How you can resist funding the government → getting under the income tax line → other advantages to this method

How you can resist funding the government → getting under the income tax line → other advantages to this method

  1. Introduction
  2. Is this method right for you?
  3. How The DON Method works
  4. Path 1: Get your income out of the “taxable income” category
  5. Path 2: Use credits to eliminate your tax liability
  6. Do the math!
  7. Make the adjustment!
  8. Conclusion and Example

Introduction

This guide shows you how to stop paying federal income tax in the United States, legally and by-the-book, by keeping your taxable income low and by qualifying for certain credits. I call this “The DON Method” (short for “Don’t Owe Nothin’ ”).

This guide is for people who are considering tax resistance but aren’t sure how to go about it. It may also be useful to people who simply want to pay less federal income tax, whatever their motives.

IMPORTANT: This guide was last updated in and is based on my understanding of tax law at that time. Tax law changes from year to year (and Congress sometimes changes it retroactively), and so my understanding may not be up-to-date. I am not an attorney or a tax expert. I’m sharing what I know, or what I think I know, and you’d be wise to get a second opinion on anything you read here.

This document is provided “as is” and there is no warranty of any kind, either express or implied. This document is intended to provide general information and is not intended to be applied to any particular facts nor to serve as legal advice. The author is not responsible for any errors or omissions or for any consequences of any reliance on this document.

Why I wrote this

In I decided to stop paying federal income tax because I did not want to fund the government’s activities. I decided to do this by lowering my taxable income and by taking credits that reduced my income tax burden to zero — what I’m calling “The DON Method.”

I was surprised to learn that I could earn quite a bit of income, and live very comfortably, without paying federal income tax and without having to battle the IRS. I could play by their rules and still pay nothing.

Is This Method Right for You?

People resist taxes in many ways. The method you choose depends on your situation and on what you hope to accomplish. I cover only The DON Method in this guide.

Questions You Should Ask

Before you decide how to resist taxes, think about your situation, your motives, and your goals. For instance:

“Do I want to stop paying all federal income taxes, or just taxes that pay for things I disapprove of?”
Some people don’t object to being taxed, they just object to how the government spends some of that money. Some “war tax resisters,” for instance, don’t oppose taxes on principle, but do object to the gigantic military budget. Some of them protest by resisting only a percentage of their taxes, equivalent to the percent that goes to military spending. Others avoid paying taxes altogether, but then voluntarily pay a portion of what they would have paid in taxes for more useful things that they feel the government underfunds. The DON Method is more appropriate for you if you want to stop paying any federal income tax at all.

However, the DON Method only eliminates your federal income tax burden. You may still pay other taxes — for instance the payroll (FICA) tax. To avoid those taxes also, you must either choose another method or supplement this method.
“Would I be comfortable living on less income?”
If so, how much less? Many people can avoid paying federal income tax without living on much less. In , about 40% of income tax filers in the United States paid absolutely no federal income tax throughout the year. It’s not rare. But if you’re used to earning and spending a lot of money, or if you have big debts or other obligations, the DON Method might not work for you. Read on, though, because you may be surprised at how much you can earn and still pay no federal income tax.
“Am I willing to break the law?”
If not, don’t worry — DON is legal. But if you are willing to break the law, there are other tax resistance options you might find appealing. For instance, you could supplement The DON Method by earning income in the romantically-named “underground economy.” Or you could hide money in sneaky trusts and offshore accounts. Or you could file returns that falsely state your income and claim deductions and credits that you don’t actually qualify for. The sky’s the limit. Of course, you run the risk of getting caught and so forth.
“Do I want to fight for currently unrecognized interpretations of tax law?”
and
“Am I willing to risk the wrath of the IRS & courts?”
Some people use tax avoidance methods that aren’t black-and-white illegal, but are certainly frowned on by the authorities. For instance, some people claim that they can’t pay taxes because they are obeying a higher law like that described in the Nuremberg Principles. Others claim the income tax isn’t a legal obligation because no law authorizing it was correctly passed, or because such a law would be unconstitutional. The IRS and the courts are not sympathetic to such arguments, but they occasionally meet with limited success. The advantage of methods like these is that you earn as much income as you like, you don’t have to fuss about deductions and credits, and you still don’t pay any taxes. The disadvantage is that the government may eventually crush you like a grape.

