How you can resist funding the government →
about the IRS and U.S. tax law/policy →
how the government deals with tax resisters →
particular individual cases
A friend sent me a link to Bureaucrash which seems to be the more edgy, activist face of a too-frequently suit-and-tie American classical libertarian movement.
One of their campaigns is called Tax Slavery Sucks.
It tries to get a new hearing for the standard good arguments against taxation and big government, while keeping a running tab of outrageous things the government is using our money to pay for.
Of course, they have their blind spots too, for instance as they organize what they call counterprotests to advocate for free trade wherever WTO, IMF, FTAA, NAFTA, etc. critics gather.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: they can call them “free trade agreements,” but if you get a bunch of the world’s politicians and tyrants together in a room to talk about setting up a set of rules and bureaucracies to govern world trade, I guarandamntee you “free trade” isn’t going to result.
In my mind, the Tax Evader has a scraggly beard, eats a lot of salt pork and beans, and owns either a copy of Thoreau or some antigovernment tract self-published in Montana.
Just as the Tax Evader doesn’t believe in taxes, he also doesn’t go for showers.
He is suspicious, owns at least one gun and tends to believe the IRS is always sneaking up on him.
His body is gnarled and contorted by the lumps of cash he stores in his mattress.
Because I don’t want to be the Tax Evader, I pay my taxes.
Can it really be that there are people who pay their taxes because they’re afraid that if they don’t they’ll turn into Ted Kaczynski by some sort of bizarre alchemy?
But anyway, the article concerns an interior decorator in San Francisco who seems to make a bundle of money without paying any taxes.
He does this not out of any activist impulse, but merely because he got overwhelmed one year at the complexity of the tax filing process for someone who is self-employed, and procrastinated a little too long and then got intimidated by the increasing size of what he owed and the penalties the IRS was adding to the total.
Interesting to me is that this guy had already been caught by the IRS, but then just decided to blow them off — hiding his assets or keeping them in the form of cash.
It sounds like a high-maintenance technique, at least as difficult to do well as the initial tax forms he blew off, but he’s learned it over the years and he’s sticking to it.
Francisco last visited the IRS .
An agent said to him, “We’d just like to get you back in the system.”
They haven’t contacted him since…
Jesse Weller, an IRS spokesman, said Wednesday that confidentiality laws prohibit him from addressing Hill’s federal tax status.
But Weller said any taxpayer who refuses to pay what is owed the government faces the “full weight of the IRS civil and criminal process.”
About Hill’s public no-tax-payment declaration, Weller said, “It is a very serious matter.…”
IRS spokesman Weller said one way or the other, a defiant taxpayer like Hill will end up paying more taxes and fines than originally owed.
“There is no law in the land that even suggests you’re free to avoid paying taxes for any reason,” Weller said.
The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (a.k.a. Quakers) has been trying to accommodate the war tax resistance of one of its employees, Priscilla Adams.
They haven’t been withholding taxes from her paychecks and forwarding the money to the IRS, but have instead been putting the withheld money into an escrow account as the IRS’s legal case against them continued.
Since most conscientious objection arguments to the federal income tax have failed in the courts, they had to try something new and so they reached for the Religious Freedom Restoration Act — a recent law that was designed for people whose long-standing religious beliefs conflict with federal law.
It’s been used, for instance, to defend religious practitioners whose peyote use conflicted with federal drug laws.
So who made Falluja possible?
Who enabled budgets to be filled with imperial plans?
American taxpayers did.
The moral tracer on this funding leads to me and you, the co-investors who backed this pre-holiday discount on the lives of Fallujans, thousands of lives, forever lost and unlived.
To pay for this moral bankruptcy, we got up in the morning, worked all day, and sent money to the war machine.
Ask not who bankrolled Falluja.
In this first of what he says will be a series of articles about war tax resistance, Moses briefly profiles resisters Shirley Smith, Andy McKenna, and Susan Van Haitsma and speculates as to whether the increased IRS enforcement activity targeting resisters in Austin, Texas is coincidental or part of a larger trend.
A state worker has had her bank account seized twice and recently received garnishment notices from the IRS.
A non-profit employee was forced to reduce his income to the poverty level of $662.50 per month to avoid repeat levies.
After 11 years of inaction by the IRS, an office worker had his wages garnished.
An emergency room doctor, whose car was seized in , was recently visited by an IRS agent and faces possible seizure of her wages and another car.
A teacher, who is new to war tax resistance, has already begun receiving collection notices.
Another group member, a housecleaner and artist, continues living intentionally below taxable level to legally avoid paying war taxes.
“Having your wages or car seized is not fun.
But it is nothing compared to living in a war zone like Iraq and daily facing permanent disability or death,” says Dr. Paula Rogge.
On IRS records is the fact that my brother, Aldrich Ames, was stripped of all assets and possessions in following his conviction for espionage.
He is serving a life term without parole in a federal penitentiary.
He also is a court-recognized pauper.
Yet the IRS has sent my brother yearly statements detailing his tax liability plus ever-mounting yearly increases of interest and penalty.
As of the amount exceeds $1 million.
This clearly is an unrecoverable amount and no doubt only one of many such cases.
“We’re all war-tax resisters.
We do it in different ways,” said ACOMT member Susan Van Haitsma.
Resisting taxation , she intentionally lives below the taxable income level.
“Others in the group are self-employed.
There are people who file, people who don’t.” The small organization, counting teachers, doctors, and veterans amongst its ranks, was successful in organizing the Austin Taxpayers for Peace action, where protesters withheld $10.40 from their 1040 tax payments.
On , the resulting $2,600 was split between Nonmilitary Options for Youth and the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker-affiliated group assisting civilians in Iraq.
While withholding only $10.40 is described as “low risk” by the ACOMT, some members have been punished.
In the Statesman’s op-ed pages, ACOMT volunteer Andy McKenna reveals that “after 11 years of inaction,” the IRS began garnishing his wages of all but the federal monthly poverty level.
Still, Austin tax resisters soldier on undeterred.
“The war takes money, and it takes bodies.
And they have to come from somewhere,” says Van Haitsma.
“And that’s what I’m opposed to.”
afternoon, an IRS attorney spent a couple of hours browsing through various pages on The Picket Line after doing a Google search for “"david gross" and tax”.
I wouldn’t have noticed, except that she clicked on the “email” link in the sidebar and then hit send instead of abort.
Oops.
Well, delighted to make your acquaintance.
Hope you’ll stop by from time to time for inspiration.
Among the interesting articles is one by NWTRCC coordinator Ruth Benn in which she recounts a meeting she recently had with an officer from the IRS’s “Abusive Tax Avoidance Transactions” branch.
From the sound of things, the IRS seems to be interpreting the war tax resistance advocacy of NWTRCC as though it were “promoting tax schemes” — putting that group in the same category as the kind of folks who peddle offshore tax shelters and bizarre Constitutionalist “sovereign citizen” untaxing kits.
In the course of explaining why ATAT was involved in my case, Officer E⸺ said “You are a threat to the compliance of the income tax system.
If everyone did what you do, then the government could not do what they need to do.”
Right.
So we will continue to do what we feel we must do and see how things develop with the IRS.
The court’s injunction was based on the conclusion that WTP had created an illegal tax shelter and tax fraud scheme.
The injunction prohibits WTP from selling and/or distributing what the IRS considers false and fraudulent information, requires them to remove all this material from their website, requires them to post the injunction on their website, givemeliberty.org, and demands that they give to the government the list of names, addresses, emails, Social Security numbers, etc. of all the individuals and entities to whom they provided materials.
The latter directive is perhaps the most disturbing from a constitutional point of view.
The appeals court had temporarily blocked enforcement of that paragraph, but eventually sustained it, reasoning that forcing WTP to provide the names of its “customers” would allow the IRS to monitor whether those individuals were, in turn, failing to comply with the tax laws.
So if the IRS is now starting to treat NWTRCC as if it were an organization like We The People hawking fraudulent tax evasion schemes, could the IRS seek a similar injunction against NWTRCC?
Rice says, “probably not.”
The opinion is very precise on why WTP received this injunction, which indicates many substantial and significant differences between WTP and NWTRCC.
First, WTP states that the federal government does not have the authority to tax U.S. citizens.
As such, they offer materials that show interested parties how to “legally” stop W-4 withholding and provide individuals with paperwork to give their employer, which states that the employer can legally stop issuing W-2 and 1099 forms.
This, in addition to their 16th Amendment arguments, is viewed as fraudulent and misleading by the court.
Second, the government’s interest in the case pertains to the loss of income caused by what they see as fraud.
The government states that WTP is responsible for at least 997 individuals not filing tax returns for at least the past three years.
And because it costs the IRS $1,607 to produce a substitute return, this has cost the government at least $4.8 million the last three years alone.
Third, WTP sold their “package” like a commercial product, charging admission to training sessions, and even offering customized “legal opinions” justifying these tax violations.
While NWTRCC is of course trying to hurt the military budget’s bottom line, we are not distributing false information and are not operating on a commercial basis.
NWTRCC always presents accurate information about legal and illegal ways of resisting taxes that pay for war, and candidly describes those which would constitute a form of civil disobedience.
All of our materials represent, to best of our knowledge, the laws that some are choosing to break when they withhold taxes, while fully disclosing the penalties, fines, etc., that we may face.
Tax resisters resist from many motives, sometimes more than one at once. For
instance, some war tax resisters resist as a form of conscientious objection — they’re unwilling to participate in war financing. Others resist as a form of
protest — they want to resist taxes as a way of emphasizing their opposition
to the government’s policies or to call their opposition to the attention of
the powers that be through civil disobedience. Many war tax resisters share
both of these motives.
For those that have protest as a motive, simply refusing to write a check to
the IRS
when they file their returns in April often doesn’t seem enough. How will the
government distinguish their refusal to pay as a protest from someone else’s
refusal to pay for other motives? For this reason, such war tax resisters will
often include a letter of explanation along with their tax filing that
explains their motives.
