Around the middle of April as the federal income tax filing deadline
approaches, tax resistance articles hit the media frequently. Here are some
examples from past years:
A post-tax-day wrap-up quotes war tax resister Ed Hedemann, and also Jack O’Malley, one of three Catholic priests in Pittsburgh who were refusing to pay war taxes.
A news report on tax day protests includes a mention of “Seven Pittsburgh priests [who] will refuse to pay about a third of their federal income taxes in a protest against the nuclear arms race” and of war tax resister Ralph Dull, who “drove a truck filled with 325 bushels of corn to the IRS office in Dayton” in lieu of cash payment.
Eleven demonstrators gathered outside the Federal Building, 600 E Cherry St., to protest the use of tax dollars for military spending.
George Mummert, a spokesman for the demonstrators, said they represent no organization.
“We’re just a gathering of concerned citizens who have an objection to our tax dollars going toward war and its preparation and not to peace.”
The protest came on the final day to file income-tax returns.
Mummert said the protesters received mainly positive response from passers-by.
In addition to passing out literature and holding signs, the group planned to deliver a giant postcard bearing supporters’ signatures to Rep. Harold Volkmer’s office.
Most of the demonstrators were “people of faith,” according to Mummert, although they are not affiliated with any particular denomination or church.
“It’s hypocritical for us to pray for peace and pay for war,” Mummert said.
He cited statistics stating that 64 percent of the federal income tax revenue goes toward current military expenses and debts from past wars.
All the protesters were what Mummert called “hard core war tax resisters.”
They do not file federal income tax returns, he said.
Mummert, a conscientious objector in , said other tax resisters pay half their tax, some pay all but $1, while still others refuse to pay their telephone excise tax.
From The Washington Post, :
Tax Resisters Refuse to Fuel War Machine
by Colman McCarthy
Well-deserved acclaim has been given to sociologist Daniel Jonah Goldhagen for his recent book Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust.
It details the complicity of German citizens during the political reign of the Nazis when much of the public accepted the intellectual arguments for the mass murder of Jews.
“Hundreds of thousands of Germans contributed to the genocide and the still larger system of subjugation that was the vast concentration camp system,” writes Goldhagen.
He states that “the moral bankruptcy of the German churches, Protestant and Catholic” was “extensive and abject.”
Religious leaders “were men of God second and Germans first.”
They blessed state violence.
As the main military force that defeated the Nazis, the United States has been able to position itself on the moral high ground and, with furrowed brow, ponder in astonishment why so few Germans protested their government’s well-organized barbarity.
If a cold eye is to be cast on Germany’s behavior a half-century ago, why not a condemning word and a protesting stance of resistance against the violent policies of the U.S. government in ?
What violence?
Congress lavishes the Pentagon with $700 million a day, a sum nearly equal to the military budgets of all other nations combined and 17 times more than the combined budgets of the six nations the Pentagon claims are threats.
Also each day, about 38,000 children are dying throughout the world of hunger-related diseases, according to Oxfam International.
The United States is the planet’s largest arms merchant, with Commerce and State Department officials roaming the world on trade missions to hustle more customers for the U.S. weapons industry.
Client states include such habitual violators of human rights as Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
, uncountable dictators to whom the United States has supplied weapons turned them on their own people.
, the annual arms bazaar — the “Contingency and Operational Procurement Exhibition” — is scheduled at the Sheraton-Washington Hotel.
This is the mercantile occasion when the newest wares of death are displayed.
The Peace Action Education Fund is organizing a protest.
Differences between Germany’s military machine 60 years ago and America’s today are obvious.
Less so are the similarities.
Germany had a complicit clergy, as does the United States today.
America’s church leaders offer a biblical argument: Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, to God what is God’s. Dorothy Day had an answer for that: After you give to God, there should be nothing left over for Caesar.
The second similarity is how rarely dissent is voiced by ordinary Americans.
Normalcy prevails, as if it were rational to have a proposed military budget $20 billion larger than in , at the peak of the Cold War.
Not all Americans fall into line.
This month in more than 50 cities, such groups as Veterans for Peace, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the War Resisters League have been organizing programs and demonstrations for tax resistance.
Last year, according to the National War Tax Resisters Coordinating Committee, about 20,000 patriots who value their government but not its warrior spirit refused to channel money to the Pentagon through the IRS They are back this year, again finding it both illogical and immoral to work for peace while paying for war or war preparation.
