Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
religious groups and the religious perspective →
Catholic churches →
St. Thomas Aquinas Parish
This is the twenty-ninth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite.
Today we continue to work through the early 1980s.
Representatives of the General Conference Mennonite Church and the Internal Revenue Service failed to reach an 11th-hour compromise at a meeting in Washington on which would have averted a suit by the 63,000-member denomination against the government agency.
IRS
officials at the meeting denied that there was any administrative solution to the conference’s complaint that it must withhold the income taxes of its employees, thereby acting as a tax collector for the state.
The denomination has argued, and will argue in a forthcoming judicial action, that the IRS requirement violates the concept of separation of church and state as embodied in the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution.
“The 45-minute meeting was cordial, but unproductive,” said Vern Preheim, general secretary for the conference.
“We outlined our concerns about the withholding issue as a historic peace church and described the problem which the IRS requirement poses for us.”
William Ball, the conference’s attorney in the matter, then formally asked members of the IRS’s special working group on withholding issues whether there was any way to exempt the General Conference from the problematic requirement.
Nancy Schuhmann, who chairs the special group, stated that the IRS must abide by its codes of operation and would not be able to offer an exemption on tax withholding to the conference.
IRS officials Susan Cunningham and Gail Libin were also present.
In light of the results of the meeting, attorney Ball will complete the preparation of the conference’s complaint and submit the brief to a U.S. district court after one last check to make sure all administrative possibilities have been exhausted is complete.
The General Conference’s General Board was authorized to initiate a judicial action on the tax withholding question at an international gathering of the conference membership at Estes Park, Colo., in .
More than a year earlier, on , delegates to a special midtriennium conference session instructed the GB to “use all legal, legislative and administrative avenues for achieving conscientious objector exemption” to the tax withholding requirement.
GB also heard a brief report by its general secretary, Vern Preheim, on the progress of the judicial action on the tax withholding issue.
Progress seems to be slow, as witnesses and a co-plaintiff have to be found.
Employees of the conference who are taking action of their own on the war tax issue were assured of adequate and appropriate conference support.
But by the issue, everything had come to a screeching halt:
In the light of a negative judgment rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court against an Amish employer on , the General Conference’s judicial action committee has recommended to the denomination’s General Board that a planned suit against the IRS on the issue of tax withholding “be put on indefinite hold."
The committee’s decision came at the end of a conference call with William Ball, who has been preparing the case on behalf of the church group over the past year.
During the telephone meeting.
Ball indicated that, considering the Supreme Court ruling in the case U.S. vs. Lee, the General Conference would almost certainly lose its case.
In the Amish case, employer Edwin Lee argued that his withholding of Social Security taxes was against both his own and his employees’ consciences.
In the unanimous decision of the court on the Amish question, Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote, “The tax system could not function if denominations were allowed to challenge tax systems because tax payments were spent in a manner that violates their religious belief."
Rather than pursue a negatively shrouded course of action at this time, the General Conference committee also urged the General Board to make more money available “for additional efforts to promote the World Peace Tax Fund.”
In his letter to General Board members, general secretary Vern Preheim concluded: “With closure of the ‘administrative avenue’ during my meeting with IRS, and now closure of the ‘judicial avenue’ via U.S. vs. Lee, we are left with the ‘legislative avenue’ as our only conceivable legal avenue prior to our triennial sessions.
“If no significant progress is made in terms of additional congressional sponsorship of the WPTF legislation, we will have to report a totally negative outcome to the efforts resolved at Minneapolis in .
This will again bring us to the threshold of divine obedience/civil disobedience.”
In coming to that decision, the group weighed the importance of a number of concerns, including the timing of the GC action, the witness value of the suit if it were pushed forward, the fact that a loss in court might set a negative precedent which would eclipse favorable decisions in related cases, and whether proceeding with the action when defeat seems certain would be good stewardship.
Preheim hopes to gather together preliminary response of the General Board to the committee recommendations in the next few weeks.
A full discussion will take place at a fall meeting of the board.
The decision of the board was covered in the edition:
Realizing they had reached a critical juncture in their church’s ongoing struggle against the payment of taxes used for war, members of the General Conference’s General Board decided on to stall its impending suit against the IRS and let delegates to ’s triennial sessions decide on what course of action to take.
A resolution to proceed with the judicial action, which would have tested the constitutionality of laws forcing the church to collect taxes on behalf of the state, was turned down by a vote of six to two, with seven abstentions.
The move to put the suit on indefinite hold was based on recommendations from the church’s judicial action committee and the denomination’s attorney in the matter, William B. Ball of Harrisburg, Pa.
In a letter to general secretary Vern Preheim dated , Ball had been pessimistic about the chances of the judicial action’s success in the light of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case Wisconsin vs. Yoder [sic].
As part of its ruling in that case, the court had stated, “The tax system could not function if denominations were allowed to challenge the tax system because tax payments were spent in a manner that violates their religious belief.”
“We regard that language as most threatening to [the General Conference’s] position, if not foreclosing it completely,” wrote Ball.
Rather than scuttle the proposed litigation completely, GB members agreed at the recent meetings to consider the suit again, “if and when more favorable conditions prevail and depending upon the response at Bethlehem, Pa.” (the location of ’s triennial sessions).
Delegates to the General Conference’s triennial sessions in Estes Park, Colo., empowered the General Board to initiate a judicial action as a follow-up to a special session on the theme of Christian civil responsibility in Minneapolis .
At that meeting, delegates resolved to “use all legal, legislative and administrative avenues for achieving a conscientious objector exemption from the legal requirement that the conference withhold income taxes from the wages of its employees.”
Part of the General Board’s discussions focused on interpretation of that resolution; namely, at what point each of those “avenues” would be considered to have been exhausted.
Some members felt that Ball’s advice closed the legal avenue; others said that the judicial route would not be blocked until a court ruled against a suit brought before it by the conference.
Many agreed that a legal test would be an important public witness and is, for that reason alone, worth considering further.
The administrative avenue to a solution was eliminated after a meeting between GC officials and representatives of the IRS on
, when IRS declined to make any exceptions to rules requiring the conference to withhold taxes from the salaries of its employees.
The World Peace Tax Fund legislation, currently in committee in the U.S. Congress, represents the legislative avenue.
Board members will ask the GC delegate body to answer some of these questions at Bethlehem , and to make a decision about whether or not the conference’s business office should simply go ahead and stop withholding taxes from the salaries of those employees who wish it, thereby breaking IRS regulations.
In such a case, the general secretary and business manager would be immediately responsible, Preheim reported.
The conference’s judicial action committee will prepare appropriate background materials and resolutions for presentation at Bethlehem and present these to the General Board at its meeting for review.
Level one — tax protest. Why is it that those who feel uncomfortable with tax resistance spend more time protesting civil disobedience than war taxes?
Persons filing and paying taxes each April 15 should attach a protest letter, outlining one’s opposition to how 50 percent of the tax money will be spent.
Most importantly, copies of this letter should go to your representative, senators, newspaper editor and should be posted in the church.
Openness is critical.
The IRS is fearful of those who publicize their tax protest — even if it is merely a letter — because it encourages others.
For those who feel exceptionally penitent, file back letters of protest and ask that they be attached to your previous returns.
Level two — tax resistance. This is a clear call to civil disobedience — organized tax resistance with acceptance of penalties.
Having a support group to guide you in this decision is important.
Hopefully, congregational affirmation of such a decision would be forthcoming.
One should be prepared for the IRS to use its unchecked power to collect any income or other tax owed.
Level three — tax avoidance. Legal tax avoidance — keeping one’s income below taxable levels — is certainly in line with living more with less.
Perhaps we ought to have our MCC overseas workers explain to us how half the world can live in poverty on $100 a year, when we with abundance and waste all around us cannot seem to live on less than $10,000.
Legal tax avoidance has the additional blessing of insuring that no income tax is used for war.
Minimum U.S. income levels for 1981 are $3,300 for single people and $5,400 for married couples.
Level four — tax counseling. This level incorporates any of the three levels above, but commits one to a study into the IRS, military budget and federal tax policy.
Just as draft counselors sprang up during the draft years, we need more tax counselors to aid us in responding to the draft on our money.
According to Sen. Pryor, D-Ark., the Pentagon spends more on military bands — close to $90 million — than we spend on arms control — about $20 million.
When will we hear the music?
Perhaps there is no single right answer for everyone, but surely silence is not an acceptable response.
The edition reviewed Affirm Life: Pay for Peace, a small handbook put out by the Historic Peace Church Task Force on Taxes, designed in a loose-leaf form so it could be updated, and meant to help classes and discussion groups explore their response to war taxes.
(There was another review of the book in the edition.)
James W. Nikl, in an letter to the editor, encouraged readers to consider cutting their income to cut their taxes.
“What
would happen if we all cut our incomes in half?” he asked.
“How would it affect the military budget?”
He did the math for a dual-income couple in the 49% tax bracket and found that they would significantly lower their taxes and gain a lot of valuable free time in the bargain.
He concluded:
We have a choice.
We can race our motors all our lives, and the government will take most of what we produce.
Or we can take time to smell the flowers along the way.
In response to a critic who thought Nikl’s tax advice was too materialistic and coldly practical, he responded:
I agree with what [the critic] said about our attitude toward material possessions.
We should put a strong emphasis on the gospel of peace which embraces the needs of those in our community who are without.
I believe, however, that Mennonites should and would prefer to use their own wealth as they see fit and would be much better stewards of God’s bounty than the U.S. government.
I doubt that willfully giving of our tax money so that a small portion will go for human resources is really attractive to many Mennonites.
I would also question whether the good effects of the human resources portion of our tax even comes close to offsetting the bad effects of the military part.
A testimony of an “outsider” in attests that Mennonites were still people of conscience at the end of their first century in North America: “It is well known that the Quakers and Mennonists were formerly some of the best farmers in Pennsylvania.
These people, from having their cattle, horses, farming utensils, etc., so often taken from them for taxes, have sensibly declined as farmers.
Many of them have sold their farms and gone to other states, whilst others of them do not raise 20 bushels of grain, where they once raised 100.”
MCC
has spent over $10,000 to purchase and ship about 1,200 shovels to Laos.
$4,000 of that amount was allocated from MCC’s “Taxes for Peace” fund [which] was established in to receive contributions from church members who had voluntarily withheld portions of their taxes as a symbolic protest against the government’s excessive spending for military purposes.
The Lutheran Peace Fellowship recently issued “A Call to Tax Resistance for Lutherans” statement committing members to tax resistance as a moral stand against the nuclear arms race.
According to Dennis Jacobsen, fellowship coordinator, 23 Lutherans from 11 states endorsed the statement, which said, “We will no longer pay for war while praying for peace.”
The St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Indianapolis made a public decision to withhold payment of the excise tax on its phone bill.
This was done, said the congregation, “in response to the gospel call to be peacemakers and to church teachings that we, as Christians, must devote ourselves to the cause of peace — and, in particular, disarmament.”
In the same edition, James W. Nikl gave some advice on seeking tax shelters and deferrals.
Most of this was fairly dry tax advice, but the article ended with a section that began thusly:
Role of our churches. Recently the Boulder, Colo., Friends Meeting proposed a position of peace secretary for the congregation.
That person would become an authority on taxes and related items and keep the rest of the congregation informed as to how to legally divert their tax dollars from military uses.
We could perhaps create a position on our various church boards and work toward this same goal.
Two members of the Methodist Federation for Social Action have found an innocent way to protest U.S. budget priorities.
John and Pat Schweibert concluded that about 41 percent of their income tax was going for armaments.
So they withheld that amount from what they owed, then handed out a $5 bill to each of 200 unemployed people they found in line at a state employment office.
The distribution, timed for , received coverage in the local paper.
Seattle Catholics gave significantly more to the annual archdiocesan funds appeal after their spiritual leader, Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen, took a strong stand against nuclear war, reports the lay-edited National Catholic Reporter.
“We thought the archbishop’s stand would have some adverse effect on the appeal,” said Paul LeBlanc, archdiocese assistant director of development.
“We didn’t think (the funds) would be this large… The letters to the diocese are running eight to one in favor of the archbishop.”
Hunthausen has attracted nationwide notice for withholding the portion of his federal income taxes used for the military.
A petition with 14,000 names of Old Order Amish in Lawrence County, Pa., was presented to Rep. Eugene V. Atkinson, a Democrat whose district includes Lawrence County.
The Amish are seeking a legislative remedy to having to deduct Social Security taxes from employees’ salaries.
A bill by Rep. Robert S. Walker (R-Pa.), and cosponsored by Atkinson, would exempt members of religious faiths opposed to the program from paying Social Security taxes.
Hanno Klassen sent the Internal Revenue Service two checks this year — each for half the amount he owed.
One was made out to IRS; the other (to cover the military share of his taxes) was made out to the American Friends Service Committee.
Klassen explained his action in a letter to IRS: “The check made out to AFSC is to show that I want to pay what I owe.
But I cannot let my life or my substance be used for killing.
You see, I was a member of Hitler’s destructive forces in World War Ⅱ.
I was used once; I will not be used again.”
This is the twenty-third in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it
was reported in back issues of Gospel Herald, journal
of the (Old) Mennonite Church.
Here’s how Larry Cornies of the Gospel Herald
reported on the negotiations between the General Conference Mennonite Church
and the
IRS
(the Mennonite Church, with which Gospel Herald was
associated, was supporting the General Conference action but from a bit of a
distance):
Representatives of the General Conference Mennonite Church and the Internal
Revenue Service failed to reach an 11th-hour
compromise at a meeting in Washington on
which would have averted a suit by the 63,000-member denomination against the
government agency.