But lately, the
IRS has
been interpreting these letters of explanation as part of the tax filing
itself, and has been threatening resisters with a $5,000 penalty for
“asserting a frivolous position” in their filing.
,
Mike Palecek at
Pacific Free Press shares his experience with
one of these “frivolous filing penalty” threats. The last two years, he has
accompanied “crossed-out” tax returns with letters of explanation of the
following sort:
Hello. Enclosed is my tax form for this year.
It is crossed-out because I do not wish to cooperate with the government of
George W. Bush.
President Bush has chosen to spend our tax dollars on war and killing while
cutting spending on social programs.
As a Christian, I cannot go along with this.
I must protest.
Note that the letter is not taking any legal positions whatsoever — frivolous
or not. Palecek is merely saying that he is not paying because he does
not want to cooperate with the government, and indicating how the government
has lost his support.
Is that enough to trigger a frivolous filing penalty? Or, legally, should it
simply be a failure-to-file or failure-to-pay penalty? The
IRS sent
Palecek a letter saying they considered his filing to be frivolous, and
threatening him with a $5,000 penalty if he doesn’t refile properly.
The law that covers this is
Subtitle F, chapter 68, Subchapter B, part Ⅰ, section 6702
of the U.S. Tax
Code (the fine has been raised from $500 to $5,000 and some of the wording has
changed since the version of law that’s posted at the link above). It says
that the frivolous filing penalty can be assessed on someone who “files what
purports to be a [tax] return … but which — (A) does not contain information
on which the substantial correctness of the self-assessment may be judged, or
(B) contains information that on its face indicates that the self-assessment
is substantially incorrect; and [this]… — (A) is based on a position which
[is] frivolous…, or (B) reflects a desire to delay or impede the
administration of Federal income tax laws.”
The question then is whether a letter like Palecek’s can be reasonably
interpreted as a “claim that [he] may reduce [his] federal tax
liability based on [his] objections” or whether it is best understood simply
as an explanation of his decision to disobey the law without any intention of
making legal claims as to what he believes he may or may not do
within the law.
Practically a question like this one will be answered by some level of the
government bureaucracy, and so the rules of logic and language and such are at
best an imperfect guide. I could see it going either way.
There is, however, another section of this preamble that says “The penalty may
also be applied if the purported return… reflects a desire to delay or impede
the administration of Federal tax laws” — perhaps this would apply.
Myself, I think the best policy here is to simply refrain from poking the
hornets’ nest. If you resist your taxes and you feel the need to make some
noise about it, don’t make your noise in the direction of the
IRS, but
start a blog, or send a letter-to-the-editor, or write your congressperson, or
send an email to your friends and family.
If you do get a “frivolous filing” warning letter, don’t panic — according to
the letter, if you re-file in a non-frivolous fashion within 30 days of
getting the letter, they say they’ll forget all about it.
Back in , I told you about my first real foray into civil disobedience, my participation in the War Tax Boycott.
I withheld 15% of my total tax liability as a protest against the use of federal tax funds to operate an illegal war in Iraq and Afghanistan…
The IRS has begun to catch up with me, though.
On — Christmas Eve, for Jeebus’ sake — I received a certified letter from the IRS…
My mother, who was visiting at the time, was aghast that I would have done such a thing as not paying my full tax burden in order to make a statement, and she strongly urged me to pay my back taxes immediately.
Since my children were in the room, too, I thought it was an excellent opportunity for what I like to call a “teachable moment.”
“The problem with American society today,” I began, understating the number of problems severely, “is that too few people are willing to stand up and make a statement against the government.
They’d rather let the government, which presumably is elected by the people and works for the people, ‘do’ things to us — to accept the rulers’ decisions passively rather than try to shape them actively.”
I paused for a beat.
My mother blinked almost imperceptibly but said nothing, and I continued.
“Well, I’m not going to sit here on my butt and watch the government walk all over us without a fight.
If they want to throw me in jail, fine.
But someone’s got to make a stand.
Otherwise they’ll keep ‘doing’ to us until there’s nothing more to do.”
The point I was trying to make is a simple one: there seems to be a strong value attached to not “making waves.”
Don’t speak out against bad policy decisions, just let things happen as they will, because “they don’t affect me anyway.”
Well, they do affect me, and they affect you, too.
I realize not everyone is willing to risk losing property or worse to send a message that the war is wrong, and I realize that, in isolation, my own meager statement is almost meaningless.
But it’s not an isolated message, and there are many things you can do that won’t subject you to the kind of risk I’m taking.
I don’t know what’s going to happen to me from this point forward, but I know that I’m not paying those taxes unless and until the war is over.…
ntodd, at Pax Americana follows up on Sinfonia’s essay with some of his own thoughts on tax resistance and a continuation of his series on Gene Sharp’s 198 methods of nonviolent political force.
, the IRS sent me a “final notice of intent to levy” letter, and I braced myself, expecting them to find, freeze, and drain my bank account.
But then, nothing.
I got another fat envelope from the IRS and I thought, “well, this is probably it.”
But it turned out to just be a bunch of 1040-ES forms for that they optimistically hope I’ll fill out over the course of the year.
Why haven’t they pursued me past the threatening-letter stage?
I’ve got three theories, any or all of which might be at least part of the explanation:
They’re after me for less than $5,000, which may fall below a threshold at which they don’t consider it worth their while to do the levy paperwork.
They may be waiting to get ’s 1099s and W2s so they have a fresh list of possible levy / lien targets to choose from.
The agency was forced to pull some of its agents from enforcement duties in order to cope with ’s stimulus payment brouhaha and all of its related confusion.
They’re anticipating even more confusion this filing season because of the stimulus payments and Congress is in the middle of further mucking up the tax code.
It’s possible that the IRS is just plain too busy to go after folks like me.
Today, it’s almost embarrassing how little attention the government pays to
war tax resisters. We willfully refuse to pay, and encourage and counsel
others to do so, and not only does the government not persecute us as the
traitorous subversives we’re trying so hard to be, but often they never even
get around to coming after us as simple tax evaders either.
It hasn’t always been this way. During the Vietnam War, the government took
war tax resistance very seriously, and went to great pains to stamp it out.
Here’s a note that appeared in a publication
from The Atlanta Workshop in Nonviolence:
IRS Unleashed
For some time,
AWIN
has refused to pay the 10% excise tax on phone calls. In
this tax was initiated for the sole purpose
of subsidizing the cost of the war in Vietnam. It is one of the few taxes
that is ear marked specifically for the continuation of the war in Indochina.
(Paying the telephone tax is the next best thing to being there yourself).
In the past, the procedure for collecting the tax has been simply to go to
our bank and withdraw the amount of delinquent tax payment from our account.
It seems that a new procedure has been initiated.
On , two agents from the
IRS
wandered into the office looking for Denis Adelsburger. I told them that
Denis wasn’t in and they flashed their
ID’s and
presented a bill for $5.50 in back taxes. They said they were told to stop
war tax resistance — especially the refusal to pay the telephone tax — because tax resistance is “getting out of hand” and that they would shut us
down if they had to. This is an indication that there are more people than we
imagined involved in war tax resistance.
I explained that I couldn’t make the decision about paying the tax myself,
and they would have to wait until our next meeting where we would make a
collective decision and they could check later to find out what we would do.
However, the agents had a different idea about handling the situation and
said that if I didn’t give them the $5.50 immediately they would put a
government lien on the Workshop, put a lock on the door, put an
IRS
seal on the lock, and auction the Workshop’s property.
I checked with a lawyer, and sure enough, the
IRS
has what amounts to a blank check from the government when it comes to
official extortion. We weren’t prepared to go without an office for a month
(it takes awhile to arrange for the auction), so I gave them the money.
They wanted to know where we bank, but I refused to tell them. They wanted to
know why we were refusing to pay the tax and I gave them a leaflet on
telephone tax resistance and they left.
I’m not sure who won the first round. We weren’t prepared to go without an
office (an oversight we should correct) and they got the money. However, it
probably cost more than $5.50 to collect the tax. At any rate, the tax
collector had to do his job — collect taxes.
The Progressive, in , carried an article from Milton Mayer about tax resistance:
Young men are a dime a dozen.
What the Army wants is a dime to buy a dozen young men with.
Either give them the dime or don’t give them the dime — but stop asking, “What can an old man do?”
April 15 is the date.
April 15 is the date you turn over a quarter of your income to Behemoth, and half to three-quarters of what you turn over goes to the Army to buy a dozen young men to populate (and depopulate) Perforation Paddy.
“I sent them a good boy,” said Private Meadlo’s mother after Mylai, “and they made him a murderer.”
If you want it, buy it.
If you don’t, don’t. But stop asking, “What can an old man do?”
If, like me, you had a good year and made more than $625 in , the Internal Revenue Act requires you to file an income tax return.
If you refuse (rather than evade) the requirement to file, you are still a felon, but you should notify Behemoth and all its minions lest you be hanged for the wrong reason.
(The Act simply punishes “failure to file” and “failure to pay”.)
I shouldn’t refuse to file, myself, but better men than I have taken the position that filing is more than a formality; the best of them, A.J. Muste, always filed an appropriately marked Bible instead of a return.
So, too, as the antics proceed, you will be asked (unless you have a readily attachable pay-check) where you stash your money so that Behemoth’s little boys in blue can go and get it.
Here again I should comply, myself, lest Behemoth get the impression that I am playing a cat-and-mouse (or mouse-and-cat) game.
But this decision, too, like whether or not to file a return, is probably a matter of temperament.
The purpose of taxation is to enable people collectively to buy what they want.
Sometimes when some of them want a little something special and some of them don’t — for instance, throughways financed by tolls — those who want them pay for them and those who don’t want them don’t. But Mylai is financed by the general fund of the Treasury, on the assumption that everybody wants Mylai.
Behemoth has no way of knowing that the assumption is false unless those who don’t want it refuse to buy it.
A vote for Nixon (or Humphrey) or Johnson (or Goldwater) is a vote for Mylai.
(“It was murder.