The DON Method is not like those methods. The DON Method plays by the IRS’s own rules as it defines them.
“Is it important that my tax resistance be a protest — a confrontation with the government?”
Because The DON Method is legal and by-the-book, some people feel it does not adequately express their opposition to the government. If your blood pressure rises every time someone asks for your Social Security Number, you’ll probably resent the paperwork and the attention to legal niceties that are required to get the most out of The DON Method. (But it’s really not all that bad.)

You can certainly combine The DON Method with another form of protest that is more confrontational. But if you don’t think the government has any right to make you choose between carefully regulating your income and paying taxes on it — or to force you to make a yearly confession of your income and expenditures in the first place — this might make you want to resist taxation in a more in-your-face manner.

How The DON Method Works

The DON Method takes two paths:

The federal income tax doesn’t tax all of your income, just your “taxable income.” Path #1 is to remove as much of your income as possible from the “taxable income” category.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll have some “taxable income” and some amount of tax owed on it. But you can offset this tax, or even reverse it into a “refund,” by using various credits. Path #2 is to qualify for these credits.

You use those paths to figure out how much money you can earn and spend without owing income tax. Then you look at your lifestyle and your goals and adjust them if necessary so that you can live within your means at that income level.

The remainder of this guide covers this in greater detail. By reading this guide you will be able to investigate for yourself if The DON Method will work for you.

Path 1: Get Your Income Out of the “Taxable Income” Category

When you fill out a 1040 form, your “income” cascades through several levels, changing a little each time: from income to “total income,” then to “adjusted gross income,” and finally to “taxable income.” Each stage gives you the opportunity to prevent some of your income from being taxed.

From income to “total income”

Income is just whatever money you brought in during the year. But “income” according to the IRS is not so simple.

Some income is invisible to the tax collector. For example, if you had money deducted from your paycheck to go into a 401k retirement account or a Health Savings Account, the IRS doesn’t include that money in your income.

There are other ways to shield your money from taxes. For example, at one job, I had money withheld from my paycheck to buy my transit passes, and that money also did not register as part of my “total income.”

Keep your eye out for opportunities like this. Ask your employer what pre-tax contributions you can make. Consider switching to a variety of health insurance that qualifies for Health Savings Accounts, and then shelter some of your income by saving it to pay health costs.

Your “total income” also includes any “capital gains” you made during the year — for instance if you sold stock or property at a profit. You can also subtract some capital losses when you calculate your “total income”.

If you run your own small business or do gig-economy work, this profit or loss is also part of your “total income.” Some tax resisters find that having such a business helps them to regulate income — in years when income gets too high, they invest more money in their business and take a business loss or reduce their business profit; in years when income is low, they put more effort into making their business profitable. (You can’t run your business at a loss every year, though, or the IRS will decide that what you’ve got isn’t a business so much as a hobby, and your deduction may go away, retroactively.)

Among the other things that are part of your “total income” are interest, dividends, and unemployment compensation.

This is just a brief introduction to some of the ways your “total income” is calculated. I haven’t gone into it in much detail because I’m really not qualified to go into specifics about things like business expenses, and such a discussion would be too long for this guide.

From “total income” to “adjusted gross income”

“Adjusted” means “lowered” because all of the adjustments are deductions (so use as many as you can). You use your “adjusted gross income” to calculate some of the credits that I cover in “Path 2” below — and in general, the lower your adjusted gross income is, the better.

One of the best of these deductions is for a tax-deferred Individual Retirement Account (IRA) — not only because you can deduct the money you put in (typically, up to $6,000) from your “total income,” but because when you put money into a retirement account you can qualify for a generous credit (which I’ll cover in the “Path 2” section below). Be aware, though, that there are forms of IRA, such as the “Roth IRA,” that aren’t tax-deferred and that won’t lower your adjusted gross income. Ask about the tax ramifications before you invest.

