Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
religious groups and the religious perspective →
Restored Israel of Yahweh
For some time now there have been difficult-to-substantiate rumors that conscientious objectors to military taxation in Italy have been redirecting their taxes from the military to non-violent civil defense organizations without a “Peace Tax” law in place, but with the approval of judges who accepted their conscientious objection and their sincere efforts to pay their taxes in a way that does not violate their beliefs.
Now there are signs that a method of conscientious objection to military taxation may sneak in to the United States in a similar judicial back-door fashion.
Leo J. Volpe was a conscientious objector during World War Ⅱ who was convicted of draft evasion in .
He and three other Jehovah’s Witnesses unsuccessfully claimed that they, and all Jehovah’s Witnesses, were “Ministers of Religion” and therefore exempt from military service.
In , Volpe also stopped paying federal income tax.
He spent four months in prison in after being convicted of tax evasion.
Volpe later founded his own small religious group, now known as The Restored Israel of YAHWEH, in which he played the part of an incarnation of the prophet Jeremiah and spent a lot of time speculating about the End Times.
The mysterious number 666, for instance, is a cipher combining the names “United States America,” “Union Soviet Socialist Russia” and “Pope Paul.”
Conscientious objection and war tax resistance are among the tenets of Volpe’s group:
In a former member, rattled by news coverage of the Branch Davidian massacre in Waco, left the group and ratted them out to the IRS.
In , three members of the group were arrested and charged with “conspiring to defraud the United States for the purpose of impeding, impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful government functions of the IRS in ascertaining, computing, assessing, and collecting taxes; Tax Evasion; and Failure to File Tax Returns.”
The prosecution and IRS agreed that they would consider the idea.
On , the judge will consider whatever they come up with and will make his own decision.
It’s certainly possible, even likely, that the prosecution agreed to consider the judge’s proposal out of tactical politeness but that they will not actually be willing to support something so unusual.
On the other hand, they may see this as a win-win and let it slip through, especially since otherwise the defendants are likely to resist any remaining taxes and penalties with the same righteous vigor with which they resisted the taxation in the first place.
See for an update on this case.
On I wrote about the legal troubles of the tax-resisting Christian group The Restored Israel of YAHWEH and how there was a hint that the judge might try to resolve the case by allowing for a sort of back-door “peace tax fund.”
At least one of the defendants has decided to appeal.
Another is considering taking a vow of poverty so as to legally avoid future federal taxation (including the payroll tax).
The Philadelphia Inquirer has a good profile today of war tax resisters Kevin McKee, Joseph Donato, and Inge Donato.
The three — members of a small group called the Restored Israel of YAHWEH, which was founded by conscientious objector and war tax resister Leo Volpe — are among a very select group of war tax resisters who have actually done time for their convictions.
Two are still in prison.
The Donatos and McKees have no idea what they will do once the men finish their sentences.
The construction company has been dissolved; they don’t plan to restart it.
Then there’s the issue of the back taxes that still have to be paid.
They petitioned the IRS to pay the $300,000 into a victim/witness fund, instead of the general treasury, but they were denied.
The ruling is part of an appeal, but a higher court is unlikely to change it.
The only legal way to avoid paying taxes, [National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund executive director Alan] Gamble said, is to live below the poverty line.
McKee and Joseph Donato both said they would rather work and make a living, but they weren’t eager to pay taxes in the future.
“If they’re going to force me to pay, I won’t pay,” McKee said.
“If the consequences are coming back here, I will.”
In , three members of the tiny religious group “Restored Israel of Yahweh” were convicted and sentenced to prison for war tax resistance.
It is very rare for war tax resisters to be sentenced to prison, something that has only happened a handful of times.
, most of the convictions were overturned on appeal.
Convictions on two charges were reversed outright, while most of the others were ruled faulty on procedural grounds with prosecutors given the option to retry the defendants on those counts.
Only a single conspiracy conviction against the three was upheld.
The appeals court ruled that improper jury instructions invalidated the convictions.
This doesn’t offer much in the way of broader implications for the legal consequences of tax resistance, except that it may prove discouraging to the prosecutors.
As I noted , a judge overturned most of the convictions of the members of the Restored Israel of Yahweh who had been prosecuted for their war tax resistance and convicted in .
, they were resentenced on the remaining counts.
Attorney Peter Goldberger filed a report, which I excerpt below:
Joe Donato, Inge Donato and Kevin McKee were re-sentenced… following the appellate reversal of twelve counts of employment tax evasion with which they had been charged, and the appellate ruling that Inge was also innocent of the two counts of alleged failure to file personal income tax returns for which the jury convicted her (as she had no taxable income in those years).
There is more good news than bad.
Prior to resentencing, the government elected to dismiss the overturned counts, rather than conduct a retrial.
Unfortunately, because the Third Circuit appeals court affirmed all three defendants’ convictions for conspiracy to defraud the United States in relation to those same employment taxes, they all ended up convicted of a felony, which in turn supported reimposition of almost the same sentences as originally.
All received new prison sentences of the time they had already served following their original sentencings in — 6 months for Inge, 27 months for Joe, and 24 months for Kevin.
Although, incredibly, the prosecutor… asked that they be given longer prison terms, the judge gave that thought no consideration at all.
However, Judge Simandle did reimpose the same fines ($50,000 on Inge, $5,000 on Joe, and $4,000 on Kevin), all of which had already been paid by their religious society.
On the bright side, however — and most important — the judge modified the terms of all three defendants’ post-incarceration supervised release… which runs for 3 years from their respective release dates.
First, even though they are all now “convicted felons,” the judge ruled they can freely associate with one another, which would normally be prohibited.
Second, for the express purpose of “accommodating” their religious beliefs, the judge changed the standard requirement of “regular gainful employment” to allow Joe and Kevin to substitute charitable or community service for paid employment, so they can keep their income below the taxable level while under supervision and thus avoid a further conflict with the government.
(Inge is disabled from working, so that wasn’t a problem for her.)
Most gratifying, the judge clarified and modified the original special condition that they “fully cooperate with the IRS by filing all returns and paying current and delinquent taxes” to say instead that they must file all delinquent and current returns, to the extent required by law, going back 10 years — but he dropped the specification that they have to pay, so far as the court’s conditions are concerned.
That, he expressly left to the IRS and its ordinary administrative remedies.
This is what we had requested, and it removed our greatest worry.
The RIOY defendants have reconsidered where they draw the line, and are now willing to file, although still not to pay.
(The judge actually suggested they consider paying the non-military percentage of their taxes, which he speculated would be “more than 50%.”
I didn’t offer him a pie chart.)
The judge came very close to terminating Inge’s supervision entirely as of today, but in the end deferred that until the returns are filed.
All three defendants gave very moving statements to the judge prior to sentencing.… All in all, it was not a bad day; we got about 85–90% of what we were hoping for.
It is very unlikely there would be any further appeal.
A while back, I started looking for examples of ways tax resisters have organized mutual aid pacts to help diffuse the effects of government retaliation.
In the course of doing the research, though, I started collecting examples instead of a larger variety of collective projects resisters and their sympathizers have used in support of tax resistance.
Here are some of the examples I found:
Tax resister “insurance”
For instance, the Breton Association in
France, which organized to “form a common stock or fund… to indemnify the
subscribers for any expense they may be put to by their refusal to pay any
illegal contributions imposed upon the public.”
Another example was the Association
of Real Estate Taxpayers in
Chicago, which formed a cooperative legal fund to fight an offensive legal
battle against the tax.
American war tax resisters today can use the War Tax Resisters Penalty
Fund to defray penalties and interest seized by the
IRS.