We were shooting into houses and at people — running or standing, doing nothing.” — Sergeant Charles Hutts.)
The nation-state is not merely fallible; it is, as every Judeo-Christian (or Christeo-Judean) schoolboy knows, unholy because it divides the family of man into we and they.
Only men are, or may be, holy in a world of nation-states, and they dare not perform an unholy act to preserve such an institution.
Still the conscientious tax refuser is a conscientious citizen of the nation-state.
He would gladly pay his taxes for the things all the people in it (including him) want.
In Norway (in this respect the only even halfway civilized country in the world) the conscientious citizen may have his tax payment segregated for the support of the United Nations if he does not want to buy Mylai.
Bucking always for salvation, the conscientious citizen is nevertheless up against some serious objections to his refusal to send a dozen young men to the edge of the ditch in Mylai.
The objections appear to be six in number:
Objection 1: The legal penalty of five years in stir and/or a ten-thousand-dollar fine.
The U.S. Government has not yet pressed for the penalty in any case of tax refusal that I know of — partly, I suppose, because Behemoth does not know what to do about conscience, partly because the use of force, violence, and other lawful means of penalizing conscientious people always increases their number.
(Better pretend they’re not there — up to a point.)
But the number is increasing anyway, and it is not unlikely that it is approaching that point.
When it is confident that it has got its Haynsworth-Carswell Court, Behemoth may feel constrained some one of these days to press for the penalty.
The tax refusal movement, for twenty years amorphous, is now coordinated by War Tax Resistance, whose address, I am reliably informed, is 339 Lafayette Street, New York, N.Y. 10017, and whose telephone number (212‒477‒2970) was discovered in the Manhattan telephone directory by a task force of forty FBI agents led personally by J. Edgar Hoover.
Desperado Bradford Lyttle of WTR reports 181 active refusal centers across the country and estimates 15,000 refusers in .
Answer to Objection 1: There are worse things than losing five years and/or ten thousand dollars, and Mylai is one of them.
Objection 2: The loss of job or reputation.
Ten years ago (even five) many tax refusers lost jobs (or failed to get them) as a consequence of the invariable FBI “inquiry.”
That’s less likely (but only less likely) now.
Loss of reputation, on the other hand, has never appeared to be consequential; I have never known anybody to the left of Orange County, California, who thought that a tax refuser was anything worse than crazy, and even in Orange County they hate taxes.
Answer to Objection 2: There are worse things than losing a job (though that is easier for a light-fingered clown like me to say than it is for an honest workingman).
We proceed now from the nuts-and-bolts to the nitty-gritty, as follows:
Objection 3: Tax refusal is ineffective because “they” get the money anyway (by force, violence, or other lawful means).
Answer to Objection 3: True, true; but, then, so is everything else ineffective (including two victorious world wars to save the world for democracy).
To man, all things are impossible.
If whatever you do is ineffective, you might as well buck for salvation and do what is right.
Objection 4: Tax refusal is illogical: If you refuse to pay half your income tax, half of what you do pay will be used for Mylai, as will more than the other half (since Behemoth, when it seizes the other half by force, violence, and other lawful means will also seize twelve per cent per annum interest on it).
Answer to Objection 4: This is true only if logic is a brance of effectiveness — and even then it is only half true.
Behemoth will lose money on the deal because it will have to spend more to collect it than it gets.
In one instance I know of, where the refuser took his case “on up,” it must have cost $25,000 in salaries and travel expenses of Treasury and FBI dicks, district attorneys, assistant attorneys-general, judges, and court attachés to collect and hold on to $32.27 (and the refuser took his own expenses in the case as a tax deduction).
It is true, none the less, that in the end Behemoth will get all the money it wants for Mylai, by raising this tax rate if necessary.
But there is another, and more significant, logic: the logic of symbolism (not to be confused with symbolic logic).
The only action a man can take against the nation-state is symbolic.
He can not prevent its depredations but only repudiate them persistently in the hope of (a) salvation and (b) the sympathetic infection of his fellow-citizens.
It is not logical symbolically (for instance) to bomb the ROTC building, because people sympathize with the victim of a bombing, and, besides, Behemoth has all the ROTC buildings it wants and is always eager to build new ones and add the building costs to its Gross National Product billboard.
(The Army doesn’t need ROTC buildings or ROTC except as a symbol of militarism; no European army would dare ask a university to disgrace itself by letting its students be marched around the premises.)
What is logical symbolically is for students to sit nonviolently in front of the ROTC building and be hauled violently away.
Tax refusal is logical symbolically.
Objection 5: Tax refusal is a disavowal of representative government.
Answer to Objection 5: It is, if, and only if, by representative government is meant majoritarianism and not representation at all.
If you are an American citizen and you do not want Mylai and won’t buy it, you are not represented.
The Congressmen (including the Senators) who deplore Mylai all buy it, without exception.
The last one who wouldn’t was Representative Jeannette Rankin of Montana, who voted all alone against the second go-around of the War to Make the World Safe for Democracy.
The conscientious citizen who does not want Mylai and will not buy it is driven to self-government by the failure of representative government to represent him.
Objection 6: Tax refusal is anarchy, and anarchy is the worst thing that can befall society.
Answer to Objection 6: Anarchy is not the worst thing that can befall a society; it is the second worst.
The worst is tyranny, and the worst tyranny is self-evidently that which requires the innocent to kill the innocent.
(“I love women.
I love children, too.
I love people.” — Lt. William L. Calley.)
He who does not want and will not buy tyranny must, like George Washington, take his chances on anarchy.
So hopelessly unholy is the nation-state that it drives the conscientious citizen to anarchy and then accuses him of driving it to anarchy when he tries to disengage himself from its tyranny.
In the interesting case of the $32.27 cited above, Attorney Francis Heisler was arguing for the refuser before the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and one of the judges said to him: “Counsel, is your client aware that if this Court holds in his behalf the Court itself will be laying the axe to the root of all established government?”
“I think he is, your honor,” Attorney Heisler replied.
The objections considered, we proceed to the obstacles.
There is only one that appears to be insuperable: withholding, the worst crime ever committed against liberty by a good man.
When Beardsley Ruml thought up “pay-as-you-go,” everybody cheered except the company bosses who had to do the detestable New Deal’s detestable bookkeeping for it.
(Anybody remember when the Connecticut manufacturer, Vivian Kellems, led the Old Guard attack on Social Security by refusing to make the employe deductions?)
Under withholding, most of the people who don’t want to buy Mylai have already had it bought for them by April 15. They can sue to recover — some have — but nobody has made it to the Supreme Court yet.
Others reduce or eliminate the withholding by claiming excess dependents (the whole population of Vietnam, for instance) in calculating their estimated tax.
Again, I suppose, a matter of temperament, and mine doesn’t happen to run that cat-and-mouse way — though their cause is just, and we have indeed made the whole population of Vietnam our dependents.
A few religious organizations — not the churches, of course — have refused to withhold the tax from the pay of their employes who do not want to buy Mylai.
The most respectable of them is the American Friends Service Committee, with which I confess to being associated.
(Personally leading a task force of eighty FBI agents, J. Edgar Hoover discovered the association by looking in the Philadelphia telephone directory, so there is no point in my denying it.)
But the AFSC has a task force of eighty Philadelphia lawyers, and one of these years a test case will go to Washington.
Meanwhile, however, the conscientious citizen who waits for a test case will go on buying Mylai until the whole of Vietnam is a ditch.
A few years ago a new form of refusal got rolling, available to people trapped by withholding.
This was non-payment of the telephone tax (which goes into the general Treasury), on the ground that Chairman Mills of the House Ways and Means Committee had argued its necessity for continuance of the war against Mylai.
I’m uneasy about the telephone tax refusal myself; again, I suppose, a matter of temperament.
There seem to me to be two visible arguments, and one invisible, against it.
First, I can not bring myself either to do or not to do anything on the bases that what a Congressman says is true.
And second, it seems to me that if you are going to fight City Hall you should go for the jugular.
The income tax is the jugular.
The telephone tax is one of those petty excises, no more significant fiscally, and no more to be singled out, Congressman Mills to the contrary notwithstanding, than the whiskey, movie, or airplane tax.
But the invisible, base-of-the-iceberg, stem-of-the-martini-cherry argument for paying the phone tax is, I’m afraid, one of craven convenience.
If Behemoth were to put me in jail for five years for income tax refusal, I’d refuse to pay my telephone tax instantly.
But living where and how I do, running a little back-bedroom sweatshop out in the country, I can’t make it very well (still worse, very sick) without a telephone.
Discussing telephone tax refusal with some of my anarchist friends, I have discovered that some of them were for it because they didn’t feel quite up to going to the mat on the income tax, and still others because they understood that the telephone company, like Vivian Kellems, was no more enthusiastic about collecting the Mylai tax than they were about paying it and would not jerk the phone out for non-payment of the tax.
This last seemed to me to be a misreading of history.
Unlike Vivian Kellems and the American Friends Service Committee — Right and Left united across the years by the mounting terror of the Middle — the telephone company has no principle except money; and Behemoth’s agent, the Federal Communications Commission, is where the money is.
In the Communist countries like Spain and Greece and, come to think of it, every other country in the world, the post office operates the telephone and telegraph systems, whose profits subsidize the carrying of the mails; in the only truly free country in the free world the money-losing branch of the communications system is communized and the money-making branches are Government-protected private monopolies.
But telephone tax refusal caught on until, according to the calculation of War Tax Resistance, there are now more than 100,000 practitioners of it.
For a couple of years nobody did anything about them.
But reports have begun to filter in of Government agents swarming over refusers and, more ominously, of the jerking of telephones by the company on behalf of its protector, the Government.
As the reports spread it may be anticipated that there will be a falling-away of telephone tax anarchists, as, I suppose, there will be of income tax anarchists when Behemoth decides that they are getting to be too much of a nuisance and starts throwing them into the pokey.
Until that time the only obstacle (not objection) to income tax refusal, other than withholding, is the harassment it entails.