If you run your own business or are otherwise self-employed, you may be able to take deductions here on things like your health insurance costs (depending on the state of the tax law, you may be able to take this as a simple business expense, or as a separate tax line item), and part of the cost of your payroll taxes (FICA).

Tax legislation passed in allows filers to take a deduction of up to $1,000 for donations they make to certain types of charities.

Other deductions are available for interest paid on student loans and for educational supplies bought by teachers. These aren’t the only deductions, and I haven’t covered any of them in much depth or detail. It’s just an overview to give you a feel for what is available.

From “adjusted gross income” to “taxable income”

There is one remaining deduction: either the itemized deduction or the standard deduction. Once you subtract this, you are left with your “taxable income.”

By itemizing, you can take deductions for things like large charitable donations, medical expenses, state taxes, and such. But for most people, the standard deduction is higher than their itemized deductions would be, so they’re better off taking the standard deduction instead.

Once you’ve made this deduction, you have your “taxable income” and you can look in the tax table to find out how much you’re supposed to pay. But don’t get out the checkbook yet because you’re only half-done.

Wait a minute — what about the “alternative minimum tax?”

In order to keep well-off people from taking a lot of deductions and not paying any taxes (in other words, to make sure that you can’t make too much money while doing The DON Method), the “alternative minimum tax” was invented.

If your “adjusted gross income” is above $68,500, you may have to worry about this. However, if it is that high, you probably won’t slip under the tax line anyway, so I’m not going to cover this in any more detail here. For most everybody using The DON Method, the “alternative minimum tax” won’t be an issue.

Path 2: Use Credits to Eliminate Your Tax Liability

Many tax credits exist. Credits are not deductions that you subtract from your income. Instead you subtract them directly from the tax you would otherwise owe. For example, if the tax table says you owe $750, but you qualify for a $500 credit — you subtract that credit directly from the tax: $750 − $500 = $250.

One credit is for your education expenses. Another is for any income tax you’ve paid to a foreign government. Another is for your child care or dependent care expenses. You also get a per-child “Child Tax Credit,” and can also take a credit for any adult dependents you have.

A new credit introduced in gives you one dollar in credit for every dollar you contribute to certain non-profit organizations that provide private school scholarships, up to a maximum of $1,700.

My favorite credit is the retirement savings contributions credit. Remember how, when you put money into tax-deferred retirement account, you were able to deduct it from your income before you calculated your tax? Now it gets better. You can take a percentage of the amount you put into retirement accounts as a credit as well. If your “adjusted gross income” is low enough, that percentage is 50%, and your credit is as high as $1,000, which can cut your income tax to zero.

The “Earned Income Tax Credit” is a special creature. Most credits allow you, at best, to lower your tax to zero. The Earned Income Tax Credit allows you to lower your tax below zero so that the government actually owes you money. This sort of credit is called a “refundable credit.”

In order to qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit, your adjusted gross income must be very low (but you must have earned some income during the year). It’s easier to qualify if you have at least one dependent child. Millions of people qualify for the EITC, but it does typically require having a very low income — lower than is strictly necessary for The DON Method.

Do the Math!

There’s one way to find out if you can stop paying income tax by using the DON Method: There is no substitute for sitting down and doing the math, either by yourself or with the help of a professional.

The IRS has some helpful information at their web site. If you’re adventurous, you can create a spreadsheet to simulate your tax return, or you can get specialized tax software, or you can sit down with a tax specialist to run the numbers.

Try out different combinations of earnings, deductions, and credits to learn which would work best for you, and then figure out what your budget would be for the year if you follow through on that plan.

Make the Adjustment!

You’ll probably find that you don’t need to lower your income as much as you expected to stop paying federal income tax. But you may find that, because you’ll be spending or saving some of your income in particular ways in order to qualify for deductions and credits, there is less left over than you’re accustomed to.

At this point you can either throw up your hands and cry out “how can I live on that?” or you can settle down and actually figure out how.

