Miscellaneous tax resisters →
individual war tax resisters →
Julia “Butterfly” Hill
The war tax resistance movement got a big boost when the well-known environmental activist Julia “Butterfly” Hill held a press conference at the Federal Building in San Francisco to announce what the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee is calling “the single largest war tax resistance in US history.”
Hill attracted international attention when she climbed 180 feet up into the branches of a thousand-year-old Redwood tree and refused to come down until it was safe from the Pacific Lumber Company’s harvesting.
738 days later, she came down with an agreement to save not only the tree she’d named “Luna,” but a three-acre patch of trees that surrounded it.
Hill’s commitment and her ultimate success proved inspirational to environmentalists and other activists.
After her successful tree sit, the wireless company OmniSky and two other companies used her story and likeness in unauthorized ad campaigns.
Hill sued to stop the ad campaign — “I do not endorse products,” she said today, “I endorse actions and beliefs.”
She and a volunteer legal team worked on the lawsuit.
Hill says, “I wanted 100% of the proceeds of the settlement to go toward the social and environmental causes for which I work so hard.… Shortly before settling out of court in , I found that even though I was not making a single penny off of this lawsuit, the federal government was going to demand that a very large percentage of the settlement be paid to taxes.”
The total tax bill was over $150,000. “When I found this out I was sickened.”
“I struggled for a long time with the knowledge that if given to the government, this money would be used for terrible things, but that if I refused to pay, I faced consequences, some of them potentially very serious.
When the first US bomb dropped in Iraq in , my decision became crystal clear.
I could not in good conscience allow this money to be used for the murder of innocent people.”
Hill said, “I was raised by Christian parents who taught me about the Ten Commandments, the first of which is ‘Thou Shall Not Kill.’
Paying for the murder of innocent people with my tax dollars is something that I cannot do in good conscience.”
She notes that “the greatest accumulations of weapons of mass destruction exist right here in the United States.
These weapons of death are funded by US citizens’ tax dollars stolen from the basic necessities that better our society such as social services, education, health care, and the safeguarding of human rights and our environment.”
Hill will be redirecting the amount she would have been paying in taxes to into various not-for-profit social service and environmental organizations.
“Thousands of others before me have taken this stand,” she says.
“I have thought through this very carefully, and with a clear mind and heart I am humanely re-directing my tax payments to where they belong, because our current federal government refuses to do so.”
Asked whether the large amount she is withholding and her celebrity might make the IRS eager to come after her, Hill said she wasn’t sure.
“It could make me a target, or it could make them not want to draw more attention.”
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 Earth Island Institute’s on-line newsletter The Edge just put out a special edition about tax resistance, featuring an statement by Julia “Butterfly” Hill on her record tax resistance, a letter from me about how tax resistance isn’t as hard as it’s made out to be, an article about a tax refuser who was taken to court by the IRS and actually won, and an article about a former IRS agent who became convinced by the constitutionalist arguments against the legality of the income tax and now works for the other team.
, the environmental activist Julia “Butterfly” Hill announced what has been billed as the single largest war tax resistance and redirection.
I covered this on The Picket Line .
, Hill was interviewed on Matthew Fox’s “Spirit in Action” radio show.
Here’s a partial transcript (from about 47 minutes into the show, if you’re looking for it in the audio):
JBH: My big project that I’m involved in right now is that last year I decided to become part of the War Tax Resistance movement…
In when the first bombs in the latest round of war in Iraq began to drop, and I was out in the streets, it hit me and I had a deep sense of sadness for how many of us were out in the streets — I was glad of that, but my sadness came from thinking about all the ways that we would then go back to our lives and contribute to the very same process we were out there trying to draw attention to.
And I saw very clearly that day that I could not pay that money to a government that would use it to murder, and would use it to subsidize corporations that don’t pay their part to society and rather steal from society, that would use that money to build yet more prisons for our young people and for communities of color, that would use that money for destroying this sacred earth we call home.
And I made the commitment that day that I was not going to give them that money even though I knew that there could be some large consequences as a result.
So I went home and began the process of setting things up in my life to be willing to take on that challenge, and last year became part of the war tax resistance movement.
From what I understand it’s the single largest war tax resistance that’s ever been done.
MF: Really? Hasn’t made the media that much.
JBH: No… It’s made it a teeny bit, but they’re not really interested in encouraging people to realize that they can take a stand in that way. [Laughter]
MF: I’m not saying that I’m surprised that it hasn’t made the media I’m just pointing out that I haven’t seen it in there.
That’s very interesting.
JBH: So… it’s a profound movement.
If people want to find out more they can go to warresisters.org
JBH: And there’s numerous sites out there around this issue, but that’s a great one…
As with the tree sit, I climbed into a very long and powerful tradition, and got notoriety for that step but would not have been able to do what I did in that tree if it wasn’t a powerful movement already in place, and the same thing with war resisters: phenomenal people who have been taking this stand for many years — saying that they will not give their money to death machines…
So I made the commitment and I told people — I am actually paying my taxes, I’m just paying them where they belong because our government refuses to do so.