The smart way to live alongside Behemoth is not to attract his attention, and whoever attracts his attention is in for it.
Twenty years ago he was paying his harassers $40 a day.
It must be $80 now, or $100; there is nothing niggardly about Behemoth.
He sends two kinds of harassers around.
The first is a ritualistic cut-out character whom it’s a positive pleasure to be harassed by.
He is the warm handclasp type, around thirty-five and running to pudge from running around in his down-payment Impala.
He wants to have a little talk with you.
“Homyonum’s the name, Mr. Murgatroid, from the Internal Revenue Service.”
(Warm handclasp.)
“Sit down, Homyonum, sit down, and tell me what I can do for you.”
“To be perfectly frank, Mr. Murgatroid, I think that I may be able to do something for you.”
“Well, now, Homyonum, that is nice — I never expected the Internal Revenue Service to do something for me.
Do sit down and have a nice glass tea.”
(He will, and he does.)
“Mr. Murgatroid, we of the Treasury Department are actually your agents.
We are here to help you.”
“How sweet of you, Homyonum.
One lump or two?”
(Two.)
“Mr. Murgatroid, I want you to know that I respect your position, but I think you are ill-advised to refuse to pay your income tax.”
“Homyonum, my boy, your advice is ill.
Milk?
Lemon?”
(Milk.)
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Murgatroid?”
“Not at all, and do let me tell you why your advice is ill.
If my position is, as you say, respectable, then yours is not, since the two positions are contradictory.
Do you follow me?”
“I —.”
“What I am trying to tell you, Homyonum, since you respect my position, is that you are trying to tell me that I ought not to pay my income tax and neither ought you.
You do want to be respectable, don’t you?”
A little more of this standoff, a warm handclasp, and Homyonum is gone wherever such people go nights and is seen no more.
He makes his report, the report spends two or three months going through channels, and then Behemoth hands one of his judges a distraint warrant to sign and sends one of his blue-boys around to attach your unattached property (money in the bank, wages coming in, shoes off your feet) in the amount in which you are delinquent in buying Mylai.
The other kind of harasser is another glass tea entirely.
He is tall, sallow, dour, ulcerated: a certified public accountant who doesn’t know anything about your income tax refusal (he says), but has been sent to audit your return.
“I suppose,” he says, “that your name came up on a spot check.
Of course you have all your records and a receipt for each expenditure — if I may just look at them.”
At the end of two weeks, at $40, $80, or $100 a day, reducing the Gross National Product by that much, he has discovered that you owe Behemoth $1.14 (or Behemoth owes you $1.14; that’s not the point of it at all) and you and your back-bedroom are a shambles.
He turns up the next year, on the dot, to do it all over again, and then you know he is lying about the spot check (and even he beginst to suspect he is).
Meanwhile, he has converted you into a fox.
You spend half your life (at $40, $20, or $10 a day) keeping records of your expenditures.
You spend the other half of your life like the mouse you were not going to play in the cat-and-mouse game, scurrying for loopholes down which you can hurry.
You end up beating your wife, cursing your children, and, of course, kicking the cat.
And that, not the $1.14, is the point of it.
If Behemoth can make your life unbearable, you will buy Mylai.
It is the very devil to be harassed, but what did you expect — a valentine from Mrs. Mitchell?
It’s like (or even as) Give-’Em-Hell-Harry used to say: If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.
You harass them, and they harass you back, and they’ve got the big battalions on their side.
(You know Whom you’ve got on yours.)
And you harass them back and they harass you back.
Who said ineffective? Behemoth has the whole country, the whole world, computerized to take care of everything — everything but one man who says, No, sir, instead of Yes, sir.
It takes one (count ’em, one) man to obstruct the machine by introducing the human element into it.
The grind-organ monkey is suddenly a monkey-wrench.
I put it to you: What more can an old man do?
The machine has not been built yet, and won’t be, that does not come down with the gripes while it digests a human being.
Mind you, I am not advocating income tax refusal; not I. For all I know the advocacy itself constitutes a felony, especially if it creates a clear and present danger that the Army won’t be able to buy a dozen young men with machine guns at the edge of the ditch in Mylai.
Operating on a very low and cautious level, I say unto you only, Give them the dime or don’t give them the dime — but don’t ask, “What can an old man do?”
If you want Mylai, buy it; if you don’t want it, don’t. That’s the free enterprise system, and do you believe in the free enterprise system or are you some kind of a Communist?
Operating on the highest level of all, under a law that even the Supreme Court (Girouard, etc.) admits is higher than the Internal Revenue Act, Jesus Christ was asked by the Pharisees whose the tribute money was, and you know what he said and you know that he said it perceiving their wickedness.
(Matt. 22:18.) If you have to choose between Christ and the Pharisee who, like the Pharisee of old, occupies the highest seat in the Temple, you are in a tight spot.
I’d play it safe myself: Better to do time than eternity.
A biographical note accompanying the article says that “Mr. Mayer began his own tax refusal adventures more than twenty years ago.
(He is the anti-hero of the $32.27 case he cites in this article.)”
Someone going by the name “Consent Withdrawn” stopped by The Picket Line and offered to share the ups and downs of his own experiment in tax resistance with us.
It is a detailed account of one resister trying to refine his techniques as he learns more about the IRS enforcement system and about how better to harmonize his tactics with his goals and ethical stance, and it’s also an interesting look at the often odd and arbitrary actions of the IRS when it encounters a tax resister:
Hi Dave, let me begin by saying what an inspiration your website The Picket Line has been to me.
Thank you for your courage, thoroughness and diligence in maintaining your site.
If you don’t mind indulging me a moment, I’d like to share my journey with you:
First some background:
Like you, I am a tax resister and although I was one in spirit most of my adult life, I finally became one in practice about four years ago.
Unlike you, I am unfortunately not self-employed and therefore have had to experience firsthand the levying of my wages for back taxes due and of course that risk will continue as long as I remain “legally” employed.
I do believe I have managed to protect myself from any other form of seizure however.
My place of employment requires direct deposit of my wages (so much for work place democracy, what a joke) and therefore I am forced to have a bank account.
What I have done is to have a non-interest bearing checking account opened in the name (and of course Social Security number) of a trusted family member who is sympathetic to my convictions.
My pay is deposited into that account and my payments are made from that account as well.
I still maintain my own checking account, however, and since the bank does not require a minimum balance on non-interest bearing checking accounts, I keep a balance at two cents in the account as a symbolic message to the IRS should they ever attempt to seize the account.
I am also no longer a property owner so there is no danger of having my home seized or a lien put on my property.
I guess my vehicle is at risk of seizure; however it is an older model with high mileage and probably not worth much.
I am considering having it put in another person’s name anyway after I figure out if the insurance can be in my name even if I’m not the vehicle owner.
Also, I maintain a different mailing address for all official mail than the address where I reside and have my vehicle parked.
Either way, I don’t worry too much about having my vehicle seized because the IRS will levy my wages before they’d try to seize an old, high mileage vehicle.
I do have a 401k plan; however, again, I doubt the IRS will come after that when wage garnishment is an available option.
If or when I become self-employed, I may have to be more aggressive in “hiding” my car and my 401k.
Now, on to my story:
As I mentioned at the outset, I have been a tax resister in spirit for most of my adult life, but I paid my taxes and kept my opinions basically to myself.
I had a very conformist first wife, eventually a son and a house and therefore needed to be respectable and law abiding.
I was also not very informed or ill-informed on the evils and atrocities of the American Empire.
But several events in my life caused me to question almost everything I believed in up to that point and although it was about a ten year process, I am no longer the man I was before.
I’d like to think I am more socially aware, courageous, and moral then I was before, although many who can’t think outside of their comfortable self-imposed parameters would probably disagree.
I no longer care one iota about being a law-abiding citizen.
Now I am more concerned about being a good human being and trying to do my small part to make the world better and more just and one part of that expression is tax-resistance.
My reasons for tax-resistance are not one dimensional.
I oppose taxation as much for the reason that tax money is used to bail out Wall Street as I do for the reason it is used to fund imperial wars and human slaughter.
I am incensed by the discovery many multinational corporations, while reaping billions in profit, paid little or no income tax and even received refunds, while hard-working people who are not doing well in the current economic crisis are being forced to pay and aggressively pursued if they don’t.
From a more philosophical perspective, I am a firm believer in the Kantian principle that people should be ends in themselves, and not means to an end.
Taxation that does not benefit all equally reduces people who pay taxes to little more than a means to an end and renders them slaves.
Additionally, in a nation in which the government’s power, including the power to tax, is derived by the consent of the governed, the question as to when and in what manner one has consented to taxation becomes a legitimate question; one in which I have never received a satisfactory answer for.
In I was in the process of divorcing my second wife and I (foolishly perhaps) took some money out of my retirement account to pay off some debt and the cost of the divorce.
I did this without having the taxes withheld.
Additionally, my wife had collected unemployment benefits for a portion of and had received the benefits pretax.
That was the last year I filed jointly and my former wife handled the task.
She neglected to claim the taxes not paid on her unemployment benefits or my retirement withdrawal and as a result, we received a refund.
It was the repayment of this refund money, interest and penalties added that led three years later to my wages being levied to a tune of just over $4,000 total.
I have since come to believe that even if the amount owed had been a few hundred dollars, the IRS would have been just as aggressive since this was the repossession of an erroneous refund and not a tax payment withheld, which is probably a less serious affront to the IRS’s overblown ego.
My reason for believing that the IRS is more aggressive in repossession of erroneous refunds, than taxes withheld (probably under a certain amount obviously) is because beginning in , I have either not filed at all, or filed a blank, unsigned return and have not yet had my wages levied.
In , I neglected to file completely and never received any correspondence from the IRS.
In I again neglected to file, however sometime after , perhaps in sometime, I received a large packet from the IRS.
I remember being quite anxious as I opened it, not knowing what to expect.
It was blank 1040 forms and the filing guidebook.
I was relieved to find that was all it was and proceeded to deliberate as to what my next step would be.
