Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
United States →
Vietnam War, ~1965–75 →
Writers & Editors War Tax Protest, 1967 →
Benjamin Spock
Writers and Editors War Tax Protest
Attention: Gerald Walker
145 West 86th Street
Apt. 7D
New York, N.Y. 10024
Fellow Writers and Editors:
Join us in signing the enclosed statement proclaiming our refusal to let our
tax dollars support the war in Vietnam. Tell us in writing that we may list
your name with ours in ads and statements. Send us your check for $10.00 or
more (payable to Writers and Editors War Tax Protest) to pay for advertising
and other expenses. Ask other writers and editors to join. Mail copies of
this letter and the enclosed statement, “We Won’t Pay” (which will comprise
the substance of ads we plan to run), to your own list of colleagues. Extra
copies available at $1.00 per hundred, plus 25¢ for mailing.
How we will go about tax refusal
Should President Johnson’s surcharge be adopted by Congress, we will
refuse payment. We will not add this extra war tax to our current tax
when preparing our return and we will enclose a letter with our return
explaining why.
Many of us will also deduct from our tax the 23% which represents the
amount currently being spent on Vietnam.
Possible consequences
It is a violation (up to one year in prison and/or up to $10,000 in fines) of
Sec. 7203 of the Internal
Revenue Code willfully to refuse to pay federal income taxes. However, of the
421 signers of a similar no-payment ad in ,
not one has been prosecuted and sentenced; of the estimated 1500 additional
protest non-payers, none has been prosecuted since the war began. The
IRS, so
far, has chosen to exercise the power to collect unpaid tax money by placing
a lien on refusers’ income or attaching their bank accounts or other assets,
when these can be traced. In addition, a penalty of 6% interest is charged
annually on the unpaid tax balance, a rate estimated to be less than the
collection expense.
Vietnam drags on. Casualties rise, $28 billion are wasted yearly,
U.S. prestige and
moral fabric rot away. No solution, political or military, is in view. The
President’s prescription is more of the same — 45,000 new men (for a total of
525,000) and a proposed 10% income tax increase specifically for this
undeclared, unconstitutional, unprofitable, and unjust war.
“The needs of this country’s riot-shaken cities are being neglected to pay
the war bill,” The New York Times has
editorialized. It is time for escalation by those who want peace in
order to focus on our critical domestic dilemma. Peace marches have not
worked; nor have pickets, protest ads, teach-ins, or pleas to the President’s
conscience by public figures here and abroad. We are not consoled by reports
of atrocities committed by the other side; we want to stop those committed by
our side. So we must now go beyond mere expressions of dissent to strong,
affirmative, and dramatic action by responsible citizens.
We, the undersigned writers and editors for publications and publishing
houses large and small, have not had to give our lives in Vietnam — that has
fallen on younger Americans. But we have lent our passive support in the form
of our tax dollars. From now on, we are willing to lay our middle-class lives
on the line in pledging:
That none of us voluntarily will pay the proposed 10% income tax
surcharge, or any war-designated tax increase.
That many of us will also refuse to pay that part of our current income
tax (23%) being used to finance the war.
Many of us, too, will give an equivalent sum to humanitarian organizations.
Even so, this was not an easy decision to make. We have been law-abiding,
tax-paying citizens all our lives, and we are now subjecting ourselves to
possible legal penalties of up to one year in prison and/or up to $10,000 in
fines for willful non-payment of taxes. But we believe our taxes should not
be used to support a war that violates not only our own Constitution but the
Charter of the United Nations.
By this act, we aim to awaken the Administration to the fact that a
significant number of responsible citizens are so fundamentally opposed to
this war that they are willing to go to this extreme. And we wish to show
other Vietnam-haunted Americans that there is a simple, swift, effective way
to vote no-confidence in the Administration’s policy. It can be done
individually or in groups. It cannot wait until the 1968 presidential
election. Your ballot is your next tax return, and other ads such as this
placed in every newspaper in the land.
There are not enough prisons to hold the millions in this country who,
according to Gallup and other recent polls, strongly oppose this ugly war.
Time now to end our tacit acceptance of what is being done in Vietnam in our
name.
Much of the text of the above declaration didn’t make it in to the final
advertisement (I’m guessing it was cut down to make room for the many names
of signers, but maybe there was more to it than that). Horowitz himself did
not make the list.
I am enclosing a copy of the statement signed, so far, by 220 writers and
editors who pledge to refuse payment of the proposed 10 per cent income tax
surcharge or any tax increase earmarked for the Vietnam War. At this writing,
seven New York Times writers and editors have signed. We plan to run a
full-page advertisement in the Times in
, giving the quote from
Thoreau, the pledge and the list of names. The placing of the ad will
coincide with Congressional debate on the tax surcharge. By that time we hope
to have 500 persons pledged to refuse payment.
If you would be interested in signing the statement, please fill in the blank
and mail it in as soon as possible. And please tell your writer and editor
friends about it and urge them to do the same. As Thoreau said, “If a
thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a
violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State
to commit violence and shed innocent blood.” During his incarceration for
refusal to pay his war tax, Thoreau was paid a visit by Emerson, who asked,
“What are you doing in here?” To which Thoreau replied, “What are you
doing out there?”
I feel strongly that the collective involvement of writers and editors in the
nation’s politics should not stop with the War Tax Protest. Many of our
colleagues share this view, and are preparing this fall to organize local
chapters of what can become a national writers and journalists association.
An organized and articulate “intelligentsia” can be a political force in
America as it is in France. And it must become a political force if
the increasingly oppressive policies of the present United States government — in Vietnam, in Southern Africa, in Latin America, and here at home — are to
be permanently reversed. Not to organize, not to amplify our voices so that
an ill-informed America may hear alternatives, is to accede, in effect, to
the policies of the present government. For more information, please write me
immediately at 377 Green Street, San Francisco, California 94133.