I believe that nonprofits only exist because our government refuses to uphold its responsibility to care for the earth and to care for its citizens.
And that’s the only reason we need nonprofits — we wouldn’t even need them if our government was truly representing the people and the planet.
Because it doesn’t, we need nonprofits to do the work of our government.
And so I donated that money to nonprofits who are doing phenomenal work in our world.
And that’s a big challenge to take on because now it’s dealing with the IRS, which is not a fun thing to have to deal with.
And yet it feels so good to know that that money went to help the earth and the people on it instead of going to hurt it…
[W]e are seeing an unraveling of the myths created by the current Bush-led administration.
Unfortunately as easy as it is for many of us to say, “We knew this all along,” the reality of these myths being perpetuated through US government and media culture come with a horrific price tag for people the world over.
Innocent people in Iraq and those US citizens who are serving the US there as an occupying force, are dying, being maimed, and tortured.
I do not believe there is a moral pedestal for any of us in the US to stand on.
There are too many ways we all accidentally or knowingly participate in this injustice that supports its existence, including in our inactions.
It is too easy a trap to fall into, to separate our selves from people like Bush, the media, and this current administration, and claim a moral stand merely by means of verbal disassociation.
So many of our actions, and inactions, fuel the very same imperialism we deplore.
This is our country. And this is our world.
This is our global family, and our family is suffering tremendously right now.
The current state of the world is a powerful and poignant call to action for each and every one of us.
Gar Smith:
Could you talk a little about your family upbringing and how that brought you to your decision to refuse to pay federal taxes.
I understand that your father was a minister.
Julia Butterfly Hill:
Yes, my father was a traveling preacher.
He and my mother were both raised Catholic and converted to Baptist and later became nondenominational so I was raised in a nondenominational evangelical upbringing.
My father always taught from a place of “How does this book known as the Bible apply to who we are today?”
He was really about teaching what it means to be a loving, committed, active spiritual person in the world.
That upbringing, I feel, has been very core to who I am because it has really become my foundation.
How do I keep a core sense of the sacred as my foundation in everything I do and everything that I say?
GS:
A lot of us grew up with that and it’s not just a core feeling that we share as a family value but it’s something we think of as a core set of beliefs that used to apply to this country as a nation.
I’d like to hope that we could find our way back to that.
, you stood on the steps of the Federal Building and issued your formal public statement about why you were resisting taxes — joining people like Joan Baez, Noam Chomsky and others.
What were the repercussions of that act?
JB:
I have to say I “redirect” my taxes rather than “resisting” my taxes.
Because I actually take the money that the IRS says goes to them and I give it to the places where our taxes should be going.
And in my letter to the IRS I said:
“I’m not refusing to pay my taxes.
I’m actually paying them but I’m paying them where they belong because you refuse to do so.”
They are not directing our money where it should be going, they are being horrific stewards of that money.
If we had an investment with a fund-management system and they were doing a terrible job of investing our funds, we would pull those funds and re-invest them with a management fund that was stewarding our money properly.
Yet, for some reason, we don’t do that with our taxes and with the IRS and with our government.
So I said, “Well, I’m sorry.
You’re not managing these funds appropriately and you’re not balancing them wisely and you’re not investing them properly, so I’m going to have to take this money from you and invest it myself.
GS:
This is an argument that supports not just environmentalists and pacifists, but anybody with good business sense should not be investing in this “company.”
JB:
That’s right!
I majored in business in college and so I’m always looking at where is the wise investment — in time, in energy and monetary resources.
What is the smartest investment?
And anyone who is a smart businessperson should look at how much is being invested in our government and where that is actually being spent.
I don’t think anyone but a select few people will think that the rate of return on that currently is a wise investment.
GS:
What local organizations are you giving money to?
How does that happen?
JB:
I have learned so much in collaboration with War Resisters network.
The People’s Life Fund is one of the ways people can give money to help a myriad of causes (as well as help people who suffer negative responses from the government for taking this step of conscience and redirecting their taxes).
I’ve directed this money to all the places where our money should be going — after school, arts and cultural programs, community gardens.
A huge portion of my funds (not only from my “redirection” but also from funds that I raise speaking at colleges) goes to indigenous peoples in this country.
All of the wealth in this country is built on what was stolen from the original peoples and then through slavery.
I look to redirecting money back to where our money comes from — from human and planetary resources.
So a large portion has gone to support native peoples’ subsistence, sovereignty and spirituality.
I’ve redirected money into the Alternatives to Incarceration Program.
I believe our prison-industrial complex is clear-cutting our diversity and clear-cutting our youth and our humanity.
That’s a big passion of mine.
And, of course, environmental protection.
Particularly endangered, old-growth forest issues, wetlands (which are a very threatened area) and some prairie protection as well.
The list goes on.
GS:
I was at a War Resisters League meeting a couple of weeks ago at the St. Martin de Porres food kitchen in San Francisco and one of the startling statements that cropped up at the meeting was that at least 25 percent of American people don’t pay taxes — legally.