IRS
officials at the meeting denied that there was any administrative solution to
the conference’s complaint that it must withhold the income taxes of its
employees, thereby acting as a tax collector for the state. The denomination
has argued, and will argue in a forthcoming judicial action, that the
IRS
requirement violates the concept of separation of church and state as embodied
in the First Amendment in the
U.S. Constitution.
“The 45-minute meeting was cordial, but unproductive,” said Vem Preheim,
general secretary for the conference. “We outlined our concerns about the
withholding issue as a historic peace church and described the problem which
the IRS
requirement poses for us.”
William Ball, the conference’s attorney in the matter, then formally asked
members of the
IRS’s
special working group on withholding issues whether there was any way to
exempt the General Conference from the problematic requirement.
Nancy Schuhmann, who chairs the special group, stated that the
IRS must
abide by its codes of operation and would not be able to offer an exemption on
tax withholding to the conference.
IRS
officials Susan Cunningham and Gail Libin were also present for the
discussions.
In light of the results of the
meeting, attorney Ball will complete the preparation of the conference
complaint and submit the brief to a
U.S. district court
after one last check to make sure all administrative possibilities have been
exhausted.
The General Conference’s General Board was authorized to initiate a judicial
action on the tax withholding question at an international gathering of the
conference membership at Estes Park,
Colo., in
.
More than a year earlier, on ,
delegates to a special midtriennium conference session instructed the General
Board to “use all legal, legislative, and administrative avenues for
achieving[”] conscientious objector exemption to the tax withholding
requirement.
John J. Hostetter, Jr. attacked
the new war tax resistance craze in a commentary titled “Render unto Caesar”:
In the , issue of the
Gospel Herald, the forms of protest on nuclear
weaponry advocated by
MCC,
Peace Section, include the following, “We call for acts of tax resistance to
be undertaken since our federal income taxes fuel the arms race. We suggest
giving funds denied for use in building nuclear weapons to groups working for
peace and disarmament, and to groups meeting human needs.”
Such statements are damaging and completely misleading. It gives the
impression to the uninformed that an option for taxpayers is withholding part
of their tax liability and sending it somewhere of their own choosing. Rather,
the choice is whether one pays his tax or whether he pays his tax plus penalty
and interest. The only other possibility at present is fraud for deliberately
not reporting income, which is even more serious.
Pick and choose from the budget? Most ethical and religious protestors
base their action on the notion that one can pick and choose in the budgetary
items of the government, as a shopper at a department store. It is implied
that taxes are a voluntary contribution to the government by its citizens and
therefore, if they don’t like the way the money is spent, they can withhold
the part of the contribution they don’t like.
The courts have long ago settled this also. There is a classic quotation from
Judge Learned Hand, “Over and over again courts have said that there is
nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as
possible. Everybody does so, rich and poor, and all do right, for nobody owes
any public duty to pay more than the law demands; taxes are enforced
exactions, not voluntary contributions.”
While one can so arrange his affairs to pay as little as possible within the
law, this does not imply the right to pay the part one likes and refuse the
rest any more than one can dictate how the groceryman uses the money paid for
groceries. Once the tax liability is assessed, it is no longer the taxpayer’s
money. Otherwise very few would pay any taxes since we all feel we have better
ways to spend money than the way the government spends it.
Some object to the defense budget, while others feel just as strongly about
the welfare program. Although far less than one tenth of one percent of church
people protest taxes to the point of refusing to voluntarily pay all of their
taxes without confiscation, yet probably a high percentage of Christians as
well as non-Christians would opt to send their tax money to a “Peace Fund”
were that option available. At present it is not. Perhaps in the future the
Congress may grant such an election in much the same way that taxpayers can
direct $1 of their taxes to the presidential election campaign. Even if such
were possible, it wouldn’t change the size of the budget for defense.
In the Waitzkin case of , the court said that
conscientious objectors couldn’t withhold 50 percent of their tax on the basis
of “war crimes” deduction. Neither religious beliefs nor international law
relieve citizens of tax liability. Tax is neutral on religious matters and is
imposed on all citizens, even though each may object to some specific
governmental expenditure on religious grounds.
Likewise in the McDade case, the “war crimes” deduction was disallowed. The
taxpayer’s belief that the government shouldn’t force its citizens to
participate in taking of lives didn’t relieve her of an obligation to pay tax.
In another case, the taxpayer’s deduction for “conscientious objection to
military expenditures” was denied and the negligence penalty imposed. Military
protest deduction wasn’t permitted under the code. Taxpayer lacked standing to
contest military expenditures of the government. (Reimer) In the Van Tol case,
the war tax credit was denied; sincerity of the taxpayer’s objection to war
didn’t excuse the tax liability.
The government gets the money. A few observations could be made. First,
such protestations, as sincere as they are, are not accomplishing what may be
the desire of the protest, in that the government ends up with more, not less,
money for undesirable purposes as a result of the protest. Not only will the
tax be collected, but penalty and interest as well. (The average increase is
$207 for penalty alone.)
Second, in the case of war or defense, not one cent less will be spent for
bullets, bombs, or battleships because of the protest. Tax money which we
might earmark for Cambodian Relief, as good as that might be, only means other
money out of the same treasury is used for what the Congress believes is
necessary for national defense, and if that is not enough, the government will
simply borrow what it needs. One who thinks that such a fund will change the
size of national defense has only a superficial method of salving his
conscience.
Third, Internal Revenue agents, with (against) whom I have worked, openly joke
at such protest tactics. Regardless of the agents’ own personal views on the
use of tax money, which all citizens agree leaves much to be desired, they as
public servants must go and collect the tax whether it is from an impoverished
taxpayer, a religious protestor, or a fraudulent evader. Thus all that is
accomplished is a reduction in efficiency and an increase in the cost of
collection in the tax system. The Revenue Service doesn’t make the laws;
Congress does. A much more valid approach is correspondence with those in
Congress responsible for the present law and who have the power to change it.
Certainly the revenue agents have no jurisdiction over setting up the national
budget.
Internal Revenue agents deserve our respect. They are, with some exceptions,
well trained and conscientious, doing a job necessary to insure compliance and
integrity in the tax system. (After all, Jesus selected one as one of his
disciples. While he wasn’t the star of the show, he certainly wasn’t the
villain either.)
It would be interesting to know what percentage of church people have ever
written to their congressman expressing their concern on militarism. The
percentage would probably increase if names and addresses of congressmen were
available on church bulletin boards with sample letters for those who want
some positive ways to express their concerns.
I cringe when reports come out in the paper of tax protestors who have been
convicted of tax evasion on religious grounds with a byline that they are
Mennonites, with the implied impression that this is a belief of such
churches. Mennonites do not believe that. Editors of newspapers and
periodicals should be corrected when it is implied. The vast majority of
Christians believe such a stance to be unscriptural teaching.
This prompted a series of letters to the editor in response:
Called Hotstetter’s commentary “a breath of fresh air” and said “the newer
viewpoint promoted so much presently is not the historical nor the
majority viewpoint of the Mennonite brotherhood.”
“I differ from his assessment that those in our churches who cannot in
Christian conscience pay war taxes are ‘simply being contrary.’ That seems
to me to be a judgment form the world rather than the Word. I believe
that, increasingly, those who have ears to hear will understand that,
while it may be contrary to the world, to resist payment of war taxes is
being faithful to the Word of God.”
The failure of the General Conference Mennonite Church to reach an agreement
with the Internal Revenue Service… should come as no surprise. Furthermore,
if the case goes to court the winner can be predicted with a considerable
degree of assurance. It will be Attorney Ball in collecting his fee. It is
to be hoped that our church does not emulate the unenviable position in
which that church now finds itself. It can hardly back down without
swallowing its pride and cannot push forward with any hope of success in the
untenable stance it is taking. The constituency should scream at using so
much funds on such a case.
The requirement of the service to withhold taxes and forward them to the
government is nothing new. It has been on the books for more than a
generation. If they had not signed the waiver on Social Security taxes, they
would have more of a leg to stand on. They can’t have it both ways.
Felt that even if Hostetter’s arguments were valid, “there is still the
conviction, scripturally based, that we must witness to Christ’s way of
peace. Our quiet support for the military as we pay our taxes each year is
not consistent with that witness.” Says Flickinger: “Christian war tax
resisters are basing their actions on Scripture, not on a desire to
attract persecution or publicity.”
The issue included an
editorial,
“As for taxes…”,
from Daniel Hertzler. There wasn’t much meat there. It talked around the
subject for the most part, though it did mention Hertzler’s own
dipping-his-toes-in: “For a time I resisted the telephone tax, but then I gave
up. Perhaps I was a little overly impressed by the threatening form letters
which began to come from the Internal Revenue Service. Also, tax refusal seemed
like a form of revolution. As an orderly Mennonite, revolution is not my
style.”
That prompted Art Landis to shoot back in the issue with
a letter to the editor
taking Hertzler to task for romanticizing earlier generations who “had no
compassion for the slave or the prisoner. I believe the state could have
constructed concentration camps and gas ovens next to their meetinghouses and
they would not have protested.”
Good statements can have a reverse and negative effect… The statement can
serve to immunize us and keep us from action. We have resolved our guilt by
preparing another statement. This statement calls for a radical change of
lifestyle. Guilt and inner conflict are not as easily laid aside as this
statement might indicate. Wrestling with the complex issues of peace does not
successfully reduce inner conflict. What would really happen if “the old self
that lives for self dies”? We call into judgment economic systems that keep
millions poor when we ourselves are very deeply rooted in that economic
system. We denounce wars, but no consensus can be reached regarding applying
the same biblical understanding to paying for the hardware of war as we have
for giving of our bodies for war.
[A]t Bowling Green when a brother expressed
his concern over the assembly’s failure to deal with the question of obedience
as it relates to payment of taxes for war. Even though long discussion
followed, business proceeded very much as usual…
The question that comes to my mind is whether we indeed should make statements
such as these when we know well enough that the very structures of our
institutions would be shattered if we attempted to live out the text of the
statement.
Responding to Seattle Catholic Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen’s call for a tax
revolt against the nuclear arms race, Lutheran pacifists have urged
co-religionists to join the protest, redirecting the money to the poor. “We
shall act on Bishop Hunthausen’s encouragement to resist a percentage of our
federal income tax that is symbolic of allocations made to the military,” said
the New York-based Lutheran Peace Fellowship, an independent intra-Lutheran
group which works with the International Fellowship of Reconciliation.
“We will no longer offer our tax dollars for a nuclear military that affronts
the lordship of Jesus. Instead, we choose to redirect resisted tax dollars to
the poor of our country and of our world.”
Conscientious tax resisters who were hoping the courts would find a place for
them in the U.S.
Constitution were disappointed (Levi Miller reporting):
Amish employers and employees cannot invoke their religious beliefs to avoid
paying Social Security and federal unemployment taxes, the Supreme Court ruled
on .
The unanimous decision overturned a western Pennsylvania judge’s ruling that
forcing the Amish to pay such taxes violates their freedom of religion.
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger said, “The design of the [Social Security]
system requires support by mandatory contributions from covered employers and
employees.”
The controversy arose when the internal Revenue Service informed Edwin Lee, an
Old Order Amish carpenter from Lawrence County,
Pa., that he owed some
$27,000 in back taxes. Lee had not paid any Social Security taxes for himself
or his employees since . He also had not
withheld such taxes.
It was noted in the ruling that Congress has already provided for a tax
exemption that covers self-employed Amish, such as farmers. The Amish believe
that the church and the family should take care of the elderly and do not
withdraw the government funds at old age.
John A. Hostetler, a professor at Temple University and member of the Plains
Mennonite Church, commented on the ruling by saying that although “it is a
blow for religious liberty in general, in the long run it is better for the
Amish to pay it. If they were exempt, it would create jealousy.”
Hostetler said he did not know how many of these small shops would be
involved. “It will mean more paperwork for them,” he concluded.
A follow-up by Phil Shenk explained the consequences for war tax resisters:
The U.S. Supreme
Court indirectly referred to the issue of war tax resistance and the World
Peace Tax Fund in its
ruling, denying an Amish employer exemption from paying and collecting Social
Security taxes.
The unanimous decision, plus the arguments employed by the court, may also
have diminished the prospects for success in the General Conference Mennonite
Church’s case asking for an employer’s exemption from collecting
federal-military income taxes for the government.
In the Amish case, Amishman Edwin Lee had refused to withhold Social Security
taxes from his Amish employees’ paychecks and failed to pay the employer’s
share of their Social Security taxes, claiming that doing so would violate his
and his employees’ First Amendment rights to the free exercise of religion.
Lee said the Amish believe it is sinful not to provide for their elderly and
needy themselves and therefore are opposed to the national social security
system.
Unlike the celebrated case, in which the
Supreme Court granted the Amish an exemption from Wisconsin’s compulsory
school-attendance law based on their free exercise of religion rights, the
Supreme Court here held that the government’s interest should overrule the
religious rights of the individual because it would be difficult for the
Social Security system to accommodate the “myriad exceptions flowing from a
wide variety of religious beliefs.”
In ruling that Amishman Lee’s First Amendment religious rights must “yield to
the common good,” the Supreme Court raised the issue of conscientious
objectors’ refusal to pay taxes that go for what the court called “war-related
activities.” The court said it could not see any difference between Lee’s
refusal to pay Social Security taxes and the position of one who refuses to
pay war taxes.
“If, for example, a religious adherent believes war is a sin, and if a certain
percentage of the federal budget can be identified as devoted to war-related
activities, such individuals would have a similarly valid claim to be exempt
from paying that percentage of the income tax.”
The problem with this, the court said, is that “[t]he tax system could not
function if denominations were allowed to challenge the tax system because tax
payments were spent in a manner that violates their religious belief.”