The IRS labels them tax cheats, which is incorrect.
They are happy to pay taxes when the money is for social programs that enhance life, not for the world’s most effective killing machine.
Those with religious ties argue persuasively that providing money for military people to kill violates the teachings of the world’s religions.
For Marian Franz of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, a Washington nonprofit group, conscientious tax resistance is a religious liberties issue.
She has allies in Congress, including Sen. Mark O. Hatfield (R-Ore.) and Rep. Andrew Jacobs Jr. (D-Ind).
Each recently introduced legislation — the U.S. Peace Tax Fund bill — that would provide legal protection for citizens who want their taxes to be diverted from the Pentagon maw.
The legislation is not likely to pass in this or the next millennium.
Its value may be for historians, ones who will ask how and why so many ordinary Americans in the said or did nothing about their government squandering its wealth on militarism.
In this current darkness, a few lights shine.
Honorable dissent may be only flickering, but it is still a flame.
McCarthy seems to have had a soft spot for war tax resisters.
He penned another op-ed on the subject in :
Washington — Whether a taxpayer obeys or violates his or her conscience on April 15 is no concern to the Internal Revenue Service.
It wants dollars, not qualms. But at tax time, conscience is an issue to a fair number of citizens whose religion, ethics, or value system holds that cooperation with war or war preparation is not moral.
They see no consistency of conscience in working 364 days of the year opposing policies that make the United States the earth’s most militarized nation while, on the 365th day, paying taxes that overflow the government’s war trough.
Tax money has paid for all seven of America’s declared wars and all of its 137 “presidential actions,” the latest of which are Grenada, Libya, and Nicaragua.
Citizens helped provide the Pentagon with nearly two trillion dollars under the Reagan administration, including a doubling of money for nuclear weapons and the beginning of a space battlefield.
The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, an East Patchoque, N.Y., group estimates that between 10,000 and 20,000 people will be sitting out for reasons of conscience.
The estimate is probably low.
This isn’t a group much given to self-generated publicity or issuing press releases every time Caspar Weinberger emits another war whoop.
Street theater is rare, although a few war tax protesters will put up a picket line in front of the IRS offices in Washington.
More important than the precise number of resisters is the growth of lawyers or counselors assisting them: More than 120 are now at work, up from 55 in .
Strength is seen in another figure: a 400 percent increase — from 45 to 180 — in for national and local groups working on war tax resistance.
Kathy Levine of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee reports that the people saying yes to their consciences and no to the IRS form a diverse group: “During Vietnam, it was mostly ‘the peaceniks’ who protested this way.
They were against just the Vietnam War.
Today there are people from all kinds of political and philosophical positions who are refusing to pay their taxes.
Some are opposed to the development of nuclear weapons.
Some have religious convictions who feel they must obey God’s law before a civil law.
And many in the middle class are sickened and fed up with the amount of money going to the military.”
Groups like the War Resisters League and the Friends Committee on National Legislation calculate that 55 percent of the tax dollar goes for military or military-related purposes.
The federal tax law lacks a provision for pacifists or others who want no part of the government’s violent solutions to conflicts.
After that, though, good news and bad news emerges.
The good news is that no conscientious tax resister has been jailed for .
For the IRS, the strain in dogging tax cheats and willful evaders, and prosecuting them if they are caught, is too great for it to be coming down hard on the noncriminal resisters.
The bad news is that the IRS, through the “frivolous return” penalty that was added to the tax code in , has increased enforcement powers to make it easier for the government to get not only the money that wasn’t paid by April 15 but also a larger amount from penalties Bank accounts and personal assets can be attached.
Without a meticulous plan of resistance before a decision is made and the services of a skilled tax lawyer after, a conscientious resister can end up paying the IRS more than if he had not protested at all.
In a few days, a solution that would satisfy both the resisters and the government will be proposed in Congress: the Peace Tax Fund bill.
With some 55 House sponsors and four in the Senate when offered in the last session, the legislation would amend the tax code.
Citizens opposed in conscience to participating in any way in military solutions would be allowed to redirect their taxes to non-military purposes.
These tax resisters aren’t out to deny money to the government.
They seek only to deny it to that part of government that wants money for military violence, which is morally unacceptable.