And somebody asked: “Does that include corporations?”
Well, of course not: the figure is much higher for corporations.
It is possible to legally not pay taxes by using available deductions and small-business options.
Are you trying to use any of those legal strategies or is this an outright redirection of tax money?
JB:
I’m currently not employing the various forms of legal ways of tax [resistance] because, for me, it was important to take the conscious, conscientious, political stand.
Not just to work within the system but to say that the system is inherently flawed and highly destructive.
It was absolutely crucial that I also take a stand outside that system.
It’s a devastated system and, just as we look at a devastated ecosystem and think about how to restore it, the same thing applies with this [tax] system.
That’s part of why I’ve chosen to take this very public, political stand…
Taxes are not inherently evil.
When we come together as a community and collectively pool our resources, the good we can do is absolutely inspiring.
On the other hand, the devastation we can wreak upon the planet and its people is horrific.
And currently [the U.S. tax] system is doing that.
Because of that, it is absolutely crucial that more and more of us take the political stand and say it’s time to transform the system.
GS:
Has your public statement inspired others to consider this as a moral option?
JB:
It’s been incredible how many people have come out of the most surprising places saying “I want to know more about this!
Is it safe to do? Is it not safe to do?”
[There are] organizations like War Resisters and the network of the war tax resistance community I can direct people to.
I became well-known for living in a tree for over two years, but that tree-sit — although it was the longest in history — was only able to be that tree-sit because of wonderful history of a movement that built it to a place where we could carry out an action like that.
It’s exactly the same with [the war-tax resistance] movement.
For over 30 years, the war-resistance community has been saying “Here’s the plethora, the rainbow, of information.
You can sit with that information and find out what most resonates for you and cultivate from that list a way for you to take your next step.”
It’s great to have that network to be able to direct people into.
GS:
Now for a question about the response from the other side of the spectrum.
How has the government responded?
JB:
Well, I knew when I took this action that the government was going to do one of two things: they were either going to come down quick and hard or they were going to ignore me.
And I felt the same would probably happen within the media.
The media pretty much ignored me.
The IRS responded very, very quickly.
My lawyer asked me: “What did you do to upset them?
They never respond that quickly? What did you do?”
And I said, “I think it’s partly because of who I am and partly because of the letter I wrote.”
He got back to me and said: “Yes, you’re right. I asked them: you’re right.”
At this point, I’ve gotten through the first round of hearings.
They’ve gone well. It’s “in the process.”
In this process, anything can happen.
There can be compromises that are reached; there can be an endless amount of paperwork that never turns into anything at all (just back-and-forth paperwork and lawyers talking to each other); or there can be a mandate into court.
It’s been a joy for me.
Every time I see another newspaper headline about yet more war and devastation happening, there’s such a joy for me — even being caught in the “process” right now, as noxious and time-consuming as that can be.
There is such a sense of liberation and joy every time I see one of those headlines and know that I can say:
“I am not contributing to that.
I’m contributing to a healthy world and a happy planet and a world that works for all.”
A little bit of headache and some legal fees and whatever may come it’s absolutely worth it to me every time I walk down the street and I’m able to say:
“I’m contributing to a different headline.”
GS:
The great American pacifist A.J. Muste once said:
“People are drafted through the Selective Service; money is drafted through the Internal Revenue Service.”
So, you’ve “liberated” your money (or, at least it’s standing its own — against the assault of a government that would take it hostage).
What are your thoughts about the environmental rationale for refusing taxes and, also, the spiritual nature of it?
JB:
I was in [the tree I named] Luna when the war, under the Clinton administration, broke out in Yugoslavia.
I was praying on how to help because I felt it so deeply.
I’m that kind of person: I feel the interconnection of issues very deeply and very profoundly.
I’m not just an “environmentalist.” I’m not just a “joyous vegan.”
I’m not just a “war-tax redirector.” I’m not these segments. I’m about the interconnection.
And as I was praying I saw a bulls-eye.
At that time [in Yugoslavia], people were running out on bridges with bulls-eyes painted on their shirts because their communities were being targeted by the U.S. and other [NATO] countries.
What the people were saying is: “Hey, you’re turning us into targets.
This isn’t some war on some evil dictator.”
The answer that came to me is that, in the war of politics, power and profit, all of life becomes a target.
And what people need to realize is that [given] where our taxes are currently going, we are actually supporting an unprecedented war on the planet and all of the life on it — the human life, the plant life, the animal life.
We are a global community and this war being perpetuated with our money, under our name if we pay taxes under our name, under our watch, for this unprecedented war.
It’s happening to the forest. It’s happening to ecosystems across the country.
It’s happening around the world.
The devastation of Iraq!
That land that is now being devastated by war under the guise of “freedom and liberation” used to be known, in Biblical times, as one of the most decadently rich, life-giving areas in the entire region.
And now it’s a desert wasteland because war does not discriminate — it affects everything.