Included with this letter is a somewhat different version of the proposed ad:
— Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience,
commenting upon American involvement in the Mexican War.
We the undersigned writers and editors, believing that American involvement
in Vietnam is morally wrong, pledge:
None of us voluntarily will pay the proposed 10% income tax surcharge or
any war-designated tax increase.
Many of us will not pay that 23% of our current income tax which is
being used to finance the war in Vietnam.
Following this was a sign-up sheet, asking signers to agree with the statement
“I believe American involvement in the war in Vietnam is morally wrong,” and giving three further options:
“As a writer/editor, I wish to add my name to the Writers and Editors War Tax Protest. I dissociate myself from my government’s actions in Vietnam and I am willing to use my next tax return to vote no-confidence in the present Administration. I enclose a check (payable to Writers and Editors War Tax Protest) for $10.00 or more to help pay for running this statement as a newspaper advertisement and for other expenses.”
“I am in sympathy with what you are doing. Enclosed is my check for $____.”
“I would like more information. Please send me your fact-sheet on tax refusal.”
A number of additional signers had been added to the list by this time:
(Spock was listed out-of-order and in a different typeface in the original.)
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
The “necessity defense”: yes, your honor, I broke the law, but I had to
do it to prevent a greater harm — American activists have tried to use it
to defend their civil disobedience against the militarist government and
its stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, but rarely do the courts
even permit such an argument to be made
(activists in other countries have had
more success). But in the trial of the Transform Now Plowshares
activists in federal court ,
former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark testified for the defense on the subject.
The activists — Greg Boertje-Obed, Megan Rice and Michael Walli — broke
into the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant , held a Christian ceremony with a bible and candles, splashed
some human blood about, and spray-painted messages like “woe to the empire
of blood” and “the fruit of justice is peace” on the walls. The empire,
not amused, and embarrassed that an 82-year-old nun made a fool of its
nuclear weapons security, has thrown the book at them.
Ramsey Clark is an interesting case. You can’t get much more
establishment than being the United States Attorney General (under Lyndon
Johnson). At that time, he was prosecuting anti-war activists (his office
successfully prosecuted Dr. Benjamin Spock for conspiracy to aid and abet
draft resistance, for instance). But since then he has become an
enthusiastic critic of the American empire — even to the extent of
defending, legally and otherwise, such unsavory American enemies as
Slobodan Milošević, Lyndon Larouche, Omar Abdel-Rahman, and Saddam
Hussein.
Clark testified that the use of nuclear weapons represents an
imminent — “omnipresent” was his word — threat. The judge was skeptical:
“Excuse me,” the Judge said. “Are you saying the President intends to
use nuclear weapons? Are you in a position to know that? Are you tied
in with the President? … does the President have his finger on the
button?”
“Well,” said Clark, “he walks around with
it by his
side.”
Then there was this examination of Clark by the defense attorney:
Quigley: Is it reasonable to believe that
what is being refurbished at Y12 are weapons of mass destruction?
Clark: It’s an established fact.
Quigley: And reasonable to believe they
violate international law?
Clark: Reasonable. Under the NPT we agreed to eliminate them.
Quigley: And I believe I just heard today
or yesterday that the Boston bomber was indicted for use of a weapon of
mass destruction — that is part of our criminal code…
The Judge stepped in. “A weapon in the
hands of a terrorist or a citizen is different than a weapon in the
hands of the government. A machine gun, or a tank—is that a fair
statement?”
Clark: It’s fair if you limit it to machine
guns or rifles, but weapons of mass destruction — the
U.S. is in
violation of the intent of the most important treaty we ever signed.
Quigley: Do you believe the continuing
threat of the use of Y12 weapons constitutes a war crime?
Clark: It is a reasonable and fair
statement of belief.
Quigley: And a soldier can commit war
crimes?
Clark: Yes.
Quigley: And using, or preparing to use
weapons of mass destruction is a war crime.
Clark: That is reasonable to believe.
Quigley: The defendants believe the work at
Y12 is preparation for genocide, could be carried out by civilians or
armed services. But they believe the weapons activities at Y12 are in
preparation for genocide and a violation of international law.
Clark: That is reasonable. Because of the
magnitude of the program at this time. One sub, one sub can carry one
hundred warheads. Eight submarines, on alert at all times, eight
hundred warheads in a position to strike. Think of maps. Eight hundred
places in Europe… or on the continent of the Americas. It is criminally
insane.
Quigley: Not homicidal, but omnicidal.
Clark: The life of the planet is at risk
from this one plant here in Tennessee.
The prosecutor tried to pin Clark down: “A minute ago, you testified
that the activities at the Y12 site were unlawful. Are the people who
work there criminals?”
Clark: They are engaged in a criminal
enterprise.
It was interesting to hear of arguments like these being explicitly
aired in court. I don’t really expect the judge to address them
forthrightly and at their worth, but there is some satisfaction in
imagining His Honor trying to figure out just how he’ll sidestep the
issue.
On I mentioned the chill I felt when I noticed that two Google execs’ new book on the future of the internet had gotten glowing prepublication reviews from folks like Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, and a handful of other national security state celebs.
Here is an op-ed the book’s authors wrote for the Wall Street Journal.
It largely strikes a nonconfrontational freedom-is-good tyranny-is-bad tone, though I thought I saw a little saliva appear at the corners of the authors’ mouths when they wrote this:
The world’s autocrats will have to spend a great deal of money to build systems capable of monitoring and containing dissident energy.
They will need cell towers and servers, large data centers, specialized software, legions of trained personnel and reliable supplies of basic resources like electricity and Internet connectivity.
Once such an infrastructure is in place, repressive regimes then will need supercomputers to manage the glut of information.
The authors look at movements like the Arab Spring, and conclude that they petered out because their grassroots, leaderless, decentralized beginnings never matured:
“some sort of centralized authority must emerge if a democratic movement is to have any direction.”