Marian Franz, the director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund and who has been working for this law for , says that “during the Vietnam era 15 percent of all draftees were recognized as conscientious objectors.
If that same percentage of taxpayers diverted their tax payments to the Peace Tax Fund, this trust fund for peace projects would receive about $2 billion each year.
These funds would have an impact on the way the world would think about, and moves to resolve, international conflict.”
A dreamer?
Yes, gloriously.
But not a dangerous dreamer.
The planet-threatening menaces are those who keep on dreaming — especially around April 15 — that more money for more militarism is the way to peace.
All that group proves is that well-funded dreams become expensive nightmares.
An obituary for Dwight Macdonald in the Catholic Worker touched on his tax resistance.
Excerpt:
In , he joined the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” in refusal to pay taxes for the Vietnam War.
This was his first act of civil disobedience.
Dwight defended his action as “the deliberate, public, and non-violent breaking of a law because to obey it would be to betray a higher morality.”
The National Catholic News Service sent this dispatch over the wires on .
Excerpts:
British Churchmen Urge Disarmament Steps
By Robert Nowell
London (NC)—
Two top church leaders in Great Britain have urged nuclear disarmament initiatives by their country and a third revealed that he is waging a tax protest against England’s military spending.
On a new booklet on conscientious objection to military taxation carried the text of a letter in which a prominent Anglican, Canon Paul Oestreicher, announced to the government that he was withholding part of his income tax “as an act of conscientious objection to the manufacture, possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons” by the British government.
Canon Oestreicher is assistant general secretary of the British Council of Churches.
Canon Oestreicher wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer announcing that he was withholding a token sum of 30 pounds (about $46) “as a symbol of my duty as a Christian citizen to refuse to be party to a policy which I believe to be of doubtful legality and certainly immoral.”
His letter was printed as an appendix to a booklet on military tax resistance issued by the Quaker Council for European Affairs.
The Service sent out this dispatch on :
Bishop Thanks War Tax Resisters for “Witness”
St. Paul, Minn. (NC)— Bishop Raymond Lucker of New Ulm has thanked war tax resisters “for their witness” while stating that he does not “personally hold that position.”
“I believe that the arms race is evil.
I believe that the very possession of nuclear weapons as long as we are making no sustained commitment to achieve multilateral disarmament is evil,” wrote the Minnesota bishop in a column published in The Catholic Bulletin, newspaper of the St. Paul-Minneapolls Archdiocese.
The paper also serves the neighboring New Ulm Diocese.
Bishop Lucker compared war tax resistance with other forms of civil disobedience to unjust laws or immoral public policy, saying for example that he would go to jail rather than obey a law requiring him or a Catholic hospital under his jurisdiction to participate or cooperate in an abortion.
He said he resolves the problem of not supporting the “madness” of the arms race by not earning enough income to be subject to federal taxes.
“I do not want to contribute to this madness,” he wrote. “What I do is take such a small salary that I no longer pay income tax.
I make sure that my annual salary each year is less than $3,600.
This is no special hardship; my needs are few.
I have no family to support.
I am free to contribute to the poor.”
In Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle announced that he was refusing to pay half of his federal income tax as a symbol of his resistance to U.S. involvement in the nuclear arms race.
He said he was giving the money instead to worthy charitable causes.
In at least 10 Catholic priests around the country, including eight in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, refused to pay a portion of their taxes as a protest against U.S. nuclear arms expenditures.
The eight Pittsburgh priests announced that they would again refuse to pay the part of their taxes that goes to pay for nuclear war and nuclear weapons.
They planned to hold a press conference and prayer service in Pittsburgh before delivering their tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service.
In discussing civil disobedience Bishop Lucker cited “many instances in history where Catholics and other Christians disobeyed a law rather than violate their conscience.”
“They used non-violent means and were willing to pay the consequences,” he wrote.
“Frequently their witness was what got an unjust law or sinful public policy changed.”
Among cases he cited were those of early Christian martyrs who refused to worship the Roman emperor, St. Thomas More’s refusal to acknowledge King Henry Ⅷ as head of the Church of England and the non-violent resistance to racist laws in the United States by the Rev. Martin Luther King and his followers.
He said that Jehovah’s Witnesses in the United States were beaten and jailed before the U.S. Supreme Court recognized their right to refuse to salute the flag because they believe the action would violate the First Commandment.