And now, with our money, we’re having a war on kids, we’re having a war on education, we’re having a war on elders, we’re having a war on healthcare, we’re having a war on the planet and all of its life-giving systems.
We’re having a war on our global family around the world.
Every time that we pay taxes or spend a penny on anything, we’re either voting for that war or we’re voting for peace and healing.
And, if we want to stand up and say:
“Shame on the Bush administration! Shame on these corporations! Shame! Shame! Shame!” we have to remember, as we point our fingers at the Bush administration, that there’s three fingers pointing back at us.
If we are not holding ourselves accountable, I don’t feel that we actually have the right to say “Shame!” unless we include ourselves in that shame.
I would rather include ourselves in a stand — in a real stand for peace, for healing, for justice — where we are actually living it, not just talking about it.
Some other Picket Line entries about Julia “Butterfly” Hill’s tax resistance:
I’ve told people from the very beginning that WTR is doing civil disobedience every single day.
In this country we seem addicted to what I call “The One Hit Wonder.”
We go for one big day of direct action and then get frustrated when the media doesn’t give the action much airplay.
Every action for justice is an important step to take, and there’s something powerful about taking one step after the other.
To me WTR is that: A commitment.
It’s like my two years and eight days in a tree.
I called that my “ground fast,” because I was away from the ground for that long.
Every choice that is about an everyday commitment is a powerful choice to make.
I chose to take this stand while marching in the financial district in San Francisco right in [against the Iraq War].
I helped shut down the financial district, the federal building, and three different intersections.
I was out in the streets exercising my responsibilities as a citizen to ask for some accountability of my government.
And it really hit me: How many people are going to go back to their lives and contribute to the very same thing they are out here protesting today?
How many people drove here, one or two people per car to protest a war for oil?
This was at the time I had found out I had this money available to me because of a lawsuit settlement.
(It’s not like I’m able to earn that much per year!)
I found out the government wanted to take 32% of it.
I tried to find ways to keep it from them and lawyers said, “You have to pay them; just be thankful for this other money you have to work with in the world.”
I really struggled with that.
And then that day in the financial district I didn’t struggle anymore.
I said to myself there is no way I can give that money to the very same thing I am out here protesting against.
(For more on Julia “Butterfly” Hill’s tax resistance, see The Picket Line , , and .)
There’s a new issue of More Than a Paycheck out, full of news about the war tax resistance movement, including:
Julia Butterfly Hill addressed her war tax resistance to an audience in New York in .
A video of her presentation has shown up on YouTube.
Here it is:
Tax resisters frequently face the criticism of being freeloaders who enjoy the benefits of organized society without cooperating in the taxes necessary to fund them.
This rhetorical attack paints the tax resisters as self-interested, anti-social tax evaders.
One way resisters have countered this attack is by staging flamboyant giveaways of their resisted taxes — both to make it clear that the resister does not have only selfish motives for resisting, and to demonstrate that the money is being spent for the benefit of society (and to a greater extent than if the money had been filtered through the government first).
Redirection is also a way of forging or strengthening ties with the recipient groups, and of making them aware of tax resistance as an option.
Today I will briefly describe some of the many examples of tax resisters and tax resistance campaigns that have used this technique, and the many variations they have come up with.
Julia “Butterfly” Hill in redirected more than $150,000 of federal taxes that she owed that year, and made a point of saying “I ‘redirect’ my taxes rather than ‘resisting’ my taxes”:
I actually take the money that the IRS says goes to them and I give it to the places where our taxes should be going.
And in my letter to the IRS I said: “I’m not refusing to pay my taxes.
I’m actually paying them but I’m paying them where they belong because you refuse to do so.”
They are not directing our money where it should be going, they are being horrific stewards of that money.
Antor Odu Ndep, executive director of Common Ground Health Clinic, accepts redirected taxes during a War Tax Boycott granting ceremony.
NWTRCC
organized what it called the “War Tax Boycott” in .
It encouraged people to resist as a group, and as part of their resistance, to redirect any refused taxes to one of two groups: one that concentrated on providing health assistance in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and the other that provides assistance for Iraq War refugees.
The campaign kept track of how much money had been redirected over the course of the boycott, and then held a press conference at which oversized checks adding up to about $325,000 were given to spokespeople for these campaigns.
The People’s Life Fund, associated with the group Northern California War Tax Resistance, accepts redirected taxes from resisters.
If the IRS successfully seizes money from the resisters, the resisters can reclaim their donations to the Fund.
Otherwise, the money remains there and earns interest and dividends.
Every year the group pools these returns on investment and gives them away to local charitable organizations in a granting ceremony.
Usually the grants are small — $500 or $1000 — but they give them to a dozen or more groups, which makes their granting ceremonies a good way for local charities to network with each other and for news of war tax resistance to spread in the local activist community.
This same model, or one similar to it, is followed by a number of regional redirection funds associated with war tax resistance groups.
A family in Vermont figured out a way to get extra mileage out of their redirection: “They refused to pay 50% of their tax liability and redirected it to Plan International’s Childreach program.