In a very broad statement that implicitly referred to religious conscientious
objection to federal-military income taxes as well as Social Security taxes,
the court revealed its basic rule: “Because the broad public interest in
maintaining a sound tax system is of such a high order, religious belief in
conflict with the payment of taxes affords no basis for resisting the tax.”
The court did recognize that Congress has passed a constitutionally sound law
that exempts Amish who are self-employed from paying Social Security taxes.
But it held that taxes imposed on employers “must be uniformly applicable to
all, except as Congress provides explicitly otherwise.” Because Congress has
not exempted Amish employers or their employees from Social Security taxes,
the court refused to honor their religious rights over the interests of the
nation as a whole.
Before Congress, in the proposed World Peace Tax Fund legislation, is explicit
language that would “exempt” conscientious objectors from paying war taxes and
instead divert their taxes to peaceful governmental activities. If passed,
this might provide the authority the court has implied it needs before it will
honor the rights of war tax objectors.
A Mennonite lawyer, John Yoder, is working as one of several assistants to
Chief Justice Burger, the author of the opinion striking down Amishman Lee’s
free exercise of religion rights. Burger’s Mennonite aide is originally from
Hesston, Kan.
The decision was so gratuitously dismissive of conscientious tax refusal that
the General Conference Mennonite Church decided to
halt its legal action,
on :
In the light of a negative judgment rendered by the
U.S. Supreme Court
against an Amish employer on ,
the General Conference’s judicial action committee has recommended to the
denomination’s General Board that a planned suit against the
IRS on
the issue of tax withholding “be put on indefinite hold.” The committee’s
decision came at the end of a
conference call with William Ball, who has been preparing the case
on behalf of the church group over the past year. During the telephone
meeting, Ball indicated that, considering the Supreme Court ruling in the case
IRS vs. Lee,
the General Conference would almost certainly lose its case.
In a cover story in the issue
Donald B. Kraybill proposed some ideas on
what to do about the threat of nuclear war.
Idea #10 was “Refuse to pay some of your federal income taxes as a witness to
your faith. If you’re scared, try a small amount like $7.77. If that’s too
scary, at least send a letter describing the difficulty of praying for peace
and paying for war. Those who pay taxes without sending such a letter are
quietly condoning and supporting the nuclear arms buildup.”
Raymond Hunthausen’s war tax resistance, which had been alluded to earlier, was
covered in a brief note:
Seattle Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen announced that he will withhold half
of his income tax to protest “our nation’s
continuing involvement in the race for nuclear arms supremacy.”
“As Christians imbued with the spirit of peacemaking expressed by the Lord in
the Sermon on the Mount, we must find ways to make known our objections to the
present concentration on further nuclear arms buildup,” the archbishop told
300 peace activists attending a meeting at Notre Dame University.
In the issue, Ivan H.
Stoltzfus felt compelled to write in to explain
“Why I pay taxes.”
The standard set of bible verses were deployed to explain that worldly goods
are at the disposal of worldly governments; Rome’s government was no better
than ours, so Paul’s advice in Romans 13 still holds; besides, it’s impossible
to determine what percentage of your taxes are objectionable, so you might as
well pay the whole thing. Still, Stoltzfus wrote, if there were a Peace Tax
Fund law, he’d go along with it.
A senate of priests in Iowa has voted to support a Catholic lay minister who
refuses to pay his federal income taxes as a protest against the nuclear arms
race.
The resolution approved by the representative group of priests in the Dubuque
Catholic archdiocese says they commend Tom Cordaro and
St. Thomas Aquinas parish at
Ames for their courageous stand relative to the payment of taxes for military
and nuclear armaments.
Mr. Cordaro, 27, has held back most of his income taxes
because he believes it would be a
sin to contribute money for nuclear weapons. The parish council at
St. Thomas Aquinas has refused
to honor an order by the Internal Revenue Service to turn over Mr. Cordaro’s
wages to satisfy the $828 tax debt.
Dan E. Hoellwarth made another attempt to defang Romans 13 in the
issue. According to him, the
description of government in that chapter should be seen as prescriptive, not
descriptive, and is meant to restrict which sorts of governments Christians owe
allegiance to: “what if the leaders are not acting in accordance with Scripture?”
“Obviously we should pay taxes… However…”
The Catholic war tax resisters were back again in the
issue:
The Catholic peace advocate Daniel Berrigan says he will take the church’s
anti-nuclear arms movement seriously “when we have a few bishops in jail.[”]
Berrigan, who is appealing a 3–10 year prison sentence for breaking into a
Pennsylvania nuclear plant, spoke to some 200 students and faculty members at
Fordham University.
The Jesuit priest said this “unparalleled threat to our survival” has made
civil disobedience — such as demonstrations and withholding federal income
taxes — a necessary component of the anti-nuclear movement.
He said he was encouraged by the fact that the American church hierarchy no
longer engages in “cold-war” rhetoric, and that the peace movement has made
some strides. But he added that the church, like the rest of the anti-nuclear
movement, has only “moved the diameter of a dime” toward serious opposition to
the arms race.
A Methodist pastor and wife in Portland, Oregon, withheld $1500 from their
U.S. income taxes.
They turned $1,000 of the money into $5 bills and gave them to persons they
found in line at the state of Oregon employment service.
According to the United Methodist John and Pat Schwiebert “clipped [a note] to
each $5 bill explaining that the couple was withholding a portion of their tax
‘because we cannot in good conscience do nothing while income we have earned
is used by our government to plan and carry out the killing of human beings…’ ”
After nearly a year in Laos, we feel a bit of fire brewing in our bones.
Surely, we think, the church can offer an alternative and a “no” to the
militarism and violence that is increasingly manifested around the world.
Surely we have a responsibility to end such suffering. Yet, as we turn to our
church papers (which we read avidly even though they arrive 4 to 5 months
late) we find that much of the discussion on peacemaking, including war-tax
resistance, seems to focus on the interpretation of certain biblical passages.
While it is important that these passages shape our thoughts and direct our
lives, it seems that too much time is spent fine-tuning favorite arguments in
comfortable, safe settings, far removed from the cries of those who suffer. We
wonder, for example, how well our arguments would stand up if the bombing
which occurred in many areas of Laos had instead destroyed our own communities
in Kansas, Ohio, or Manitoba.
The oil lamps burned late into the night when we visited the village. The day
before a Lao woman, the mother of 11 children, was killed when her hoe struck
a small anti-personnel bomblet that had buried itself under a root in her
garden. The bomblet, one of hundreds which still litter the soil, had been
dropped 10 to 15 years ago… Looking at the depression left in the soil by the
explosion, the hoe fragment, and the saddened eyes of the 10-year-old
daughter, we wondered who would own this family’s grief… who would answer for
this woman’s death?
The answer, we fear, is no one. Indeed the United States has created a
military system which can kill in such a way that no one need feel guilty.
Certainly no one in America, army general or taxpayer, will be accused of
plotting the death of this peasant woman. No international court will bring
bomb manufacturing companies to trial. Even to know which pilot dropped that
particular bomblet some ten years ago would be impossible. Thus we have
created death without a murderer.
Are we really so clever? Have we finally outwitted God, who would come and
ask, “Where is Abel, your brother?” Indeed, if God should come and ask, would
he not find us all guilty?
Of course, we as historic peace churches have often tried to separate
ourselves from our nation’s militaristic policies, to be a people with a
different identity. To some extent we have succeeded. The very fact that
Mennonite Central Committee is allowed to be in Laos is in large measure due
to the fact that we, as Mennonites, did not fight as
U.S. soldiers in
Indochina.
Nevertheless, how clean are we? Are our self-perceptions of innocence
realistic? Or have we been lured into a giant game of guilt evasion whose
players include Pentagon officials and common folk alike? While we ourselves
have not worn a soldier’s uniform, have not our taxes and our silence helped
to build weapons systems and to pay the salaries of those who fight? Though we
have espoused love and peace, could any of us stand before that peasant
woman’s family and state with assurance that we did not contribute to the
making of the weapon that killed her?
Thus, the presence of the shattered family in Muong Kham or the “cave
dwellers” in Sam Neua is disquieting to our spirits — the links between our
tax money and their suffering are too strong to ignore. The option of war tax
resistance then seems not like a matter for debate, but the next logical step
for all Christians who would work for peace in the world.
Perhaps many of you will disagree with us that withholding taxes is a faithful
part of peacemaking. May we plead however that before final judgments are
made, you listen to the voices of those hurt by our violence? Standing close
to them, we need to respond with compassion. What will we say? What will we
do?
A letter to the editor
from Robin Lowery followed: “They [the Peacheys] seem to base their conclusion
on the experience of those they dialogued with rather than on what God our
Father says to us through the Bible,” Lowery wrote. “It is a dangerous thing to
base our faith on experience and feelings.” We shouldn’t expect governments to
live up to Christian principles. Our worldly life is only temporary; we are
guests here and live under worldly rules temporarily. “War is a horrible thing,
but even more terrible is the judgment waiting for those who would oppose God
and what he has put in place.”
A
letter to the editor
from the Peacheys complained that their original article had been severely
edited:
As edited by Gospel Herald, our article seemed to
imply that all true peacemakers will engage in war-tax resistance. Certainly
we were urging Christians to seriously consider making some type of witness
with their tax return. Our original article acknowledged, however, that this
could take many forms. Some people may choose to live with an income below the
taxable level while others may wish to enclose a letter of concern with their
tax return. Some may withhold a symbolic amount while others withhold all of
their taxes.
Yet, none of these actions can be the whole of peacemaking. Rather, as we
stressed in our original submission, peacemaking is a total way of life which
embraces our troublesome next-door neighbor as well as those whom our country
defines as “enemy.” Further, as we seek to prevent suffering caused by North
American militarism, we must also turn to those in our communities who have
been cut off from help by our nation’s preoccupation with defense “needs.”
Finally, all of our actions must spring from our Christian faith. We cannot
work for peace out of guilt or a desire for personal innocence. Instead, what
we do, we do joyfully as a positive witness to life, to wholeness, and to our
faith in God who loves all people, irrespective of human barriers.
And Titus Peachey also wrote a follow-up article. Here is
an excerpt
that touches on war tax resistance:
The U.S.
asks neither for our consent or direct physical participation to send
weapons around the world such as the cluster bombs which were dropped in
Laos. It requires only our dollars and our silence. Can we continue to
give our government what it needs to make wars, and then serve the victims
of its violence with a clear conscience? Can we still claim to be
nonresistant if that violence was committed in defense of our way of life
in another part of the world?
Some of us felt that the shovels provided to Lao farmers in Xieng
Khouang should be purchased with money which Mennonites withheld from
their taxes, thereby making the connection between our nation’s militarism
and the victims of war. While some of the shovels were indeed purchased
with the Taxes for Peace Fund, many people cited legal, theological, and
practical problems with taking such an action.
From our vantage point in Laos, we admittedly worry more about the
theological, human, and practical problems of inaction. Can we
find common ground for a strong, unified, Mennonite peace witness which
deals more directly with our nation’s defense budget, arms sales, and
military aid?
MCC
has spent over $10,000 to purchase and ship about 1,200 shovels to Laos, and
$4,000 of that amount was allocated from
MCC’s
“Taxes for Peace” fund. This “Taxes for Peace” fund was established in
to receive contributions from church members
who had voluntarily withheld portions of their taxes as a symbolic protest
against the government’s excessive spending for military purposes.
“Since people withheld this money so that it could be used for peace instead
of war, we feel it especially appropriate that these dollars be used to help
clear the land of Laos of bomblets made and dropped by Americans,” explains
John Stoner, executive secretary of
MCC
U.S. Peace Section.
What is the meaning of conscientious objection to war in Canada today, and how
does this relate to the support of Canadian military industries and armed
forces activities? That is the focus of a task force on tax support of
Canadian military activities. A short document spelling out proposed goals and
research tasks of this group was mailed to each of the conferences earlier
this year asking for more guidance or support, perhaps after discussion at
their annual meetings. The initial work of this task force is being
coordinated by the Peace and Social Concerns office of
MCC
(Canada).
War tax resisters continued to have tough luck in
U.S. courts, as
this showed:
A Rhode Island couple who have refused to pay their federal income taxes
as a way of demonstrating their
opposition to military spending have lost their fight with the
U.S. Internal
Revenue Service. The United States Tax Court in Washington has not only
ordered Kevin and Linda Regan to pay $4,138 in back taxes and $206 in interest
for , but it has also slapped
the couple with a $500 fine for having “wasted” the government’s time and
money on “frivolous” actions. Although the decision was reached
, the
IRS
office here only announced it .
Keith Johnson, an
IRS
public affairs officer, said the agency was publicizing the Tax Court decision
because the Regans had been the subject of a long
Providence Journal-Bulletin story
in which the couple attempted to
justify their nonpayment of taxes on religious and moral grounds. In the
interview, the Regans argued that the arms race contradicted the Christian
belief against the taking of human life. “What we were presented with were
taxpayers who were saying they could withhold tax payments on moral grounds,”
Mr. Johnson said. “This is an argument that neither the
IRS,
nor the courts, accept.”
Finally, a
letter to the editor
from Weldon Nisly emphasized the parallel between conscientious objection to
the draft and conscientious objection to military taxation:
May we all have the faith and courage to stand with these young men of
conscience facing draft registration. It is indeed a difficult moment and
decision they and their families face. But it is not just they who face the
demands of the powers in our country and time. We all face a parallel decision
in a direct way with the demand for tax money to finance the Pentagon’s
headlong plunge toward death and destruction of all God’s creation and
creatures. The painful question of faith we ail face is will we contribute to
and cooperate with that demand of the powers or will we choose to place our
trust in God alone?