Indeed, these grassroots, leaderless, decentralized movements constitute a threat:
a “mad consensus” that will require “a great leader” to defy, according to Henry Kissinger, whom they approvingly quote.
Over at Slate, Mya Frazier suggests that
Google has aspirations of statehood.
The internet is just such a grassroots, leaderless, decentralized
dystopia… a mad consensus in need of a great leader… and Google knows just
the company for the job.
At The New Yorker, James Surowiecki offers
a meditation on the American underground economy. “Ordinary Americans have gone underground, and, as the recovery continues to limp along, they seem to be doing it more and more.”
I’m not sure it makes much sense to spend time worrying about Obama’s
proposed budget. It’s part wish-list, part advertisement, but not policy.
But one of the things it includes is a 94% bump in the federal excise tax on cigarettes.
Every pack of cigarettes purchased would have a $1.95 federal excise tax
attached to it. While on the one hand, this would be one more reason to
quit smoking and to discourage others from taking up the habit, on the
other hand it would make tax resistance via smuggling that much more
attractive. State cigarette excise tax increases in New York, for example,
have grown to the extent that the majority of cigarettes smoked there are
smuggled in. As marijuana legalization spreads, expect the smuggling
networks that have so successfully supported the marijuana trade over the
years to find a new use in combating the cigarette tax.
The edition of Cycle,
a student paper from Fitchburg (Massachusetts) State College, gives us a good
peek into the rhetoric and tactics of the war tax resistance movement at that
time:
In , the United States government spend $103
billion to pay for present and past wars and to be prepared in case of future
wars. This was 66% of the entire federal budget of $156 billion. One hundred
and three billion dollars exceeds the gross national product of all but six
nations.
Of this $103,198,100,000, $29 billion was spent on the Vietnam war, to
continue a conflict whose brutality, immorality, and illegality have sickened
most Americans and the vast majority of the people of the world. Already, this
war has brought death to more than 42,000 Americans and more than two million
Vietnamese. It is a spur to the arms race and continually threatens world
peace.
Almost $20 billion will be invested this fiscal year in making more frightful
our nuclear missile and bomber arsenal, weapons already so destructive that
they can deliver ten tons of explosive power for every person on the globe.
$330 million will be spent on chemical and biological weapons that are
polluting the environment and endangering the people in the United States and
other countries without even being used; simply by being improperly stored.
$7.5 billion will go toward research on new and yet more fearful weapons.
$1.2 billion has been authorized for the Anti Ballistic Missile
(ABM)
system in .
$500 million to $1 billion is the estimated budget of the
CIA.
Vast sums will be paid to the corporations and research institutes that design
and build the weapons. In , the following companies, a handful of the biggest among thousands
engaged in war production and research, enjoyed these military contracts:
General Dynamics
$2.2 billion
Lockheed Aircraft
$1.8 billion
General Electric
$1.4 billion
United Aircraft
$1.3 billion
McDonnell-Douglas
$1.1 billion
AT&T
$777 million
The following amounts were spent in
for projects that
seem to have little to do with primary human needs:
For moon and other space exploration $3.4 billion.
For farm subsidies to wealthy landowners $3.1 billion.
In comparison to the enormous expenditures for acts and instruments of
military violence, luxury space programs, and subsidies to the wealthy, and at
a time when city governments are crying for more funds, the United States
government spent these sums on improving the health, education, and general
welfare of the people within this country.
Slum rebuilding $1.9 billion.
Other poverty programs $7.2 billion.
Health programs $1.8 billion.
Educational programs and subsidies $3.7 billion.
Direct, nonmilitary foreign aid to underdeveloped countries totaled about $1.6
billion.
The U.S.
appropriation to the United Nations was $109 million, about the cost of one
Polaris submarine.
In , the total of all
non-military expenditure was approximately 34% of the military expenses.
Throughout the United States, young people by the hundreds of thousands are
rebelling in disgust and anger against this squandering of resources on war,
and neglect of the day-to-day practical needs of the people. They are not
alone in seeing only massive social disruption and probably nuclear war as
eventual consequences. They are risking their freedom, careers, and often
their lives to protest and resist what they see to be wrong.
In the face of this shameful and alarming situation and in solidarity with the
youth resisting it, we, as participants in War Tax Resistance, are resolved to
confront our own complicity in war, waste, and callousness. We resolve to end
to the extent we can our cooperation in a federal tax program geared to death
more than life. The least measure of our resistance will be not to pay
voluntarily $5 of federal taxes due.
We are prepared to bear the consequences of our actions, be these criticism
and unpopularity, financial penalties, confiscation of our bank accounts and
property, and, perhaps, imprisonment. These seem to us small inconveniences
beside the agony of those killed or bereft by war, and the numb hopelessness
of those crippled by poverty.
We invite all Americans to join us in some form of tax refusal. War tax
resistance is not always easy, particularly for those whose taxes are withheld
from their wages, but for most there is some variety of tax refusal that they
can conscientiously adopt. It may be by not paying part or all of a balance
“owed,” or by not paying federal telephone tax. War Tax Resistance has
prepared literature and is setting up counseling services designed to help
each individual find the best way of tax refusal and resistance for him. A
list of Methods of War Tax Resistance follows this statement of purpose.
We also are developing a war tax resistance promotional program that will
include advertisements, demonstrations, meetings, a bulletin, and other
literature distribution. If you become a war tax resister, we hope you will
allow yourself to be publicly identified with the movement and permit your
name to be used on tax resistance literature.
War Tax Resistance will do more than concentrate on the weeks just before
April 15. We are planning a year round educational and resistance program. If
you agree with conscientious tax resistance as a means for opposing war, we
hope you will communicate with us now. The included coupon is for your
convenience.