Childreach has a fund drive for a project to help children in Nepal and Ghana, and has received a challenge grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
This means that the $211.69 that the WTR family has redirected will result in a $423.38 matching contribution from the U.S. government!”
In , several hundred Spanish war tax resisters redirected over €85,000 to the group “La’Onf,” which was organizing and educating about nonviolent conflict resolution techniques in Iraq.
The Mennonite Central Committee has established a “turning toward peace” fund especially designed for people who want to redirect their tax dollars from the government to more constructive projects — for example, education for children in Afghanistan.
War tax resisters Paul and Addie Snyder made a point of saying “we believe in paying taxes” as they explained in that they wouldn’t be paying those taxes to the federal government, but instead would be giving the money directly to rural poverty projects nearby.
In several hundred American Quaker war tax resisters paid their tax dollars to a Catholic soup kitchen in Philadelphia.
The Women’s Tax Resistance League largely suspended its campaign during World War Ⅰ, but one woman, writing as “A Persistent Tax Resister” wrote a letter to the editor of a suffragist paper suggesting that women “should contribute the sum she owes to the Government to a National Fund of her own choosing, and should send her donation as ‘Taxes withheld from the Government by a voteless woman.’ ” Charlotte Despard, for example, “said she had offered to give voluntarily the amount demanded of her by Revenue authorities to any war charity, but her offer had not been accepted.”
A war tax resistance group in Iowa used the proceeds from their redirection fund to create a scholarship for college students who would be ineligible for government financial aid because of refusal to register for the draft.
Another, in Pennsylvania, made an interest-free loan to a defense committee that was supporting a group of draft resisters who were on trial.
In , 70 war tax resisters went to the phone company offices in Boston to pay their bills minus the federal excise tax.
They then collected this refused tax ($142 worth) by passing an army helmet around, and donated it to the United Farm Workers to help them set up a clinic in California.
Also , the Cornell branch of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam did a similar phone company office protest and collection of redirected phone taxes, donating the money to a local Early Childhood Development program.
In , war tax resister Irving Hogan stood outside the Federal Building in San Francisco and redirected his federal income tax dollars one at a time — by handing them out to passers by.
“I want this money to be used for the delight, not the destruction, of men,” he said.
“Here: go buy yourself a beer.”
John and Pat Schwiebert did something similar: “One year they converted their war tax debt into five-dollar bills, which they gave to individuals waiting in line at the city unemployment office.
They included a letter with each donation telling why they were doing this, and they notified media beforehand.
Their actions garnered them an interview on NPR, and they received letters and cards from around the world.”
In a group of war tax resisters in New York redirected their war taxes as nickels that they handed out to people waiting at the bus stops on lines where fare hikes were being proposed, saying “this is where our tax dollars should be going.”
And here’s something kind of similar that doesn’t fit into any of my other categories, so I’ll toss it in here:
When the IRS seized back taxes from war tax resister Mary Regan’s retirement account in , she threw a fundraising party to try to raise an equivalent amount of money — not to reimburse her, but to give away to charities like “the Boston Women’s Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Friends Service Committee, a homeless shelter for youth, and the peace movement in Israel.”
Your tax resistance news round-up
The third war tax resistance podcast, sponsored by the War Tax Talk blog, features war tax resisters Shirley Whiteside, Juanita Nelson, Randy Kehler, Betty Winkler, and Beth Seberger sharing the fruits of their experience.
“Tax evasion” has a bad reputation because governments have successfully convinced people that paying taxes is of public benefit, and that those who dodge their share reap these benefits while pushing the burden off on others.
But there are a lot of assumptions packaged in with that story that don’t hold up under scrutiny.
Under a more realistic set of assumptions about the nature of public spending and taxation, tax dodging is an important public service that benefits all of us by limiting the invasiveness of government.
The scam in which callers impersonating IRS agents trick people into sending them money to settle spurious tax debts continues to grow.
According to the latest news:
When the law enforcement agency that oversees the Internal Revenue Service warned in of the “largest-ever phone fraud scam targeting taxpayers,” it did not realize the 20,000 victims would be just the tip of a growing iceberg.
As of , close to 300,000 consumers have reported to the Treasury Inspector General for Taxpayer Administration, or TIGTA for short, that they’ve been contacted by callers claiming to be from the IRS.
As we head into tax season in 2015, 12,000 people are complaining to TIGTA about the IRS impersonation scam every single week.
At least $14 million have been reported to be extorted by criminals, and the actual number may be twice that high.
The tax resistance movement that’s sprouting from the Occupy Central / Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong continues to seek guidance from tax resistance campaigns around the world.
In the latest example, they look to Julia “Butterfly” Hill’s enormous war tax redirection action for inspiration.