The Catholic Worker reprinted an article on war tax resistance by Ed Hedemann of the War Resisters League in its issue:
Tax Resistance
by Ed Hedemann
Direct action, as conventionally defined, means those who are adversely affected by a situation are the ones who try to change that situation, rather than appeal to third parties (such as the courts, the government, or the general public).
Direct action is often resorted to when other methods seem inadequate, or fail, or need to be supplemented.
When to use direct action is often a controversial question within the movement.
Some feel that as long as we have a roughly responsive system, the need to resort to direct action is minimal.
I would like to ask those who question the use of direct action “at what point would you be willing to use such methods? Ever?”
Most people might say, "When a problem reaches a state of critical or dangerous proportions, that to wait for or rely on a third party is irresponsible.”
The arms race, the dangers of nuclear power, the poverty and injustices around the world are at such critical stages that we need, individually and collectively, to resist these problems ourselves, in addition to any appeals to third parties.
We cannot rely solely on elected or appointed officials and military personnel to be adequate guardians of our safety and well being.
As A.J. Muste once pointed out, “The two decisive powers of government with respect to war are the power to tax and the power to conscript.”
For arms race opponents, one of the most direct personal ways to oppose armaments — even with a draft — is tax resistance.
A third of the money we pay to the Federal government each year goes to current military.
And, if we include past wars, that means half of our Federal income tax goes to wars and the military.
The basic logic and rationale for war tax resistance would be to
personally reduce our complicity with the war-making machinery,
redirect money to programs which suffer because of the arms race or those organizations actively working against the arms race,
make a dramatic statement to the government in opposition to the arms race,
offer resistance to the smoothly operating military machine,
motivate and inspire others into escalating their opposition to the nuclear arms race.
A Resurgence
Tax resistance isn’t new.
Its origins in this country began over 200 years ago with the Quaker and Mennonite opposition to the French and Indian war.
Today there are probably several thousand people who are refusing some portion of their income taxes in opposition to the military and perhaps three times as many refusing to pay the Federal tax on telephone service.
There has been a resurgence of tax resistance among elements of the historic peace churches as well as more conventional religious groups.
Among the newer efforts to expand tax resistance have been a “Conscience and Military Tax Resolution,” put out by Suffolk County Committee for a World Peace Tax Fund (44 Bellhaven Road, Bellport, NY 11713) which commits signers to withhold the military tax portion of their income taxes when 100,000 have signed up.
Also, the Disarmament Program at Riverside Church (122 St. and Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10027) is seeking to collect 25,000 signers to a tax resistance pledge.
The Government response to a person who resists varies greatly.
Most people can expect to get a series of notices from the IRS.
Often the IRS will attempt to levy a bank account or salary, if they can find either.
Occasionally, the IRS has seized property (bicycle, car, even a house) and sold it at a public auction, returning the money less the tax, interest, and penalties.
If the money “owed” is small (less than $100), the IRS may not proceed beyond a few forms.
In fact some people have been refusing for over thirty years and have never been collected from.
If the IRS is successful in a collection, they will add 12% interest per year and possibly a penalty, which might be a few percent and up.
In any case, it usually costs the IRS more money than it collects when dealing with resisters.
A few resisters have been taken to court and jailed from a few days to a few months for claiming too many dependents on their W-4 form, refusing to reveal sources of assets, etc.
At any point in this process, the resisters can “bail out” and pay the taxes.
I am not suggesting that tax resistance should be used as a means simply to save money, but as a means to offer resistance and a dramatic protest to World War Ⅲ, U.S. imperialism, and the deterioration of our society.
Tax resisters are encouraged to reroute their money to appropriate groups and projects, or at least put it into an alternative fund.
How can we convince the general public and government officials to take more moderate steps, if we—who are so concerned and committed to ending the arms race — aren’t willing to take more daring steps?
Ed Hedemann is on the national staff of the War Resisters League, from whose newsletter this article was taken.
Those interested in exploring tax resistance further can write to WRL, 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 for a free copy of a “Call to War Tax Resistance, or the Tax Resistance Kit, for which they ask $3.
A brief note in the edition of that paper read:
The edition of the Handbook on the Nonpayment of War Taxes, produced by Peacemakers, is now available.
It contains information on reasons for not paying war taxes, ways of nonpayment, regulations on filing, listings of war tax resistance counselors and centers, and alternative funds.
The price is $1.50 for a single copy.
(A discount is available on bulk orders.) To order, or for more information, write to the Peacemakers, Box 627, Garberville, CA 95440, or to Rod Nippert, Route 1, Box 90-B, Amesville, OH 45711.
A National Catholic News Service dispatch from covered the war tax resistance endorsement of Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen:
Archbishop Hunthausen Urges Withholding Taxes to Protest Nuclear Arms
By Greg Manuel
Seattle (NC)—
Denouncing the nuclear arms race, Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen of Seattle called for unilateral disarmament and suggested that Christians refuse to pay 50 percent of their federal income taxes as non-violent resistance “to nuclear murder and suicide.”
Archbishop Hunthausen told about 600 delegates to the Pacific Northwest Synod Convention of the Lutheran Church in America, “to render to a nuclear arms Caesar what that Caesar deserves — tax resistance.”
“I am told by some that unilateral disarmament in the face of atheistic communism is insane.
I find myself observing that nuclear armament by anyone is itself atheistic and anything but sane.,” he said in his call to war-tax resistance and a “return to the Gospel with open hearts to learn once again what it is to have faith.”
Archbishop Hunthausen also intensified his opposition to the Trident nuclear submarine base in Puget Sound, saying that people of the Puget Sound area must take special responsibility for what is in their own backyard and speak plainly when crimes are being prepared in their name.
“I say with a deep consciousness of these words that Trident is the Auschwitz of Puget Sound,” he said to the crowd who followed his speech with sustained applause.
“Some would call what I am urging civil disobedience,” the archbishop said.
“I prefer to see it as obedience to God.”
“We have to refuse to give incense — in our day, tax dollars — to our nuclear idol,” he said in his call to Christians to become peacemakers.
The archbishop told the crowd that he was grateful for the opportunity to speak on the topic of disarmament because it forced him to a “personal disarmament.”
Archbishop Hunthausen acknowledged that he himself had never refused to pay war taxes.
“I must say in all honesty that my vision of a sizeable number of tax resisters is not yet one which I have tried to realize in the most obvious way — by becoming one of the number… And I recognize there will never such a number unless there are first a few to give the example,” he said.
He did not say definitely whether he will withhold his own taxes in the future.
The archbishop said to realize the implications of the gospel of peace given by Christ, “it is not the way of the cross which is in question in the nuclear age but our willingness to follow it.”
In his statement, delivered as a homily during the opening worship service at the Lutheran convention, Archbishop Hunthausen referred to the beatitude which calls Christians to become peacemakers.
He added that the following beatitude in Matthew’s Gospel, “blessed are those who are persecuted in the cause of right, theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” may imply that the consequence of peacemaking — persecution — is a further way into the kingdom.
A follow-up:
Archbishop’s Stand on Nuclear Arms Draws Support
Seattle (NC)—
A majority of the Catholic clergy in the Seattle Archdiocese and many Protestant clergymen have indicated support for the stand in favor of unilateral disarmament taken by Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen of Seattle.
Letters to the archdiocesan chancery have been running four to one in favor of the archbishop’s position, officials reported.
And church leaders in Washington state are planning to meet on to draft a joint statement to send to their national denominational offices in support of the archbishop’s call for unilateral disarmament and his suggestion that Christians refuse to pay 50 percent of their federal income tax to protest government spending on nuclear arms.
“We hope it will spark a national dialogue,” said the Rev. Loren Arnett, executive director of the Washington Association of Churches.
Some military personnel however visited the archbishop “to express consternation” over his stand, said Father Jeffrey L. Sarkies, executive editor of Catholic Northwest Progress, the archdiocesan newspaper.
And retired Adm. Joseph Jaap wrote an article for the daily Seattle Post-Intelligencer to oppose the archbishop’s position.
In a speech on to the Pacific Northwest Synod Convention of the Lutheran Church in America, Archbishop Hunthausen urged the delegates “to render to a nuclear arms Caesar what that Caesar deserves — tax resistance.”
“I am told by some that unilateral disarmament in the face of atheistic communism is insane,” he said.
“I find myself observing that nuclear armament by anyone is itself atheistic and anything but sane.”
In a letter published after the archbishop’s speech, Seattle leaders of the Lutheran, United Methodist and United Presbyterian Churches and of the United Church of Christ vowed to “stand publicly with him” and called on clergymen elsewhere in the nation “to give a similar call to action.”
In an article published in the issue of the Catholic Northwest Progres, Archbishop Hunthausen said his suggestion of withholding taxes “is a tactic that may or may not be used by persons who agree with the main points I made on disarmament.
I have no intention of urging it strongly on anyone.”
Located in the area covered by the Seattle Archdiocese are the headquarters of the Boeing Company, a military supplier; the Bangor nuclear submarine base, which will soon be home port for 10 Trident submarines; Fort Lewis, an Army base; and McCord Air Force Base
The Catholic Worker reproduced the text of Hunthausen’s speech in its issue (I’ve already reproduced that text in an Picket Line post, so I won’t here).
An editorial note accompanying the transcript read in part:
It deserves careful study and much reflection.
While it focuses on the nuclear arms stockpile, it can help us reflect on the various manifestations of violence in our world.
And in response to the evil around us, Archbishop Hunthausen reminds us that we can take concrete steps to build a better society, if we are willing to take risks.
Further, by presenting unilateral disarmament and tax refusal in a moral, rather than a tactical, perspective, he has opened much needed discussion.
We welcome this reminder that to build a society based on love rather than fear, we are called by the Gospel to seek a guide for action and a measure for success other than those the world offers.
A brief introduction to tax refusal, contributed by Peggy Scherer, also accompanied the speech transcript:
Tax Refusal
Tax refusal can be approached in many ways.
A person thinking of taking this step should consider their motivation, and their willingness and ability to accept the consequences of their action.
Yet, while the negative results may range from inconvenience to fines to time in jail, and these realities merit consideration, there are many positive implications as well.
Taking one’s money out of a budget which puts a priority on arms rather than services and putting that money into an alternative fund is a positive action.
Many see tax refusal as an opportunity to engage in discussion with those working in the Internal Revenue System, and view it as a means for educating those who know of no other alternatives.
Methods of refusal vary.
Some people refuse to pay the Federal phone tax, historically connected with military spending.
This tax was to have been reduced to 1% this year, but was kept at 2% for the remainder of .
Others choose to live on a non-taxable income.
Still others refuse to pay all, or part of, their income tax, continuing that witness until possible seizure of property or prosecution by the IRS (which may take months or years, though no one should count on that).
Some pay at different points during this process, having taken their stand, and in fact causing the IRS to spend some part of what is being collected.
Various resources offer concrete information on how to refuse, reasons why this path is chosen, and personal accounts of some who have refused taxes:
War Resisters League, 339 Lafayette St., NY, NY 10012 has a Tax Resistance Kit.
It contains, among other things, a good handbook called People Pay for Peace, by William Durland, which includes information on the why and how of tax refusal, information on IRS’ collection process, a bibliography of reading material, and a list of counselors and alternative tax funds around the country.
The Peacemaker, P.O. Box 827, Garberville, CA 95440, a movement with a newspaper of the same name, has both a leaflet, called “Saying No to War Taxes,” and a regular column on tax refusal in its paper.
Many people connected with the Peacemaker movement have refused taxes for years, and can be very helpful in providing information and personal accounts of their experiences.
The Tax Dilemma: Praying for Peace, Paying for War, by Donald Kaufman, Herald Press, Scottdale, PA 15653, $3.95, discloses the long tradition of Chriatians refusing to pay for war.
It is a helpful resource to those considering tax refusal in the light of the teaching of Jesus.
National Catholic News Service continued covering the response to Archbishop Hunthausen’s speech.
This comes from a dispatch:
Religious Leaders Back Archbishop’s Disarmament Plea
Olympia, Wash. (NC)—
Sixteen leaders of nine denominations in Washington state strongly backed a recent call for unilateral U.S. nuclear disarmament by Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle.
In a separate action the Catholic Biblical Association at its annual meeting in Seattle passed a resolution praising the archbishop’s “courageous witness to the urgent need for nuclear disarmament.”
Archbishop Hunthausen issued the call in a speech in Tacoma, Wash., to the Pacific Northwest Synod Conference of the Lutheran Church in America.
He urged Americans to “render to a nuclear Caesar what that Caesar deserves — tax resistance.”
The 16 church leaders — bishops or executive heads of denominations affiliated with the Washington Association of Churches — said at a press conference following a private meeting that they planned to issue a joint statement on nuclear disarmament soon and take several other steps to begin discussion, prayer and action on the issue within their churches.
“The response of the other leaders of the churches in our state (to Archbishop Hunthausen’s talk) could be summarized in the word ‘bravo!’ ” the Rev. Loren Arnett, executive minister of the Washington Association of Churches, told reporters after the meeting.
“We’ve been waiting for someone in our group to have the courage to forthrightly state the commitment that the archbishop declared that day in Tacoma,” he added.
“We’ve termed it prophetic, we regard it as preaching God’s word in the best sense.”
United Methodist Bishop Melvin G. Talbert commented, “We do endorse his stance and in addition we intend to take further steps.”
The group said it had decided to
Draft a joint statement on nuclear disarmament and the arms race in the near future, based on Archbishop Hunthausen’s talk;
Work with their constituencies to heighten awareness of the moral issues involved in nuclear arms proliferation;
Encourage prayer and discussion over the archbishop’s recommendation of tax resistance as a possible strategy specifying that tax funds withheld should be channeled to peace efforts;
Urge their people to fast and pray each Monday to increase awareness of the enormity of the nuclear arms race;
Advance education for peace in the state and organize a statewide peace conference in the near future.