The fund is raised as-needed by asking subscribers to contribute an equal
amount.
The oath of the Regulator tax resistance movement in the North Carolina
colony bound its signers to “bear an equal share in paying and making up
[the] loss” if “any of our company be put to expense or under any
confinement.”
Communes, collectives, and co-housing projects.
Some tax resisters have formed mutual support communities.
Whiteway Colony
was founded to try to live up to Tolstoyan ideals. The members of the
Bijou and
Agape communities live below a taxable
income so as to avoid paying taxes.
Supporting resisters as an employer
Some members of the Restored Israel of
Yahweh ran a construction business and agreed not to withhold federal
taxes from the wages of those employees who were fellow-members and who were
resisting taxes.
Vivien Kellems refused to withhold
taxes from her employees’ wages, saying: “They are all free American
citizens, thoroughly capable of performing all of the duties and
responsibilities of citizenship for themselves. And so, from this day, I am
not collecting nor paying their income taxes for them.”
Charles Kanjama recently urged Kenyans
to begin a tax resistance campaign, and said that to foil pay-as-you-earn
withholding, “participating employers and employees can enter into a
voluntary contract to convert monthly employment into quarterly or
half-yearly employment, thus effectively delaying tax liability for several
months.”
British nonconformists and women’s suffrage activists a century ago also
used this tactic. Auctions became rallies, with speeches and banners and
crowds that could number in the thousands. Supporters would pack the auction
house and refuse to leave their seats. On some occasions, violence broke
out. In some cases, auctioneers refused to handle goods that had been seized
for tax refusal.
Simply boycotting the auctions and refusing to buy seized goods is one way
communities offer support. It was part of the Quaker “Discipline” to refuse
to buy seized goods. When Valentine Byler’s horse was seized for non-payment
of the social security tax, “no Amish came to bid on the horses and, due to
a lack of bidders, they went for a good price, with the harnesses ‘thrown
in’ by the auctioneer.”
Pay cash so as not to leave a paper trail
Jessica Ramer and a
Claire
Files contributor brought this idea up. If you pay in cash
whenever you can, you give the recipient the opportunity to decide whether
or not to declare the income.
Cash tips are easy to under-report. I asked about that recently and was
told that most people pay with credit card/debit card and that the
government now uses a percentage method for tips. They look at the charged
meals, look at the number of total meals served, and then look at the
charged tips to figure out how much cash tips you received.
(100 meals served. 50 paid with card, tipping 15%. the government
calculates 15% from 100 meals even if cash tips are only 10%)
You can help out by tipping more when paying with cash or better yet, when
you pay with card, put 1% tip on it and put the rest out as cash. I even
leave a note for the server saying “this is your money, don’t
tell your boss, or the government. share it with the buss boy if that is
the policy.” This will help lower the average tip figures, but
still give the nice server what they have earned.
Use barter to avoid taxable/seizable transactions
Karl Hess found people willing to barter with him as he was dodging
IRS
seizures:
The other day I welded up a fish-smoking rack for a family in Washington,
D.C. It will earn me a year’s supply
of smoked fish. At about the same time, I helped a friend dig a foundation.
He’ll help me lay the concrete blocks for a workshop. Part of my pay for a
lecture at a New England college was the use of the school’s welding shop,
to make some metal sculptures. Three such sculptures have paid my
attorney’s fees in maintaining the tax resistance which is the reason
barter has become such an integral part of my life.
Manufacture and sell goods as alternatives to taxed products
Before the American Revolution, colonists who opposed Britain’s economic
control boycotted British products and began to produce homespun cloth,
alternatives to tea, and so forth. Gandhi’s independence campaign in India
made the wearing and production of homespun cloth central to the opposition,
and the Salt March was focused on the illegal production of untaxed,
non-foreign-monopoly salt.
An example today is home-brewed beer (which beats the excise tax on
alcoholic beverages).
Buycotts and boycotts that favor resisting businesses
One report from World War Ⅰ-era America noted that this was a technique used
by those who opposed the “Liberty Bonds”:
Efforts to prevent banks from handling the bonds have centered chiefly in
Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Missouri and
Oklahoma. The President of a Wisconsin bank has advised the Treasury that
his depositors, mostly Germans, or of German parentage, have withdrawn
many thousands of dollars from his bank because he aided the First Liberty
Loan.
These depositors, he added, had taken their accounts to two rival banks on
the understanding that those banks would not aid the second Liberty Loan.
The two banks, he reported, were not aiding the loan in any way.
Many banks have felt the pressure of German influence in this propaganda,
reports indicate. So pronounced was the movement that the States of
Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and Montana recently decided that they
would withdraw State funds from any bank which did not support the loan.
Social boycotts / shunning / noncooperation with tax collectors
Adolf Hausrath writes of Roman-occupied Judaea,
The people knew how to torment these officials of the Roman customs with
the petty cruelty which ordinary people develop with irreconcilable
persistency, whenever they believe this persistency to be due to their
moral indignation. In consequence of the theocratic scruples about the
duty of paying taxes, the tax-gatherers were declared to be unclean and
half Gentile.… among the Jews the words
“tax-gatherersand sinners,”“tax-gatherers and Gentiles,”“tax-gatherers and harlots,”
“tax-gatherers, murderers and robbers,” and similar insulting
combinations, were not only ready on the tongue and familiar, but were
accepted as theocratically identical in meaning. Thrust out from all
social intercourse, the tax-gatherers became more and more the pariahs of
the Jewish world. With holy horror did the Pharisee sweep past the lost
son of Israel who had sold himself to the Gentile for the vilest purpose,
and avoid the places which his sinful breath contaminated. Their
testimony was not accepted by Jewish tribunals. It was forbidden to sit
at table with them or eat of their bread. But their money-chests
especially were the summary of all uncleanness and the chief object of
pious horror, since their contents consisted of none but unlawful
receipts, and every single coin betokened a breach of some theocratic
regulation. To exchange their money or receive alms from them might
easily put a whole house in the condition of being unclean, and
necessitate many purifications. From these relations of the tax-officials
to the rest of the population, it can be readily understood that only the
refuse of Judaism undertook the office.
A social boycott of tax collectors was practiced in the years before
the American revolution. John Adams wrote:
At Philadelphia, the Heart-and-Hand Fire Company has expelled Mr. Hughes,
the stamp man for that colony. The freemen of Talbot county, in Maryland,
have erected a gibbet before the door of the court-house, twenty feet
high, and have hanged on it the effigies of a stamp informer in chains,
in terrorem till the Stamp Act shall be repealed; and
have resolved, unanimously, to hold in utter contempt and abhorrence
every stamp officer, and every favorer of the Stamp Act, and to
“have no communication with any such person, not even to speak to
him, unless to upbraid him with his baseness.” So triumphant is the
spirit of liberty everywhere.
Harassment of tax collectors was a signature action of the Whiskey
Rebellion. An early published resolution of the rebels read in part:
[W]hereas some men may be found amongst us, so far lost to every sense of
virtue and feeling for the distresses of this country, as to accept
offices for the collection of the duty:
Resolved, therefore, That in future we will consider such persons as
unworthy of our friendship; have no intercourse or dealings with them;
withdraw from them every assistance, and withhold all the comforts of life
which depend upon those duties that as men and fellow citizens we owe to
each other; and upon all occasions treat them with that contempt they
deserve; and that it be, and it is hereby most earnestly recommended to
the people at large to follow the same line of conduct towards them.
