Tax resistance in the “Peace Churches” →
Quakers →
20th–21st century Quakers →
Paul Sheldon
It must be tax season. I had to tell a newspaper reporter, “hey, can I get back to you on that?
I’ve got a radio interview coming up and I need to keep the line free.”
I may need to get a press secretary to help me out during .
, war tax resisters are the lead article on the San Francisco Chronicle’s SF Gate site, and on the front page of the Chronicle’s business section.
The article (“The tax bucks stop here”) features area tax resisters Dorothy Hansen, Elizabeth Boardman, Steve Leeds, and myself.
And yesterday, Susan Quinlan, Scott McCandless, Elizabeth Boardman, and myself were interviewed by Susan Galleymore for Raising Sand Radio.
McCandless is one of those unusual conscientious tax resister / constitutionalist tax protester hybrids.
He was using Irwin Schiff’s mad theories for a while, and now he has a new set that strike me as equally implausible.
But here’s the thing: the way he tells it, he’d racked up about $10,000 in unpaid taxes when he was doing things the Schiff way back in the day, and when the IRS finally caught up to him he agreed to an “offer in compromise” with them — $600.
He paid $600 to erase $10,000 in unpaid taxes.
Perhaps there’s a method to this madness after all.
War tax resister Paul Sheldon was interviewed for a tangent in a Justice Talking radio show on the subject of tax reform.
He redirects $25 of his income tax each year from the U.S. Treasury to UNICEF.
More from the swarm of tax resisters who came out to play on :
“All I kept thinking about was just how many people oppose the war, wish the war wasn’t happening and don’t really see a clear way of doing anything about it.
On tax day, everybody’s scrambling to pay the government and feeling like their hard earned dollars are being sopped up and wishing that that money went to roads and to schools and to healthcare.
We were able to interject some information about where that money really goes — and to offer some alternatives… about how people can withdraw their own complicity.”
The Makingpeace blog has been covering war tax resistance actions in Austin, Texas and elsewhere.
As best we can figure, we gave out about 2200 flyers on at the Brunswick and St. Simons Island P.O.s.
Amazing!
We started at with 500 War Resisters League pie chart flyers at each P.O.
We ran out of those at in Brunswick and on St. Simons at , just as I arrived to give Bill Jerome a stack of about 400 “Economic Costs of the War” flyers with info from the American Friends Service Committee.
Milly Hastings reported later that when she & Steve Stevens finished their leafletting at , they had only 16 flyers left!
Although our youth were ready to provide someone to take over on St. Simons, there weren’t flyers for them!
On the Brunswick side, Cathy Browning brought us a couple of hundred of the flyers addressed to Georgia taxpayers, giving figures from the National Priorities Project on how much the war is costing us locally and what else the money could have purchased in services and meeting community needs.
Those weren’t going to be enough, so she went back and printed 600 more.
These were all gone by , a half-hour before the P.O. closed.
Paul Sheldon reports on his many tax day (more like tax week) actions at Paul’s Perambulations.
It will be difficult to keep up this witness — my wages at the Fellowship of Reconciliation, as of yesterday, are now being levied by the IRS — but we are going to try.
The most encouraging thing is the powerfully supportive response that we have received from so many people.
Clearly, our small action has struck a chord with others who similarly oppose this war, and are unsure about what they can do to help stop it.
Eric Muller: “The paper tiger casts a shadow, but it’s a shadow of paper and of enforcement.
What can they take from us? They can take our money.
And that’s a very small damage compared to the damage we’re creating throughout the world and particularly in Iraq right now, as we speak, you know much more damage is being inflicted than will be on the tax resisters who are working here today.”
Muller and others in the community have donated six thousand dollars to local charities instead of paying their full taxes to the federal government.
The money will go to Food for Lane County, Shelter-care, [and] peace groups, among others.
…Wonderful people, some very good times, some very frustrating times.
Perhaps I spoke too much, but for me, there was very little in the way of direct action from this Conference group.
This seems surprising, when I consider what I know of the wonderful examples of direct action that have been taken by so many of those who were present.
There was a lost opportunity here.