The group also agreed to start a dialogue with congressional delegations on the nuclear arms issue and to use prayer and non-violent means to express concern over the Trident nuclear submarine and its role in nuclear arms proliferation.
In his address to the Lutheran Synod Conference Archbishop Hunthausen had referred to the Trident base in Puget Sound as a “back yard” issue which people in the Pacific Northwest “must take special responsibility for.”
He said the Trident submarine with its ability to fire 408 nuclear warheads at separate targets, represents a first-strike nuclear doctrine by the U.S. government.
“First strike nuclear weapons are immoral and criminal,” he said, and “Trident is the Auschwitz of Puget Sound.”
The church leaders who attended the special meeting and backed Archbishop Hunthausen’s disarmament plea represented nine of the 10 churches affiliated with the Washington Association of Churches.
No representative of the Church of the Brethren was present.
Catholics besides Archbishop Hunthausen included three other bishops in the state and officials from the Washington State Catholic Conference.
Non-Catholic churches or church agencies represented were the American Baptist Churches of the Northwest, the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia, the American Lutheran Church, the Lutheran Church in America, the United Methodists, the United Church of Christ, the United Presbyterians, and the United Church-Disciples of Christ.
The Catholic Biblical Associations resolution supporting Archbishop Hunthausen passed without a negative vote and with only three abstentions among the more than 150 Scripture scholars attending the meeting, said Benedictine Father Joseph Jensen, executive secretary of the CBA.
The resolution said that “the nuclear arms race is a moral issue of the greatest magnitude” and “the biblical tradition emphasized that our trust must be placed in God rather than in armaments.”
The CBA commended Archbishop Hunthausen “for his courageous witness to the urgent need for nuclear disarmament and for creative constructive efforts to foster peace.”
There were also a few mentions-in-passing of Hunthausen’s call for tax resistance in other dispatches about increasing church activism on the nuclear weapons issue.
A Catholic institution began resisting its phone tax, according to this National Catholic News Service dispatch:
Reaction to Parish Tax Resistance Decision Varies
Indianapolis (NC)—
The decision by the St. Thomas Aquinas Parish Council to withhold the federal tax portion of its phone bill to protest the U.S. arms buildup has met with a varied but basically favorable reaction, said Philip Schervish, parish council president.
“Many people agreed wholeheartedly and support what we’re doing,” said Schervish, who spoke at all Masses on .
“Through the resolution some people have learned for the first time about the church’s position on armaments and escalation and are now considering what their own personal response should be.
“And some other people agree in principle but disagree with the specific action that was chosen.”
Schervish acknowledged that “a small but vocal minority” said the action was against the law or asked “How dare you criticize the government?”
He said the parish will mount a month-long educational effort in , which will include printed materials, films and discussion opportunities after Sunday Masses and at other times.
St. Thomas’s federal taxes on its phone bill probably will amount to no more than about $50, Schervish said.
There is a penalty of 12 percent going up to 20 percent in , on any unpaid taxes, if the Internal Revenue Service chooses to collect it.
Schervish said he doubts that will happen.
He said he and his wife have withheld these taxes for 12 years and the IRS has collected the money only twice.
“For individuals or the parish, the amount isn’t that much,” he said.
“The witness value is what’s important, the decision that we can’t voluntarily participate in the system.”
Frank Savage, Indianapolis archdiocesan superintendent of education, said his office has sent out a statement outlining church teaching on disarmament with its regular mailing to all pastors, school principals and directors of religious education.
The statement was drafted out of concern for the apparent military buildup and proliferation of military arms, Savage said.
He added that “as educators we need to be aware of our responsibility and the church’s teachings on the issue.”
He said archdiocesan high schools are considering offering a short course in war and peace issues.
The Catholic Worker devoted a page to tax resistance:
Conscience and Tax Resistance
Letter to the IRS
314-4th St. Brooklyn, NY 11215
Chief Collection Branch
Department of the Treasury
Internal Revenue Service 4901
Friend(s),
It’s taken me a while to respond because it’s been a very busy month at the house and it takes me time to express truth.
You asked for a tax return.
I wish to give what I have of life in serving others; and, since Federal taxes go primarily for war, I cannot help you in any way with data gathering and collection.
Rather, I wish to have back the $635.17 income tax and $373.95 FICA you took in , to use for building peace and living with the poor.
, I have been a pacifist and member of the Catholic Worker movement.
I quit the Navy Reserve and, rather than report for induction into the Army, briefly went to jail.
During this time I have lived and worked with the poor, actively promoting peace and running city and country “houses of hospitality” for homeless and helpless people.
I’ve done agricultural labor and all sorts of poor and subsistence work that poor people must bear — the basic labor that rich, comfortable, and professional people depend upon to live — though they little realize it.
For three and a half years, I lived with a Quaker family and have many Quaker friends who have strongly influenced me.
Currently, I help run the Arthur Sheehan House of Hospitality and the Christian Help In Park Slope (CHIPS) Shelter in Brooklyn.
I also am a poet and go to library school.
Since I refused to take part in killing or coercion, the only thing that makes sense is to refuse cooperation with the process of paying for it.
Cooperation builds a public spirit of deference and legitimacy that facilitates the process.
The process of taxation supports developments more far-reaching, serious, and monstrously perverse than even simply killing.
This country is spending more of the budget for war than ever before in peacetime.
We make, use, and export weapons which kill indiscriminately (even babies in womb or at breast) and en masse; and weapons which mutilate, pollute air, ground, and water, and corrupt forever the genetic heritage of future generations.
The government plans first strikes and preemptive war, destabilizes governments, foments discord and treachery, and brokers arms races.
Further, it actually has placed and planned to use weapons which can destroy every living thing.
Fear, greed, grasping to get one-up on others, and war, have distorted perspectives and led the Federal Government in every area and at every level (including health, education, welfare, agriculture, commerce, etc.) to adopt what amounts to an anti-life mentality.
I look long and hard to find anything the Federal Government does which is not in its own interest and is in a right spirit.
Support for abortion, though a relatively small part of the budget — an extreme case in point — is a sign that the spirit is anti-life.
Although for civic peace and good neighborliness, I file and go along with state and city taxes, despite whatever foolishness local government gets into, I draw a line.
All of these anti-life actions have been condemned by the Catholic Church. I am Catholic.
The American bishops, Vatican Council, Popes — I think by now most responsible religious bodies — have condemned especially weapons of indiscriminate destruction — even possession of such weapons.
Several American bishops have called for war tax refusal.
I believe the only way to peace is peace. Only winning hearts is effective.
Violence originates in human hearts; peace begins in self with faith, poverty of spirit, and fundamental change of heart.
Then, to make peace with each other, it is necessary to make peace with the earth.
Experience convinces me war is incompatible with any true problem-solving, dialogue, reconciliation, or ministry — war is futile for achieving peace.
It lacks room for forgiveness.
State resort to violence makes violence seem legitimate and helps create a climate of contradictions and violence.
All other violence pales in comparison to preparation of instruments for world destruction.
The government which prepares such things lacks qualifications to resolve conflicts, within or without.
I believe the only way to resolve social conflicts is to resolve and eliminate causes — works of mercy versus works of war.
I believe I must one day face Jesus as judge (Who said: “If you deny Me before men, I shall deny you before My Father in Heaven”).
He commanded “Love your enemy,” “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is, Who lets His rain fall on the just and unjust.”
He warned: “He who lives by the sword will die by the sword” and “What you’ve done to the least of these you’ve done to Me.”
He took judgment and killing out of our hands, because it is sacrilegious to kill within God’s family and killing leads to destruction of the killers — body, soul, mind, heart.
He left us the right to use, in constant prayer, only whatever truth and love God abundantly grants us.
We each face, in a way, the choice that humans have faced since the beginning, as in the story of Adam and Eve: to choose good only and thus find paradise or to choose the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and thus bring on ourselves pain, death, and destruction of everything most beautiful and precious to us in the world we know.
I want to give allegiance only to hope — to say “Yes!” to life, and to say “No!” to mad fear and scapegoating — while it still may possibly not be too late.
The Federal Government may go one way.
I go another — trying to build a spirit in the world, such that some day I may even be happy to contribute to what the government does; and the government may even be willing to allow me to contribute freely or not.
Can you imagine? That is world peace!
I care for your salvation. I pray you may have peace and freedom from the madness of arms.
Will you gather a harvest in spirit for Truth and Love rather than money for war and worse?
If you want to pursue this further may we meet and talk?
Daniel Marshall
Conscience & Military Tax Campaign
One of several groups promoting various ways to refuse taxes is the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign.
It is seeking people who will resolve to start withholding the full military portion of their Federal income taxes when notified that 100,000 people are ready to join in this action.
The Campaign encourages people to start at least symbolic withholding now, and offers support as well as advice on how to do it.
CMTC was organized by supporters of the World Peace Tax Fund.
Some may feel they cannot take such a risk because they are encumbered with assets and family obligations.
CMTC can furnish material that will explain how certain steps towards tax refusal can be taken with minimum risk.
One can withhold taxes in such a way as to not expose oneself to a jail sentence.
For further information, contact: Conscience & Military Tax Campaign, 44 Bellhaven Road, Bellport, NY 11713.
People Pay for Peace
An updated and enlarged edition of People Pay for Peace: A Military Tax Refusal Guide for Radical Religious Pacifists and People of Conscience, by Bill Durland, will be available by .
People Pay for Peace has been used for several years by people of religious and moral conscience who are contemplating or actually resisting participation in military expenditures for war, planning for war or weapons research.
Over 50% of U.S. income tax dollars goes to the military (for past, present and future uses), while social services expenditures continue to be cut by the current administration.
The new edition (published by The Center on Law and Pacifism, P.O. Box 1584 Colorado Springs, CO 80901 and available on order from them) is enlarged to include the following subjects: Part Ⅰ is entitled “Introduction to Military Tax Refusal” and contains four chapters.
Chapter One discusses the background of the movement including motivations and a history of war tax resistance.
Chapter Two outlines theological responses to paying taxes for war — both Christian and Jewish, including the relationship of civil disobedience to the Gospel and Torah.
Chapter Three deals with several philosophical questions on the “why’s” and “why not’s” of doing war tax resistance.
Chapter Four discusses the military budget, alternative funds and community organization.
Part Ⅱ is entitled “How to Refuse to Pay the Military Tax.”
This part also has four chapters.
Chapter One deals with the employee as tax refuser, with special emphasis on the problem of withholding and adjusting one’s W-4 form in order to have sufficient allowances so that by income tax time one may have some control of one’s tax payment, thereby allowing a war tax deduction.
Chapter Two is concerned with the problems encountered by employers, self-employed and community organizations as war tax resisters.
Such questions as the loss of tax exempt status are addressed in this chapter.
Chapter Three provides an historical background of the income tax and information on current trends in military spending.
War tax credits, deductions and refunds and, finally, an analysis of telephone tax refusal are also covered in this chapter.
Chapter Four reprints a number of examples of letters of conscience of people who explain to the IRS their reasons for war tax refusal.
Part Ⅲ is entitled “What the IRS Will Do To You” and treats the administrative process (the audit) in Chapter One; the collection process (the lien, levy, seizure) in Chapter Two.
Attention is given to specific questions such as: Can you be fired?
What are the specific problems of husbands and wives or other people with joint accounts?
What are the IRS penalties and interest?
What can you do about collection?
Part Ⅳ explains the court process.
Chapter One discusses both civil and criminal courts, especially the Tax Court, and the process involved in electing to go there.
Is it true you can be fined $500 for exercising your constitutional right to use the Tax Court?
What are the statutes of limitations for the IRS in prosecuting your case?
Chapter Two deals with current criminal and civil cases with a discussion of winning and witnessing and conscience and the courts.
Part Ⅴ reviews the major constitutional cases on war tax resistance brought before the courts by the Center on Law and Pacifism over the past several years.
Each chapter includes reprints of major sections of legal briefs and writs used at the Appellate Court and Supreme Court level.
These reprints are offered because they can be modified for use at all court levels by war tax resisters handling their own cases.
Chapter Seven of this section concludes with some observations about the future for war tax resistance.
War Resisters League Tax Refusal Guide
People at the War Resisters League, many of whom themselves have refused taxes, have put together a comprehensive Guide to War Tax Resistance.
Drawing on their own experiences and the kinds of questions many people have asked them through the years, they have compiled information on types of tax refusal and their consequences, a history of tax refusal, accounts of resisters, a list of local tax refusal centers or contacts, and an historical analysis of military spending.
Another section is on ways to resist collection.
The Guide is a very useful resource and easy to understand.
It is 120 pgs. long, with 8½×11 inch pages, and can be gotten for $6 plus $1 postage from: War Resisters League, 339 Lafayette St., NY, NY 10012.
―Peggy Scherer
When we last left Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen, he had issued a rousing cry for resistance to nuclear arms, and had suggested war tax resistance as one way to go about it, but had been a little coy about how he himself was going to respond come tax time.
In , he cleared that up.
From the National Catholic News Service:
1-1-27-82 ARCHBISHOP HUNTHAUSEN HOLDING BACK HALF OF TAXES IN NUCLEAR PROTEST (600 — EMBARGOED until .
Not to be published or broadcast before that date.)
Seattle (NC)—
Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen of Seattle has announced that he will withhold 50 percent of his federal income taxes as “a means of protesting our nation’s continuing involvement in the race for nuclear arms supremacy.”
The archbishop’s announcement, in the form of a pastoral letter, came seven months after he suggested to delegates to the Pacific Northwest Synod Convocation of the Lutheran Church in America that one possible non-violent form of Christian resistance to “nuclear murder and suicide” would be to refuse to pay 50 percent of one’s federal income taxes.