Tax collectors were tarred-and-feathered in America, both before and after
the revolution — the violent expulsion of tax collectors was a frequent
technique of the Whiskey rebels. Tax collectors have been the targets of
violent reprisal at many times and in many places. Because of this,
governments have often had to pay high salaries — or, frequently,
percentages of the take — to convince collectors to take on the job, which
only increases the resentment of those being collected from.
During the French Revolution and its aftermath, customs houses were burned
by mobs, tax rolls were destroyed, excise collectors were made to renounce
their jobs and then were run out of town — or in some cases killed.
The first Boer War was triggered when an armed group of Boers seized a
wagon that was being auctioned after it was distrained for resisted taxes.
The Whiskey rebels threatened to destroy the stills of those distillers
who complied in paying the excise tax.
Boycotts / social boycotts of non-resisters
If a tax resisting movement is large enough, it may be able to dissuade
people from paying taxes through boycotts or social boycotts of people
who are tax compliant. In Massachusetts, a group enforced a boycott of
taxed British imports by declaring that
…we further promise and engage, that we will not purchase any goods
of any persons who, preferring their own interest to that of the public,
shall import merchandise from Great Britain, until a general importation
takes place; or of any trader who purchases his goods of such importer:
and that we will hold no intercourse, or connection, or correspondence,
with any person who shall purchase goods of such importer, or retailer;
and we will hold him dishonored, an enemy to the liberties of his country,
and infamous, who shall break this agreement.
Maintain solidarity in the face of divide-and-conquer tactics
In
Germany, the government attempted to break a tax resistance movement by
offering to moderate its enforcement efforts against people who could show
that they had limited means. Karl Marx, who was promoting the resistance at
the time, saw this as a divide-and-conquer tactic:
The intention of the Ministry is only too clear. It wants to divide the
democrats; it wants to make the peasants and workers count themselves as
non-payers owing to lack of means to pay, in order to split them from
those not paying out of regard for legality, and thereby deprive the latter
of the support of the former. But this plan will fail; the people realizes
that it is responsible for solidarity in the refusal to pay taxes, just as
previously it was responsible for solidarity in payment of them.
Keep a record of the “sufferings” of resisters
The Quakers responded to persecution by keeping careful records of
individuals who had suffered thereby. In the archives of Quaker meetings,
you can find lists of people who had resisted militia taxes or tithes for
establishment church ministers, and what property was distrained by which
tax collector.
Sign petitions and public advertisements, engage in public protests
When the American Amish were trying to resist compulsory enrollment in the
social security system, 14,000 of them signed a petition to Congress.
During the Vietnam War, public advertisements were taken out by tax
resisters. In , for instance,
448 writers and editors put a full-page ad in the New
York Post declaring their intention to refuse to pay taxes for the
Vietnam War. The signatories included James Baldwin, Noam Chomsky, Philip K.
Dick, Betty Friedan, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Goodman, Paul Krassner, Norman
Mailer, Henry Miller, Tillie Olsen, Grace Paley, Thomas Pynchon, Susan
Sontag, Benjamin Spock, Gloria Steinem, Norman Thomas, Hunter S. Thompson,
Kurt Vonnegut, and Howard Zinn.
Protests, rallies, pickets, and the like have been a part of many
large-scale tax resistance campaigns.
Hold resisters’ property as an informal trustee
Some resisters who are vulnerable to property seizure find sympathetic
friends who are willing to hold the resisters’ property in their
names as a way of foiling seizure. Some war tax resister
alternative funds function
partially as “warehouse banks” that hold deposits of war tax resisters.
When a frustrated tax collector seized Ammon Hennacy’s protest signs
as he was picketing the
IRS
office — claiming that he planned to auction them off to pay Hennacy’s tax
debt — a friend of Hennacy helped him make new signs, each one marked “this
sign is the personal property of Joseph Craigmyle.”
Keep in contact with resisters and express support
After the press reported that Valentine Byler’s horse had been seized by the
IRS
as he was plowing his field, he got letters of support from all across
the country.
Form groups for mutual support & coordinated decision-making
Here there are too many examples to list.
Give financial aid to evicted rent strikers
When the Irish Land League launched its rent strike, it claimed that
“The funds will be poured out unstintedly to all who may endure
eviction in the course of the struggle. Our exiled brothers in America may
be relied on to contribute, if necessary, as many millions in money as they
have thousands, to starve out the landlords and bring the English tenantry
to its knees.”
Comfort and aid imprisoned resisters
The trick to supporting imprisoned tax resisters is to respect their real
needs and desires. When “someone interfered,” as Thoreau put
it, and paid his taxes in order to spring him from his night in jail, they
thought wrongly that they were doing Thoreau a favor, “for they
thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall.”
Juanita Nelson tells of the support she received in jail, where she had
been taken in her bathrobe from her home. Her supporters took the time to
learn how to support her in a way that was appropriate to her resistance:
Two fellow pacifists, one of them also a tax refuser, had been permitted
to come to me, since I would not go to them. I asked them what was
uppermost in my mind, what they’d do about getting properly dressed?
They said that this was something I would have to settle for myself. I
sensed that they thought it the better part of wisdom and modesty for me
to be dressed for my appearance in court. They were more concerned about
the public relations aspect of getting across the witness than I was. They
were also genuinely concerned, I knew, about making their actions truly
nonviolent, cognizant of the other person’s feelings, attitudes and
readiness. I was shaken enough to concede that I would like to have my
clothes at hand, in case I decided I would feel more at ease in them. The
older visitor, a dignified man with white hair, agreed to go for the
clothes in a taxicab.
They left, and on their heels came another visitor. She had been told that
in permitting her to come up, the officials were treating me with more
courtesy than I was according them. It was her assessment that the chief
deputy was hopeful that someone would be able to hammer some sense into me
and was willing to make concessions in that hope. But he had misjudged
the reliance he might place in her — she was not as critical as the
men. She did not know what she would do, but she thought she might wish to
have the strength and the audacity to carry through in the vein in which I
had started.
And she said. “You know, you look like a female Gandhi in that robe.
You look, well, dignified.”
That was my first encouragement. Everyone else had tended to make me feel
like a fool of the first water, had confirmed fears I already had on that
score. My respect and admiration for Gandhi, though not uncritical, was
deep. And if I in any way resembled him in appearance I was prepared to
try to emulate a more becoming state of mind. I reminded myself, too, that
I had on considerably more than the loincloth in which Gandhi was able to
greet kings and statesmen with ease. I need not be unduly perturbed about
wearing a robe into the presence of his honor.
Support the families of imprisoned resisters
When Gandhi was preparing the groundwork for a tax refusal campaign in
India, he noted that the Indian National Congress “should undertake
to feed the wives and families of those who may be imprisoned.”
Study the law, give legal support
When Elizabeth Cady Stanton was contemplating a tax resistance campaign for
women’s suffrage in the United States, she noted, “One thing is
certain, this course will necessarily involve a good deal of litigation,
and we shall need lawyers of our own sex whose intellects, sharpened by
their interests, shall be quick to discover the loopholes of retreat.”
Combine redirected taxes for dramatic charity giveaways
Larry Rosenwald wrote, of this technique, “To sit on the Grants and
Loans Committee of New England War Tax Resistance, and to dispense the
interest on refused taxes to a youth group in Chelsea, a video for cable
television on United States involvement in Central America, and a
people’s garden in Roxbury is to be reminded of the ideal community,
however blurred and fragmented, that war tax resistance is done on behalf
of, in the hope of helping to make it clear and whole.”
Can you think of any I’ve missed?
People will be less reluctant to take risks in a tax resistance campaign if
they know other people are willing to share those risks. One way of providing
this sort of reassurance is for resisters to join together in a mutual
insurance plan, so that if the government takes legal action against a
resister, or retaliates against them in some other way, they won’t have to
bear these consequences alone.