I should have stood up and cheered when, during the perennial discussion of why there were essentially no young people at this conference (thank you, Kristen, for being an exception), someone stated out loud that no young person could stand to attend something (often dull — my addition) as this was.
Exactly one possible solution was offered… let’s get nifty interactive websites on sites where young people are active.
Since this is an older group whose members tend to be ignorant of technology, [this] can take the form of “the answer” when nothing else seems possible.
Peacepays is a great website… but it is not “the answer.”
My question — what do we offer after the website?
And just how great is that medium for us?
I am dubious about how well we can ever compete on youth websites — our message is not inherently well suited to the medium, in the way that the way the U.S. Army has the best hi-tech video games in the world on their websites.
How far can this take us — then what?
Our action needs to be “on the ground” and we offered not one stitch of that at this conference.
Well, I walked around Fallowfield with my “War, No Way, Don’t Pay” shirt on, and a number of young folks clearly looked at it and got the message.
As far as I know, that is the only hint that we gave to the many young people that were all around us in that town, that an international peace conference with some amazing people was being held that weekend, right in their midst.…
Where was the real dialogue at the conference?
It was preaching to a small group of the already converted.
A group that will grow progressively smaller if we don’t take this to the streets and do some direct peaceful action.
It is also what young people, in my experience, find most satisfying and appealing.…
You might say that much of what I say here is not directly relevant to our Conference topic of War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns.
I think we all realize that it is highly unlikely that war tax resistance/campaigns will ever be the “gateway” for young people to enter the peace movement.
We need to start with a more direct and less intellectual focus.
Out of Iraq — Now!
At this point in the war, that is not a shocking statement in the U.S..
Or be gentler (but making the point, very visibly) if you are with a more conservative group.
How can we get out of war?
Present various options, and one of these is always taxes for peace not war.
But don’t expect any active response from people hearing about WTR for the first time, or even for quite a while.
Civil disobedience appears scary and difficult for most people.
Personally, I believe that WTR is generally inappropriate for anyone new to the peace movement.
I have on one or two occasions gently discouraged individuals whom I believed did not understand its full implications and were not prepared for what is required of war tax resisters.
On the other hand, Mimi is a young Menonite whom I have spoken with considerably about this topic, and she became a war tax resister .
Her commitment to pacifism was already well developed, and thus WTR was a new and additional avenue for her to express and witness to her beliefs.
As a practical matter, in the United States peace tax campaigns are much more user-friendly to the vast majority of people and represent an easier place to start a discussion.
I am a person who believes in street speaking. Be a public Friend or whatever
you are. Let our beliefs be known directly to the public. Not to be in
someone’s face, not as a weirdo, but let it be known (gently) to whomever you
meet. If, between now and the time of our next Conference
, each of us enlisted one
new person to our common cause, our members (well, we don’t have members
really, do we?) would be dancing in the streets. We should not expect to ever
be a large group, or even a young group. What we are struggling with now is
simply to replace the old people with a new crop of experienced middle-aged
people. I know that as individuals we are “activist” and willing to take
risks. What wonderful people I met at the Conference. But our work does tend
to be of the legalistic and formal variety, which does not engage young
people. And to the extent that the Conference itself represented how we
present ourselves to the world, it was not an enticing model.
I hear lot of frustration here, and I’ve heard some similar things from the
war tax resistance movement in the
U.S. (especially
frustration at being unable to engage younger activists on a large scale, and
occasional clumsy gestures at trying to jazz things up to appeal to the
youngins).
I don’t share Paul’s enthusiasm for petitioning politicians or supporting
peace tax legislation campaigns, but I do agree that direct action is a good
way of engaging impatient peace activists. But in my opinion, war tax
resistance is (or can be part of) a lifestyle of direct action — and we’d be
wise to market it that way. Want to engage in direct action? Don’t wait for
the next big rally to get arrested at a worthless die-in farce for the benefit
of the evening news — start acting directly now and keep it up day after day.
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
Mentions of war tax resistance and differing approaches to the dilemma of paying war taxes continued to appear in some of the issues of the Friends Journal in .
The issue included a review of the book A Persistent Voice: Marian Franz and Conscientious Objection to Military Taxation.