In his letter dated and released in the issue of his archdiocesan newspaper, the Catholic Northwest Progress, the archbishop stated that he is “aware that this action will provoke a variety of responses,” but urged all persons to “continue to discuss this nuclear arms issue in a spirit of mutual openness and charity.”
He also said that he was not suggesting that all who agree with his peace and disarmament views should imitate his action of income tax withholding.
“I recognize,” he said, “that some who agree with me in their hearts find it practically impossible to run the risk of withholding taxes because of their obligations to those personally dependent upon them.
Moreover, I see little value in imitating what I am doing simply because I am doing it.
I prefer that each individual come to his or her own decision on what should be done to meet the nuclear arms challenge.”
Citing a previous pastoral letter he wrote on the subject.
Archbishop Hunthausen stated that certain laws may be peacefully disobeyed under serious conditions, and that there may be times “when disobedience may be an obligation of conscience.”
“I believe,” he said “that the present issue is as serious as any the world has faced. The very existence of humanity is at stake.”
What he hopes his words and actions will do, the archbishop continued, is “to awaken those who have come to accept without thinking the continuation of the arms race, to stir even those who disagree with me to find a better path than the one we now follow, to encourage all to put in first place not the production of arms but the production of peace.”
The federal income tax which he withholds, the archbishop said, will be deposited in a fund to be used for charitable purposes.
When Archbishop Hunthausen called for unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United States in an address to the Lutheran synod meeting and suggested nuclear tax resistance as one possible response to nuclear arms spending, his comments received national news coverage.
His speech led Catholic and non-Catholic church leaders in the state of Washington to begin programs of prayer, study and discussion on war and peace issues in their churches.
Archbishop Hunthausen, 60, did not reveal the amount of federal taxes he usually pays or how much one half of his taxes would be.
His chancellor, Father Michael Ryan, said he did not think the archbishop would publicize the amount because it was the symbol of the action that was important rather than the amount of money involved.
Father Ryan also said the archbishop “realizes he’s responsible for facing the consequences” of civil disobedience, but “I don’t think he’d want to speculate on” the penalties he may face.
Deliberate refusal to pay taxes can be punished by fines or imprisonment or both.
3-1-27-82 NC DOCUMENTARY: ARCHBISHOP HUNTHAUSEN ON TAX RESISTANCE (1,080 — EMBARGOED until .
Not to be published or broadcast before that date.)
Seattle (NC)—
This is the text of a pastoral letter by Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen of Seattle announcing his decision to withhold half his federal income tax in protest over U.S. nuclear weapons policy.
The letter, dated , was released in the Seattle archdiocesan newspaper, the Catholic Northwest Progress.
My dear people of God:
As you Know, I have spoken out against the participation of our country in the nuclear arms race because I believe that such participation leads to incalculable harm.
Not only does it take us along the path toward nuclear destruction, but it also diverts immense resources from helping the needy.
As Vatican Ⅱ put it, “The arms race is one of the greatest curses on the human race and the harm that it inflicts on the poor is more than can be endured.” (“The Church in the Modern World,” n. 81)
I believe that as Christians imbued with the spirit of peacemaking expressed by the Lord in the Sermon on the Mount, we must find ways to make known our objections to the present concentration on further nuclear arms buildup.
Accordingly, after much prayer, thought, and personal struggle, I have decided to withhold 50 percent of my income taxes as a means of protesting our nation’s continuing involvement in the race for nuclear arms supremacy.
I am aware that this action will provoke a variety of responses.
Many will agree with me and support me as they have done in the past.
Other conscientious people will be puzzled, uncomprehending, resentful, and even angry.
For the sake of all, I shall clarify what I am attempting and not attempting to do by my tax-withholding action.
I do so in the prayerful hope that all continue to discuss this nuclear arms issue in a spirit of mutual openness and charity.
How ironic if we as Christians were to discuss the issue of disarmament for peace in a warlike fashion!
I am not attempting to say that there is but one way of dealing with the problem of the arms race and the nuclear holocaust toward which it leads.
I recognize the need for a number of different strategies for the promotion of arms reduction.
Accordingly, I welcome the diverse efforts of many individuals and groups, including the efforts of some of my fellow bishops to call attention to the seriousness of this matter and to suggest practical ways of acting with regard to it.
I am not attempting to divide the Christian community.
I pray that because of our openness and respect for one another we can grow together by our concentration on the goal of world peace and the eventual elimination of nuclear arms despite our disagreements over the best way to achieve such goals.
I am not suggesting that all who agree with my peace and disarmament views should imitate my action of income tax withholding.
I recognize that some who agree with me in their hearts find it practically impossible to run the risk of withholding taxes because of their obligations to those personally dependent upon them.
Moreover, I see little value in imitating what I am doing simply because I am doing it.
I prefer that each individual come to his or her own decision on what should be done to meet the nuclear arms challenge.
I am not pointing a finger of accusation at those who disagree with what I plan to do.
I would hope, however, that such persons will respect those whose views differ from theirs.
No one has answers that are absolutely certain in such complex matters.
I am suggesting that we must maintain a continuing and open dialogue.
I am not attacking my country.
I love my country.
As I said in a previous pastoral letter on this subject (): “It is true that as a general rule the laws of the state must be obeyed.
However, we may peacefully disobey certain laws under serious conditions.
There may even be times when disobedience may be an obligation of conscience.
Most adults have lived through times and situations where this would apply.
“Thus Christians of the first three centuries disobeyed the laws of the Roman Empire and often went to their death because of their stands.
They were within their rights.
Similarly, in order to call attention to certain injustices, persons like Martin Luther King engaged in demonstrations that broke the laws of the state.
The point is that civil law is not an absolute, it is not a god that must be obeyed under any and all conditions.
In certain cases where issues of great moral import are at stake, disobedience to a law in a peaceful manner and accompanied by certain safeguards that help preserve respect for the institution of law is not only allowed but may be, as I have said, an obligation of conscience.”
I believe that the present issue is as serious as any the world has faced.
The very existence of humanity is at stake.
I am not encouraging those who wish to avoid paying taxes to use my action as an excuse for their not paying.
I plan to deposit what I withhold in a fund to be used for charitable peaceful purposes.
I am saying by my action that in conscience I cannot support or acquiesce in a nuclear arms buildup which I consider a grave moral evil.
I am saying that I see no possible justification for the willingness to employ nuclear weapons capable of destroying humanity as we know it.
I am saying that everyone should think profoundly and pray deeply over the issue of nuclear armaments.
My words and my action of tax withholding are meant to awaken those who have come to accept without thinking the continuation of the arms race, to stir even those who disagree with me to find a better path than the one we now follow, to encourage all to put in first place not the production of arms but the production of peace.
I urge all of you to pray and to fast, to study and to discuss, and then to decide what you shall do to combat the evil of the nuclear arms race.
I cannot make your decision for you.
I can and do challenge you to make a decision.
May God be with you, His joy, His peace, His love.
Raymond G. Hunthausen, Archbishop of Seattle
IRS Could Prosecute Tax Resisting Archbishop
By Jerry Filteau
Washington (NC)—
If Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle holds back half of his federal income tax in protest over U.S. nuclear arms policy, as he has said he will, the Internal Revenue Service could prosecute him.
In addition to having his assets attached to pay the taxes and interest or penalties on them, the archbishop could face up to five years in prison and $10,000 in fines for each year that he refuses to pay.
“We’ve got to administer the law regardless of the political or philosophical persuasion of the taxpayer,” said Larry Batdorf, an official of IRS’s national media relations office in Washington.
Archbishop Hunthausen said in a TV interview in Seattle that he planned to withhold 50 percent of his federal income taxes to protest U.S. involvement in the nuclear arms race.
In a pastoral letter to his archdiocese a few days later he stated his position more fully and explained it.
Batdorf, following IRS policy, declined to comment specifically on Archbishop Hunthausen’s action or how the IRS would respond, but he outlined the general IRS position and policy regarding those who try to resist or evade their taxes.
He cited the court case of Autenreith v. Cullan, in which a tax resister was trying to withhold part of his taxes in protest over the Vietnam War, as a key legal precedent for IRS policy in such cases.
Batdorf quoted the pertinent part of the judge’s ruling: “The fact that some persons may object on religious grounds to some of the things that the government does is not a basis upon which they can claim a constitutional right not to pay a part of the tax.”
“We feel that the court has ruled very clearly” on that type of protest of conscience, said Batdorf.
He said that during the Vietnam War one popular form of tax protest was to refuse to pay the excise tax on one’s telephone bill.
The IRS assessed and collected the taxes from “about 700 to 800 a year” who engaged in that protest, he said.
He said he did not have any specific figures distinguishing IRS cases involving protests of conscience from those involving mistakes on one’s tax return or fraudulent tax evasion.
But in general, he said, the IRS audits some 2 million tax returns a year, settles most of those cases civilly, and gets about 1,600 criminal convictions a year for tax evasion.
He said in most cases the procedure is to try for a civil settlement first.
If the person refuses to file a return or files a low return, the IRS computes the tax, informs the person of its findings, and notifies the person that he has 90 days to make corrections or petition the findings in court.
If the person does not petition, said Batdorf, the tax is presumed correct.
After the court decides in favor of the IRS or the person fails to go to court, the IRS is free to collect the money and can use various means to do so, including attachment of wages or assets.
If the case goes to criminal prosecution, he said, the maximum penalty upon conviction for tax evasion, which is a felony, is five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
The actual penalties in each case are determined by the courts, not by the IRS, he said.
Another dispatch, from , read:
Church Refuses IRS Demand
Ames, Iowa (NC)—
A Catholic church in Ames has refused to cooperate with demands by the Internal Revenue Service to garnishee the wages of an employee who is a tax protester against the nuclear arms race.
Thomas Cordaro, employed by St. Thomas Aquinas Church as a lay campus minister for the parish’s Catholic Student Center at Iowa State University, owes the government $828.23 in federal income taxes.
He has refused to pay the taxes because of his religious beliefs.
He used the money instead to help found and run Loaves and Fishes Hospitality House, a shelter and meal center for the poor.
Father Thomas Geary, administrator of the parish, said an IRS representative from Des Moines, Iowa, served levies four times to the parish secretary, each time declining to wait to meet with the pastor.
He said he was frustrated at the lack of personal contact and called the IRS office, but the personnel there were unwilling to discuss the matter.
The parish council unanimously resolved “that St. Thomas Parish refuse to pay the IRS levy because we are not a tax collecting agency and because we see underlying moral implications that we have not had time to sufficiently explicate.”
Father Geary sent the IRS a letter communicating the parish council’s resolution and his decision to refuse to garnishee Cordaro’s wages for the government.
The decision means that the government could take the church to court to force it to pay the money.
According to an IRS spokesman, under Section 6332 of the IRS code an employer that refuses to honor a levy for garnishment of wages becomes “liable in his own estate to the extent of the levy not honored.”
If the IRS must take the employer to court to enforce the payment of that liability, the spokesman said, the court can force the employer to pay a penalty of 50 percent of the levy in addition to the levy itself.
Archbishop James Byrne of Dubuque, Iowa, the archdiocese in which Ames is located, has privately supported the parish’s decision to refuse to honor the levy in support of Cordaro’s conscience.
Father Geary said that the parish council’s decision was not based on the taxes and their use, but on concern for “respecting the conscience of Cordaro.”
“Also this council decision does not necessarily reflect the thinking of the parish members, who are now struggling with the issue before deciding what path to follow,” he said.
Cordaro agreed that the parish council is still struggling with the issue of his tax protest and said its action should not be interpreted as a condemnation of the arms race.
He said his decision to withhold his taxes as a witness against the nuclear arms race “is intricately linked to my concern for the poor,” and all his financial resources are used to rent and maintain the hospitality house for the poor.
Saying his action “is well within Catholic orthodoxy,” Cordaro cited the statement by the Vatican to the United Nations on disarmament in , which said that the arms race itself “is an act of aggression which amounts to a crime, for even when they are not used, by their cost alone armaments kill the poor by causing them to starve.”
Following a similar rationale, Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle recently announced that he was refusing to pay half of his federal income tax as a protest against U.S. involvement in the global arms race.
He said the tax money would go into a fund for charitable activities.
In rejecting the right of citizens to withhold taxes because of conscientious objection to a government policy or program, the IRS cites the decision of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, which was upheld by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
That court ruling said in part, “The fact that some persons may object on religious grounds to some of the things that the government does is not a basis upon which they can claim a constitutional right not to pay a part of the tax.”
An article in the Catholic Commentator said that Archbishop Hunthausen had addressed “300 peace activists attending a meeting at Notre Dame University” in South Bend, Indiana and had again announced his tax resistance there.
Aside from that, the article just recycled already-familiar quotes and background.
However, the Catholic Worker printed a few excerpts from the talk:
“…Render to Caesar without question, and without question we will get nuclear war.
“As Christians, we once had a commitment of refusing incense to Caesar.
The Church resisted that idolatry, at the cost of martyrdom.
What has happened to the Christian belief in the Cross and rejection of idolatry?
“Now, on a more blasphemous scale than any homage paid to a first-century Caesar, we engage in nuclear idolatry.
It is not God in Whom we place our trust, but nuclear weapons…
“I believe deeply that God’s love is infinitely more powerful than any nuclear weapon, and that, in seeking to rediscover the Cross, we are on the edge of a discovery more momentous to the world than that of nuclear energy.
Nonviolence. Jesus’ divine way of the Cross, is, in its own way, the most explosive force of history.
Its kind of force, however, is a force of life — a divine force of compassion which can raise the people of this earth from death to life.
I invite you to join me in finding our way back to that nonviolent force of life and love at the heart of the Gospels, which offers a way out of our nuclear tomb.”
