from Ann Arbor, Mich., who drafted the U.S. peace tax legislation with law faculty, have dreamed that one day he would attend an international conference of peace tax campaigns?
After five years as executive director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund in the United States, I was thrilled to attend the first international conference of peace tax campaigns and war tax resisters in Tubingen .
One hundred participants from 15 countries gathered for the conference.
They came together at the invitation of five German groups, including the Deutsches Mennonitisches Friedens Komitee (German Mennonite Peace Committee).
In workshops, panel discussions, and plenary sessions many participants expressed openly and in moving ways the Christian basis for their beliefs and actions.
While the religious and political backgrounds of the participants varied, there was little diversity in their conviction of conscience.
All found it a clear violation of conscience to pay the military portion of their taxes.
All saw the connection between the 4 million people who starve each year and swollen military budgets.
All noted that what the world spends in just 10 days for military expenditures could not only feed all the hungry on earth for a year but also provide them with clean water, housing and education.
Even the setting for the conference was a reminder of why we had gathered.
From the Tubingen church where we met, we could see a hospital for brain-damaged people from World War Ⅱ, now under conversion into a training center for the triage method of treating the victims of the next war.
I was struck by how many of the participants had known the trauma of war firsthand.
The majority were Europeans and had lived under bombs and/or had grown up with family members missing because of World War Ⅱ.
Antje Spannenberg was one of the generation of children who had plagued their parents with the question, “How could you have allowed Hitler to come into and remain in power?
Why didn’t you stop him?”
Now Antje’s children are asking her, “How can you allow a world full of weapons so dreadful and dangerous?”
Ursula Windsor, a refugee from Nazi Germany now living in England and married to Britisher Arthur Windsor, admits, “I know if enough of us had resisted we could have stopped Hitler.
For some it would not have been difficult; for others, a great sacrifice.
Whether simple or difficult, there came a time when it was too late.”
Ursula knew that truth from experience.
“I have watched my favorite possessions being taken out of my home as the British Inland Revenue Service claimed them in lieu of taxes we have not paid because we believe that Jesus forbids us to pay for war.”
Her husband, Arthur, went to prison for three weeks.
On the day of Arthur’s release he was met at the prison gate by a member of the British Parliament who escorted him to the British House of Commons.
With Arthur in the gallery, the member of Parliament introduced the British Peace Tax Fund into Parliament.
On that day, for the first time, it received 10 minutes of official debate.
She also briefly profiled conference attendees Wolfgang Krauss of West Germany and Susumu Ishitani of Japan.
Military tax resistance.
Are there conscientious objectors to taxes for military purposes in other countries, and do some refuse to pay the military portion of their taxes to their governments?
Yes.
Some withhold all, some the military portion and some a symbolic portion from their taxes.
For some these actions are a political strategy; for many they are based on religious commitment.
Reports from the various countries echoed a refrain.
In the Netherlands 5.72 guilders is a symbolic amount withheld by many.
In Germany 5.72 Deutsche Marks is a symbolic amount.
The number represents the 572 Pershing Ⅱ and cruise missiles on European soil and expresses abhorrence for the fact that they shorten the nuclear fuse to six minutes.
Legislative efforts.
Has any country succeeded in passing peace tax legislation that would make it legal to have the military portion of their citizens’ taxes go into a separate fund?
Not yet.
Countries working for legislation are the Federal Republic of Germany, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Finland, Australia and the United States.
Switzerland and Spain have no organized effort for legal recognition of conscientious objection to military taxes.
France has a fund in which tax-resisted dollars are collected, as does Italy.
The Peace Tax campaigns of Canada and Japan, rather than promoting peace tax legislation, are challenging their governments in the courts based on constitutional guarantees of freedom of conscience (Canada) and constitutional stipulations that not more than 1 percent of the gross national product be used for military force (Japan).
Other judicial efforts.
Attempts to establish through the courts the legal right to redirect taxes from military purposes have been pursued in many countries.