Today I’ll review some examples of how a variety of tax resistance campaigns
have created mutual insurance plans to protect resisters.
War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund
The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund
reimburses American war tax resisters who have penalties & interest
seized by the
IRS.
The fund is operated by a team of resisters and sympathizers, and has hundreds
of subscribers:
In a core group of 83 people across the
country decided we could easily share $463.14 in penalties and interest
incurred by a few military tax resisters who appealed to the war tax
resistance community for help. The more people we could recruit to shoulder
the penalties and interest of resisters, the lighter the burden for everyone.
With the modest help we could provide, conscientious resisters were able to
keep on keeping on.
The penalty fund had the added benefit of making us all tax resisters, not
just those who withheld all or a portion of their income taxes. The base list
of supporters has been as high as 800 people sharing the weight. In nearly
every appeal, at least 200 people respond, usually more. In all we’ve paid
out about $250,000 to help resisters stay in the struggle.
Resisters who have had money seized by the
IRS
send the fund documentation showing how much of the seizure was the result
of interest and penalties, and then the fund sends out an appeal to its
members to help reimburse the cost:
We divide the total amount for all resisters by the number of active names on
the membership list to arrive at a “share.” We then send out an appeal to
both actives and inactive members. Each contributor pays all of a share or
whatever amount she can afford. Some pay more than a share. If we collect 75
percent of the total we ask for, each resister gets 75 percent of the amount
they requested. We cannot promise that we will collect the total amount
requested; usually, however, we can reimburse between 50% and 80% of each
appeal.
I have personal experience with this mutual insurance plan. In
the
IRS
seized some bank accounts of mine to recover taxes I had refused to pay. This
included $813 in interest and penalties. I applied to the War Tax Resisters
Penalty Fund, which sent me a check for $649 from the amount the subscribers
to the fund pledged.
Irish Land League
When the
National
Land League launched a rent strike targeting English absentee landlords in
Ireland in , it made sure resisters knew
it would have their backs if the landlords tried to evict them. The leaders
of the League issued a rent strike manifesto from Kilmainham Jail that
declared:
If you only act together in the spirit to which within the last two years
you have countless times pledged your vows, they can no more evict a whole
nation than they can imprison them.
The funds of the National Land League will be poured out unstintingly for the
support of all who may endure eviction in the course of the struggle. Our
exiled brothers in America may be relied upon to contribute if necessary as
many millions of money as they have contributed thousands to starve out
landlordism and bring English tyranny to its knees.
One of the ways this played out was for evicted tenants to be temporarily
put up, along with their livestock if any, on the property of unevicted
tenants and sympathetic landowners, in what came to be called “Land League
Villages.” Each family was given a small monthly allowance from the Land
League.
Dublin Water Charge Strike
In , the resistance campaign against the
water charge in Dublin initiated a mutual insurance fund. One of the campaign
leaders recalls:
Obviously the council/government tactic was to try to individualise their
intimidation. By summonsing individuals to court maybe they could bypass the
mass participation that the protests against disconnections had seen. The
campaign immediately took a decision that when any individual was summonsed
to court, we would turn up and contest every case — and that we would turn up
in force. It was at this time that we made a decision which would prove
crucial to the success of the campaign. We decided to initiate a membership
of the campaign at £2 per household. This money would go into a warchest to
pay legal fees so that no individual would be left facing a legal bill. The
idea that the individuals being taken to court were representing all of us
was paramount. Within weeks 2,500 households had paid the £2 membership fee,
and within 12 months there were over 10,000 paid-up households making the
campaign without doubt the biggest to have existed in decades.
Breton Association
When Charles Ⅹ of France attempted to bypass the legislature and enact his own
taxes in , French liberals in the Breton
Association organized tax resistance and created a fund to defray the costs of
any tax resisters who were prosecuted. By the terms of the Association’s
manifesto:
We declare… [t]o subscribe individually for ten francs… This subscription
will form a common stock or fund for all Brittany, destined to indemnify the
subscribers for any expense they may be put to by their refusal to pay any
illegal contributions imposed upon the public…
And this is how the fund was to be administered:
[Elected procurators are to] receive the subscriptions, to afford indemnities
conformably to the [section quoted above], at the request of any subscriber
prosecuted for the payment of illegal contributions; to sue in his name…
for justice against the exactors by all possible means allowed by law…
War of the Regulation
The Regulator movement, a tax resistance rebellion in pre-American Revolution
North Carolina, had an oath that members took that committed each of them to
come to the aid of any others who might be arrested or whose property was
being seized for nonpayment:
I will, with the aid of other sufficient help, go and take, if in my power,
from said officer, and return to the party from whom taken; and in case any
one concerned should be imprisoned, or under arrest, or otherwise confined,
or if his estate, or any part thereof, by reason or means of joining this
company of Regulators, for refusing to comply with the extortionate demands
of unlawful tax gatherers, that I will immediately exert my best endeavors to
raise as many of said subscribers as will be force sufficient, and, if in my
power, I will set the said person at liberty…
The oath also created a mutual insurance pledge:
I do further promise and swear that if, in case this, our scheme, should be
broken or otherwise fail, and should any of our company be put to expense or
under any confinement, that I will bear an equal share in paying and making
up said loss to the sufferer.
Reformed Israel of Yahweh
Members of the small Christian group called the Reformed Israel of Yahweh
were, like its founder, conscientious objectors to military taxation. When
some of the members of the group were convicted on tax evasion charges, the
Reformed Israel of Yahweh organization paid their fines.
Pacific Yearly Meeting
A committee of the collection of American Quaker congregations known as the
Pacific Yearly Meeting administers something it calls “the Fund for Concerns:”
Its purpose is to assist members and attenders of Monthly Meetings to follow
individual leadings arising from peace, social order, or spiritual concerns.
… Up to $100 per fiscal year per person will be available to help with the
interest and penalty expenses of war tax resisters who are members or regular
attenders of a Monthly Meeting. The Monthly Meeting must indicate approval
and provide matching funds.
New York Yearly Meeting
During the Vietnam War, the New York Yearly Meeting advocated war tax
resistance and “promised financial help through special committees if [Quaker
resisters] changed jobs or refused to pay taxes in protest against the war.”
Papuan Courier
In 1919, Papua, which had been a territory occupied and run by the German
Empire until World War Ⅰ when Australia took over, began to agitate against
taxation without representation, and many people refused to pay.
The Papuan Courier, which was sympathetic to the
tax resisters,
…as evidence of its bona fides on the question, has decided, to form a fund
for the defence of any resident who may by victimised, persecuted, or
prosecuted for failure to pay the tax, and to that end we open the list with
a contribution of Five Guineas.
Tithe War
In , Irish Catholics rebelled
against paying government-mandated tithes to the Anglican church. In this
case, the Catholic church itself provided some insurance to the resisters.
The Anglican archbishop Richard Whately complained:
Every possible legal evasion has been resorted to to prevent the incumbent
from obtaining his due. A parish purse has been raised to meet law expenses
for this purpose, and the result has been that in most instances nothing
whatever, in others a very small proportion of the arrears, has been
recovered. … [One Anglican clergyman] instituted a tithe-suit which was
decided in his favour; but, instead of receiving the amount, he was met by an
appeal to the High Court of Delegates, and is informed that a continued
resistance to the utmost extremity of the law is to be supported by a parish
purse.