Methods of Refusal
Refuse to pay at least $5 of your tax
The first goal of War Tax Resistance is to convince as many people as
possible to refuse at least $5 of some tax owed the government. Nearly
everyone can do this by refusing their federal telephone tax or part of
their income tax. If hundreds of thousands refuse to pay $5, they will
establish mass tax refusal. Besides having the burden of collecting the
unpaid amounts, the government will be faced with the political fact of
massive noncooperation with its warmaking policies.
Better yet, refuse to pay all the taxes you can
Even if some of your taxes are withheld, you can refuse to pay the balance
and other taxes. These might include: taxes on additional income, the 10%
surtax, and the telephone tax.
You can refuse to pay that percentage of your tax that goes for war
Two thirds or more of the federal budget pays for wars past, present, and
future. To protest against war, a person can refuse that percentage of his
tax. He can base his refusal on the percentage of the total national
budget used for war, on the cost of the war in Vietnam, or on other
calculations. Some people pay part of their tax and contribute the rest as
a peace tax. Some give to the
UN, or a
relief agency, or some other organization engaged in peaceful,
constructive work.
You can refuse to pay the 10% surtax
This surtax was imposed in to help pay
for the war in Vietnam. Refusing to pay it is a direct protest against the
war.
You can refuse to pay the federal telephone tax
The federal telephone tax was revived in
to help pay for the war. Thousands are already not paying it. In all cases
known to us but one, the telephone companies have continued service and
referred the tax collection to
IRS.
To Reduce or Eliminate the Withholding of Your Taxes You Can
Claim additional dependents
If you claim a sufficient number of dependents on your W-4 form you can
reduce the amount of taxes withheld from your salary to zero. The law
reads that a dependent has to live in your household and be supported
by you. The fact is that many people, particularly draft age young men
and the Vietnamese, depend on you. So long as you declare at the end of
the year that by the government’s standards you owe so much and are
refusing to pay it, the moral point is made
The law reads that it is illegal — fraudulent — to state on a tax form
that someone claimed as a dependent falls within that category, as
defined by the
IRS,
when he does not. But no fraud appears to be involved if the people
claimed as dependents are identified as being outside the
IRS
categories. The issue has not been tested in the courts.
Make your employer an ally
Although the law reads that it is illegal not to withhold taxes from an
employee’s wages, your employer may be sympathetic to your protest and be
willing to assist — and make a protest of his own — by not withholding
from your salary. It is always valuable to raise the question.
Organize an employment agency
Have your agency hire you and then have your present employer hire the
agency to supply him with you. Naturally, an agency that you control will
not withhold taxes from its employees. Getting organized is complicated,
but if you and a few friends get together you can work out the problem.
Write us for information.
Also You Can
Demand a refund
There are four ways to do this:
You may request a refund right on the 1040 form and stand a good
chance of receiving it. Ask for a tax credit on Part Ⅴ of the
form.
You may file form 843 for a refund.
If the above demands are refused, go to the Income Tax Board of
Appeals. If the Board turns you down, sue.
You can also sue the government to refund all your taxes on the
grounds that the taxes have been used for illegal and immoral
purposes.
Protest by letter or in person
Any protest to
IRS
or other government officials will help express opposition to the war and
to militarism. If you are unable to refuse taxes, protest them as
vigorously as you can.
Maximize the Impact
Talk about your tax refusal with friends, neighbors, co-workers. This sort of
direct contact changes many minds. Distribute tax refusal literature.
Inform the newspapers and other mass media in your neighborhood that you are
resisting war taxes and why. Start a war tax resistance group in your
community.
Organize or join demonstrations at your local
IRS
office.
Inform yourself thoroughly and become a tax refusal counselor. Let your
community know through ads, leaflets,
etc. that a
counseling service is available.
Keep the War Tax Resistance Clearinghouse informed by writing or phoning about
your activities. Communication is the lifeblood of any movement.
We invite war tax resisters to send War Tax Resistance the first $5 or more
refused the federal government. This money will be used to publicize and
expand the war tax resistance movement.
Until now, the government has not imprisoned anyone for conscientious tax
refusal. A few have been given short sentences for refusing to reveal
information about their incomes. In general, the
IRS has
been content to take money from tax refusers’ bank accounts, garnishee part of
their wages, or, on rare occasions, seize and auction property.
Sponsors of War Tax Resistance
Winslow Ames
Joan Baez
Norma Becker
James Bristol
Prof. Noam Chomsky
Prof. Frank Collins
Tom Cornell
Prof. William Davidon
Dorothy Day
Dave Dellinger
Barbara Deming
Ralph DiGia
Prof. Douglas Dowd
Prof. Margaret Eberbach
Ruth Gage-Colby
Allen Ginsberg
Bob Haskell
James Leo Herlihy
Faye Knopp
Kennett Love
David McReynolds
Stewart and Charlotte Meacham
Rev. and Mrs. Arthur G. Melville
Karl Meyer
Jack Newfield
Grace Paley
Igal Roodenko
Rev. Finley Schaef
Dr. Benjamin Spock
Marj and Bob Swann
Arthur Waskow
George and Lillian Willoughby
Irma Zigas
Working Committee (in formation)
Norma Becker
Maris Cakars
Frank Collins
John Darr
Jerry Dickinson
Ralph DiGia
Bob Haskell
Neil Haworth
Peter Kiger
Kennett Love
Bradford Lyttle
Mark Morris
Christopher Pollock
Melinda Reed
Kay Van Deurs
Eric Weinberger
Here are some excerpts from The Catholic News Archive concerning tax resistance, from sources other than Catholic Worker, from the span:
First, a typed news dispatch from “M. Massiani,” Paris Correspondent for the National Catholic Welfare Council (U.S.) News Service, dated :
Priests and People of Vendee, France, Protest Tax on Christian Schools and Refusal of State Aid
Paris, . —
A delegation of 20,000 citizens from various parts of the Department of Vendee, one of the most Catholic regions of France, appeared in the town of La Roche-sur-Yon, where a number of priests were on trial for refusing to pay a tax exacted on entertainments and theatrical productions given to aid in supporting the free Christian schools of the Department.