Except in Italy, these efforts have been without success.
The standard response of governments to non-payment of the military portion of taxes (if they respond at all) includes trials, confiscation of property, fines and interest fees, and — in rare instances — prison.
The standard response of the courts to tax resisters who are brought to trial is that the issues raised present a “political question” that the courts cannot address or that constitutional guarantees of freedom of conscience and/or religion do not outweigh the duty of a citizen to pay taxes.
The greatest success and surprise story was that de facto recognition of conscientious objection to military taxes exists in Italy.
Fifty war tax resisters have been prosecuted in six legal cases and have been acquitted in every case.
They based their case on the fact that freedom of conscience is guaranteed in the Italian constitution.
Participants from Italy reported at Tubingen that four years ago they knew of only 20 who did not pay the military portion of their taxes for reasons of conscience.
That number is now 3,500 and growing.
War tax resisters are no longer prosecuted in Italy.
I listened with anticipation to the featured speaker, Petra Kelly, founder of the Green party, and member of the West German Bundestag (Parliament).
Referring to the Hitler years, she said, “Because we can recall the painful experiences of fascism in this country, especially when it comes to military violence, we cannot retreat into obedience by our citizens in relation to the state.
In the domain of conscience there is a higher duty.
The special status of human conscience and the fundamental right not to kill is set apart from other issues.
Therefore governments should make allowance for tax redirection that they would make in no other cases.”
Then came the surprise.
Kelly said that in searching for signs of some way out of the dark morass of military expenditures, she finds an example in the Mennonites.
She said, “An example for me is the [General Conference] Mennonite Church.
A group of members decided the following:
‘The employees of the church administration are given the power to be true to the high demands of Christ’s Law of Love, in that they can resist withholding taxes from employees that have requested it and therefore open up the possibility to resist for reasons of conscience to pay for the preparation of war.’ ”
She continued, “This example should give us all courage, but it is also a clear signal of that which happens in many Christian churches and can give us hope.”
I thought back to the long struggle of conscience that culminated in the conference decision cited by Kelly.
At the time we were not thinking of what the rest of the world would think of us, but only whether our action was consistent with obedience to Christ.
I certainly did not expect to hear it quoted three years later by a member of a foreign parliament, at a conference of 15 countries.
Conscience is contagious.
This is the thirty-sixth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite.
Today we enter the 1990s.
In residents began refusing to pay taxes to the Israeli occupiers.
Tax money should go for roads, health and local services, they said.
But the occupiers were supplying none of these services.
Instead they used taxes to fund the military occupation.
Residents adopted the slogan “No taxation without representation.”
The authorities responded with nightly curfews, mass arrests and a strong troop presence in the town.
But residents still did not pay their taxes.
For six weeks in , Israeli troops sealed off the town.
They seized property and belongings from businessmen and families who had not paid taxes.
Tax officials went from house to house humiliating and beating people, according to a account in the Jerusalem Post.
Israeli tax officials confiscated without trial several million dollars worth of property.
The tax siege has now been lifted, but Beit Sahour residents still refuse to pay taxes.
I recently attended a meeting that focused on the question of paying the military portion (about 50 percent) of our [U.S.] federal income taxes.
I left the meeting troubled, not because there were varying viewpoints but because many people appeared unconcerned about the issue and failed to address what I believe are key questions on the matter.
The question for me is not whether we should honor our government or whether a government has the right to collect taxes.
The crux of the matter is to determine when Caesar’s demands conflict with our obedience to God.
I fear that if I were to give Caesar all that he demands in war taxes, I would fail to honor God in four important ways.
I fear that by paying the military portion of my income taxes I fail to trust God alone for my security.
Throughout history nations have tried to secure their well-being and safety through military solutions.
Again and again in the Bible God asks us to resist such solutions and to trust him instead:
War horses are useless for victory; their great strength cannot save.