Addio-Pizzo Movement
In , a number of individuals and businesses
opposed to paying mafia protection money began to use a number of techniques
to interrupt the payments and to support those resisters whom the mafia was
threatening with reprisals. The mayor of Palermo, Diego Cammarata, pledged
€50,000 to assist merchants who had been victims of extortion.
Peacemakers
The group “Peacemakers,” which launched the modern American war tax resistance
movement , had a mutual
insurance component from the beginning:
Peacemakers at the Ohio cell… established the Peacemaker Sharing Fund, a
mutual aid plan designed to insure aid to dependents of imprisoned
Peacemakers and to help finance group projects. During the Vietnam war, the
sharing fund became the main vehicle for donations to meet the needs of war
resisters’ families.
Penalty Sharing Community
The Iowa Peace Network maintains a mailing list of persons who have made a
commitment to the Penalty Sharing Community
to share in the penalties assessed to individuals and families who have
chosen to resist war taxes or have participated in civil disobedience or
non-violent direct action. When a request for assistance is received, a
mailing is sent out which explains the resister’s situation and the amount of
money needed. For example, if the resister was assessed a $300.00 penalty,
each of the persons in the Community would pay an equal portion of the
$300.00. Thus if there were 200 people in the Community, each would pay
$1.50. The Iowa Peace Network will also add into the amount requested its
costs for printing and mailing. Such costs have proven to be minimal.
Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters
Members of the Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters redirected their federal taxes
into an “alternative fund” that served partially as an escrow account, and
partially as a way of redirecting some of the money to charitable
organizations. Part of the fund was reserved to help defray any legal costs
incurred by members in the course of their resistance.
“New Rush” Resisters
White miners at the “New Rush” in Kimberly, South Africa, voted in
to form “a Defence League and Protection
Association… not to assail the Government, but to protect individuals if
assailed unrighteously by the Government.” The pledge of the association said
in part:
I shall to the utmost of my power, with purse and person, protect any and
every officer and member of the League against coercion or consequences of
what nature soever arising out of the action necessitated by this pledge.
The pledge had a clause that made it binding when it would be signed by 400
men, whereupon:
The Government will be defied if they dare to touch a single claim for
non-payment of license. The diamond buyers will refuse to pay further license
and will be defended from harm.
Ruhrkampf
When the Ruhr region of Germany began resisting reparation payments to the
victorious nations of World War Ⅰ, France and Belgium occupied the region
to take the payments by force. Germans responded with a campaign of mass
nonviolent resistance, including tax resistance, and were backed up by their
own government.
One of the ways the German government supported the campaign was by paying
the strikers itself, to the tune of 715 million marks. It did this in part by
printing off more currency, which helped fuel the hyperinflation of
(itself a sort of resistance strategy that
made it difficult or impractical to account for reparations payments).
Louisiana Anti-Reconstructionists
During the “Reconstruction” period after the American Civil War, white
supremacists in Louisiana refused their allegiance to a federally-backed,
mixed-race state government, and demonstrated this through tax resistance.
Several attorneys issued a statement offering to “engage themselves, without
compensation, and as a matter of public service, to defend professionally all
[tax resisters].” A mass-meeting issued a tax resistance pledge, and resolved:
That a committee of five be appointed to draw up a plan by which the citizens
may co-operate, to employ counsel and mutually assist each other in their
refusal to pay taxes.
Satyagraha in South Africa
Gopal Krishna Gokhale, an officer in the Indian National Congress fighting
for the independence of India, pledged £2,000 a month to support Indian
satyagrahis in South Africa who were engaged in tax resistance and other
tactics under Gandhi’s direction.
Occasionally, tax resisters will join forces to form cooperative housing or business relationships that help to facilitate their resistance.
This is most often found among war tax resisters, for whom resistance is an ongoing commitment rather than a protest or rebellion against a particular government or policy.
Today I’ll summarize some examples of this that I have encountered in my research.
The Bijou community of Colorado Springs, Colorado is a living example of nonviolent community resistance in the “belly of the beast” of right-wing military and Christian extremism.
The members of this community live below a taxable income level so that they don’t pay for war.
In addition to ongoing bannering and civil disobedience at some of the 5 major military institutions in the area, the Bijou community runs services for the mentally-ill, homeless, working poor, incarcerated, and the general community including: a soup kitchen, food banks, a land trust, several homes for transitional and homeless folks, a free bicycle clinic, and a musical theater group.
The Agape Community
The Agape Community was founded in by a group of Catholics who wanted to live closer to the ideal of Christian community they found in the Bible.
Among the founders were tax resisters Brayton & Suzanne Shanley and Emmanuel Charles McCarthy.
They formed the community in such a way that it could support itself with members earning less than a taxable income, for example by being able to grow their own food.
The Shanleys have stayed with the two-house community since its founding, and it has had dozens of more transient residents through the years.
The community hosts speakers and workshops on nonviolence and related topics.
The Whiteway Colony
A group of Tolstoyans made a go of creating a colony based on their interpretation of Tolstoy’s Christian anarchism, which included tax resistance, and was eventually the home to forty people.
The land was operated by a committee headed by noted Tolstoyan (and Tolstoy translator) Aylmer Maude, and this committee held the land in trust, while allowing anyone to settle on and work the land, with the understanding that nobody would own any of it except by virtue of being engaged in occupying and working on it.
(The Whiteway community still exists, but has abandoned the more radical communal-ownership principles — today the land is communally owned, but the homes on it are bought and sold as private property.)
Possibility Alliance
The Possibility Alliance farm is a simple-living showcase guided by the following five principles: radical simplicity, service, social activism, inner work, and gratitude.
It hosts free skills-share classes and a group called the Superheroes who dress up like caped crusaders and bike out to do good deeds here and there.
The founders are war tax resisters who resist by maintaining a very low (sub-poverty line) income.
Joanne Sheehan
When the Hartford Courant profiled war tax resisters Anna Aschenbach and Joanne Sheehan, who have been resisting taxes since the Vietnam War, it noted Sheehan’s participation in cooperative projects as being helpful to her resistance:
Along with her partner, who’s also a tax resister, Sheehan raised two kids with a family income of about $24,000. Now that their children are grown, and can no longer be claimed as deductions, each earns less than about $8,000 a year in order to keep from paying taxes.
They’ve lived in collectives and communes much of the time, sharing living expenses with other resisters.
They practice “radical simplicity” by going “back to basics” — doing things like hanging clothes instead of using a dryer, not going to restaurants or buying pre-packaged foods.
“Land League Villages”
During the rent strike that the National Land League organized against English absentee landlords in Ireland, when landlords were successful in evicting tenants who refused to pay rent, the League would try to find them (and sometimes their livestock) a temporary home on the land of someone who was sympathetic with the resisters.
These might grow to hold several families and were sometimes called “Land League Villages.”
Amish Milk Cooperatives
The cooperatives used by Amish communities to process and package milk turned out to be useful also when the Amish began resisting the then-new social security taxes (they believed the social security program would require them to violate principles of their faith, and after many years of resistance, they won a legal exemption from the program).
The government tried to levy the checks that the cooperative wrote to pay those of its milk suppliers who were resisting the tax, but the responsible officials of the cooperative refused to sign the checks.
Peacemakers attempted to build a decentralized and self-disciplined movement which stressed local initiative and group coordination along the lines of the nonviolent revolutionary movement in India.
Emphasis was put on building intentional communities which practiced communal living.
“Groups or cells are the real basis of the movement,” Peacemakers announced, “for this is not an attempt to organize another pacifist membership organization, which one joins by signing a statement or paying a membership fee.”
Instead, Peacemakers emphasized a living program which included resistance to the draft and war taxes, personal transformation, and group participation in work for political and economic democracy.