It was a collection of essays by and about Franz and about Peace Tax Fund activism, with some supplemental material about the U.S. versions of Peace Tax Fund scheme legislation that Franz had championed.
The issue included Harrison & Marilyn Roper telling the story of their war tax resistance.
Excerpts:
In the contradiction of “praying for peace and paying for war” overwhelmed us.
We needed to try to live under the taxable level (supplemented by tax-free investments) so that we no longer would be supporting monetarily what we deplored spiritually.
In an open letter to fellow Friends at Haverford (Pa.) Meeting… we wrote:
Along with raising our family and “just living,” we have been trying in our own ways to contribute to a more just and peaceful society.
While doing this, we have both had jobs and paid federal taxes.
For the last three years we have not paid that portion of our federal income tax (approximately one-third) that goes to the Pentagon.
However, IRS has eventually taken the funds, with penalties and interest, by placing a lien on Harry’s salary at West Chester State College.
Thus, we are purchasers and part owners (along with you) of numerous H-bombs and other weapons of death.
We ask ourselves if the potential damage we are doing is not more than outweighing any benefits to society we might be making.
They wrote that they were hoping for the passage of Peace Tax Fund legislation with which they “could have continued in our present occupations and continued to pay our income taxes.”
But meanwhile, they decided to simplify their lives and reorient their finances with a goal to getting under the tax line.
They shared some of the details of how they went about this:
After our younger son had graduated from high school, we were able, at ages 49 and 47, to move to northern Maine and live a simpler life.
Louis Green… taught us what we needed to know about tax-free municipal bonds and helped us invest the cushion we received from selling our home in Haverford and buying a very low-cost one in Houlton, Maine.
Our older son was about to enter his senior year at University of Maine and we would be able to pay the much-reduced in-state tuition.
We… installed an on-grid photovoltaic electrical system and have solar pre-heating of hot water.
We also live within walking distance of stores, which reduces our need to travel and helps us live in an environmentally friendly manner.
Our home is heated by wood from dead and diseased trees that we harvest ourselves from our woodlot.
…a wonderful new life of volunteering, composing, conducting, and living closer to nature opened up.… Despite all the details of our peace witness through federal tax avoidance being aired on the front page of our Houlton paper soon after our arrival, in we were honored with the “Good Samaritans of Houlton” award for our volunteer work and in we each received a Paul Harris Award from the local Rotary Club for our peace efforts.…
For those who share our concern about not paying for war or preparations for war, tax-free municipal bonds are the legal tickets.
Those who purchase them are financing voter-approved and life-enhancing projects in our country such as better sewers, schools, and hospitals.
The modest interest on these state and/or municipal bonds is not taxable by the federal government.
We file a 1040 every year, but most years we owe nothing or very little.
If we think we may “go over,” we give more money away that year to tax-exempt organizations.…
Thanks to understanding parents, most of our inheritance has been in the form of tax-free municipal bonds.
When a bond comes due, we always reinvest the capital by purchasing another tax-free municipal bond at face value (i.e. at par) so that there is no capital gain when the bond comes due or is called.
Although we do not know how long we will live or what dire situations might eat up our principal, we do hope to be able to continue to live very simply on the interest from our tax-free municipal bonds and pass on some of the capital to our children and grandchildren… We really love the kind of life we’re living; we didn’t make this commitment in order to be miserable.
And we sleep better at night knowing that we are not paying for war as we pray for peace.
That issue also reprinted a “declaration of conscience” that came out of a group associated with the Quakers from the New York Yearly Meeting who had been working to try to get legal accommodation for conscientious objection to military spending.
Excerpts:
The government of the United States violates freedom of conscience rights by forcing us to pay for war.
…In paying federal income taxes we contribute personally and directly to such expenditure, in violation of our consciences.
We have responded in various ways.
Some of us have taken steps to reduce or eliminate our income tax liability.
Some have paid under protest.
Some have withheld all or part of the taxes due, redirecting the sums involved to nonviolent and humanitarian purposes, or have deposited the money in escrow for any nonmilitary governmental use.
Some have challenged federal agencies in the courts.
Some have petitioned and campaigned for legislative accommodation.
We stress that we are willing to contribute our full share to the expenses of civil society.