The Lord watches over those who have reverence for him, those who trust in his constant love.
He saves them from death… We put our hope in the Lord; he is our protector and our help (Psalm 33:17–20).
If I work several months each year to pay my nation’s military dues, am I not giving legitimacy to the military establishment’s answers for my security?
If I am willing to invest so much of my time and energy in a military solution, can I honestly say that God is my protector?
I fear that by paying my war taxes I fail to give my primary loyalty to Christ’s worldwide church.
My war taxes would purchase planes, bombs, guns and military training to be used in Third World settings.
Although our country is not involved in any declared war, our military might is felt keenly in Central America, the Philippines and the Middle East.
In fact, in recent years the United States has adopted a policy of promoting “low-intensity conflict” in countries that threaten to move out from under our sphere of influence.
This means keeping warfare away from the American public eye and avoiding the involvement of American soldiers in the fighting.
Yet our brothers and sisters in Christ do die in the struggle.
Can I say that my first loyalty is to the worldwide kingdom of God if I comply with structures that do violence to my neighbors around the world?
I fear that by paying my war taxes I fail to follow Christ as he calls me to love all people, even my enemies.
In Matthew 5 Jesus no doubt surprised his listeners by challenging them to love not only their friends but all people, just as God does.
This has not been an easy teaching for the church.
Peter struggled with it when he was called to go to Cornelius, a gentile, and Paul reminded the early church often that the gospel was not only for Jews but also for gentiles.
Ephesians 2:14
points this out: “For Christ himself has brought us peace by making Jews and gentiles one people.
With his own body he broke down the wall that separated them and kept them enemies.”
Do we believe that this can also apply to Americans and Soviets, rich and poor, capitalist and communist?
Can I believe this and at the same time contribute to the forces that are designed to destroy these very people whom Christ called me to love?
I fear that by paying my war taxes I fail to respect God’s creation.
In today’s world, militarism not only threatens people but all of creation as well.
While militarism is not the only way we dishonor God’s creation, it is through nuclear weapons that we dare to threaten all that God has made.
Can I claim to truly honor God if I continue to help pay for such weapons?
I think these questions have special poignancy for us as Mennonites.
We claim to be conscientious objectors to war.
Yet in a low-intensity conflict or in a nuclear war it is almost irrelevant to say that we will not serve in the military.
These kinds of wars do not demand our bodies but our dollars and our consent.
Thus we cannot ignore this issue of war taxes.
I recognize that sincere people differ on this issue.
Some encourage elected leaders to reorder our nation’s priorities.
Some give away more of their income so that they owe less income tax.
Some live in community so that they can live on lower incomes.
Some withhold a symbolic amount of all of their military taxes.
Some support legislative efforts that would allow conscientious objectors to designate the military portion of their federal taxes to a peace tax fund.
What is important is not so much that we all agree but that we agonize together on these questions.
Let us pray for wisdom as we wrestle with what this issue means for our faith in God, our witness as a Christian church, our faithfulness to Christ and our reverence for God’s creation.
This was accompanied by a sidebar invitation for people to redirect their taxes through “the Taxes for Peace fund.”
It added that “In , $5750 in Taxes for Peace funds were divided between the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund and Christian Peacemaker Teams; 1990 contributions will be divided the same way.”
Members of St. Louis Mennonite Fellowship recently passed a proposal to faithfully resist payments of the U.S. federal phone tax applied monthly to the fellowship’s phone bill.
The revenues will be redirected to Mennonite Central Committee.
“We wish to respect the convictions of our members and Anabaptist forebears and to be disciplined followers of Jesus Christ,” said Scott Neufeld, coordinator of St. Louis Mennonite Peace Witness.
Federal phone tax revenues, first collected in , contribute directly to the U.S. Armed Forces and other systems of war, Neufeld said.
Looking at our Anabaptist heritage and looking at our Scriptures in light of contemporary political realities, we do not have to be pressed to pray for peace while paying for war.