A large group of priests and directors of Christian schools purposely decided to refuse payment of this tax and made public announcement of the decision in order to protest what is regarded by the people of the Vendee as a highly inequitable situation; the state taxing the people to support unneeded public schools, refusing to grant a subsidy to aid in maintaining the Christian schools, and at the same time taxing entertainments held to raise money for support of the Christian schools.
It is pointed out that in Vendee public schools are practically empty. The Christian schools, on the other hand, are educating the vast majority of the children of the region, saving the state more than 200 million francs in school taxes annually.
Yet whenever Catholics hold a festival to raise funds for support of their schools, the state intervenes to collect part of the receipts.
It is hoped that in refusing to pay this tax, public attention will be called to the injustice and the need of a state subsidy to help support the Christian schools, such as is granted in other countries, including Belgium and Holland.
Bishop Antoine Cazaux of Lucon, who went to La Roche-sur-Yon to testify in behalf of the defendants, stated that his priests are neither rebels nor evaders, and that the court, in order to judge equitably, should take into consideration the unjust situation that exists with regard to education.
Many thousands of people were in the streets outside the courtroom.
Decisions were rendered in only two of the cases, the defendants being acquitted on procedural grounds.
The other cases were postponed. The action of the court caused anti-religious groups and newspapers, particularly in Paris, to demand that new suits be instituted and that the law be applied with severity.
In the Diocese of Lucon, two-thirds of the children attend the 461 primary religious schools. In six large districts, 13,757 children out of 15,183 are enrolled at the Christian schools.
In two other districts, the number of pupils in the public schools is only three per cent of the total.
In 41 settlements in the Department, with a population of 40,000, there are no public schools.
A National Catholic Reporter editorial (signed by editor Robert C.
Hoyt) in the issue recommended that men refuse military service, concluding that in Vietnam, “we are killing people and destroying a culture without adequate justification, without a rationale that meets the minimum requirements of morality.
That imposes obligations on all of us.
We believe that anyone who despairs of a political solution has a right and duty to search for more effective ways, including civil disobedience and tax refusal.
We have a responsibility to the rest of the world, to history, to God that nobody else can bear.”
In its issue, that paper published a lengthy article on the war tax resistance movement:
Protesters turn to taxes to fight against the war
By Gary MacEoin
Special to the National Catholic Reporter, NEW YORK—
Protesters against the Vietnam war are turning to the withholding of taxes as a way of fighting against the war.
A national campaign against the payment of taxes used for the war is being organized and its goal is to involve “tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of people in conscientious tax refusal.”
The campaign is spearheaded by the War Tax Resistance, an organization founded which draws support from a broad spectrum of pacifist groups.
Its headquarters is in New York and it has offices in Philadelphia and Chicago.
Resistance spokesmen say they hope to have “at least a phone, an address and a contact person” in each of the principal 50 to 100 cities in the nation by .
Groups organized around such regional centers are to focus their tax resistance efforts on demonstrations on and .
“We picked the date more or less arbitrarily,” said Bradford Lyttle, clean-shaven and soft-spoken coordinator of War Tax Resistance.
“That’s about the time that thousands of accountants all over the country hang out signs offering to help prepare tax returns.
We want to provide an option for those who want not to pay.”
The choice of is more obvious, he said.
“It is both the final day for filing tax returns and the start of the Spring offensive of the demonstrations against the war in Vietnam.”
Lyttle, 42, works out of an office in Lower Manhattan (339 Lafayette Street).
It is also the home of the New York GI Coffeehouse, the Jewish Peace Fellowship, the Catholic Peace Fellowship, the War Resisters League, Win magazine (hippie-pacifist), and Liberation magazine (David Dellinger’s voice).
Between them, they occupy the two top floors of a three-story cold-water walk-up not far from the Catholic Worker.
Organized resistance to paying war taxes is not new, dating from , Lyttle said.
The War Tax Resistance is trying to give the idea broader appeal by modifying the totally pacifist position that its forerunners had adopted.
Lyttle, who himself is a pacifist, said the new approach was developed by a New York teacher, Norma Becker, who recruited a group of sponsors which included Joan Baez, Noam Chomsky, Tom Cornell, Dorothy Day, Dave Dellinger, Allen Ginsberg, Stewart and Charlotte Meacham, Grace Paley and Dr. Benjamin Spock.
“The result,” says Bradford Lyttle, “was a new emphasis.
Instead of stressing the total pacifist tradition as the others had done, we decided to concentrate on two more immediate and obvious reasons:
the horrors of the war in Vietnam, and the misuse of the taxpayers’ money by the government to the extent that it was neglecting national priorities.
“And instead of calling on sympathizers to pay no taxes whatever, we appealed to them to make a token withholding, if only $5, without of course ceasing to urge those who had the moral courage to go further.”
War Tax Resisters chose as their prime targets the 10 per cent surtax and the 10 per cent federal excise tax on telephone service — two taxes more clearly linked to Vietnam than any others.
Both War Tax Resistance and other organizations distribute literature explaining the various ways — some legal, some doubtful, some illegal — for nonpayment of federal taxes.
The first War Tax Resistance leaflet was prepared for the antiwar demonstration in Washington, D.C., , and 10,000 copies were handed out there.
“The act of war tax resistance creates a confrontation between the government and the conscience of the citizens,” this pamphlet states.
“We believe that the right of conscientious objection to war belongs to all people, not just to those of draft age…
Do whatever makes sense to your conscience. But do it.”
Among the ways to avoid paying taxes, the first is to earn an income so low as not to be taxable.
This means for the single person under 65, an earned income of less than $900 annually.
Yet a considerable number of pacifists choose this method.
Another form of protest is to refuse to pay the percentage of the tax that goes for war.