The Italian tax resistance movement growing under the hashtag “#IoNonMiAmmazzo” now has a rap video to dramatize its campaign:
There’s a new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter out, with content including:
a look back at the life and work of Juanita Nelson with contributions from Bob Bady, Karl Meyer, Ginny Sсhnеider, Ed Hedemann, Lori Barg, and Ed Agro
some notes about trends in tax enforcement including IRS levies on royalty income, the sudden decline in property seizures for the past 15 years, phone tax resistance, and Elizabeth Boardman’s attempt to get some respect for war tax resistance in the courts
a note about the passing of Dirk Panhuis, who had been active with Conscience and Peace Tax International
some updates about war tax resisters Julia Butterfly Hill and Joseph Olejak, the Spring Rising anti-war action, Greg Wise’s mouthing off about tax refusal, and the Mennonite Central Committee’s war tax redirection program
news about tax day outreach on social media, at the U.S. Social Forum, at the Jewish Voice for Peace conference, and the Intercollegiate Peace Fellowship
Members of the Bijou Community were already involved in war tax resistance when Peter and Mary arrived.
Early on, money was held in common, but that evolved over the years to each doing their own thing.
One year the community did a tax protest and filed a 1040 saying they didn’t want to pay anything “because we don’t want to support the war.”
That seemed to trigger an audit, which took an exhausting six months of collecting receipts to convince the IRS that members were not living off donations that came in for the soup kitchen and houses of hospitality.
“The IRS said don’t file like that anymore because it messes up our system, and we said don’t audit us anymore because it messes up ours!”
David Hartsough is a Quaker and a War Tax Resister who has for decades been redirecting a large portion of his “tax obligations,” believing that if war is abolished, “humanity can not only survive and better address the climate crisis and other dangers, but will be able to create a better life for everyone.
The reallocation of resources away from war promises a world whose advantages are beyond easy imagination.”
(Editor’s note: The 2016 U.S. budget for past, present, and future wars is $1,300 billion.)
He cofounded the Nonviolent Peaceforce, inspired in part by Gandhi’s idea of a shanti sena, a peace army, and this organization is now active in 40 countries, stationing trained professional peaceworkers in conflict areas around the globe and is sustained by an $8 million budget.
He works with World Beyond War and is currently executive director of Peaceworkers in San Francisco.
Waging Peace has been in the works for 27 years.
Today I’ll try to catch up on what has been going on with the tax resistance campaign taking place in Hong Kong as part of the “umbrella movement” protests for democratic reforms.
Beijing loyalists had been pushing what they were calling a “universal suffrage” bill, but one which would only allow people to vote for candidates that had been pre-screened by a Beijing-controlled committee.
This bill failed to pass the Hong Kong legislature , which was seen as a victory for pro-democratic forces.
The tax resistance campaign has posted a series of bulletins on inmediahk.net about the campaign and its historical precedents, including:
some of the illustrations accompanying the inmediahk.net series of articles about the tax resistance campaign in Hong Kong
The movement seems to be exploring new tactics.
The last time I checked in, the tactics being discussed seemed to mostly be either underpaying tax by a symbolic amount or paying the complete amount of the tax but in a symbolic fashion (by writing a large number of checks each for a value that is a number with symbolic value for the campaign).
Overpaying the taxes by a symbolic amount so that the government cuts a refund check for that amount.
some of the refund checks received from Hong Kong Inland Revenue
Expanding the underpayment or payment-with-many-checks method to other payments to the government besides taxes, such as student loan repayments, rates at government-run housing, and utility bills.
people brought their checkbooks to an event where they could use rubber stamps to quickly make many $6.89 checks
Donating money to charity so as to reduce the amount of tax owed.
Responding to a notice of assessment with an objection (in the 1cm×18cm space provided for objections) to the effect that the unrepresentative, violent Leung Chun-ying regime has no authority to assess taxes.
fine print fills the space allowed for objections to the tax assessment
Some tabs that have slid through my browser in recent days:
Irlanda Jerez
Irlanda Jerez, a leader of the tax resistance movement in Nicaragua against the Ortega/Murillo tyranny, was arrested by masked police last July and has been held prisoner since then.
She has said she has been drugged while in captivity, and the latest reports from her family say that she has been beaten so badly by her captors that she is currently bedridden.
Torture, arbitrary arrests, and repressive brutality are frequently relied upon by the regime, amounting to “crimes against humanity,” according to Amnesty International.
The pace of destruction of automated traffic ticket radars in France has slowed, perhaps just indicating that the low-hanging fruit have already been taken (as the government had stopped repairing frequently-targeted radars).
Still:
12 of the 42 radars in Indre-et-Loire are completely out of service.
Eight of those were set aflame.
Of the remaining thirty, these are regularly covered with bags or otherwise masked so that they don’t work.
At any time, more than half are not operating.
The radars issued less than half as many tickets last year than they had the year before.
You are a war-tax resister.
How did you come to that decision, and what have its consequences been?
Julia Butterfly Hill:
About 10 years ago I sued three corporations for creating an ad using my image without my permission to sell a hand-held wireless device.
I wasn’t looking for personal gain — I was planning to give all the money away — but I felt that their using my life and my work to promote consumption was against everything I stood for.