I had recently declared myself an individual secessionist and had my name expunged from the voting rolls and thought, naïvely perhaps, that filing the tax forms the IRS sent me would mean consenting again to be under the authority of the State.
You see, for me individual secession had more far reaching implications than just not voting.
But, I also was fearful of what would happen if I refused.
I decided to send a blank, unsigned 1040 back to the IRS along with my W2.
It was my way of compromising.
I filed, but I didn’t do it in an explicitly consensual way.
I did not hear from the IRS on my taxes due, but in , I did receive from my place of employment, a notice of intent to levy my wages for the “refund” my ex-wife and I received in .
I never received the standard warnings and certified mail because they were persuing my ex-wife and she must have gotten those notices.
When came around, I decided again to send in a blank, unsigned 1040 along with my W2.
I did this because I was still a neophyte tax resister (still am, I suppose) and also because I was at that time still having my wages levied.
I have since, thanks in a large part to The Picket Line, become more emboldened about my tax resistance tactics.
I mailed my blank return on .
Sometime thereafter, I received a letter from the IRS stating that if I did not include all the pertinent information on the tax return, they would calculate it for me with the result that I would miss out on deductions I might qualify for, etc..
I ignored the letter.
In when I received a form (CP51A) from IRS showing that they calculated my tax and after what my employer deducted from my paycheck, I still owed $1,173.16.
Again I was faced with a decision.
My first thought was to ignore the letter and let the IRS proceed to levy my wages again.
In retrospect, I wish I had, but again, I was a bit less confident about this than I am now.
I decided to send a check for $100.00.
There was an offer to contact the IRS and set up a payment plan, but I wasn’t going to play that game; I’d make my own payment plan, thank you very much.
in , I received a second notice (Form CP501) with my new balance due minus my payment, but, get this: the IRS showed I made a bigger payment than the $100.00 I actually paid and therefore a smaller balance due remained.
Maybe there really is a God!
Anyway, I proceeded to write a second check for $100.00 and mailed it off to the IRS.
In a more urgent letter arrived (Form CP503) with my balance due and this time the correct payment amount reflected and again I sent off a check for $100.00.
About a month or so later, I received notice of a certified letter waiting for me at the Post Office.
Being pretty certain it was from the IRS, I decided to ignore it.
A second notice came a few days later and again I ignored it.
It was during this time that I had the checking account opened in another person’s name and liquidated my account of all but two cents.
I braced myself for another wage levy notice from work but as of this time, none has been forthcoming.
Perhaps because the amount due, even if their error is discovered and corrected is under $1000.00.
This brings us to .
I had planned again to submit a blank, unsigned form as I had done in and , but decided with the continued and escalating wars and after learning about all the “legal” corporate tax “evasions” that I will not be filing at all this year.
Just two weeks later, I received a packet from the IRS with tax forms and the guide book.
My trusty paper shredder had a busy evening that night.
I wrote to you first of all to thank you because your website has been an invaluable resource to me.
Additionally by reading your story and the testimonies of others on your site or its links has given me a sense of not being alone and also the much needed encouragement to stay the course.
Also, I gladly extend the offer for you to post all or parts of my story on your site so that through the sharing of my story perhaps I can be an encouragement to others.
Whatever you decide, you have my most humble gratitude and deepest respect.
The IRS has filed a petition asking a district court judge to compel war tax resister Cindy Sheehan to provide the agency with detailed financial information.
She had previously declined to provide such information in response to an IRS “Collection Information Statement” summons.
The agency is hoping to find assets they can seize to satisfy a tax debt that has accumulated since she stopped paying taxes in reaction to her son’s death as a U.S. soldier in Iraq.
“I see nothing but opportunity in this new development,” Sheehan says.
“When those papers were filed against me, the Feds did something that I have been trying to do for years: put its evil, illegal, and immoral wars on trial.
The Feds have thrown down the gauntlet against someone who has absolutely not one ounce of fear of them, and when it’s over, they’ll know they have been in a fight.”
The magazine In These Times had a couple of short
newsbriefs about the American war tax resistance movement in their
edition:
Hungry generals
The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee
(NWTRCC)
estimates that from 10,000 to 20,000 citizens won’t be filing
U.S. income tax
this year — not because they don’t have to, but because they refuse to pay.
Larry Bassett, a Long Island peace activist, has been a tax resister
because, he says, “60
percent of our taxes goes to the Pentagon,” and he doesn’t want to help the
Reagan administration build more nuclear bombs or aid Central American
dictatorships, writes Susan Jaffe. He has refused to comply with a court
order issued by Federal District Court Judge Jack Weinstein requiring Bassett
to submit financial information to the
IRS.
The IRS
wants to know where Bassett’s savings account is. And where to find any other
assets so they can take the money he owes — $1,300. If Bassett is found
guilty of violating the court order, he could be sent to jail indefinitely
for being in contempt of court until he agrees to cooperate or until the
judge decides his imprisonment serves no purpose.
Bassett realizes that $1,300 is not a lot of money, but that’s not the
point. “No general is going to bed hungry because I didn’t pay my taxes,” he
says. “I’m aware of that. But it’s a political statement that the government
can’t ignore. And they are obviously not ignoring it.” Instead of sending his
money to the
IRS,
Bassett contributes an equivalent amount to peace groups and needy friends,
often victims of Reagan’s budget cuts. So even if he hasn’t inconvenienced
the Pentagon, Bassett says, “it makes a difference to the people I’ve helped
with my tax resistance money. And it also makes a difference to me: what I’m
doing makes me feel that my life is more consistent with what I believe. I’m
living what I believe in as many ways as I can: this is one of them.”
Tax resistance is also his job. He is a staff member at the
NWTRCC.
So instead of being intimidated by the
IRS and
the courts, Bassett issues press releases about his case and organizes
supporters to send letters to the judge and demonstrate at the courthouse.
For more information on tax resistance, contact the
NWTRCC
at P.O. Box 2236,
East Patchogue, NY
11772; (516) 654‒8227.
IRS
hits jackpot
The IRS
didn’t have too hard a time locating war tax resister Karl Meyer’s assets:
they seized a small
trailer he owns and a station wagon he leases, both parked in front of his
Chicago home. Then they handed him a bill for $20,000 in penalty fines — and
Meyer informed them that their figures were way too low because he had
already received notices in the mail for $135,000. Meyer a 10-year tax
resister and long an innovator in tax resistance circles, was being penalized
for what he calls his “Cabbage Patch resistance.” Every day in
he sent a return to a different
IRS
office somewhere in the country (see In These
Times, [which had a
newsbrief reading: “War tax resister Karl Meyer was recently fined $135,000
by the
IRS
for ‘frivolous tax returns.’ Meyer, a freelance carpenter in Chicago, sent
IRS
offices across the country a daily report of his income (averaging $38 a day)
with a declaration of refusal to pay.”]). He included a handwritten statement
of his resistance to military buildup on each and an invitation to
IRS
officials: “I invite each of you to resign from the collection of military
taxes and to join in working for a disarmed world. If you want to talk about
this, call me evenings at…”
Though Meyer’s scheme has not netted any converts among the
IRS,
he sees it as a way of shaking up a complacent public. Some of his earlier
tax resistance innovations have taken hold across the country, including the
boycott of the telephone excise tax that he helped popularize and the
practice of claiming large numbers of dependents to beat the employee
withholding tax.
Meyer refuses to pay a cent of the penalties he owes and may soon be
summoned to court. The threat of jail doesn’t deter Meyer — he’s already
spent months in jail for tax resistance and for civil disobedience. And
though he misses using the trailer and the station wagon for his mobile
demonstrations, his pragmatic side allows that the wagon was “only worth $75
anyway” — a lot less than the monthly upkeep has cost lately.
[Y]ears ago when a notice to garnish wages was received by an employer, the employer had 30 days to comply.
Now it appears that the 30-day notice is sent directly to the non-taxpayer and the 30 days begins ticking then.
Thirty days later the employer receives the notice if no payment has been made by the resister.
The employer must comply immediately.
In other words, there is no longer a grace period to sort things out once the employer has received the notice.
This means the IRS will receive whatever wages have been earned during the pay period when the employer receives the notice to garnish.
The only way this might be stopped is to file a collection appeal.
When the appeal is filed the IRS is required to suspend collection during the appeal process.
one of the signs used by Sheehan supporters who gathered at the federal courthouse in Sacramento yesterday
Yesterday the
IRS
took war tax resister Cindy Sheehan to federal court to ask a judge to
compel her to turn over information about her finances so they could find
assets to seize.
And the agency completely struck out. The judge told them that if they want
Sheehan to come in and talk to them, they should ask her nicely. But can’t
you make her come in and answer our questions? they asked. Maybe I
could but I won’t, the judge said.
There is a second hearing scheduled for at which time the judge may reconsider.
During the hearing, the judge said others have made political statements with tax protests while still managing to comply with the law.
“Finally, someone in this government recognizes my pain,” she told reporters.
Sheehan has agreed to meet again with the
IRS,
but not to answer their questions or to pay the taxes the agency says she
owes. “No matter if the government says I owe a penny or $100,000, I’m not
paying one penny to them,” she told supporters outside after the hearing.
When I decided to be a conscientious objector to war tax, I knew that the
consequence could be harassment and/or punishment, but I decided to do it
long before I became well known as a gadfly to Empire. I was willing to
accept those consequences because I felt that if I were put on trial, the
reasons that I don’t fund war crimes would have to also be put on trial, and
I think it’s the only way that the illegality of the wars can actually get a
hearing.
I have an advisor who is an experienced tax attorney who advises the National
War Tax Resister’s [sic] Coordinating Committee and he feels that the
Empire may be targeting me to get publicity and to intimidate others from
taking the same course of action that I actually encourage others to do, so
he could inform me as to what usually happens every step of the way, but my
case could be “special” and contain many surprises, a few which did occur in
court today.