More than two-thirds of the federal budget pays for wars, past, present and future.
This is the amount some withhold.
Others refuse to pay the proportion of the federal budget (23 per cent) directly allocated to Vietnam, while others hold back a token amount.
According to Internal Revenue Service figures, 73 million Americans paid their income taxes in full , while 1,025 refused to pay all or part in protest against the Vietnam war.
The 1,025 protesters was an increase from 592 .
IRS counted 10,511 cases of refusal to pay the telephone tax in , down from 14,396 in .
Several factors combine to make the telephone tax the attractive target it has become.
For one thing, the American Telephone and Telegraph Co. has handled the situation with kid gloves.
So long as the protester makes it clear to the company with each payment that the amount withheld is the tax portion, it will not cut off a phone.
Printed forms are made available by the resistance groups to facilitate this notification.
What the telephone company does is simply to report to IRS the fact of nonpayment and the amount.
IRS also is anxious to keep the situation as cool as possible, but it wants at the same time to maintain whatever pressure is necessary to dissuade the hesitant from joining the movement.
Back in 1967, the first step was to send the defaulter a “notice of preliminary assessment” which enabled him to demand a hearing.
Because of the number of cases involved and the small amount in each, the IRS quickly eliminated this step and moved immediately to Form 17-A or some other “notice of final assessment.”
This notice contains a threat to seize property to collect a debt.
Ralph Di Gia of War Resisters League is one who has been through this process several times.
Early in , for example, the IRS computer at Andover, Mass., sent him Form 17 demanding payment of $2.25 owed as telephone tax.
Next a New York agent wrote him, then called on him in his New York office.
After checking with Di Gia’s landlord and the building superintendent to establish his political views, the agent tried to place a lien on his salary at the War Resisters League, but the League refused to cooperate.
After another confrontation with Di Gia, which merely established that it was “the principle,” not the $2.25, that was at issue on both sides, the agent located Di Gia’s bank account and collected the $2.25 plus 6 per cent interest.
Under the IRS code, it can take money from a bank account without a court order in payment of taxes due by the account holder.
Apparently the discovered account was then fed into the computer, because another section of IRS moved quickly to seize the entire balance in payment of income tax.
And as of , the IRS located a savings account recently opened by Di Gia in another bank and collected yet another telephone tax bill.
But Di Gia insists that he doesn’t mind.
“The issue isn’t withholding money from the government,” he says.
“They’re going to get it ultimately.
But I made a few collection agents think about what their job’s about, and now IRS is going to have to realize that there are people who aren’t afraid to resist.
They got the tax, but they had to come and get it, like when the agents had to go to the fields in France for collection.”
Unpaid taxes, whether telephone or income, can result not only in seizure from a bank account but also a lien on salary or the attachment and sale by auction of some property, usually an automobile.
In addition, some banks make a service charge — as high as $10, reportedly each time a lien is placed on an account, and the resisters suspect that IRS is pressuring banks to do this as a deterrent.
Such a fee every month would make telephone tax refusal impractical for most people.
But actually, the load on the IRS is such that it usually moves against any given individual only at much longer intervals.
Everyone who refuses to pay any taxes he owes is actually exposing himself to heavy penalties, and the resistance literature spells out this danger very openly.
Simple “willful failure to pay” is punishable by fine up to $10,000 and a year in jail, plus the cost of prosecution.
Similar or greater penalties are available for a variety of related offenses.
Although the offense of counseling or urging others not to pay taxes would seem greater than the simple act of withholding, the law on this point is somewhat ambiguous and apparently has never been tested in the courts.
There are few, if any, cases of conscientious tax refusers being jailed for not paying taxes or filing returns.
Most of the small number of cases on record have resulted from related non-cooperation with the courts, such as ignoring a court order to disclose financial records.
In addition, it would appear that prosecutions have been initiated by local collectors who did not first check with headquarters.
Current IRS policy on this issue apparently stops short of court action.
The most distinguished American to go to jail for refusal to pay taxes was Henry David Thoreau, the essayist, poet and naturalist.
He spent only one night in confinement, because a neighbor paid the tax, but the experience inspired his essay on Civil Disobedience, espousing the doctrine of passive resistance.
It deeply influenced Gandhi and has become the bible of the resistance movement.
One passage is found to be particularly relevant by today’s resisters:
“When… a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize.
What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the Country to overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.”
The reference is to the Mexican War of .
About half a dozen have been jailed in the past 20 years.
Juanita Nelson was arrested in Philadelphia in , threatened with a year in jail and $1,000 fine if she did not disclose certain financial information, but in fact was held only some hours.
Maurice McCrackin, arrested in Cincinnati in , was given a mental test, imprisoned “indefinitely” on a contempt charge, then sentenced to six months and a $250 fine.
James Otsuka got 90 days and a $140 fine in Indianapolis, in .
Eroseanna Robinson, sentenced to a year and a day in Chicago in , was released unconditionally after 93 days.
Walter Gormley got 7 days in Cedar Rapids in .
And in the first such imprisonment in several years, Neil Haworth of New London, Conn., got 60 days in for refusal to produce records.
He had served six months in for “committing civil disobedience at a missile site” near Omaha.
And in , he was a crew member of Everyman Ⅲ, a boat which sailed to Leningrad to protest the Russian nuclear tests.
Those who have refused to pay federal taxes and have got away with it include the Catholic Worker settlement houses and the settlement house of the New England Committee for Non-Violent Action.
“We pay local taxes,” says Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker, “and we let the IRS people examine our records, but we pay them nothing.”
The New England group says that IRS has spent thousands of dollars going through their bills and receipts, without collecting a penny.
War Tax Resistance is now urging citizens “to sue the government to refund all your taxes on the grounds that the taxes have been used for illegal and immoral purposes.”
The main value of such suits to date has been the publicity.