Keep in mind that what looks low to you probably looks like a fortune to the majority of people on earth — and that it probably doesn’t look bad to many of your fellow Americans either. Remember that about 40% of people who file taxes in the U.S. live under the federal income tax line, most just because they don’t make a lot of money — not because they’ve made a special effort to refuse to pay.

What would it take for you to live on less? It’s probably just a matter of spending less and spending more wisely. Maybe you have to get out of debt first, or give up an expensive habit or hobby. Or it may be more extreme: you may have to move to a less expensive home and change your lifestyle more radically. Maybe you have to convince your spouse or children to go along with your crazy plan first. Whatever that next step is, it’s probably something you can start working on today.

Additional Benefits of a Reduced Income

You may find other benefits to paying closer attention to your spending and lowering your income. For instance, even if your total income goes down, your hourly wage rises — you make more per hour because you’re not giving a cut to the government. You may also find that you don’t have to work as much — you can take more time off to do things you want to do.

Your state income tax may also fall to nothing or nearly nothing. You may discover that by lowering your spending, you’re simplifying your life, decreasing your environmental footprint, and reducing the influence of superficial consumerism in your life. If you’re a follower of Jesus, you may fear less his warning that “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

The government taxes money not only as income, but also when you spend it (as excise and sales taxes), then again when some of it turns into profit where you spent it, and then again when that profit is used to pay more taxable wages or buy more taxed goods. If you spend less, you reduce the amount of money you push through this gantlet of taxation.

Conclusion

Now you know how to legally stop paying federal income tax, by lowering your taxable income and by qualifying for tax credits. And you know what to do next, in terms of research and lifestyle reassessment. To make things more vivid, I’ll conclude with a fictional example:

Example:

By September, Joe Taxmenot had earned $44,000 at his job. $8,800 in 401k contributions were deducted from his wages, along with $5,300 for his Health Savings Account, $3,300 for FICA tax, and $2,750 for federal income tax. Then he decided he didn’t want to pay federal income tax anymore and he began to try to get that $2,750 back by using The DON Method.

He quit his job and started a business doing freelance manuscript editing. He went through the paperwork and fees involved to get a business license, and he put some advertisements in magazines catering to authors and scriptwriters. By the time he finished with this, he’d spent $2,800 on his new business, but it started to pay off. He got his first of several freelance jobs in November, and his first check from a happy client ($2,000) arrived just before the end of the year.

Income ($44,000) − 401k deduction ($8,800) − Business Expense ($2,800) + Business Income ($2,000) = $34,400 TOTAL INCOME

Joe’s been lowering his expenses because he knew he might quit his job, but he’s still kind of strapped for cash. He needs to put $7,000 into an IRA to make the DON Method work for him. He does some research and discovers that the IRS will let him take credit for putting money into an IRA before he actually makes the contribution, as long as he puts the money in before the tax filing deadline next year. So he declares the $7,000 contribution on his tax return in February, but waits until he gets his refund check from the IRS before he actually makes the contribution.

Total Income ($34,400) − Health Savings Account contribution ($5,300) − IRA ($7,000) = $22,100 ADJUSTED GROSS INCOME

Joe takes an ordinary standard deduction because when he calculated his itemized deductions they didn’t amount to much.

Adjusted Gross Income ($22,100) − Standard deduction ($15,750) = $6,350 TAXABLE INCOME

Joe looks in the tax table for the tax on $6,350: $635. He then fills out the Retirement Savings Contributions Credit form. Because his Adjustable Gross Income is $23,750 or below, he can take 50% of the first $2,000 that he put into retirement accounts (like his 401k and IRA) as a tax credit. This is a $1,000 credit. Alas, the IRS won’t let you take more of this credit than you owe in taxes, so it only eliminates the tax rather than converting it into a refund. However, Joe is satisfied and claims victory.