An editorial by Father Michael J. Savelesky, printed in the issue of the Inland Register (newspaper of the Diocese of Spokane, Washington), went out over the wire on .
It compared Hunthausen to the biblical prophet Jeremiah, and concluded:
Already people are calling Archbishop Hunthausen a prophet in our own time.
There is a subtle abdication of personal responsibility here.
If the archbishop is indeed a prophet, then we individually and collectively are obliged to face the truth he speaks.
His tax refusal will hardly affect the Gross National Product, but it does shock us into confronting in our own lives the moral issue of nuclear arms.
No one of us escapes that responsibility.
Even to do nothing is a moral stance whose consequences we bear.
A dispatch:
Tax Protester Gets Support in Iowa, Criticism in Florida
By NC News Service
Tax protester Tom Cordaro, who refused to pay $828 in taxes because of the nuclear arms race, has drawn support from the Dubuque Iowa, archdiocesan priests’ senate and criticism from a writer, a lawyer and a priest in Florida.
In an unanimous vote the Dubuque priests’ senate backed Cordaro and his parish, St. Thomas Aquinas, in Ames, Iowa, which has refused Internal Revenue Service (IRS) demands to withhold money from his wages.
Individual members of the priests’ senate also pledged $2,500 for a defense fund to be used if litigation with the IRS over the tax protest ensues.
Meanwhile, in Florida, writer and Scripture scholar Dick Biow and an attorney, Aldo Icardi, both of Winter Park in the Diocese of Orlando, and an unidentified priest, who all disagree with Cordaro, have sent the IRS $145 to cover some of the taxes Cordaro owes.
They said they acted out of concern for armed forces personnel and a “deep sense of shame that one of our co-religionists" would withhold taxes.
Cordaro is a lay pastoral minister for his parish’s Catholic Student Center at Iowa State University.
Because of his religious beliefs he withheld his federal income tax payment and used it to set up Loaves and Fishes Hospitality House, a shelter and meal center for the poor.
The IRS has served levies on St. Thomas Parish four times but according to Father Patrick Geary, parish administrator, has declined to discuss the matter with the pastor.
The parish council passed a resolution stating St. Thomas will “refuse to pay the IRS levy because we are not a tax collecting agency and because we see underlying moral implications that we have not had time to sufficiently explicate.”
Father Geary informed the IRS of the parish decision and the government could take the church to court over the issue.
Biow, a writer whose articles have appeared in the Florida Catholic, newspaper of the dioceses of Orlando and St. Petersburg, the priest and the lawyer listed three reasons for opposing Cordaro and for extending partial payment of his taxes.
They stated that they “would not like to see even one member of our armed forces deprived of the weapons needed to save his own life while he is protecting that of Mr. Cardaro” and that they “pay these reparations out of a deep sense of shame that one of our co-religionists would select such a callous and brutal way of articulating his anti-defense posture.”
“We hope to deny him the opportunity of playing the public martyr,” they added.
A convert to Catholicism, Biow served as a fighter pilot in World War Ⅱ and his son is now a student at the U.S. Naval Academy.
He has studied Scripture for the last 20 years and served as a Scripture consultant to Bishop William D. Borders of Orlando, now an archbishop who heads the Baltimore See.
Biow said he thinks the Reagan administration’s military budget is too big.
But he also said that seeking a strong national defense is good sense.
And, he said, those who believe a cut in military spending will mean more money for the poor are mistaken.
Reagan “is running the military on credit and he could do the same for the poor,” Biow said.
“People who want to help the poor could do a better job if they stopped tying in their arguments with military spending.
Reagan has to be convinced — or politically forced — to help the poor.”
A National Catholic News Service dispatch gave some more details about Hunthausen’s tax resistance (excerpt):
On his tax resistance the archbishop commented that the amount of money involved “will not be great” since “my total income for will be only about $9,000–$10,000.”
He said he will engage in the resistance by withholding half the amount due when he makes his quarterly estimated tax declaration.
He will divide the unpaid tax money “among a peace group — probably the Peace Academy — a pro-life group and perhaps a direct-service charity like our Society of St. Vincent de Paul,” he said.
“Increasingly I see the linkage between peace, life and charity issues, especially as I see the impact on people’s lives of the worsening economy,” he commented.
Asked if he would continue to withhold taxes until the arms race stopped, the 60-year-old Seattle prelate said, “I have not thought that through completely, but what has recently come home to me is the thought that I should be more closely living the poverty of the Gospel and should be giving away more of what I earn.
“In that case I would have no tax to pay.
However, I want to be sure that I am putting myself in that position for the sake of the Gospel and not because I want to avoid the difficulties of tax resistance.”
A dispatch from gives the appearance of a rapidly-developing story:
Priests Hold Back Taxes to Protest Nuclear Arms
By Jerry Filteau NC News Service
At least 10 U.S. priests refused to pay part of their federal income tax to protest American military expenditures and the nuclear arms race.
There was no way to tell how many others may have done so without saying anything about it publicly.
In Oakland, Calif., Father James A. Schexnayder said he “will not be part of a plot to incinerate humanity” and withheld half his taxes “as a conscious resistance to our nation’s nuclear arms race and our selfish and oppressive military interference in Central America.”
Father Schexnayder, 44, is director of the Oakland diocesan permanent diaconate program.
He said he had been considering tax resistance for some time but was “in a sense stimulated” by the similar decision of Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle, which received national publicity .
In Pittsburgh eight priests held a press conference on , to explain their decisions to withhold part of their taxes to protest “the militaristic priorities of the federal budget and to resist our country’s obsessive participation in the arms race.”
“We are fully aware of the illegality of our action according to the U.S. Tax Code laws,” they said in a prepared press statement.
“We pray that the tension caused by our ‘peace gestures’ may turn people’s minds and hearts to the illegality and immorality of the arms race.”
The priests, all from the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, were Fathers Donald McIlvane, John Brennan, Patrick Fenton, Jack O’Malley, Robert Schweitzer, Donald Fischer, Mark Glasgow and John Oesterle.
After a brief press conference and prayer service at the Pittsburgh Diocesan Building, the eight were joined by other opponents of nuclear weapons in a march to the Pittsburgh Federal Building for a protest demonstration there.
Hearing of the tax protests in Pittsburgh and Oakland, the Indianapolis archdiocesan newspaper, The Criterion, called an associate pastor at a local socially active parish to see if he knew of any priests in the Indianapolis area who were doing the same thing.
The priest, Father Cosmas Raimondi, said yes, he knew of one — “me.”
He had made no public announcement of his decision, but he said that a few days earlier he had filed his federal tax return with a covering letter notifying the IRS that he was paying only half the tax due.
“In my own conscience I don’t feel that I can support a strong militarist spirit in government,” Father Raimondi explained.
“I respect civil law but I also feel that God’s law of love is superior to that civil law.”
He said he preferred to not to call his action of conscience “civil disobedience,” but rather “divine obedience.”
Father Raimondi said he objected to not only the nuclear arms race, which he said must be ended by “mutually monitored steps of disarmament, but also U.S. military aid to “repressive regimes” in Central America and the current program of draft registration in the United States, which he said will lead to a mandatory draft.
The fact that Father Raimondi said nothing of his tax protest until he was called by a newspaper indicated that there may be other priests in the country, influenced by Archbishop Hunthausen’s decision and by the numerous denunciations of the arms race by other American bishops in the past year, who have also engaged in tax resistance without publicity.
In virtually all cases the amount of money involved is slight, since the taxable income of diocesan priests is normally very low.
For religious order priests and nuns, tax resistance is not an option because of the vow of poverty they take.
Under federal law salaries received by members of religious orders are considered income of the religious order itself, not personal income.
Father Schexnayder said his protest was “largely symbolic” because half his taxes only came to about $60.
His tax resistance drew mixed reactions from other Oakland clergymen.
Three local military chaplains contacted by the Oakland diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Voice, expressed different views.
A retired National Guard chaplain, Father Paul J. Engberg, called it “anarchism” and said it was contrary to American principles of respect for law and working within the system if changes are needed.
Father Robert Ríen, chaplain of the 349th Military Airlift Wing, said, “If he feels in conscience that he has to do this, then I support him 100 percent.
At the same time, I hope brother priests will support me in bringing the ministry we share to the people in the military sector.”
Another National Guard chaplain, Father Ronald Lagasse, called Father Schexnayder’s protest “laudable” but “ineffective.”
It might “prick people’s consciences, but won’t go any further than that.
There’s no basis on which to build,” he said.
He and Father Ríen emphasized that military personnel do not want war.
Those in the military, said Father Lagasse, are going through the same qualms of conscience as everyone else on nuclear weapons.
Father Brian Joyce, president of the diocesan priests senate, praised Father Schexnayder for drawing attention to the nuclear arms race as “an issue of conscience, a major one that every Christian has to seriously address.”
But he said he would not take the same action for several reasons, including questions he had about its effectiveness and whether it was the right approach.
“For instance, while I oppose nuclear arms, I don’t necessarily oppose defense, and at the same time I have a lot of respect and admiration for what Jim (Father Schexnayder) is doing,” he said.
(Contributing to this story were Stephen Karlinchak in Pittsburgh, Dan Morris in Oakland and Jim Jachimiak in Indianapolis.)
Archbishop Hunthausen, whose announcement of tax resistance drew national attention, said in that the federal taxes he was refusing to pay were being placed in an escrow account for the World Peace Tax Fund.
Bills to establish that fund are pending in Congress.
If enacted, the legislation would change the U.S. tax code to let conscientious military tax objectors direct the military portion of their tax money to non-military peace-related purposes such as peace research, disarmament efforts, international health, education and welfare programs, and the retraining of workers displaced by conversion from military to non-military production.
A citizens’ organization, Conscience and Military Campaign-U.S., has established the World Peace Tax Fund escrow account to accept payments in anticipation of the legislation.
Correction and Insert
At least 11 (NOT 10) U.S. priests…
After 16th paragraph beginning, The fact that… INSERT the following:
Another priest who said nothing until a newspaper called him and asked was Father Joseph O’Hara, a sociologist at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa.
When he was contacted by The Witness, Dubuque archdiocesan paper, Father O’Hara said he had refused to pay any taxes and had informed the IRS that this was a protest over the nuclear arms race.
Last year Father O’Hara refused to pay his taxes as a protest against the administration’s military support of El Salvador despite the Salvadoran government’s record of human rights violations.
Another tax protester in the Dubuque Archdiocese is Thomas Cordero, a lay minister employed by St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Ames, Iowa.
In the parish council voted unanimously to refuse IRS orders to the parish to garnishee his wages for payment of the taxes owed.
Members of the archdiocesan priests senate agreed to contribute $1,200 out of their pockets to reimburse the parish if the IRS succeeds in legally forcing the parish to pay the taxes plus applicable penalties for its refusal to comply with the garnishment orders.
Father O’Hara said that the money involved in his tax protest was not much, and he had not yet heard a word from the IRS about his refusal to pay taxes last year
PICK UP original 17th paragraph beginning.
In virtually all…
ADD to list of contributors at end of story: …and Father Thomas Ralph in Dubuque.
The Cordero case got more attention in a dispatch:
Tax Protester, Archbishop Clash Over IRS
By Father Thomas Ralph
Dubuque, Iowa (NC)—
Archbishop James J. Byrne of Dubuque and tax protester Tom Cordaro, a lay minister at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Ames have clashed over whether the parish should pay the Internal Revenue Service Cordaro’s unpaid back income taxes.
After a meeting between the two foundered, Cordaro held a five-day prayer vigil next to the archbishop’s house and other protesters picketed the archbishop.
In a statement released Archbishop Byrne stated his position.
St. Thomas Parish, the archbishop said, owes Cordaro a month’s salary for his services as a lay minister during .
Under the law of the Internal Revenue Service code, these unpaid funds are subject to taxation and the parish is obliged to honor the levy.
The archbishop further stated that he had been advised by legal counsel that the parish church is not “the proper or appropriate party to litigate the merits” of Cordaro’s refusal to pay federal income taxes as a protest against the nuclear arms race.
The archbishop’s response came two days after Cordaro ended a five-day prayer vigil at the Chapel of Perpetual Adoration adjoining the archbishop’s residence in Dubuque and returned to Ames.
Cordaro had been in Dubuque when he and Father Patrick Geary, pastor at the Ames parish, met with Archbishop Byrne at Cordaro’s request to discuss the archbishop’s decision that the parish must honor the IRS order to garnishee his wages for $1,300 in back taxes.
The archbishop requested confidentiality regarding the discussion, and when Cordaro said he could not honor the request the meeting ended.
Cordaro began his prayer vigil to protest the archbishop’s refusal to state publicly his reasons for his decision.
At a press conference at the Catholic Worker House before leaving Dubuque , Cordaro said the real tragedy of the past week had not been the archbishop’s demand for payment of his back taxes but “that those in the church with power and influence, who knew an injustice was done, have remained silent.”
He named moral theologians, religious communities, other bishops, teachers and presidents of the universities as examples of those he expected to speak out.
“The archbishop’s silence has made it impossible for me to obey his wishes,” Cordaro said, “and I will continue to withhold my taxes.
Blind obedience to authority is in itself immoral.”
Many groups and individuals in the Dubuque Archdiocese support Cordaro’s position of having the courts decide whether he can withhold payment of his taxes on religious grounds.
On the archdiocesan priests’ senate voted 23-1 for a resolution calling for the archbishop to clarify his decision for halting the tax protest.
The parish council at St. Thomas Aquinas voted unanimously the previous week to support Cordaro’s fight and refuse the IRS demand to garnishee his wages.
Cordaro had been refusing to pay his federal income taxes , giving all but $50 of his $874-a-month parish salary to Loaves and Fishes Hospitality House in Ames which furnishes food and shelter to the needy.