Peacemakers at the Ohio cell organized a land trust to remove property from the market place…
Juanita and Wally Nelson, founding members of Peacemakers, and war tax resisters Betsy Corner, Randy Kehler, and Bob Bady were among the organizers of the Valley Community Land Trust.
The trust resisted IRS attempts to seize the Corner/Kehler home for back taxes, and helped to get their home returned to them.
Art Harvey’s farm
Dorothy Day visited Art Harvey’s farm in and described it this way:
He carries on a practical application of Karl Meyer’s tax refusal… by having teams of workers in orchards where they prune trees, harvest apples and later blueberries and work seven months of the year.
They work and live in a style which frees them from the payment of taxes for war.
Perhaps about a hundred are engaged in this way of life, which results usually in some settling in communities of the moshavim variety, each having some small acreage and a house built by themselves.
Considering the New England climate, no small achievement!
It certainly means an emphasis on the ascetic, on sacrifice.
Peter Maurin Farm
Peter Maurin Farm
is a Catholic Worker project — a “hospitality house on the land” near Manhattan that also grows food for the urban hospitality houses.
Many of those involved in the project were conscientious objectors, and appreciated being able to be part of a self-supporting project that required its volunteers to earn little or no taxable income and so enabled them to stay under the tax line.
Collective Impressions
War tax resister Ed Guinan created a business to help facilitate the tax resistance of its employees.
One news profile described it this way:
[I]n Washington, D.C., is another group of tax resisters who have formed a nonprofit cooperative print shop and who refuse to send their taxes to the IRS.
Ed Guinan is a priest and the coordinator of the shop, called Collective Impressions.
A year and a half ago Guinan and his colleagues decided to continue paying social security taxes but to send their withholding taxes to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.
“Every quarter, when taxes are due, we send a check to the Arms Control Agency,” Guinan says.
“They return it with a polite note saying that they cannot accept it, and we put it into a tax escrow account which cannot be used for normal business expenses.”
Collective Impressions owes only $500 per quarter to the IRS, but Guinan and his coworkers believe they are making an effective protest against U.S. military spending policies.
Restored Israel of Yahweh
Similarly, members of the small religious group called the Restored Israel of Yahweh formed a small construction business and helped those of its employees who were also members of the group to resist their taxes — eventually facing criminal tax evasion convictions for this.
In the modern world, many governments have introduced income tax withholding
or “pay as you earn.” In such a scheme, it can be difficult for people to
resist paying income tax, as the tax has already been paid on their behalf by
their employers. In such cases, resisters need their employers to be willing
to go out on a limb and resist alongside them.
Today I’ll give some examples of employers who helped their employees resist
income tax withholding.
Quaker Meetings
Quaker Meetings (congregations and collections of congregations) have sometimes
supported the war tax resistance of their employees by not withholding taxes
from their paychecks.
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Yearly
Meeting) has discerned and again affirms that conscientious objection to
paying taxes supporting military purposes is an appropriate and traditional
individual expression of the Friends Peace Testimony. As a result, Yearly
Meeting has a religious duty to refrain from taking action that violates an
employee’s expression of conscience in such historic Friends testimonies. …
At the written request of an employee pursuant to this Policy, Yearly Meeting
will withhold from an employee’s gross salary or wages, but refuse to forward
to IRS,
amounts up to but not in excess of the military portion of the federal income
tax otherwise due on that employee’s pay. Yearly Meeting, in notifying
IRS
that it has not remitted a portion of withheld taxes, will disclose and advise
IRS of
its action, as described [below]…
Yearly Meeting will communicate at least annually with an appropriate office
or official of the
IRS to
explain that, pursuant to this Policy and Yearly Meeting’s core religious
principles, it has withheld the full amount of taxes, as indicated by form(s)
W-4, from the salaries of certain employees opposed to the payment of taxes
for military purposes. Yearly Meeting will further explain that, at the
request of each such employee, it has not remitted the portion of the amount
withheld which the employee has conscientiously refused to pay, that it has
identified the amounts not remitted in its records, and that the amounts not
remitted, plus interest, will be paid over to the Treasury of the United
States on behalf of the employees at such time as there is assurance that the
taxes will not be used for military purposes.
The Meeting was taken to court in
for failing to remit $11,224 in taxes
from resisting employees. More recently, the Meeting has been pursuing legal
arguments in support of its employee Priscilla Adams, who has been resisting
war taxes for years with the help of the Meeting. The Meeting was unable to
convince a court to order the
IRS to
respect its conscientious scruples, and the agency ordered to Meeting to
garnishee Adams’s salary. The Meeting has continued to refuse.
The London Yearly Meeting for a while withheld a portion of the
pay-as-you-earn withholding of some of its employees, hoping to make this a
test case that might legalize conscientious objection to military taxation.
The courts rejected their arguments, and an appeal to the European Commission
of Human Rights also failed, and so the Meeting stopped trying to resist
military taxation and now gives war tax resistance only rhetorical support:
Since losing the appeal we have paid in full the income tax collected from
our employees. In recent months we have considered whether we can continue to
do this, but after very careful consideration have decided that for the time
being we must do so. The acceptance of the rule of law is part of our
witness, … for a just and peaceful world cannot come about without this.
However we do wish to make it clear that we object to the way in which the
PAYE [withholding]
system involves us in a process of collecting money, used in part to pay for
military activity and war preparations, which takes away from the individual
taxpayer the right to express their own conscientious objection. This
involvement is incompatible with our work for peace.
American Friends Service Committee
During the Vietnam War, the American Friends Service Committee refused to
withhold taxes from those of its employees who were refusing to pay taxes.
Milton Mayer said, of the Committee’s action:
Under withholding, most of the people who don’t want to buy Mylai have
already had it bought for them by April 15. … 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. … 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.
The AFSC continues to support tax-resisting employees, and has had mixed luck defending itself in court.
According to the NWTRCC pamphlet on Organizational War Tax Resistance:
Employers or other entities which refuse to withhold from the assets of a war
tax resister on religious grounds actually have a chance of justifying their
actions in court thanks to a case involving
the American Friends Service Committee
(AFSC) and the
IRS. A
federal district court ruled that the
AFSC and
its employees had the First Amendment right not to be required to participate
in the withholding system, since the
IRS has
other methods of satisfying its objectives, such as levies. The decision was
overturned by the Supreme Court, but solely on procedural grounds. This
position is possibly strengthened by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act
(RFRA), passed by Congress in .
The IRS
has more recently tried to send what are called “lock-in letters” to the
AFSC, demanding that they withhold taxes from their resisting employees at
the maximum rate permissible by law.
For a time (and this may still be the case), the AFSC policy was to obey
such withholding laws and orders, but to hold back a percentage of the
withheld taxes from the government, putting that percentage (a percentage they
deemed equal to the percentage of the federal budget spent on the military)
into an escrow account.
According to a Treasury Inspector General
for Tax Administration report, many employers ignore these lock-in letters.
This takes some gumption. The way the law works, if an employer doesn’t comply
with the lock-in letter, the employer can become liable for the taxes
that the employee isn’t paying.
Mennonite General Assembly
In 1989, the Mennonite Church General Assembly adopted a resolution to
“support the Mennonite General Board in establishing a policy that federal
income taxes not be withheld from the wages of any of its employees who make
this request because of conscientious objection to the use of their taxes for
military purposes.”
The General Board, however, balked on establishing such a policy after
determining “there was not enough support… to ask church boards to engage in
civil disobedience.”