Income tax on $6,350 ($635) − Retirement Savings Contributions Credit ($635) = $0 tax owed

Joe files his return and soon gets a check for $2,750 from the federal government (the $2,750 that had been withheld from his wages for income tax). He remembers to put that check into his IRA as part of his $7,000 contribution. Over the course of the year, he’s put $15,800 away for retirement, put $5,350 away to pay his medical bills (or for retirement, if he stays healthy), and spent $2,800 to get his business off the ground. Subtracting the FICA that was taken from his paycheck, that’s left him $18,800 to spend however he wants, plus a business, plus $15,800 invested to spend in his old age and $5,350 to cover his health insurance deductible if need be. Not too shabby!

Wages ($44,000) + Business earnings ($2,000) − retirement savings ($15,800) − Health Savings ($5,300) − Business expenses ($2,800) − FICA ($3,300) = $18,800 free-and-clear

Compare this to Joe’s cousin Jane, who earns only $21,000 a year (less than half of what Joe brought in). By the time her taxes have been withheld from her wages — including about $800 in federal income tax — she has less free-and-clear take-home income than Joe does. She can’t believe that Joe, who brought in much more money than she did last year, and has all that savings to show for it, doesn’t have to pay any federal income tax at all. She’s going to go through the numbers herself and see if maybe she could try the DON Method too.

So it took about a month. As soon as I quit my job, I started filling up my free time with all of those things I wanted to do but could never find the time for. Now my time feels like it’s filling up again and I wish there was more to spare.

I had to stop and come up with a schedule of events and look for what kind of gaps I could anticipate so I’d have time to travel and visit far-flung friends.

Yeah, I know, you wish you had problems like this. But still, I didn’t expect the cram to come so soon.

I’m treading water money-wise. The bank accounts haven’t started to fall yet, in part because I’ve been diving into frugality with a passion (I’m gonna save $1000 a year just by not starting my morning with an espresso drink like the goddamned yuppie I was), in part because some pals took mercy on me and coughed up some long-overdue money they owed me.

I’m spending more time in the kitchen, too. Boy I was spoiled. When I got hungry I used to think “where’ll I go for food” at least as often as I’d think “I wonder what’s in the fridge.” Now I’ve been making my meals again, trying out stuff I could have been doing all along but never seemed to have the energy or motivation to try.

Okay, so I haven’t been exercising more, spending a lot more time with friends and family, or practicing my Spanish diligently every day — but I have been keeping busy on interesting projects, and doing some volunteer work. I say the side effects have been at least somewhat ennobling.

“If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself; and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do not affect the truth of my statement. Notwithstanding much cant and hypocrisy, — chaff which I find it difficult to separate from my wheat, but for which I am as sorry as any man, — I will breathe freely and stretch myself in this respect, it is such a relief to both the moral and physical system; and I am resolved that I will not through humility become the devil’s attorney.”

―Henry David Thoreau

If you’re looking for ideas on how to live a fuller and less-stressful life on the income you have, or if you’re thinking of lowering your income either for tax resistance or just because you’d rather not spend so much of your life on-the-job, you’ll probably get some good food for thought from reading Escaping the Job Trap: Its a Matter of Time, NOT Money!

, in a fit of bloggish self-reference, I quoted an article in which I was quoted evaluating my own experiment in tax resistance. Now I compound the absurdity by re-referencing that post by way of a recap, and highlighting the following excerpt:

“I’ve got more free time, I’m living a life that’s more closely aligned with my principles, and I haven’t really had to give up a whole lot to lower my spending… Most of my savings have come from spending smarter. I’m eating as well or better than before, for instance, but I’m cooking at home rather than going out. I’ve switched to drip coffee at home from $3 mochas on my way to work.”

Those who know me personally, in “meat space” as the kids these days are said to say, know that I’ve got a pretentious epicure in me. I like the finer things on my table, have a horse in the race over how to make a martini properly, prefer my cheeses odoriffic, my oysters recently pried off their rocks, and so forth.

So how can I be satisfied — delighted even — with drip Folgers, a cheap bourbon I affectionately call “Old Sock,” and the like? Do I not suffer pangs of regret over my downscaled dietary budget?