We settled out of court, and I found out that I would have a federal tax liability of about $175,000 on the settlement.
Everyone told me just to pay it, but I couldn’t stomach it.
This was right as the Bush administration was beating the war drums after September 11. I marched in the streets in San Francisco with hundreds of thousands of other people, and we shut down the Federal Building and the financial district.
We caused creative mayhem all day.
In the back of my mind the whole time was the thought that all these hundreds of thousands of protestors were eventually going to go home and feed with their tax dollars the very same machine they were protesting.
I made the decision that day that I was not going to give that $175,000 to the IRS.
It turned out to be the largest single instance of war-tax resistance in history.
There’s never been a larger single nonpayment of taxes in protest of a war.
Defying the IRS
is a scary prospect, so I took my time.
I did my research.
I went to the national War Resisters League, and I talked to people who had done war-tax resistance.
I did everything I could to educate myself and keep the people I work with safe, because they were not signing up for the same choice.
I took myself off all the governing boards I was on, including the one for my own organization, because my presence on the board could hurt it.
I took myself off salary at my own organization.
I did whatever I could to protect the people I work with.
And then I filed my taxes.
Along with my nonpayment I wrote a letter that said I was not
refusing to pay my taxes — I was redirecting them.
I’m not against paying taxes.
I believe in what we can do when we pool our money together for the collective good.
But the same is true for the collective bad, because our taxes were being spent not only toward war in Iraq but toward war on this planet.
With penalties, interest, and fees, I now owe more than four
hundred thousand dollars.
I cannot own anything, or the IRS will take it.
I face jail every single day.
Although they’re not technically allowed to throw people in prison for not paying their taxes, because we don’t have debtors’ prisons anymore, they could take me to court and claim I’m evading my taxes, which I’m not.
I’m consciously redirecting my money to causes I believe in.
The IRS
hasn’t gone so far as to file formal charges, but they have taken me to tax court twice now to try to scare me into submission.
They don’t seem to realize that trying to scare me into submission doesn’t work.
The MOON:
How come? It works on just about everyone else.
Hill:
[Laughs.]
You know, my father came out to California while I was
doing my tree-sit and gave a press conference.
He said, “If Maxxam Corporation thinks they can outwait my daughter, they don’t know my daughter very well.”
If you try to threaten or scare me, it only makes me more
determined.
If Maxxam Corporation had left me alone, it’s quite possible I might have given up before they did.
I’d like to think I wouldn’t have, but I do know that their harassing me and degrading me in the press — all the things they did to try to make me come down — only deepened my commitment.
The same is true with the IRS.
I didn’t decide to become a tax resister lightly.
I knew going into this that it would alter the rest of my life; that I would have to be creative in providing for my own needs.
I knew that I was risking prison.
So the threats from the IRS didn’t take me by surprise.
They only strengthened my resolve.
The MOON:
Do you have attorneys who represent you when you have to go to tax
court?
Hill:
I did at the beginning.
I wanted to make sure I’d done everything
correctly, so that it was clear that I am not evading my taxes but redirecting them.
I wanted to demonstrate that I was making this choice with the utmost integrity.
But I don’t have the money to keep paying for lawyers.
If they were to drag me back into court now, I’d probably go without one, because I understand my legal rights as well as the risks of representing myself.
Trump’s tariffs, in addition to being economically foolhardy and otherwise ridiculous, are also something of a conundrum for war tax resisters.
It is difficult to discover how much of one’s purchases are going towards these taxes that are largely hidden from the end-consumer.
At NWTRCC’s blog, Lincoln Rice begins an investigation into the current state of tariffs.
Last month the statute of limitations erased another year of my taxes.
For the tax year, my 1040 form showed that I owed $1,203 in federal taxes.
I didn’t pay, of course, and the IRS has been nagging me about that ever since.
But now it’s too late for them, as ten years have expired as they failed to collect.
I celebrated by sending a check for $1,203 to our local food bank program.
(Coincidentally, on the same day I sent the check, I got my $1,200 stimulus check from the U.S. Treasury.
I’m not sure how to interpret that, cosmically-like, except that it seemed to rhyme like poetry.)
Governments spend a lot of time and energy—and enlist a host of political scientists and pundits and other such clergy—to try to convince their subjects that paying taxes is not only mandatory, but that it’s honorable, dignified, and even charitable, while failure to pay taxes is underhanded, shady, and selfish.
Governments and other critics of tax resistance are quick to deploy this already-available propaganda lexicon in their counterattacks. They criticize tax resisters as freeloaders who enjoy the benefits of organized society without cooperating in the taxes necessary to fund them—as self-interested, anti-social tax evaders.
One way resisters have countered this attack is by staging giveaways of their resisted taxes. This makes it clear that the resisters do not have merely selfish motives for resisting, and also demonstrates that the money is being spent for the benefit of society (to a greater extent than if the money had been filtered through the government first).
This sort of tax redirection also can forge or strengthen ties between the resisters and the recipients, and can make more people aware of tax resistance as an option.