Professor Donald Kalish, chairman of the philosophy department at UCLA, filed a suit to recover his telephone tax but it was dismissed by the District Court.
He appealed, and the appellate court has agreed to hear his appeal.
The most important case to date is that of Walter C. Pietsch, of Rego Park, N.Y., a 33-year-old administrative employee in a hospital.
Last year, he instituted “a class action” for an injunction to enjoin IRS from collecting the 10 per cent surtax and all other taxes used to propagate the war, and also for a declaration that the Vietnam war was unconstitutional.
A class action, if successful, would provide the same remedy for all taxpayers.
Pietsch, who served in Korea, “is not against all wars, just this one.”
The surtax he withheld was $190.84.
“The amount is insignificant,” he said, “It’s the principle I’m fighting for.”
After a preliminary hearing in the Brooklyn federal district court on , written arguments were submitted on , and on the case was dismissed on a motion by the defendants.
An appeal was filed immediately.
Although the Vietnam war is the direct issue on which tax resisters are concentrating, many of them insist that the campaign has escalated into something much bigger — the war mentality behind much of United States foreign policy.
“Maybe it’s a hang-up,” says Ted Webster, administrator of the Roxbury War Tax Scholarship fund, “but I personally have a great feeling of urgency, it seems the logic behind bombing North Vietnam can be so easily applied to China.
The influence of the Pentagon on policy, and the political expediency of yielding to it seems so obvious, I see the need to rapidly escalate resistance, or there will be a greatly expanded war — maybe with China — within one to three years.”
Another National Catholic Reporter article, from the issue, asked “In the name of God, how did Milwaukeeans get so radical?” A section of it covered tax resisters:
One area in which a number of community members are discussing is tax resistance.
Some say they have claimed as many exemptions as were needed to keep from paying any federal taxes used to finance the war.
[Richard W.] Zipfel, who is defense committee chairman for the Chicago 15, Feit and Father Robert W. Dundon, a Jesuit, have sent a letter to the Wisconsin Telephone Co. stating they are refusing to pay the federal telephone tax on their phone bills because “we can no longer tolerate our nation spending more than $75 billion on the military while our cities die.”
The letter, dated , added that “even if the present war ended, our policies would quickly create another Vietnam.”
Their resistance gesture is significant, they said, because the tax was argued through Congress as a specifically Vietnam war tax.
They have reserved a reply from the utility saying their letter was being forwarded to the government.
“I do believe in the legitimacy of the magistrates,” [Michael] Cullen said.
“In paying property taxes, I believe in the state.
“I’ll render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but when Caesar decides to take what is God’s, or if Caesar decides to look like God or act like God, I won’t render to Caesar.
“You only render to what is legitimate and what is human, and what is for the common good.
War destroys humans.”
Milwaukee’s Casa Maria Catholic Worker House still looks to be something like a hotbed of war tax resistance, at least relative to the current national lull.
Lincoln Rice of Casa Maria is the current NWTRCC coordinator.
I recognize the names of war tax resisters Roberta Thurstin and Don Timmerman among their volunteers as well.
From the Pittsburgh Catholic, :
Five say they won’t pay taxes
Five local clergymen handed in their income tax forms at the Federal Bldg. downtown on with the announcement they were withholding a portion in protest to the Vietnam War.
Joining them in the protest at the Internal Revenue Office there were several dozen local lay members of War Tax Resistance, an organization whose members carried out withholding actions in a number of cities , the last day for filing income tax returns.
It is headquartered locally at 3601 Blvd. of the Allies.
The clergymen issued a statement denouncing the Vietnam war as immoral and stating other means of protest had been futile.
“Now we must do more than talk.
The time is now that we must act,” they said.
They included three priests active in civil rights causes here: Fr. Donald C. Fisher of St. Francis de Sales, McKees Rocks; Fr. Donald W. McIlvane, St. Richard’s, Hill District; and Fr. John O’Malley of St. Joseph’s, Manchester.
Also taking part was Fr. Bernard Survil of St. Hedwig in Smock, Greensburg Diocese.
Protestant clergy included Rev. Oscar L. Arnall, a Lutheran, Rev. Thomas Whitcroft, an Episcopalian, and Rev. William S. Richard, a Presbyterian, signed the statement but weren’t present.
The clergymen announced they were withholding 25 per cent of their income tax, the proportion of the national tax that is estimated goes for the Vietnam war, they said.
Some said they would pay the money into local community action programs suffering because of the amounts given to the Vietnam war.
“We are conscious of our obligation to pay taxes, but we are equally conscious of our obligation before God to refuse to cooperate with evil,” the clergymen said.
The National Catholic Reporter, in its issue, printed the following letter from Robert Calvert of War Tax Resistance:
Tax resisters suggest: “Stop paying for it”
To The Editors:
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos… young people by the hundreds of thousands are rebelling in disgust and anger against the squandering of lives and resources in an immoral and illegal war.
They are risking their freedom, careers and often their lives to protest and resist what they see to be wrong.
We, as participants in war tax resistance, are resolved to confront our own complicity in war, waste and callousness.
We resolve to end to the extent possible our cooperation in a federal tax program geared to death more than life.
For every dollar which the administration expects to spend in , 64.8 per cent will go for wars — past, present and future.
Of this amount, 48.4 per cent will go for current military expenditures, including Vietnam.
(The administration has not revealed the exact costs of the Indochina war.)
Another 17 per cent will go to health, education and welfare; 18.2 per cent for other expenditures.
The deadline for paying income taxes is close, .
Many who read this letter will owe the federal government money. Don’t pay.
War tax resistance is being supported by numerous civil rights, anti-poverty and peace organizations in our call to help end the war by widespread tax refusal.
Widespread tax refusal does more than force the government to spend much money to try to collect unpaid taxes.
It confronts the government with the political fact of massive non-cooperation with its war-making policies.
We need to dramatize war tax resistance and to expand it from an act of individual conscience to a nationwide demonstration of collective civil disobedience.