Well, I have to admit that I do miss being able to walk into one of the Bay Area’s many exotic cheese emporia and walk off with some delightfully rotted curd or other, price no object.

But I’ve learned a few tricks in my day. When I was in the Boy Scouts, my troop believed in the lots-of-hiking & lots-of-camping school of Scouting. And so we learned the finer points of cooking rehydrated this-and-that over one-burner stoves in the dark. And although most of what we cooked was probably prepared fairly poorly, and wasn’t much more than freeze-dried sow’s ear in tinfoil to begin with — at the end of a long day of hiking with a pack on, sitting hungry on a rock under the pines eating out of a metal tin, it was some of the most delicious food I’d ever tasted.

So I learned that the most important ingredient in good cooking isn’t anything you add to the dish, but it’s the quality of the appetite you bring to the table.

Nowadays I’ve got advantages both in the appetite and in the prep. I’m in a better mood in general after starting on my “experiment” — I’m not harassed by a desk job, and I’m more comfortable in my life and my skin. And I’ve got more time to gather ingredients and prepare meals. And so I’m cooking a wider variety of dishes, learning new recipes, and picking up new skills. Where I used to see a cabinet full of miscellaneous odds and ends and think “there’s nothing to eat” I now look at it and think “I can work with this.” This, in turn, makes me welcome in my sweetie’s kitchen, where I have a whole new set of ingredients to play with and tastes to satisfy — and the joy of sharing the meal with my sweetie to add spice and make things that much more delicious.

As a result it seems like just about every day I’m closing my eyes and marvelling at some flavor or other. Not all of my experiments work, but what I don’t like I learn from. I don’t remember having as much fun with food back when I could afford to eat out a lot and bring home the stinkiest cheeses.

I recently finished a selection of Lyrical and Critical Essays by Albert Camus. The lyrical essays were way too lyrical for my tastes, and the critical ones were kind of a grab bag, much of which didn’t much grab my attention. But I did pick out a quote or two that I thought were worth holding on to.

Here’s one, for instance, that reminded me of Alasdair MacIntyre’s argument in After Virtue:

For the Greeks, values existed a priori and marked out the exact limits of every action. Modern philosophy places its values at the completion of action. They are not, but they become, and we shall know them completely only at the end of history. When they disappear, limits vanish as well, and since ideas differ as to what these values will be, since there is no struggle which, unhindered by these same values, does not extend indefinitely, we are now witnessing the Messianic forces confronting one another, their clamors merging in the shock of empires. Excess is a fire, according to Heraclitus. The fire is gaining ground; Nietzsche has been overtaken. It is no longer with hammer blows but with cannon shots that Europe philosophizes.

And here’s Camus on the joys of voluntary simplicity:

From time to time I meet people who live among riches I cannot even imagine. I still have to make an effort to realize that others can feel envious of such wealth. A long time ago, I once lived a whole week luxuriating in all the goods of this world: we slept without a roof, on a beach, I lived on fruit, and spent half my days alone in the water. I learned something then that has always made me react to the signs of comfort or of a well-appointed house with irony, impatience, and sometimes anger. Although I live without worrying about tomorrow now, and therefore count myself among the privileged, I don’t know how to own things. What I do have, which always comes to me without my asking for it, I can’t seem to keep. Less from extravagance, I think, than from another kind of parsimony: I cling like a miser to the freedom that disappears as soon as there is an excess of things.

And here’s a moment of Zen:

The most loathsome materialism is not the kind people usually think of, but the sort that attempts to let dead ideas pass for living realities, diverting into sterile myths the stubborn and lucid attention we give to what we have within us that must forever die.

An article I wrote about my tax resistance strategy and about the various benefits of a lower-income lifestyle now graces the pages of Shareable. It starts:

Nine years ago, I started living a more bountiful life by working less, earning less, and spending less.

I started by going to my employer’s human resources department to ask if I might take a significant pay cut. “How significant?” they asked. I said, “I’m not sure yet; maybe 75 percent?”