“Hundreds of thousands of Americans are working to change the interpretation of the Constitution which allows abortions taking life away from the unborn.
We have a right to dissent.
We must dissent.
The issue is not going to go away,” he wrote.
He also wrote that a Christian soldier has an obligation to disobey an order that is immoral and that a person “can be a good Catholic and a conscientious objector” to all war or to a particular war.
“Each of us in our own way must respond to the Lord’s call,” Bishop Lucker wrote.
He said that not engaging in direct civil disobedience but not earning enough money to be subject to U.S. income taxes “is one way for me.”
The Service sent out this dispatch on :
Tax Resistance Funds Go to Catholic Agencies
By Brian Baker
Albany, N.Y. (NC)—
Catholic and Catholic-affiliated agencies were among 33 social service and community organizations that received donations from a war tax resistance fund in Albany.
On , the day before the deadline for filing tax returns, the Military Tax Resistance and Alternative Fund distributed more than $5,500 in checks, ranging from $50 to $600, to the non profit organizations.
The money came from people who, for reasons of conscience, refused to pay the portion of their federal income tax that they estimated would be used for military purposes.
At least five of the recipient organizations were agencies affiliated with the Diocese of Albany, among them Catholic Family and Community Services of Schenectady.
The tax resistance fund has grown each year, from $1,000 when it was begun in to $5,500 .
total was $1,500 more than despite a new federal law passed last summer which adds a $500 penalty for filing a frivolous return on top of already existing penalties for failing to pay all taxes owed.
Maureen Casey, a spokesperson for the fund and a member of St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Albany, said she has been a tax resister for three years because “it is wrong to kill people, either personally or through war.”
“I see what I am doing as the continuation of a tradition followed by many respectable people, including Dorothy Day,” a pacifist and foundress of the Catholic Worker movement, Ms Casey added.
Donald Roberts, a public affairs officer for the Internal Revenue Service, said that tax resisters could have assets seized or levies placed against their salaries to recover the taxes and applicable penalties.
In addition, he said, if the IRS decides to launch a criminal investigation a resister could be prosecuted and imprisoned.
He added, however, that the agencies receiving donations from a tax resistance fund face no legal risks for doing so.
This “news in brief” item was carried by the Service on :
Indianapolis (NC)— An Indianapolis parish has been ordered to pay for its pastor’s act of civil disobedience.
The Internal Revenue Service has issued a notice of levy on the salary of Father Cosmas Raimondi of Holy Cross Parish for $604.18 for unpaid income tax, penalties and interest.
While Father Raimondi was associate pastor at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish, Indianapolis, in he informed the IRS that he was withholding 50 percent of his income tax “as a protest against the nuclear arms race, military intervention in Central America and efforts to reinstate a mandatory military draft.”
And a follow-up on this, from a dispatch:
Friends Pay Priest’s Taxes After IRS Seizes His Car
By Jim Jachimak
Indianapolis (NC)—
An Internal Revenue Service case against an Indianapolis pastor has been settled, but the priest’s tax protest has not ended.
The IRS seized Father Cosmas Raimondi’s car on to cover federal income taxes which he withheld in but other parties have decided to pay the tax so the car can be returned.
Taxes, penalties and interest owed by Father Raimondi, pastor of Holy Cross Church, amounted to $608.14.
The car, a Honda Civic, was valued at $2,500 by the IRS.
“I have been informed that people who care about me are getting the car back by paying the taxes, which I would rather not have happen,” Father Raimondi said. “But that is their decision.”
He withheld $564.87 from the IRS to protest the nuclear arms race, U.S. intervention in Central America and draft registration.
the IRS has been attempting to collect the back taxes.
He said his action has focused attention on the issue of militarism and caused the parish council at Holy Cross to discern “the good and moral thing to do given the teachings of our church.”
In an IRS levy against Father Raimondi’s salary ordered the Holy Cross parish council to pay the amount he owed.
The council announced that it had decided not to honor the levy.
Father Raimondi said that he plans to take a reduction of salary in the future so that he will not be required to pay any federal income tax.
Jane Sammon wrote an article on tax resistance for the Catholic Worker.
There’s very little meat in it, but it does have the earliest mention I’ve found so far in this archive to the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (with a post office box address in East Patchogue, New York, and Kathy Levine listed as the contact person).