Restored Israel of Yahweh
The small Jehovah’s Witnesses spin-off group called the Restored Israel of
Yahweh practices war tax resistance. To help facilitate this, two of them, who
ran a construction business, agreed not to withhold taxes from those of their
employees who were also members of that denomination.
Those two, along with the company’s bookkeeper, were taken to court and
convicted of tax evasion charges, making them, according to one of their
lawyers, “the first pacifist tax resisters to be prosecuted and
jailed — possibly ever — for felony conspiracy to defraud the
U.S. and attempted
tax evasion, the most serious criminal charges in the Internal Revenue Code.”
War Resisters League & War Resisters International
In , Ralph DiGia, who was working for the War
Resisters League, asked them to stop withholding federal taxes from his
paycheck. The League agreed, and some other employees followed DiGia’s lead.
It had taken a lot of work to get the League to adopt a policy of tax refusal.
At first, they had refused, with a member of the League’s executive committee
saying “the life of the organization is at stake.” War tax resisters
responded, saying: “If pacifist organizations, whose business is to create a
warless world, are not ready to risk something for war resistance
now, when will they be ready?” Another group, the Fellowship of
Reconciliation, also refused to challenge the
IRS, and
some of its employees resigned over the issue.
War Resisters’ International, which is based in London, decided in
to hold back a percentage of
its employees’s taxes (equivalent, in its view, to the military percentage
of the British national budget). The organization takes the position that
conscientious objection to military taxation is an unrecognized human right,
but a human right all the same, and they intend to assert it.
Collective Impressions
American war tax resister Ed Guinan for a time ran a print shop called
“Collective Impressions.” “Most of the workers in the collective were rooted
in a Catholic tradition of pacifism,” said Guinan, and so,
the company paid its
employees’ withholding not to the Internal Revenue Service but directly to the
U.S. Arms Control
and Disarmament Agency.
The Agency returned the money, saying it could not accept it under such
circumstances, whereupon Collective Impressions put the money into an escrow
account from which it hoped to eventually be able to pay the money in a way
that wouldn’t violate the pacifist beliefs of its employees, and from where
it was eventually seized by the government.
Straight Lines, Ltd.
Martin Philips, director of the Welsh jewelry business “Straight Lines”
stopped paying the 13.6% pay-as-you-earn withholding to the government for his
employees — sending the money instead to the Overseas Development
Administration as a protest against government military spending.
The government took Straight Lines to court, and eventually seized money from
the company to cover the unpaid taxes.
Vivien Kellems
Soon after income tax withholding was introduced in the United States,
ornery industrialist Vivien Kellems decided she was not interested in being
the tax collector for her employees’ at the Kellems Cable Grip Manufacturing
Company:
The most un-American phrase in our modern vocabulary is “take home pay.” What
do we mean, “take home pay”? When I hire a man to work for me we discuss
three things: the job to be done, the hours he shall work, and the wages he
shall receive. And on Friday when he received that pay envelope, we have both
fulfilled our contract for that week. There is no further obligation on
either side. The money in that envelope belongs to him. He has worked for it
and he has earned it. No one, not even the United States Government, has the
right to touch it. Who dares to lay profane hands upon that money, to rudely
filch from that free man the fruits of his labor, even before the money is in
his own hands. This is a monstrous invasion of the rights of a free people
and an outrageous perversion of the spirit of the Constitution. This is the
miserable system foisted upon the people of our country by New Deal zealots
and arrogant Communists who have wormed themselves into high places in
Washington. This system is deliberately designed to make involuntary tax
collectors of every employer and to impose involuntary tax servitude upon
every employee. We don’t need to go to Russia for slavery, we’ve got it right
here.
Paying taxes is a duty, a responsibility and a privilege of citizenship.
Without taxes we can have no government. However I do not exercise other
duties, responsibilities and privileges of citizenship for my employees. I do
not vote for them, I do not form political opinions for them, I do not select
a church for them, I do not pay real estate taxes for them. They are all free
American citizens, thoroughly capable of performing all of the duties and
responsibilities of citizenship for themselves. And so, from this day, I am
not collecting nor paying their income taxes for them.
To demonstrate that she wasn’t against her employees paying their taxes, but
only opposed to having to do it for them, she organized her employees once per
quarter and allowed them, on company time, to fill out their own tax returns
and to go down to the post office as a group to purchase money orders and file
their own taxes.
The government subjected Kellems to a public smear campaign (which included
intercepting and publicizing her love letters), and to legal action. The
government won the legal battle, fining Kellems $7,600, whereupon she resumed
withholding taxes from her employees’ paychecks.
George Fidenato
George Fidenato is Vivien Kellems reincarnated in today’s Italy.
he has been refusing to withhold
taxes from his six employees’ paychecks. “I do not want to be the tax
collector. I’m not a slave of the state, and wouldn’t want to work for it even
if you paid me!” As of this writing he is still pursuing legal appeals.
Indianapolis Baptist Temple
The Indianapolis Baptist Temple started refusing to pay federal taxes in
, when pastor Gregory Dixon “decided the
church would break all ties with the government and no longer act as its agent
in withholding taxes from its employees,” citing Constitutional freedom of
religion as his mandate for taking his church out from under Uncle Sam’s
thumb. For several years, nothing came of this defiance, but in
, the
IRS
started seeking back taxes, eventually filing liens against the church and
against Dixon. The church fought back in court, but lost a series of appeals,
finally getting turned down by the
U.S. Supreme Court
in , whereupon the government seized
and auctioned off church property and Dixon himself was fined.
“Texas housewives”
, a group of women the
press invariably referred to as the “Texas housewives” refused to withhold and
pay social security taxes on the wages of their household help. The women were
opposed to government-run social security, and to being enlisted as government
tax collectors. They claimed also to be supported in their stand by their
employees.
Money was eventually seized from their bank accounts to cover the taxes. They
also pursued court appeals to try to get the tax declared unconstitutional,
but in they lost their case and began paying
the taxes.
The women’s suffrage movement in the United Kingdom
The National Insurance Act of required all
workers to pay a portion of their paycheck into a fund for government-run
health and unemployment benefits.
Members of the women’s suffrage movement saw this as another tax enacted
without their consent, another example of “taxation without representation,”
and another opportunity to resist.
Some members of suffrage groups were employers, and some suffrage groups had
paid employees. In the Women
Writers’ Suffrage League met to ask whether they “should, as a society, resist
the new insurance tax and refuse to insure their secretary, with her full
consent to their so doing?”
Kate Harvey refused to pay 5 shillings, 10 pence of tax for her gardener — for
which she was sentenced to two months in prison.
The Women’s Freedom League refused to pay the tax on their employees — “we
refuse to acquiesce in any legislation which controls the resources of women
without the consent of women” — but the government seemed unwilling or unable
to do more than threaten the group.
A letter-to-the-editor in the Catholic Worker promoted NWTRCC:
Ithaca, NY
Dear Catholic Worker Friends,
I hope this letter finds you in good spirits.
In these times of heightened and outrageous war fervor, it seems vital that we continue to do what we can to further the cause of peace.
The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC) is currently conducting an outreach effort to promote the work that we do: serving as a clearinghouse for the conscientious war tax resistance movement in the US.
For those who are questioning their contribution to this government’s increasing militaristic emphasis, NWTRCC can extend a hand with a variety of resources and contacts.
The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee sees poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, economic exploitation, environmental destruction and the militarization of law enforcement as integrally linked with the militarism which we abhor.
Through the redirection of our tax dollars, National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee members contribute directly to the struggle for peace and justice for all.
For information, please contact us at NWTRCC, PO Box 6512, Ithaca, NY 14851.