And concludes:

Take stock of your own vision of a rewarding, generous life, and look closely at which components of it are best served by earning money and which components are best served in more direct ways. Look also for ways in which your career may interfere with such a life. And look at how the government, by means of the tax system, is forcing you to expend your time and energy on priorities that contradict your values. Consider the possibility that the most bountiful and generous life you could be living may be one in which you are earning and spending less but living and sharing more.

The latest issue of Friends Journal has some articles on people who voluntarily live on a low income, for reasons that include tax resistance. Here are some excerpts:

Seres Kyrie writes:

For the past ten years my husband and I (and later, our two children) have subsisted on an income of less than $25,000 per year. How is this possible? We wouldn’t have it any other way.

We’ve chosen this social class; each of us has an advanced degree and could be making more as a full-time teacher. As is, we both juggle a handful of under- and over-the-table gigs. With a constant query of peace and justice in this lifetime, we’ve continually drawn parallels between misuse of power and an excess of money. 1 Timothy 6:10 states: “For the love of money is the root of all evils.” Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

Like many of our generation, we’ve been gravely affected by the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan and are concerned about the mis-distribution of tax money toward military spending. My husband was deployed with the Wisconsin National Guard in , and neither of us has had the same worldview since. Who has benefited from these military conflicts? Surely the Iraqi people have not benefited, nor have our American veterans. The American people too have suffered in the war’s wake. Only an elite few, with investments in weaponry, oil, and contracting have possibly improved their (worldly) situation.

According to the War Resisters League, the United States federal budget allotted 47 percent of our income taxes (about $1,334 billion) to past and present military spending. This is a gross misuse of funds; the money would be better spent on a peace division, education, or health care. Our conviction is strong that war taxes should be resisted. Instead of not paying our due taxes in an act of civil disobedience, however, we followed the simplest path of tax resistance: not making enough to have to pay any blood money at all.

And Chuck Hosking writes:

Over the years, many people have expressed to me an intention to simplify their lives. In nearly every case, those intentions appeared to be grounded in either a litany of “shoulds” or a reluctant resignation to making a sacrifice to assuage an untenable level of ethical dissonance. In my experience, neither impetus is sustainable.…

When I speak to groups about downward mobility, someone usually commends me for my willingness to sacrifice. Once again, I flinch. It’s no sacrifice to eschew something you never wanted in the first place. Unless one’s heart embraces a simpler lifestyle, it will not be sustainable. And unless we’re religious flagellants, our hearts won’t desire simplicity as long as we consider it a sacrifice

Jesus wants the best for his followers, not the inferior and soul-eroding “best” that our culture panders. He wants us to have a lean and robust faith, not the flabby faith and vacuous values of a superficial life. The path that Jesus modeled for us is not a hair shirt of misery. He embraced voluntary poverty because he knew it to be the best sustenance for a healthy soul. When something is best, it’s no sacrifice to embrace it, and no “shoulds” are needed to prompt us to the task.

So how am I doing? Not very well, I’m afraid. When my wife and I wed in and set out to center our lives on pursuing global equity (having observed that a large percentage of the world’s problems seem to stem ultimately from global wealth disparity), we knew our path would be considered societally insane by mainstream U.S. culture. But, embracing the concept of the priesthood of all believers, we felt the Christian path was the best for our souls. When Mary Ann died in , I accepted the challenge to live for both of us and attempted to venture deeper into the global equity realm. So I downsized further, and for the past five years have lived on $5 a day for all my expenses, giving away the rest of my income.

That looks pretty good from the perspective of an overdeveloped country like the United States, but in the global context it’s unimpressive. The World Bank says over half of the world’s people live on less than $2 per day. My $5 per day is princely. Moreover, my $25,000 per year income ranks me in the global elite 10 percent, according to the World Bank. And for the last 30 years, in order to avoid paying federal income tax (since about half of it funds militarism, regardless of who is in the White House), I’ve deposited money into retirement accounts amounting to enough to cover all my living expenses for over a century! (To avoid federal tax, I will postpone giving this money away — to projects that promote global equity — until I am 70-and-a-half in .) So despite my lofty aspirations, I seem to have a pecuniary penchant.