Before I continue, I’d like to say that since I have become an antiwar
“criminal,” my respect for the legal profession has grown by leaps and
bounds. I have always managed to attract some amazing attorneys to help me in
my cases always on a pro bono basis and this case is no
exception. My attorney of record in California is San Francisco attorney,
Dennis Cunningham, who has been involved in many protest cases and advising
us is Peter Goldberger in Pennsylvania. I am so thankful for the help of my
attorneys and for the
NWTRCC
and I honestly don’t know what I would do without their legal help and peer
support.
Anyway, there was a pre-hearing rally in Sacramento today and supporters came
there from Los Angeles, Ventura, San Jose, San Francisco, Nevada City and
Sacramento — we filled the small courtroom after the rally
(my pre rally statement is linked here).
After we went through security and had to relinquish cameras and the signs we
had pinned to us showing my son’s picture and my picture and No War
Taxes printed on top, we went to the courtroom where my hearing was the
final one on a short docket of four.
We were arguing that I had a 1st Amendment right
to the protest and a 5th Amendment right against
self-incrimination and the attorney for the
IRS and
her buddies that traveled from D.C.
(yes, of course, this is not a political persecution) argued that a “blanket
5th” is not allowed by case law and rulings and
she wanted me to be ordered to go to a room in the federal building to answer
questions about my “assets.” (My lawyer brilliantly argued that the “secret”
agencies already had all that information on me, anyway) — but there was no
way that I was going to be blindsided by an unwarranted demand like that and
this is where some extraordinary things happened.
Dennis was able to expound at length about our fears of political retribution
and my moral opposition to the wars and he was able to iterate that I was
against militarism and the huge proportion of our taxes that go towards it.
This is what I have always wanted — the position of Peace had its day in
court today! I was thrilled beyond belief, but what happened when Dennis
finished literally blew me away.
The Magistrate who presided over the hearing, John Moulds, is an older man
whom my attorney said has been on the bench for years and years, but is known
to be “fair” and not too “excitable.”
The Magistrate said that he read all of our motions and he looked me right in the eyes from across the room and with great emotion in his voice he said, “It strikes me as a civilized way to protest uncivilized acts.”
(Reuters)
I actually started to cry because it was such a beautiful thing to say in
such a loving way and I can’t ever recall anyone in the government and/or
establishment that has ever genuinely acknowledged my pain and practically
admitted that what happened to Casey and my family was disordered. Oh, many
democrats pretended that they were sorry for my pain, but they were only
doing it for crass political gain — and when the republicans acknowledged it,
they were “thanking” me for my son’s brave service to the country — I don’t
know which approach was worse, but I felt no compassion until today.
Then the lady from D.C. said that she
could “sympathize with conscientious objectors” but “losing a son” was no
excuse to “break the law with impunity.” What’s the empire’s excuse for
breaking the law with impunity in many ways on every day?
Dennis and I agreed to meet with the
IRS at
a future date so I could do a line by line 5th
amendment claim to each question and the lady from
D.C. requested that the magistrate order
me to comply and show up for the meeting and he said something like, “I want
the parties to talk, this hearing is over and I have 45 days to make a ruling
one way or the other on your motion — I may, or I may not.” According to
Peter, this is also something unprecedented.
I came away feeling very energized and encouraged by today’s proceedings and
if the Empire wants to make someone cower before them in fear to intimidate
others, they picked the wrong person. Even if the magistrate hadn’t been so
favorable to our side, I still would feel triumphant.
The fissures of imperial overreach and excess are widening and the Empire is
being exposed for the ridiculous bully it really is.
No Empire lasts forever and the terribly destructive nature of ours requires
us to help its inevitable collapse. I am doing everything I can in my own
small ways with all the courage I can muster and I appreciate all the support
and help I get along the way.
Cindy Sheehan met with the IRS the other day to hear their questions for her about her finances, but she didn’t much feel like giving answers.
She shares what happened on her blog.
An excerpt:
There was no ruling from the Magistrate at my hearing on
whether I could use a “blanket 5th” for the
IRS
form 433-A, but we agreed to meet with the
IRS on
…
to do a “line by line” answer for my “assets.” Basically, every answer was
“No” or “Zero,” but I do receive contributions for my books and speaking that
pay the expenses for Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox and which allow me to be a
full-time activist… so I did take the 5th on my
bank account records. Confirming my suspicion that the feds either want me to
perjure or incriminate myself, after I answered “no” to the automobile
question, the Revenue Officer pulled up my
DMV
record showing that I owned a Toyota Camry — which I transferred to my son
last year after his only form of transportation died on him. It was barely my
car anyway as I also try very hard not to purchase fuel. I had the feeling
that I was asked many questions that the feds already have the answer to.
When Nixon got caught using the IRS to go after his political enemies, one of the consequences was that the agency — though on the cusp of victory in its battle to seize the home of war tax resister Ernest Bromley — surrendered and returned the home to its rightful owners.
Washington, D.C. (AP) —
A pacifist group’s scheduled protest rally at Internal Revenue Service headquarters turned into a victory celebration after the agency reversed its seizure of a home owned by members of the organization.
While about 40 members of the Peacemakers danced and sang outside, IRS Commissioner Donald Alexander received several of their leaders in his office to confirm the decision to drop all assessments against the 25-year-old group.
The action meant the return of the Cincinnati, Ohio, home of Peacemaker founder Ernest Bromley and several friends active in the organization.
Earlier this year, the IRS technically seized the house against a claim of $33,000 the group allegedly owed in back taxes for the years .
None of the occupants was forced to move out.
Talked With Bromley
A spokesman for Alexander said the IRS district office in Cincinnati decided to reverse its lien upon the property following an interview with Bromley.
As to why Alexander personally met with Peacemaker leaders, the aide would say only “he talks with various groups from time to time.”
Bromley did not attend [the protest/celebration, presumably —♇] because of illness, friends said.
The tax assessment against the Peacemakers had followed a probe in of that group and other anti-war organizations by the now-defunct Special Service unit of the IRS.
According to revelations which surfaced during the Watergate scandal, the unit developed an “enemies” list of about 11,000 individuals and groups with anti-war views.
Alexander has long acknowledged that activity as improper and has promised that the list would no longer be used in tax investigations.
Politically Tainted
In the meantime, the Peacemakers protested the levy on grounds that the case was politically tainted and, moreover, that ownership of the Cincinnati house was not tied directly to the organization and hence was not liable to seizure.
The case attracted considerable controversy in the Cincinnati area, including an 8-1 vote of the City Council to request a congressional investigation of the IRS action.
One Peacemakers spokesman, Chuck Matthei, said the group thanked Alexander for the reversal “despite the recalcitrance” but also told him of suspicions that Special Services files are still active in IRS regional offices.
Moreover, said Matthei, the group vowed to continue its advocacy of non-payment of federal taxes so long as any portion of them go to support the defense program.
Matthei said he and most of the other pacifists still active in the group deliberately live below the taxable income level to avoid criminal liability.
A bunch happened while I was away and I’m only just getting caught up.
Here’s the highlight reel:
The IRS has been pursuing war tax resister Cindy Sheehan for months, and not long ago they hauled her into court to try to get a judge to order her to cough up financial information they could use against her. She fought back, with help from NWTRCC and its legal advisor. The IRS has apparently thrown in the towel! Sheehan posted to her blog a letter she got from the agency in which it informs her that they have withdrawn their summons.
Some notes on the taxable income baseline, how to adjust your withholding as a new employee, and the latest news on the telephone excise tax resistance front.
A “Pull the Pork” protester outside of the Washington, D.C. headquarters of military contractor Lockheed Martin
A coalition of groups have organized a “Pull the Pork (from the Pentagon)” national day of action to try to point out that the sacred cow of Pentagon spending is really a pricey pig in a poke.
Levante profiles ecological and antimilitarist activist Francesc García Barberà, who was involved in the Spanish struggle for the recognition of conscientious objection to military service, and in its war tax resistance movement. Excerpts (my translation):
As a conscientious objector, García Barberà performed alternative service in the Barrio del Cristo, where he became involved in the Workers’ Catholic Action Brotherhood, to which he remains linked, as with the objector movement.
“The objection is in all of life; it’s not only not doing military service, but it’s rethinking the role of the Army and of military spending.
The movement did not end when objection was legalized nor when conscription was abolished,” he notes.
Today he is associated with pacifist groups, never fails each year to make a symbolic assault on the NATO base in Bétera, and practices tax resistance, like a handful of Alaquàsers of his generation.
“We omit the percentage that we estimate is dedicated to military spending (between 7% and 12%) and redirect it to Caritas or some NGO,” he explains, which on some occasions has meant conflict with the Treasury Department.
“Armies defend borders when what ought to be defended is a dignified life for people.
And even if they are dressed up as humanitarian actions, they serve large vested interests.
In a war the strongest wins, not the most just,” he says.
I got four letters from the IRS that purported to sum up my total unpaid taxes, along with interest & penalties, for , , , and .
Their numbers didn’t add up consistently even within their own printouts, though, so I thought I’d dig a little deeper.
I requested my “tax account transcripts” for those years from the IRS.
(This is easy to do: you can request your transcripts from the IRS website.)
They arrived on (in four separate envelopes, naturally, as the agency’s way of reminding me how respectfully it spends taxpayer dollars).
These are interesting artifacts, but in many ways they only add to my bewilderment.
I’ll show you one of the transcripts they sent me below, and add some comments and explanations.
The original transcript was two pages — I’ve pasted them together in this illustration.
I added the red circled letters for my annotations below:
First, a note: In there was
a weird glitch in which the
IRS
erased the “personal exemption” from my
return. Perhaps somebody tried to claim me as a dependent on their tax return,
or accidentally filled in my social security number for that of their actual
dependent, or maybe it was just a snafu — I
never did get an explanation. I simply filed an amended return reinstating
my personal exemption and left it at that. It didn’t effect the bottom line in
any case, so I didn’t give it much thought afterwards.