We simply seek to ensure that the taxes we pay are not used to finance warmaking or preparations for war.
As a result of this conscientious objection we have variously suffered financial hardships, administrative and court fines, garnishment of wages, seizures of bank accounts or other property, deductions from our social security pension payments, and even imprisonment.
However, the substance of our remonstrance is that we are all ultimately compelled to pay taxes used for military purposes, and that we have a continuing liability to do so in the future.
We have thus been obliged, and are being obliged, in direct violation of our consciences, to be complicit in the funding and waging of war.
…Written expressions of conscientious objection to military taxation are classified as “frivolous” by the government and subject to punitive fines amounting to thousands of dollars.
Our freedom of conscience claims have never been fully reviewed at any level of administrative or judicial consideration, nor are we aware of any case in which this has occurred.
Accompanying this was a sidebar from Elizabeth Boardman in which she shared “the following queries [which] are in use at local meetings in College Park Quartely Meeting:”
What deeply held spiritual values or concerns make the issue of war tax resistance difficult for me to consider?
How can we as Friends, regardless of our perspective, overcome our reticence to discuss the issues with one another?
What are the personal or family needs I would need to address before I could become a tax resister?
Do I feel a need to further engage the war machine by not paying my war taxes in some form, either fully or symbolically?
What are my major fears and joys about challenging the government in this way?
What are the personal or family needs I would need to address before I could become a tax resister?
How can I engage my beloved spiritual community in supporting me as I take my next step on this complex issue?
Naomi Paz Greenberg, in a letter-to-the-editor that responded to critics of war tax resistance whose writings had been published in earlier issues (I’ve included other excerpts from this letter in Picket Line entries covering those writings, on and ), wrote, in response to people who believe that “conscientious war tax resistance is borne to bring about consequences”:
I knew for all of my adult life that I should not be paying taxes for war, and for most of that time I knew that I did not have the courage to bear this witness.
The energy that supports my commitment now has little to do with consequences.
I am simply unable to cooperate in murder, in war crimes.
As soon as I was able to make that commitment, I began to understand that I will probably pay more rather than less as a consequence of my refusal to pay for war.
It matters very little to me whether the hundreds or the thousands of dollars that I may someday “owe” remain pure and pacifistic or not.
As a U.S. citizen I have been taught that this is a government of, by, and for the people, so in some sense every dollar in the government’s coffers is my responsibility and not one of those dollars should be spent to kill another human being.
This is what direct experience of God teaches me.
Paul Sheldon noted, in a letter-to-the-editor in the issue, that he had “made a donation to the non-partisan Disabled American Veterans organization” and included a letter in which he had “mentioned that this particular contribution was the redirection of war tax money that I had publicly refused to pay the U.S. government (as a pacifist tax resister).”
A letter-to-the-editor from Peg Morton in the issue forcefully encouraged Friends to resist their war taxes: “It is beyond a doubt, in my opinion, that it is time — now!
— to withdraw from paying the United States federal government the war taxes it demands… to voluntarily pay war taxes to our current federal government is an immoral act.… When policies and actions of a government become immoral, it becomes immoral to support them.”
An obituary notice for Gordon Mervin Browne in the issue noted that “they [Gordon and his wife Edith Carlton Browne] were military tax resisters in .”
A book review in the issue summarized the use of tax resistance in the First Intifada this way:
[Maxine] Kaufman-Lacusta [author of Refusing to be Enemies: Palestinian and Israeli Nonviolent Resistance to the Israeli Occupation] looks in depth at a tax strike in the West Bank village of Beit Sahour during the First Intifada (), a time of popular activism.
This strike was based on the fact that taxes collected by Israelis were not being used to serve the needs of the Palestinian population, but to finance the occupation itself.
Elias Rishmawi, a major player in Beit Sahour, said that the villagers “found out that Israel was profiting dramatically from occupying the Palestinian land — from direct taxes, indirect taxes, taxes on the workers inside Israel, taxes on imports, taxes on people leaving the country, using Palestinian land, using Palestinian resources.”
Palestinians viewed the strike, which they ended in , as a success because a strong and violent reaction from the Israeli government failed to suppress it.