Our spiritual authority in Jesus Christ, as expressed by apostles and Anabaptist forebears, allows and empowers us to make the difficult decision to withhold war taxes.
Balthasar Hubmaier, writing about taxes paid to an unjust government, states, “…to come to the point, God will excuse us for nothing on the account of unjust superiors…” (Anabaptism in Outline, Klassen, p. 246).
The U.S. government has become unjust, and when a government is unjust, it has forfeited the right to expect my taxes.
As Christians and Anabaptists, we have a rich tradition of conscience.
In some ways we even have a tradition of anarchy.
Anarchy in the eyes of the world, that is, for we may claim a greater authority — God.…
The early Anabaptists — Menno Simons, Balthasar Hubmaier, Jacob Hutter and Peter Rideman — all spoke out on the proper attitude of a Christian toward government, on paying taxes used for war and on the production of weapons of violence.
For Anabaptist Christians the issue to pay or not to pay war taxes has a significant history.
Jacob Hutter wrote, “For how can we be innocent before our God if we do not go to war ourselves but give the money that others may go in our place?
We will not become partakers of the sin of others and dishonor and despise God” (“Plots and Excuses,” Klassen p. 252).
While this may refer to the practice of paying one’s way out of military service by supplying a replacement, it still holds true that aiding the carrying out of violence indirectly indicts the taxpayer as a participant in the violence enacted.
Similarly Peter Rideman asserts that one has a responsibility not only for what one produces but also for how those products are used by others.
Rideman states that Christians cannot build weapons of violence, even if they do not use those products themselves.
The one who produces weapons is responsible for the violence inflicted.
But the issue of our history as Christians and as Anabaptists concerning the issue of war tax resistance is made more difficult because of our reading of the biblical texts relating to government, particularly Matthew 22:21 (and other texts referring to government, e.g. Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2:14).
In any discussion of war tax resistance among Christians, the words of Jesus are almost always quoted, “…render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” However, if we look closely at the political and historical context of these biblical texts, we have to ask ourselves how we can apply Jesus’ response in Matthew 22:21 to ourselves in our political and historical situation.
Trick question: Ancient Palestine, in the time of Jesus, was a territory held captive under Roman rule.
Foreign powers hostile to Judaism had occupied Palestine, installed a puppet ruler, King Herod, and sought to form alliances with certain Jewish factions.
The Pharisees, on the other hand, reflected the thoughts and feelings of the majority of the poor and middle-class Jews, feelings of resentment and anger.
The Pharisees, who had been plotting to do away with Jesus on any grounds possible, were seeking to trick Jesus.
On the chance that Jesus might make some incriminating statements, the Pharisees sent their disciples to Jesus along with representatives from Herod.
That way, if Jesus said something self-incriminating to the religious people or to the political regime, he could be arrested.
As it was, neither truth nor justice were being sought by this group when they asked Jesus the question about paying the tax.
It was a trick question, and Jesus responded with a trick answer.
“And Jesus said to them, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.’ And they were greatly amazed at him” (Mark 12:17).
But what does his answer say to us?
What direction does it give to those who are not asking trick questions but whose motives are truth and justice?
We must take seriously that we do not live in a political situation anything like ancient Palestine.
We live in , has witnessed amazing revolutions of democratization.
Democracies seek to do away with the dichotomy between the government and the people.
In a democracy there is no Caesar.
Since we are not ruled by a monarch, we have no “caesar” over us.
If there is a caesar over us, so to speak, then we are caesar.
The U.S. Constitution begins by naming our caesar, “We the people.”…
We, as responsible citizens, are the political and moral authority of the United States.
If our nation blunders and falls, if it is unjust and violent, if it has misplaced priorities, then the blame is on us and not merely upon those we have elected to represent our concerns.
Living in a democracy, we actually pay taxes to ourselves.
We are responsible for setting the budgets.
We are responsible for policies.