On , the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice — which includes such groups as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Welfare Rights organization, the American Friends Service committee and the Fellowship of Resistance — is calling for a nationwide “Tribute in Action to Martin Luther King.”
The theme is “Freedom from Hunger, War and Oppression”; the event will be observed by hunger marches, fasts, teachins, demonstrations and religious services.
War tax resisters will relate to these events in a real way.
We are asking people to refuse to pay $10 to $50 or more of their federal income taxes, and to publicly turn this money over to a local community group on .
We will thus take our tax money out of the hands of the government and put it into the hands of the people.
If we work hard thousands of dollars can be rechanneled to the people.
We can not wait for the government to change priorities. We must change them ourselves.
Find out what actions are being planned in your city or region and build a demonstration dramatizing the transfer of funds to useful community programs.
A possible action: Rally at the IRS office where people put their tax money into a container of some sort.
The money is then carried to the main event and is turned over to the designated local community group.
There also will be actions at Internal Revenue Service offices across the country on .
We will publicly submit our 1040 forms to the IRS with all or part of our taxes deducted.
This is a simple action and serves as an extension of the observance.
If no action appears to be under way in your community, contact the nearest war tax resistance center or the People’s Coalition office (1029 Vermont avenue, Washington, D.C.).
Information about the WTR center nearest you, and about other forms of tax resistance, may be obtained from War Tax Resistance, 339 Lafayette street, New York, N.Y. 10012; telephone (212) 477‒2970.
Thousands are already engaged in these acts of peaceful, conscientious civil disobedience.
If you engage in any of the above acts of civil disobedience we strongly urge you to write a letter to the IRS setting forth the reasons for the steps you have taken.
Keep a copy.
Although there is a penalty for openly refusing to pay federal taxes (Section 7203 of the Internal Revenue Code — a fine of up to $10,000 and up to a year in jail, plus the costs of prosecutions) no war tax resisters have been prosecuted under this law.
The only war tax resisters arrested have been those who have filed “fraudulent” W-4 forms, refused to file any income tax form, refused to present financial statements to the courts when ordered to do so.
There have been prosecutions and convictions based on Section 7203 but none for openly refusing to pay for conscientious reasons, as far as we know.
We invite all Americans to join us in some form of war tax refusal.
We must now take a stand by refusing to support the governments destructive policies with our bodies, our skills and our money.
Robert Calvert
New York, N.Y.
Editor’s note: The writer is a member of the Working Committee of WTR.
Among sponsors of the organization are Dorothy Day, Joan Baez, David Dellinger, Arthur and Cathy Melville, the Rev. Richard J. Neuhaus, Rabbi Michael A. Robinson, Noam Chomsky, Peter Seeger and Theodore Roszak.
An op-ed from Eugene C. Bianchi, in the National Catholic Reporter:
“Maybe next year…”
To resist or not to resist
Two TV tableaus recently jarred me into fresh appreciation of how my tax money fosters the insanity of Vietnam.
In one film, helicopter gunships swooped down on a truck convoy; thousands of rounds of computer-directed cannon fire pierced the night.
There goes at least one year’s withholding tax, I thought.
But the commentator saw this military exercise as a demonstration of admirable killing efficiency.
It was so orderly and precise; nothing out of place, except perhaps some Vietnamese flesh and bone.
The second scene showed men carefully loading bombs into B52s.
The calm reporter noted how effectively these marvels of American know-how worked.
The big bombs tore open huge craters and sent waves of damaging concussion.
The antipersonnel bombs spewed thousands of body-ripping nails.
As I viewed the distant puffs of smoke, I mused about how many income tax returns it took to accomplish such a feat.
It’s appalling how resigned we are to this insane use of our financial resources.
Yet my and your tax money is closely related to the terrible statistic from the Kennedy subcommittee about 325,000 Indochinese, civilian deaths in recent years.
Many more are maimed and driven from their homes.
When I drop that IRS envelope through the red and blue bomb bay of the mail box, I wonder how many sad faces I’ve put behind the fences of relocation camps, how many children I’ve separated from parents.
If Mr. Nixon is a prime candidate for war crimes according to the Nuremberg principles, we have all in some degree had our hands on the tax trigger.
Yet my courage rarely equals my insights.
I also tell myself that some tax money goes for good causes.
But the spirit of Ammon Hennacy, that holy maverick against war, won’t let me be content with such dodges.
The whole Catholic Worker crowd stares up at me from their penny paper.
I finally summon up the mouselike courage of refusing to pay the telephone war tax.
At least that will cost the government more in time and bother than they’ll eventually get from me.
Maybe next year around income tax time, I’ll be brave enough to risk other concrete gestures.
The words of Thoreau won’t go away:
“If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bill this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure as it would be to pay them and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood.”
War tax resistance, though only a small act before the mighty state, could have broad effects if it became more widespread.
It has the educational effect of conviction in action.
Such tax resistance is illegal; but the war, by an ever-growing consensus, is enormously more illegal and immoral.
Even token refusal to pay war taxes confronts the government with a concrete statement about its brutal policies.
Tax resistance also awakens conscience to active non-complicity, to a new level of sensibility.
For the situation is overwhelmingly clear: Tax money can be as killing as the weaponry it buys.
Since some risk is involved in tax resistance, it is worth reading a brochure or two about it.
These can be easily obtained from a number of peace action groups, such as the War Tax Resistance (339 Lafayette St., New York 10012; or War Resisters League-West, 833 Haight St., San Francisco 94117).
A Catholic group, Ammon’s Tax Associates (Box 1744, Indianapolis, Ind. 46204) is striving to awaken church institutions to their responsibilities for supporting conscientious tax resisters, as an extension of the church’s respect for conscientious objectors.
Perhaps the American church will end its complicity of silence with the warmakers when enough of us try to stop our own complicity in war taxes.