War tax resisters
This tactic is put to particularly good use by the contemporary war tax resistance movement. Here are some examples:
When Julia “Butterfly” Hill refused to pay more than $150,000 in taxes to the U.S. government in , she made a point of saying “I ‘redirect’ my taxes rather than ‘resisting’ my taxes”:
I actually take the money that the IRS says goes to them and I give it to the places where our taxes should be going. And in my letter to the IRS I said: “I’m not refusing to pay my taxes. I’m actually paying them but I’m paying them where they belong because you refuse to do so.” They are not directing our money where it should be going, they are being horrific stewards of that money.
NWTRCC organized what it called the “War Tax Boycott” in . It encouraged war tax resisters across the country to coordinate by redirecting their refused taxes to either of two groups: one that provided healthcare in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and one that helped Iraq War refugees. The campaign kept track of how much money had been redirected over the course of the boycott, and then held a press conference to give oversized checks adding up to about $325,000 to spokespeople for these campaigns.
The People’s Life Fund is associated with the group Northern California War Tax Resistance, and holds redirected taxes from resisters. If the IRS successfully seizes money from a resister, that resister can reclaim his or her deposits to the Fund. Otherwise, the money remains there and earns interest and dividends. Every year the group pools these returns on investment and gives them away to local charitable organizations in a granting ceremony. Usually these grants are modest—$500 or $1,000 each—but they give them to a dozen or more groups, which makes their granting ceremonies a good way for local charities to network with each other and helps the word about war tax resistance spread in the local activist community. This same model, or one similar to it, is followed by a number of regional redirection funds associated with war tax resistance groups in the United States.
A war tax resistance group in Iowa used the proceeds from its redirection fund to create a scholarship for college students who had been banned from applying for government financial aid because of their refusal to register for the draft. Another, in Pennsylvania, made an interest-free loan to a legal defense group that was supporting a group of draft resisters who were on trial. These actions helped to forge or sustain ties between the war tax resistance movement and anti-conscription activists and gave war tax resistance a higher profile in the larger anti-war movement.
One family figured out a way to get extra mileage out of their redirection: In they redirected their refused federal taxes to a charitable program called “Childreach.” That year, the U.S. Agency for International Development, a federal government agency, had promised to match private donations to Childreach two-to-one from its budget, so the family’s $211.69 in redirected taxes had the effect of pulling an additional $423.38 from the U.S. government for a good cause.
war tax resister Bill Ramsey redirects $1,000 to charity in a granting ceremony
In , war tax resister Irving Hogan stood outside the Federal Building in San Francisco and redirected his federal income tax dollars one at a time by handing them out to passers by. “I want this money to be used for the delight, not the destruction, of men,” he said. “Here: go buy yourself a beer.”
John and Pat Schwiebert did something similar: They redirected their taxes by handing out five-dollar bills to people standing in line at the unemployment office. Along with the bills, they handed out letters in which they explained their redirection action. To amplify the public relations impact, they notified the media of their plans ahead of time. “Their actions garnered them an interview on NPR,” according to one report, “and they received letters and cards from around the world.”
In a group of war tax resisters in New York redirected their war taxes as nickels that they handed out to people waiting at the bus stops on lines where fare hikes were being proposed, saying “this is where our tax dollars should be going.”
Arthur Evans felt that if redirecting your war taxes to charity was a good idea, redirecting twice your war taxes to charity must be twice as good. In he wrote to the IRS to tell them “I am sending double the amount I am not paying for war to Quaker House at the United Nations for transmission to the United Nations Organization for its technical assistance program.”
In the early 1970s, farmers who were resisting the expansion of a military base onto their land in Larzac, France, found common cause with war tax resisters. Thousands of war tax resisters there redirected their war taxes to help fund the Larzac struggle.
And here’s something kind of similar that doesn’t fit into any of my other categories, so I’ll toss it in here: When the IRS seized back taxes from war tax resister Mary Regan’s retirement account in , she threw a fund-raising party to try to raise an equivalent amount of money—but not in order to reimburse her, but to give away to charities like “the Boston Women’s Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Friends Service Committee, a homeless shelter for youth, and the peace movement in Israel.”
British women’s suffrage movement
The Women’s Tax Resistance League largely suspended its campaign during World War Ⅰ, but one woman, signing her letter “A Persistent Tax Resister” wrote to the editor of a suffragist paper to suggest that women should redirect their taxes from the government to a privately-run war relief charity “and should send her donation as ‘Taxes withheld from the Government by a voteless woman.’ ” Suffrage activist Charlotte Despard reported that “she had offered to give voluntarily the amount demanded of her by Revenue authorities to any war charity, but her offer had not been accepted.”
Social Security foe
In , Howard Pennington, unwilling to pay an $81 social security tax “for waste by socialistic dreamers,” instead sent that money directly to George Robinett. Robinett was a 72-year-old retiree whose social security had been abruptly cut off for three months, costing him $210, because during one month he had earned 62 cents above the $50 maximum monthly earnings for a social security recipient.