One of our greatest problems is that we have surrendered democratic government to bureaucracy, allowing others to make decisions for us.
We are the caesar to whom we are to render our taxes, not some authority outside ourselves.
As such, it is up to us to decide what we will or will not render.
It is this freedom of conscience that makes democracy both attractive to those who live without it and a headache to those who must operate with it.
For this reason, Plato said, democracy is the best form of a bad government and the worst form of a good one.
A restraint of evil: Those of us who withhold a portion of our taxes are trying to reorient our national spending priorities by saying we will not pay for war or violence.
The portion we do not pay we give away to those who will use it for peace.
While we recognize that we are breaking a law of the people (willing to take responsibility and to be accountable for our actions), we are not breaking a law against caesar.
What we are trying to do is give ourselves what we need to function as a government, that is, to function as a restraint of evil and to be a supporter of good (1 Peter 2:14).
Menno Simons wrote that the task of government is to “do justice… to deliver the oppressed,… without tyranny… without force, violence and blood” (“Foundation of Christian Doctrine,” Complete Writings of Menno Simons, p. 193).
Government ceases to be legitimate when it ceases to be a force for order in both foreign and domestic realms, when it ceases to provide for the needs of all, and when it ceases to be a body of law for carrying out justice without violence and bloodshed.
Would we continue to give our tithes and offerings to a ministry that has been proven to be unethical, caught in scandalous dealings and clearly immoral?
If we held our government up to the same standards as we do televangelists and their ministries, the government would not be able to finance its bureaucracies.
Our government has been caught in one scandal after another, involved in or supporting one war after another.
And because we are caesar, we are responsible for this scandalous behavior.
Even though we have given away our democratic rights to bureaucratic powers, we still will bear God’s judgment.
The majority of our federal budget pays for the operations of the world’s largest military system, which prepares for war with scarce resources.
It finances low-intensity conflicts throughout the world by supplying and sponsoring surrogate armies.
It has yet to finish paying for past wars.
Thus we must come to terms with the reality that we are producing and indirectly using weapons of violence.
Living in a democracy, we are, as citizens, weapons producers by providing through our taxes the capital needed for the production of B1-Bs, MX “Peacekeepers,” Apache attack helicopters, bullets, rifles and on and on.
The Scriptures, which determine the right function of government, the witness of our Anabaptist forebears and our democratic freedoms force us to act in ways that affect the political process.
For many, tax resistance is a way to bring about a change in federal spending priorities.
But much more importantly, it is a way to make one’s life have integrity and to align one’s life with God’s gospel of shalom.
The edition announced a “Standing Up for Peace Contest” with $1,100 in prizes available to “young people ages 15–23” who “interview someone who has refused to fight in war, pay taxes for war, or build weapons for war and share the story through writing an essay or song, producing a video, or creating a work of art.”
The Mennonite Church General Board, after years of study and discussion, brought the military tax question to a vote, then tabled it.
a majority of General Assembly delegates voted to “support” the efforts of church board employees who do not wish their taxes deducted so that they may deal with the government in regard to military taxes.
At the General Board meetings in Kalona, Iowa, members tabled a motion to honor requests of employees who ask that their income tax not be withheld.
Gary Jewell, a student at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries, Elkhart, Ind., handed out about $150 in $1 bills to passers-by in front of the downtown post office in Elkhart to express his opposition to U.S. military spending.
He gave away about half of what he and his wife, Jan Yoder, owe in federal income taxes.
The couple plans to give the rest to a charity like Mennonite Central Committee.
Stapled to each $1 bill was a statement by Jewell that read in part, “Today I choose to give my money away (call it a ‘peace dividend’) rather than to pay the remaining 60 percent of my federal income tax that goes toward present and past military expense.”