The transcript shows my initial tax assessment ($3,695.00), the penalty
immediately assessed on me for not having paid any of this in quarterly
installments ($168), the initial late payment penalty for not having enclosed
a check with my tax return ($18.47), and a small amount of interest that had
accumulated at the time of their first delinquency notice to me ($3.64). All
of that matches my records. (Ⓐ)
In June they erased my personal exemption, then took note of my amended return
in which I reinstated it (Ⓑ). I didn’t get
official word that they’d accepted my
amended return until . I think
their phrase for “we changed the numbers on your tax return” is “Additional
tax assessed” since it appears twice on the transcript around here, once to
omit the personal exemption and once to reinstate it, though neither of these
occasions actually resulted in an assessment of additional tax.
On I got an “Intent to Levy” letter from the
IRS for
the tax year. This also does not show up on
the transcript. That letter listed $166.28 in accumulated penalties and $98.46
in accumulated interest, and asserted that my original tax due was $3,885.11
(which actually is the amount of my original tax due, plus the failure to file
quarterly penalty, plus the initial late payment penalty, plus the first
amount of interest that accumulated).
On I got a “final notice of intent to levy” letter. This
is mentioned in the transcript: both the date it was issued, and the
date the
IRS
was notified that I signed for the letter (Ⓒ). By this time, the accumulated
penalties & interest on the original $3,695 tax bill had risen to a bit
over $572.
Here something peculiar shows up in the transcript: “Tax period blocked from
automated levy program” (Ⓓ). This, just two weeks after they’d issued me a
“final notice of intent to levy.” I’m not sure how to interpret this. (Note
also that this appears out of chronological order in the transcript, just from
perverseness I suspect.) There’s also one of these on my
transcript.
When I filed my return in (for the
tax year) I had so little income to report
that I actually was one of those “lucky duckies” who not only owed no taxes
but qualified for a refundable earned income tax credit: a whole $124. The
IRS
seized this refund and applied it to my unpaid
taxes. This shows up on the transcript (Ⓔ).
They also credit me for a “Payment” of $345.19 on
(Ⓕ). This was actually
a levy of a bank account of mine…
so apparently that “block” issued in
had been released or had expired
by then, or perhaps this levy was not one of the “automated” variety.
I got another letter from the
IRS in
complaining about
the unpaid balance, and then
another in
. These don’t show up in the
transcript either.
The
IRS
tried to seize another bank account , but I’d long since closed it. By then, the interest and
penalties had risen to $985.14. Neither an indication of the levy attempt,
nor any amounts of interest & penalties from this period show up on the
transcript.
The next thing that does show up in the transcript, after
, is
a “reminder of overdue taxes” that they
sent me (Ⓖ). This is
accompanied, in the transcript, with a late payment penalty of $843.05 (Ⓗ).
The transcript also notes
the letter it sent me
, though it gets the
date wrong (Ⓘ).
The transcript also has a summing-up section (Ⓙ), which just makes things
worse:
ACCOUNT BALANCE PLUS ACCRUALS
(this is not a payoff amount): 5,042.24
Why does the interest “accrue”, but the penalty just gets added to the account
balance? If they just are going to add the penalty to the account balance, why
do they bother to have an “accrued penalty” line on the transcript? Why, if
this is their policy, do I only have a zero accrued penalty amount on my
and
transcripts, while my and
transcripts do show accrued
penalties?
The account balance does seem to add up to my original tax owed plus
that original set of penalties and interest (Ⓐ), plus the $843.05 in penalties
(Ⓗ), minus what they managed to seize from me (Ⓔ) & (Ⓕ). I can’t tell you
how surprised I was to find some set of numbers on the page that added up to
another number on the page in a semi-intuitive way, though it took me a while
to develop the correct formula, and I couldn’t tell you why they stuff that
original interest amount in there.
I was a little puzzled at first as to why they stopped assessing penalties
, but I think by that point the
penalty had reached its legal maximum — 25% of the unpaid amount. From here on
out there will be no more penalties on my
taxes, though the interest will continue to accrue.
While I was busy going through Friends Journal back issues, I didn’t attend much to American tax resistance news in the here-and-now, so I’ll try to give a recap today of some of the interesting items that caught my notice:
Some Christian war tax resisters in Michigan held a small “Independence from
War Tax Day” demo that included symbolic burnings of tax forms.
“The common citizen is not being listened to,” wrote participant Michael J. McCarthy.
“We must learn to vote with our money, as the powerful do. April
15th becomes the new
second
Tuesday in November. This tax redirection is one of a number of lifestyle
changes that people can make to better participate in a real
community-responsible democracy.”
McCarthy also wrote up his thoughts for USCatholic.org.
Excerpts:
In , facing the probability that the Iraq
War was unjust, a group of Catholics in my community in Port Huron, Michigan,
openly informed
IRS
that we would redirect hundreds of dollars from our federal taxes, donating
this “Iraq Peace Bond” instead to our local library. Our donation was merely
a drop in the bucket of the trillions wasted in this war, but a small step in
a new direction. Most of the money was eventually recovered by
IRS,
but the donation still helps the community and serve as an inspiration to
find further methods to invest in the works of peace, not war.
The problem for us in the United States is non-cooperation with evil — a
difficult feat when so much of our tax money (more than 50 percent of all
federal income tax, or 25 percent of total income tax) is spent on war. There
are, however, alternative ways to turn away from it towards peacemaking. It
is possible to take some of the money you would have offered to the troubled
war economy and homeland security and spend it instead on the works of mercy,
from feed the hungry to investing in creative work opportunities for our
young people to donating to your local Christian pregnancy care centers.
You must inform the
IRS of
your intentions, and your wish to be a responsible citizen while also
divesting from this war economy. The dialogue that follows with them can be
kept cordial. For the practical measures, contact the National War Tax
Resistance Coordinating Committee. My wife and I have tried war tax
resistance/redirection for 17 of the 35 years of our marriage, with varied
results — some trial and tribulation, a lot of good done within our faith and
larger communities.
For years now, because I knew the
IRS was
out to get me at some point, I’ve kept the balance in my PayPal account very,
very low. Whenever I made pitches for donations, I withdrew the funds almost
immediately. But because my health has now gotten so much worse, I wasn’t
able to make as many trips as I wanted to the closest
ATM. It’s only a block and a half away,
but given my enormous difficulties in getting around, it might as well be a
couple of miles. The heat in
L.A. didn’t help,
either. That’s the reason there were still funds left for the
IRS to
get. My apologies and regrets again, both for all the kind donors and for my
sorry ass.
However, I’m not content to let the matter stand there. That is, I’m not
ready to lie down and die, which is what I’m certain they’d prefer. I
obviously have no money to pay an attorney or tax specialist, but if there is
anyone out there who would consider volunteering their expertise, I would
like to find out if there are any options with the
IRS at
this point. I should tell you that I don’t want to pay them a single damned
cent — I don’t choose to give funds to murderers and torturers, thank you
(which is why the IRS was after me in the first place) — and I’d also like to
get back at least some of the funds they’ve taken.
As I say, I suspected this might happen at some point, especially after
PayPal began filing tax forms starting with . I had thought about providing a warning to donors that the
IRS
might suddenly swoop down, so that you kind people would be forewarned. I’m
terribly sorry I didn’t do that. But since the IRS and I hadn’t communicated
at all for years now, I thought (hoped) they might have forgotten about me. I
mean, Jesus Christ, I have almost no money at all. And I didn’t
receive any warning at all before this levy was imposed.
And that’s another aspect of this that absolutely enrages me. I know, we all
know, that there are multibillion dollar companies (and individuals) who,
with the aid of their fleet of top line attorneys and financial experts, pay
next to no taxes at all — and in many cases, none, period. And yet these
bastards come after me.
Well, to hell with them. This has made me so angry that I feel I have a new
lease on life. With your help, I hope we can figure out a way around these
difficulties. And just to show them, I’ll live for another ten goddamned
years, and write another ten books’ worth of essays.
During the day, I tried to remember the last time I had any communication
from the
IRS.
I’m almost certain it was close to ten years ago. Ten years, during which I
had heard nothing at all. So I had thought that perhaps, mercifully, I’d
fallen off their radar. I guess that’s a lesson for all of us: they never
forget. If there is any way at all, they’ll get you in the end.
Before “sequestration” took effect, the Obama administration issued
specific — and alarming — predictions about what it would bring. There would
be one-hour waits at airport security. Four-hour waits at border crossings.
Prison guards would be furloughed for 12 days. FBI agents, up to 14.
At the Pentagon, the military health program would be unable to pay its bills
for service members. The mayhem would extend even into the pantries of the
neediest Americans: Around the country, 600,000 low-income women and children
would be denied federal food aid.
But none of those things happened.
Partially this is because Congress quietly made exceptions to the sequester in
some cases, but a lot of it is because all of the alarm was bluff, and when
agencies finally did have to cut their budgets, they found that there
was plenty of stuff they could cut fairly painlessly.
The act of screaming bloody murder while engaging in mostly-symbolic
belt-tightening seems to be a global phenomenon. In an article for
Negocios.com, Jorge Valín says, of the Spanish
version of budget cuts, “ ‘austerity’ doesn’t work (because it doesn’t exist).” Excerpts (my translation):
There is much debate on the issue of Government austerity. Those with a
leftist mindset accuse it of generating poverty, reducing welfare, and even
killing people when it comes to health. The rightists insist that government
spending has to be checked, and in this sense austerity is good.
, the
government has created three new bodies per month, whether commissions,
committees, councils, centers, or agencies of some type. The government
propaganda agencies receive more than a billion euros in additional subsidies
to what they had at the beginning of the economic crisis. In fact, government
spending grows year after year even without mentioning the exponential growth
of the debt. Austerity doesn’t work because it does not exist.
…It simply does not happen; it’s propaganda and a stalling measure. And the
big problem with austerity is that it is just another government program.…
The government, any government, is simply incapable of reducing its drag on
the economy or to eliminate its debt.