In solidarity, David Meyers
Another article in that issue promoted the New York City People’s Life Fund for tax redirection:
NYC People’s Life Fund
As approaches, we are reminded of the crucial act of war tax resistance.
In , almost 50% of the US fiscal budget went to war tax and past military expenditures.
Today’s war tax resisters are people from all walks of life who have in common a deeply felt opposition to paying taxes in support of the military establishment.
The New York City People’s Life Fund (PLF) is the direct offspring of New York City War Tax Resistance.
Founded on , in direct response to escalating war spending and declining funds for social and economic problems, the fund redirects tax-resisted monies to assist people in need.
For more than two decades, the New York City People’s Life Fund has offered grants and loans to New York City-based groups such as Coalition for the Homeless, 4th Street Food Co-Op, John Heuss House, The Living Theater, Metropolitan Council on Housing, Theater for the New City, and Workers Defense League, Inc.
This spring, the New York City People’s Life Fund is proud to announce the upcoming publication of Why Just Survive? — Flourish! a New Yorker’s Guide to Jobs, Healthcare, Education, Alternate Living, and Leisure Time Activity.
Addressed particularly to New Yorkers, this useful sourcebook is designed to enrich the lives of its readers and promote change, leading toward an alternative and more communitarian approach to life.
For further information, please contact the New York City People’s Life Fund, or New York City War Tax Resistance, at 339 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10012.
The following front-page article appeared in the issue of The Catholic Worker:
War Resisters and Taxes
By Ruth Benn and Ed Hedemann
What better time to be a war tax resister than now?
The horrifying death and destruction in Afghanistan and Iraq, funded by US tax dollars at the shocking rate of $5–6 billion a month, demands the strongest protests.
Withholding money from the government will certainly get its attention, and the more people who do it publicly, the more war tax resistance will grow, bringing us back around to getting more of the government’s attention.
When Ed began his life of crime as a war tax resister during the Vietnam War, that was an equally critical time to resist.
Pictures of the war were on the news every night and hundreds of lives were lost — and reported to the public — on a daily basis.
We saw the body bags coming home and the Gold Star mothers protesting.
The draft was real, and for Ed, having refused induction into the military, the next sensible step was to refuse to pay for any of it.
As a student with not much in the way of income, a telephone had to be purchased so that war tax resistance could begin.
Telephone tax resistance among peace activists was well-known and thousands refused to pay.
In , the Johnson administration brought to Congress a bill to continue the excise tax at 10% (rather than phase it out as had been intended since the Korean War), prompting the famous quote from Wilbur Mills, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee: “it is Vietnam, and only the Vietnam operation, which makes this bill necessary.”
After the war in Indochina finally came to an end, many dropped out of the peace movement and stopped resisting war taxes, but others saw yet another equally important time to resist.
The Cold War was still in full swing.
The US and the Soviet Union were stockpiling bombs and challenging their best scientists to outdo each other with their destructive power and speed of delivery.
The threat of nuclear war was growing, and the whole ecosystem was endangered by the environmental destruction which is a side effect of building these horrific weapons.
At the time Ruth began resisting, President Jimmy Carter — who looks like a good guy by today’s standards — was bringing us draft registration and growing military budgets.
As before, the connection between knowing that you would refuse to be part of the military and knowing that your tax dollars pay for someone else to do it hit home.
Once again, it seemed like a good time to be a war tax resister.
With the Reagan era of , the military budget skyrocketed, and children in Latin America were living a nightmare as family members were killed in wars sponsored by the US.
We said to ourselves, “What better time to be a war tax resister?” Despite the “warm and fuzzy” legacy that Nancy Reagan wants to promote, US taxpayers are still stuck with huge debt from that era and the boondoggle of the Star Wars missile shield program.
George H.W. Bush brought us the first Gulf War and the focus on the Middle East reminded us that without US tax dollars, Israel could not support its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Then there was Kosovo, military aid to Colombia, and always the willing commitment by elected representatives to throw billions of US tax dollars at corporate contracts loaded with waste, mismanagement, and cost overruns.
All of this and, at the same time, a litany of needs around the world that could be solved with a serious commitment of money and human resources.
Who can look at the Sudan today and not be shamed — shamed — that the money and human energy devastating Iraq is not being used to help solve the crisis there instead?
During our combined 51 years of war tax resistance, we’ve openly refused somewhere around $97,000 in federal taxes.
That money has been rerouted to all kinds of non-governmental groups who try to ease the suffering caused by the military priorities of this country.
On one hand, our resistance adds up to one small part on a single cruise missile.
On the other hand, the government doesn’t like it, and they don’t want other people to get the idea that refusing to pay taxes is a way to demand change.
Why else would the IRS be the most feared agency in the federal system?
In addition, there is a personal satisfaction in giving to good causes, even if the amounts are not huge.
The risks and inconveniences of this resistance are real — ongoing collection efforts by the IRS made up mostly of piles of letters, levies that can lead to the loss of a job, and an occasional trip to court.
These days, the IRS puts most of its collection efforts against war tax resisters into sending letters demanding payment, and once in a while they’ll make bank account and salary levies.
But one group in New Jersey is headed to court for their refusal to pay.
The Restored Israel of Yahweh is a small religious community in southern New Jersey that has a long history of resistance to war taxes.
Their leader was arrested and jailed in for tax resistance, and the group has also supported military resisters over the years.
On , three members of the community were arrested by federal marshals and taken to US District Court in Camden, New Jersey.
They were charged with “conspiring to defraud the United States for the purpose of impeding, impairing, obstructing and defeating the lawful government functions of the IRS in ascertaining, computing, assessing, and collecting taxes; Tax Evasion; and failure to file Tax Returns.” The weight of these charges is unusual with war tax resistance, and the community seeks support in their efforts to resist government interference with their religious beliefs.
Quakers in Pennsylvania have also been in court recently.
One staff member, Priscilla Adams of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (PYM) is a longtime war tax resister, and the Meeting has tried to honor her resistance by not sending her withheld taxes to the IRS.
The money was placed in a bank account, available for the IRS to seize, but not paid over willingly.
The IRS sued last year, demanding that the Meeting hand over the money and asking a 50% penalty, all totaling about $60,000.
In , a judge ruled that PYM must pay the principle to the IRS, but not the penalty; the ruling indicated that the judge felt that the Religious Freedom Act had some validity and left the door open for PYM to find some other way to handle the withheld taxes that could stand up in court someday.
These more dramatic — though very rare — cases, while used by the IRS to keep up the fear, are also the ones that bring wider attention to war tax resistance.
Each time an article appears, more people call to ask how to resist, challenged by those who stand up for their convictions, despite the legal consequences.
The act of refusing to pay one’s income taxes for war is the simplest and easiest form of direct action against war: file your tax return (IRS form 1040), withhold some or all of the taxes due, and include a letter of explanation.
What would happen if every peace activist refused to send $1 owed to the IRS and enclosed a protest letter with their refusal?
Resisting a token amount is very low risk but forces the government to deal with the protest.
Since the election, calls and emails to the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee indicate a growing interest in tax resistance and in making it visible.
Many people say that they would resist if they felt they were part of a campaign where the numbers could more easily be tallied.
War tax resistance can be a lonely affair at times, and everyone wants to know, “How many war tax resisters are there?” How many of you receiving this paper resist, but no one knows?
It’s time we all stepped up our vocal refusal to pay for war.
There have been plenty of reasons to resist over the last fifty years, but there’s no better time than now to stop paying for war and for the ongoing military spending that allows the government to wage it.
If we don’t do it, the era of endless war will certainly become a reality.
For more information and resources call the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee at 800‒269‒7464.