(The Elkhart Truth)
The edition included a sidebar with this quote:
“Until membership in the church means that a Christian chooses not to engage in violence for any reason and instead chooses to love, pray for, help and forgive all enemies; until membership in the church means that Christians may not be members of any military…; until membership in the church means that Christians cannot pay taxes for others to kill others; and until the church says these things in a fashion that the simplest soul can understand — until that time humanity can only look forward to more dark nights of slaughter on a scale unknown in history.
Unless the church unswervingly and unambiguously teaches what Jesus teaches on this matter, it will not be the divine leaven in the human dough that it was meant to be.”
―George Zabelka, who served as a Roman Catholic chaplain for those who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on and
The General Boards of the General Conference Mennonite Church and the Mennonite Church issued their first joint statement as a merging body in .
It urged the U.S. to stand down from its Iraq war threats.
One of the seven points of the document calls congregations to confess “our own complicity and selfishness in utilizing more than our share of the world’s supply of oil and other resources… limited concern for longstanding injustices in the Middle East and… paying for the military buildup through our taxes.”
A regional report from the noted that in the Mennonite Conference of Eastern Canada, “A conference employee has requested that the conference not withhold his war taxes.
This issue will be brought to a future conference session.”
The most obvious extension of the concept of conscientious objection to military service is however in the field of taxation.
As historically it has usually been to fund military expenditures that taxes have first been levied, there are ancient precedents.
Canonized in for his refusal as Bishop of Lincoln to pay taxes to fund the French wars, St Hugh is now regarded as the patron saint of the peace tax movement.
Gross traces the modern tax resistance back to the revolt against Charles Ⅰ’s “ship money” which led to the English Civil War of the mid-17th Century.
However, on that occasion the revolt was not against the use of the tax to raise a navy, but against the King’s circumventing Parliament in order to do so.
Ironically, but perhaps appropriately, it was however against those who coined the slogan “no taxation without representation” that “war tax resistance” first came into prominence.
Quakers corporately refused to pay the taxes imposed to pay for the American Revolutionary War, and they were joined by members of the other “historic peace churches” — many Mennonites and some Brethren.
Property was seized and auctioned, and many were jailed.
Nevertheless, it was a non-pacifist, Henry David Thoreau, who established himself as the prophet of the modern war tax resistance movement with his pamphlet “Resistance to Civilian Government (Civil Disobedience)” where he wrote about his experience of imprisonment in for refusing to pay the poll tax levied in Massachusetts for the Mexican-American war.
, many Quaker Yearly Meetings in the USA continued nominally to support war tax resistance, but the issue was almost forgotten until , when a specifically-named “Defence Tax” levy of 10% was added to income tax in the USA.
A number of organizations, including the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the (Quaker) American Friends Service Committee, called for a recognition of conscientious objector status for taxpayers.
Few however actually resisted; until the Viet Nam war only six war tax refusers were imprisoned, all of them nominally for contempt of court.
Once again, it took not just a war, but a deeply unpopular war, to spark widespread tax refusal.
An inestimable boost was given to the movement when just before tax day the singer Joan Baez announced that she was withholding 60% of her (not inconsiderable) tax bill for in protest at the war.
Initiatives and supporters mushroomed, the emphasis generally being on practical measures to deprive government of revenue, rather than asserting any freedom of conscience right, although the latter soon followed.
Taxes specifically earmarked for military purposes have always attracted more opposition; thus it is estimated that between 200,000 and 500,000 persons refused to pay the earmarked telephone tax whereas by the end of the war perhaps 20,000 were withholding some or all of their income tax.
It so happened that the embroilment of the USA in the Viet Nam war coincided with the end of conscription in the United Kingdom.
While there was no longer an opportunity to take a stand of conscientious objection against conscription into military service, some were quick to point out that all were arguably being conscripted into paying for military expenditure, so the possibility of taking a stand of conscientious objection was open to all.
In , Quakers in Kent brought to the Society of Friends nationally an appeal for a legal right of conscientious objection to the conscription of income “for what they regarded as immoral purposes, contrary to the Spirit and teaching of Christ”, pointing out that modern war required large sums of money rather than large armies.
