Miscellaneous tax resisters →
individual war tax resisters →
Scott Kennedy
Scott Kennedy, formerly a mayor and city councilman in Santa Cruz, California, and now working for the Resource Center for Nonviolence, is having his wages there seized by the IRS.
Complying with the levy, the Resource Center has paid a total of $1,548.32 including unpaid federal income taxes, interest and penalties demanded by the IRS for tax year .
Speaking on behalf of the Resource Center’s Steering Committee, Peter Klotz-Chamberlin commented, “The Resource Center for Nonviolence supports the choice of our employee Scott Kennedy to refuse paying for war waged by the United States government.
The Center supports acts of conscience seeking peace and justice by Scott Kennedy and all Americans.
Our responsibility to the ongoing work of the Resource Center, however, leads us to reluctantly comply with the IRS levy on Scott’s salary.”
Kennedy said, “The timing is auspicious during .
The House of Representatives has just recommended another $100 billion for our brutal, immoral, and unwinnable war in Iraq.
I won’t in good conscience voluntarily pay for such madness, because of its cost in US lives and squandered resources and because of the devastation and loss of life it is causing in Iraq.”
Lots of tax resistance in the news as approaches:
The “Democracy Now” radio show features Ruth Benn of NWTRCC and Pamela Schwartz of the National Priorities Project, talking about the cost of war and how to stop buying it.
(This segment starts at 28:45, if you download the audio, or here’s the transcript.)
Benn discusses the phone tax and its recent partial repeal, the history of war tax resistance and of her own resistance, and how the government typically responds to resisters (including an update on the imprisoned tax resisters from the Restored Israel of Yahweh group).
The National Priorities Project has released their estimate of how much of your tax bill feeds the war machine.
They use a different methodology from that used by the War Resisters League in their pie chart, so they come up with different numbers.
If you’re curious, read the fine print.
Kennedy, 59, a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, has not paid a full federal tax bill as his way to protest war and object to the billions of dollars spent by the U.S. government on bolstering defense.
“It’s a valid moral stance,” said Kennedy, a former Santa Cruz mayor.
“To me, it’s not just an extraordinary waste of resources, but withholding taxes is part of the effort to build a more humane world community.
We’re happy to pay taxes for a good purpose.”
If you haven’t seen it yet, treat yourself to this video of U.C. Davis chancellor Linda Katehi walking to her car down a path lined by silent sitting students, in the wake of yet another act of standard-procedure police brutality against protesting students on that campus.
Roy Prockter has taken his legal battle for conscientious objection to military taxation as far as it will go in the English court system, without success, and is now appealing to the European Court of Human Rights.
A group of residents of Andino, Argentina met and decided to suspend their payment of property taxes after rate increases they felt to be unreasonable.
The government of Argentina has been taking drastic steps — including prosecuting economists who have the nerve to contradict optimistic government figures, and sharply restricting the legality of people and companies to hedge by keeping their assets in foreign currency — to wish away inflation and prop up the peso, while introducing its own version of an austerity plan.
The resistance movement targeting the new tax on electric bills in Greece continues. Some recent actions have included sit-down blockades of the utility company offices and YouTube videos showing how resisters can reconnect their own power if the utility shuts them off for non-payment.