Unfortunately, the politicians are incapable of doing anything. They would
lose their power. So the other option is to force austerity on the state. The
politicians live on our work and there’s no moral or technical reason why
they have to plunder us with taxes this way. Tax resistance is not only a
moral position, it’s a necessity before a corrupt status quo in which
criminals prosper.
Tax reform
Some of our feckless legislators are trying to come up with some sort of
radical tax reform plan. Of course it’s unlikely that this Congress will ever
agree on much of anything, but some future Congress is likely to try to pass
something that they’ll call radical tax reform, so it’s worth at least keeping
an eye on things like this.
Of course, whatever they come up with will be awful. And the motivations of
the politicians will have a lot less to do with trying to make the tax system
better or more efficient (even by government standards), and more to do with
the fact that radical tax reform is an incredible shakedown opportunity, where
every deep-pocketed son of a bitch with a stake in tax subsidies will have to
pony up if they want to keep their cash cow alive.
But keep in mind that tax simplification, even when it’s accomplished
in such an ugly way, and even if it doesn’t shrink the budget by a
nickel, can still shrink government somewhat.
So there may yet be reasons to smile.
Taxpatriates
I didn’t make much noise about it last quarter, when the Treasury Department
announced its highest quarterly total number of people who had renounced their
U.S. citizenship
(679), as there was some indication that this had been an accounting fluke
caused by names being shifted from one quarter to another.
The educated guesses about why this recent surge of citizenship renunciations
has taken place say that it has less to do with people becoming increasingly
ashamed at having to call themselves Americans, or with eagerness to avoid
U.S. taxes, and more
to do with the onerous paperwork requirements that the
U.S. government
requires from its citizens — even of those who live overseas and who conduct
little activity back in the “land of the free.”
A more do-it-yourself approach to taxpatriatism was tried by the Gastonguay family, who fled the United States in part because they were upset at being “forced to pay these taxes that pay for abortions we don’t agree with.”
They boarded a small boat and sailed for Kiribati, a remote set of islands with a total population of a little over a hundred thousand people, where they hoped their religious practices and beliefs would be better-tolerated.
But they never made it there, instead getting storm-tossed and lost at sea for three months before getting rescued and taken instead to Chile, from which, they said, they planned to return to the United States, at least for now.
Jerry Kirk of Searcy County, Arkansas, one of that odd crop of American tax
protesters who adhere to incredibly baroque legal systems of their own
devising, refused to pay his county taxes whereupon the government seized and
sold some of his property.
He responded by doing something I haven’t seen a tax protester of that ilk do
before: he redirected his unpaid taxes by handing out envelopes of money to
people in front of the county courthouse. Here’s a video of the event:
Let’s face it: As a marketing strategy, a 6.25 percent sale is embarrassing.
What car dealer has ever run ads saying “Today Only — Save Just Over A Nickel
On The Dollar!” When does Macy’s ever post “6.25 Percent Off!” over their
junior miss selection?
And yet, the sales tax holiday weekend is huge. The stores are packed. It’s
like a mini-Christmas in the dog days of August.
, when you see
Massachusetts shoppers waiting in long lines to buy stuff they could have
bought two days earlier without any hassles, they’re showing you just how
hard they will work to stick it to the state.
Here are some excerpts from that book concerning war tax resistance as it was encountered in that community during .
A War Tax Alternatives Group (WARTAG) was meeting to acquaint people with the possibility of tax resistance and to support those already engaged in it.
It… was composed almost entirely of religiously motivated activists.
When you speak to members of an activist group which is relatively small, people continually refer you to other members of the community… If tax resistance was mentioned, people regularly told me to “get in touch with Father Bob Quirin because he knows the history of it in the city.”
Approximately two dozen people [in the local peace community] are refusing to pay what they label war taxes.
Most are simply refusing to pay the federal tax on their phone bill, since it was enacted to help defray the costs of the Vietnam War and remains committed to the military.
Each month they include a letter to this effect when they send their check to the telephone company.
A few people have taken tax resistance much further and have refused to pay about 40 percent of their income tax during the past two years and have instead placed their monies in a world peace tax fund escrow account not recognized by the government.
Steve Hodges, coordinator of the Richmond Peace Education Center, has not only resisted payment, but has transformed his stand into a vehicle of public education, granting interviews to local print and broadcast reporters about his decision.
The development of tax resistance indicates how the Richmond activists have tried to apply these ideas about civil disobedience.
Given their commitment to assuming personal responsibility, about two dozen people in the peace community have seriously considered withholding or have actually withheld a percentage of their federal income tax and placed it in a peace escrow fund as a protest against the use of tax monies to pay for nuclear weapons.
Originally, a number of those involved resisted taxes as a matter of conscience and did not intend to persuade others to join them.
Harold Houghton, a Quaker who teaches mathematics at a local high school, one year withheld 36 percent of his tax.
He justified his decision by saying, “I feel that I must live morally, I cannot kill and neither can I pretend that my money does not pay for killing.”
Despite this commitment, Harold refrained from informing many of his acquaintances of his decision.
“I don’t tell people at work, ‘Listen, this is what I’m doing, how do you respond?’
Perhaps this is related to my concern about job security, but I think that I would just be terribly uncomfortable saying, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m not paying my taxes and this is why.’
I just don’t want to confront people in that manner and I don’t want to invade their privacy.”
Harold Houghton did participate in the War Tax Alternatives Group.
For the first few years of its existence, WARTAG was basically a mutual support organization.
It brought together tax resisters and those contemplating it to share thoughts and experiences with like-minded people.
The group also organized seminars at local churches that explained to potential tax resisters the rationale for the act, the various legal and illegal mechanisms that could be used to register a protest about government spending priorities, and the penalties that were possible for war tax resistance.
By the middle of , WARTAG — under the impetus of Steve Hodges — began to move in other directions as well.
Its activities were more highly publicized within the peace community and became a form of internal education.
The group worked to increase the visibility of the issue by recruiting others to write letters of protest even if they were not actively resisting taxes themselves.
Members began to pass out literature at the post office on April 15 when citizens were filing last-minute returns.
WARTAG also sought to recruit more tax resisters by drafting a resolution and circulating a petition in which those who signed agreed to resist a level of taxes if one hundred others in the area did the same.
These efforts to widen the scope of WARTAG achieved, at most, minimal success.
Within the peace community itself, activists discussed both tax resistance and the general issue of civil disobedience.
Steve Hodges’ tax protest compelled the board of directors of the Richmond Peace Education Center to decide whether it would put a lien on his salary if the Internal Revenue Service issued this demand.
The board ultimately stated that it supported individual acts of conscience such as Steve’s, though it could not, as a tax-exempt organization, actually endorse civil disobedience.
In other forums, activists debated whether tax resistance was the best possible way of bringing the movement to public attention.
Besides the internal discussion that tax resistance generated, protesters received a measure of public attention.
Newspaper articles and television interviews permitted them to explain their rationale for their actions and to indicate their personal beliefs to a wider audience, and a few churches invited some of the resisters to discuss their perspective in Sunday-school classes or other special programs. But despite these accomplishments, tax resistance never extended much beyond its core group or caught on as a pressing issue of discussion in the wider community.
Harold Houghton… experienced the distress that can arise from trying to express one’s opposition to nuclear weapons policy and to construct a successful marriage at the same time.
While Debra Houghton supported Harold’s decision to resist taxes — a step actually taken in the year before their wedding — the couple found the combination of fear and anxiety that permeated their young marriage almost impossible to handle.
Unlike some forms of protest, a person resisting war taxes has no control over the timing of the consequences or the exact nature of the penalties.
The Internal Revenue Service might choose to ignore it for years or take immediate action to garnish the salary of the resister and impose other fines.
Interested in starting a family, the Houghtons would have been more comfortable facing a definite penalty at a specified time in the future.
Instead, the computer-generated letters sent by the IRS at irregular intervals evoked fears of a catastrophic outcome to the protest.
Harold mentioned that “when one of those bills arrives in the mail, your whole life gets blown into a nightmarish thing.”
Debra experienced similar fears, recalling dreams “in which people came at night and moved us out of our house.”
Eventually, Debra and Harold Houghton decided not to pursue this witness to its full limits.
They paid the taxes that had been withheld, plus the interest and penalties that had accrued.
Doing so, in Harold’s words, “left a very bitter taste in my mouth.
Writing the check and then mailing it seemed like an act of capitulation.”
At a minimum, it demonstrated how difficult it can sometimes be to harmonize the full complement of one’s professed moral commitments.
Undoubtedly, tax resisters in Richmond have made progress in transforming lonely statements of personal conscience into a broader public action.
They have also been attentive to developing strategies that will allow supporters of the movement to participate at a variety of levels, ranging from legal protest to civil disobedience.
Yet there are some inherent limitations to tax resistance that may never be surmounted.
One of the most critical is that the government can dampen enthusiasm for the strategy without engaging in heavy-handed public reprisals.
If tax resistance ever threatened to become more widespread, there would be no need to arrest people in the streets or drag them from their homes while the neighbors watched.
Sending a computer-generated letter from the Internal Revenue Service assessing a penalty of five hundred dollars for a frivolous deduction would adequately serve the government’s purpose.
It might no dissuade those people who were already resisting, but it would certainly discourage other people from taking a war tax deduction and, most important, it would do so without casting the U.S. government in a particularly malevolent light before the rest of the American population.*
* In fact, by
the Internal Revenue Service had decided to crack down on what was a small yet growing number of tax resisters by imposing a five-hundred-dollar fine for a frivolous deduction.
Articles in the movement journals which focused on tax resistance now spent much time addressing the question of how to respond if one received such a penalty and how groups could pressure Congress to alter the tax code so that statements of conscience would not be considered frivolous.
The outcome of these efforts is currently uncertain, but the situation does reveal the considerable discretionary power of the government in general and the Internal Revenue Service in particular.
I should also mention, however, that the IRS had occasionally resorted to heavy-handed reprisals such as the auctioning of homes, which, when publicized, probably work to the benefit of the movement.
There were several other off-hand mentions of war tax resistance throughout the book as well.