Meanwhile, resistance in Switzerland, particularly before there was any recognition of conscientious objectors to military service, was focused on the special military exemption tax which had to be paid by all men of the liable age who did not perform military service in any particular year.
This system has subsequently twice been criticized by the European Court of Human Rights as discriminatory, but in cases which did not involve opposition to military expenditure as such.
The movement appears to have suddenly “gone global” at the beginning of the 1980s.
In the UK, “Conscience—the Peace Tax Campaign” was founded in , followed over the next three years by national campaigns in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany (Netzwerk Friedenssteuer), Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Spain.
Campaigns in France, Japan, and Switzerland were already underway.
The first of the ongoing sequence of International Conferences of War Tax Resisters and Peace Tax Campaigns took place in Tübingen, Germany in ; in , the decision was taken to found Conscience and Peace Tax International (CPTI) to lobby on the issue at the international level.
It might be generalized that in Europe and other parts of the world the tax objection movement has largely been distinguished from the American antecedents by seeking legal recognition of a means to object, and even in “peacetime”, rather than seeking to deny funding for an unpopular war.
That said, it was in the USA that the first attempt at legislation was made in in the Bill brought forward by Congressman Ronald Dellums, “the World Peace Tax Fund Act”; a similar Bill was brought forward in the Senate by Senator Mark Hatfield in .
The National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund was founded to support these efforts, and with its assistance bills have been brought forward in each subsequent Congress, for many years by the late Senator John Lewis of Georgia, former ally of Martin Luther King.
In , Bills were put forward in the Parliaments of Belgium, Germany, and the UK to allow conscientious objection to the payment of taxes for military expenditure.
These were followed by Bills in Australia, the Netherlands and Italy (all ), Canada (), Norway (), and Spain ().
In many cases, the attempt at legislation has — so far — been one-off, but in Belgium for many years and still in the United Kingdom and Germany, bills are put forward at regular intervals.
The first attempt to appeal such a case internationally was by Tony Croft in the case of C v UK under the European Convention on Human Rights.
The then Commission found the case inadmissible, as it did in in a case concerning the agreement of Quaker Peace and Service to withhold taxes on behalf of Quaker staff.
In C v UK, the Commission found “The obligation to pay taxes is a general one which has no specific conscientious implications in itself. Its neutrality in this sense is also illustrated by the fact that no tax payer can influence or determine the purpose for which his or her contributions are applied, once they are collected.”
In , the European Court itself declared inadmissible the appeal from the Peace Tax Seven by reference to the decision of the Commission in C v UK.
In , a Canadian Quaker doctor, Jerilynn Prior, was the author of a communication to the UN Human Rights Committee.
This case was likewise deemed inadmissible by the Committee:
“Although article 18 of the Covenant certainly protects the right to hold, express and disseminate opinions and convictions, including conscientious objection to military activities and expenditures, the refusal to pay taxes on grounds of conscientious objection clearly falls outside the scope of protection of this article.”
This precedent was followed in dismissing two further communications brought to the Committee, JvK & CMGvK v Netherlands and KV & CV v Germany.
In the second, the case was further inadmissible on the grounds that the facts concerned a date before Germany had acceded to the Optional Protocol which grants the right of individual communication under the Covenant.
Had it been considered on its merits, would the fact that it came subsequent to General Comment no. 22 have made any difference?
Certainly the upsurge of activism on tax objection around the turn of the century was boosted by the progress which was being made at the time with regard to the recognition of a right of conscientious objection to military service.
However, arguments for the expansion of that recognition into the field of taxation were logical and theoretical only, whereas the advances with regard to military service had been carried forward by substantial and continuing developments in State practice, to which context General Comment no. 22 itself pointedly refers.
By contrast, there is not a single instance of a precedent in national practice with regard to tax objection.
Brett is a board member of Conscience and Peace Tax International, and served for several years as its UN representative.