Father Richard P. Funke, vice chancellor of the archdiocese, said that neither he nor the archbishop had seen the priests’ senate resolution and questioned why the resolution was made public before the archbishop had seen it.
“The archbishop is equally concerned about the nuclear build-up,” Father Funke said, “but we are talking about two completely different issues.
“The church has the obligation to support the right of conscience and in this has been supportive of Mr. Cordaro and others in their protests of the nuclear arms race.
“The church also has an obligation to support obedience to duly authorized authority such as the government in its right of taxation for purposes of providing protection, order, freedom and services to its citizenry.”
Portions of taxes go to support “the elderly, the needy, the kind of people Cordaro seems to be concerned about,” Father Funke said.
“How he can withhold 100 percent of his taxes is a real problem to me.”
A legal battle over the right of the government to force a church to garnishee tax moneys in violation of a person’s conscience is being considered by Cordaro and the parish council, of which he is a member.
Approximately $9,000 in pledges has been received to support his legal defense, he said.
Gordon Allen of Des Moines, a constitutional lawyer and the chief counsel for the Iowa Civil Liberties Union, has offered to handle the case without cost.
Archbishop Hunthausen spoke about his tax resistance and the reasoning behind it — and took some questions from a skeptical audience — at a talk in Brooklyn ( dispatch):
New York (NC)—
The possibility of the human family’s destroying itself in a nuclear holocaust presents the greatest spiritual crisis in history, Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle said in an address in New York .
Declaring that he saw no political solution to the crisis, he said that “conversion” was needed “at a depth in our lives we’d rather not know.”
Archbishop Hunthausen spoke at St. James Cathedral in Brooklyn, N.Y. following Sunday Vespers, one of several bishops appearing in a “Shepherds Speak” series sponsored by the Brooklyn Diocese.
The archbishop from Washington state was a focus of national news when he suggested that refusing to pay part of ones income tax could be an appropriate way of protesting the nuclear arms race, and again when he announced that he was refusing to pay half his own tax.
Instead, he said, he would put the money in a fund for such purposes as helping the poor, fighting abortion and promoting disarmament.
In his address Archbishop Hunthausen offered no analysis of how his approach would resolve the military issues involved in national defense but kept his argument on a religious level.
Faith in Christ he said, will liberate Americans from “fear of the Russians” and other fears motivating production of nuclear weapons.
These include the “fear of losing our wealth,” he said.
Archbishop Hunthausen reported that others had tried to convince him that the “realistic way of preserving peace was to build nuclear weapons and plan for the possibility of a first strike.
“I do not understand any of this as realistic,” he said.
Americans, he added, must get a new understanding of reality “or we shall be destroyed.”
As an alternative he advocated the “reality” of the kingdom of God as taught by Jesus.
Archbishop Hunthausen described the way of Jesus as “faithful non-violent action” and said he was seeking to follow that way in his tax protest.
As a result of taking this action, he said he has “begun to experience conversion myself.” Carrying the action a step further Archbishop Hunthausen said he would participate in a “non-violent peace blockade” trying to stop the U.S.S. Ohio, America’s first Trident nuclear missile submarine, when it is taken to its Puget Sound base .
Archbishop Hunthausen was enthusiastically applauded by nearly all of the audience, which numbered about 200–300.
He received standing ovations when he was introduced, at the conclusion of his brief talk, and again at the end of a question period.
However a few individuals had come to express opposition.
One of them, James Crockett, a retired layman from a Brooklyn parish, had prepared a large sign that he held up outside as people departed.
It read: “Archbishop Hunthausen: Would you have us abandon the defense of our homeland and our loved ones?”
During the question period, the archbishop was challenged by S.Z.F. Rutar, a layman of another Brooklyn parish who is the area chapter president of the National Alliance of Czech Catholics.
He told of leaving Czechoslovakia after seeing many friends killed by communists and went on to question Archbishop Hunthausen’s commitment to preserving American freedom.
“I love my country and it is because I love my country that I say what I do,” the archbishop responded.
“I would like for my country to put its confidence in the God we profess to believe in.”
Finally, Bill Samuel summed up the history and current state-of-the-art of American war tax resistance in an article for New Catholic World (reprinted in the Catholic Worker):
Refusing War Taxes
By Bill Samuel
Tax refusal is such an obvious and fundamental means of protest and resistance that it has been used for centuries for a variety of purposes.
Movements of tax refusers are reported as far back as in Egypt.
Tax refusal movements focusing on opposition to war date back at least as far as , when Danish peasants refused to pay taxes to support King Christian Ⅱ’s war against Sweden.
In the United States, war tax refusal is older than the country.
The Quaker-controlled Assembly of the Pennsylvania Colony in refused a royal demand to appropriate money for an expedition into Canada.
In , when the Assembly voted large amounts for the French and Indian War, many Quakers and Mennonites refused to pay taxes. , this was true throughout the colonies, and a number were imprisoned as a result.
The Quaker testimony became so strong that a number of Quakers were disowned by their Monthly Meetings (parishes) during the Revolutionary War for paying war taxes.
But it was not only Quakers and those of other traditionally pacifist religious groups who are engaged in war tax refusal.
The most famous early American war tax refuser was Henry David Thoreau, who was jailed for refusing to pay taxes for the Mexican War.
He eloquently defended his action in his landmark essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience”:
“If a thousand (people) 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.”
Over , there continued to be persons refusing taxes on grounds of objection to war, but war tax refusal was not a major part of peace efforts.
It took the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the growth of the Cold War, to make tax refusal again an important issue in the peace movement.
A number of peace activists, including A.J. Muste, began war tax refusal in .
In , about 250 people seeking a more radical approach to peace met in Chicago.
War tax refusal was one of the major issues at the conference, which spawned the radical pacifist Peacemaker movement.
Nonpayment of taxes for war has been a central tenet of this movement since its founding.
A handful of people associated with the Peacemakers were imprisoned on various charges connected with tax refusal during .
Until , little was published on war tax refusal except leaflets and magazine articles.
Two important books were issued that year.
The Peacemakers issued the first edition of their Handbook on Nonpayment of Taxes for War, which reported the experiences of a number of individuals and endeavored to explain both the whys and the hows of war tax refusal.
The other publication, Edmund Wilson’s The Cold War and the Income Tax, was written by a prominent literary figure who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the same year.
This blistering attack on militarism and the income tax system was greeted with critical acclaim and received mass distribution as a Signet paperback.
Although war tax refusal grew in the two decades following Hiroshima, it remained largely an act of deeply committed pacifists, a tiny minority on the fringes of American society.
It only became a mass movement when large numbers of Americans were killing and being killed in a war that was difficult to justify.
President Johnson aided the growth of tax resistance by identifying specific taxes as needed to finance the war.
The telephone tax, scheduled to expire in , was reimposed explicitly to finance the Vietnam operation and was extended twice during the Vietnam War.
For there was also an income tax surcharge to raise revenue for the war.
People who strongly opposed the Vietnam War, but who were not necessarily pacifists, were moved to resist those taxes.
Because it was both clearly associated with Vietnam and easy to refuse, the telephone tax was at one time refused by hundreds of thousands of Americans.
The War Resisters League (WRL) was the principal group promoting war tax refusal during the early Vietnam war years.
By it seemed to merit its own organization.
With considerable help from the WRL, War Tax Resistance was launched at a New York press conference on .
Aiming at the masses of Vietnam War protesters, WTR defined as a war tax resister anyone who refused at least $5 of some federal tax.
WTR struck a real chord.
Its initial hope was to encourage the formation of WTR branches in at least 25 cities.
Within a year, it had 160 WTR Centers in all parts of the country.
Tax resistance demonstrations were held, especially at filing deadline, in cities and towns all over the U.S.
Most national peace groups participated in the campaign.
Local churches of many denominations refused the phone tax.
Two editions () of a book, Ain’t Gonna Pay for War No More by Robert Calvert, on the reasons for and the methods of war tax refusal were published.
During , the movement attempted to conquer a major obstacle to income tax resistance, the withholding system.
Resisters began to claim additional exemptions on the withholding forms (Form W-4) they filed with their employers to reduce or eliminate withholding.
A number of resisters were indicted on withholding fraud charges.
A handful went to prison, but others won court decisions that an open aboveboard act could not be considered fraud.
Withholding resistance became more sophisticated as Form W-4 was made more complex.
Resisters began claiming allowances justified by large itemized deductions rather than additional dependents.
Large amounts were claimed as “war tax deductions” on tax returns.
This tax refusal method forced the IRS to allow the taxpayer appeals through the civil courts.
The movement also developed a concrete positive component, inspired by Karl Meyer’s article “A Fund for Mankind” in the issue of The Catholic Worker.
Alternative funds pooling refused taxes began to spring up in cities all across the country.
These funds would grant or loan money for a wide variety of social service and social change purposes.
Sometimes the money was dispersed in public and dramatic ways, such as handing people subway tokens with a leaflet at subway stations in poor areas.
Decisions about use of the funds have usually been made collectively by donors.
Most of the funds will return deposited tax money in the event of IRS seizure.
For this reason, many funds have retained all income tax deposits, spending only the interest earned on them.
There were about 55 funds in existence by .
In , a group of war tax refusers and others concerned in the Ann Arbor, Michigan area began meeting together to find a legal alternative to paying taxes for military purposes.
Under the able leadership of Quaker physician Dr. David Bassett, this group developed the World Peace Tax Fund Bill using the legal resources of volunteers from the University of Michigan Law School.
This proposed legislation would allow persons to declare themselves conscientious objectors to military taxation on their tax returns.
Their taxes would be diverted to a new government trust fund, the World Peace Tax Fund.
The military portion of the taxes paid by conscientious objectors would perform alternative service through support of a national peace academy, disarmament efforts, international exchanges and other peace-related programs.
The non-military portion would be returned to the Treasury for use in civilian government programs.
In , a related committee composed largely of church and peace group lobbyists was formed in Washington.
They persuaded Rep. Ronald Dellums (D.-Calif.) and nine other U.S. Representatives to introduce the bill that year.
The Ann Arbor and Washington committees, working from their own homes and offices on a volunteer basis, developed support for the bill from around the country from thousands of individuals and many Church, peace and political groups.
In , the two committees consolidated their efforts into the National Council for a World Peace Tax Fund, operating from a staffed office in Washington.
In , the bill was introduced in the Senate for the first time by Sen. Mark Hatfield (R-Oregon).
The World Peace Tax Fund Bill (H.R. 4897, S. 880) was introduced again in by Rep. Dellums and 29 co-sponsors (as of ) in the House and Sen. Hatfield in the Senate.
In the first years after the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam, the war tax refusal movement lost a lot of its energy.
Although there continued to be many more tax resisters than before the Vietnam era, the organized movement faltered.
National WTR published the last issue of its Tax Talk publication in and formally dissolved .
Many local WTR groups lapsed into inactivity.
Most of the national peace groups lost interest.
Individual resisters often had difficulty finding needed information and support.
As the much-heralded “Vietnam dividend” releasing resources for domestic needs failed to appear and military spending continued to rise, interest in war tax resistance began to grow, particularly within the religious community.
In , the Center on Law and Pacifism was formed.
The brainchild of Catholic attorney and lay theologian William Durland, it was conceived as a radical religious pacifist group focusing on the relationship of pacifism to law and legal institutions.
The Center has provided legal counsel to a number of war tax refusers.
It has not won any major legal victories, but its existence as an expert resource for support encouraged many to become war tax resisters.
A Center workshop in called for a People Pay for Peace campaign involving the refusal of at least $2.40 (U.S. military budget per day per capita) in federal taxes.
During the tax filing season, local groups formed in a number of cities, resulting in many new war tax resisters and a number of public witness actions.
The Center issued the first edition of People Pay for Peace: A Military Tax Refusal Guide in , and has issued a revised edition or a supplement to the book each year since.
At the same time, interest was increasing in historically pacifist churches.
The General Conference Mennonlte Church had been considering the issue for years, beginning its forum newsletter God and Caesar in .
The issue became a major one for the New Call to Peacemaking (NCP), a joint effort by Mennonites, Quakers and Brethren to revitalize their peace witness.
At the first NCP national conference in , the gathering called upon individual church members “seriously to consider refusal to pay the military portion of their federal taxes as a response to Christ’s call to radical discipleship.”
It further called “on our denominations, congregations, and meetings to give high priority to the study and promotion of war tax resistance in our own circles and beyond.”
This strong stand received considerable publicity in the mass media.
Particularly among Mennonites and Quakers, greatly increased consideration of the issue has resulted and many more individual members are engaging in war tax resistance.
A second NCP conference in reaffirmed the position.
In , Long Island peace activist Ed Pearson and others active in the World Peace Tax Fund movement launched a new national campaign to focus mass war tax resistance on passage of the bill.
The Conscience and Military Tax Campaign seeks 100,000 people to sign a Resolution stating that they are either now resisting the payment of war taxes or will do so by the time 100,000 have signed.
An Escrow Account of refused military taxes is maintained, to be turned over to IRS after enactment of the World Peace Tax Fund bill.
On , Catholic Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen of Seattle spoke to a regional Lutheran gathering, sharing “a vision of… a sizable number of people… refusing to pay 50 percent of their taxes in nonviolent resistance to nuclear murder and suicide.”
Although he later stated in a pastoral letter that this was a secondary aspect of the speech, his vision received considerable national publicity and sparked many Catholics and other mainstream Christians to consider seriously war tax refusal for the first time.
There is now a growing war tax resistance movement which has begun to reach Americans in the mainstream.
This movement has the potential of becoming a major component of a large and influential campaign to halt the arms race.
(Bill Samuel is a Quaker who has worked on tax refusal for years.
This article first appeared in New Catholic World.)
Resources
Conscience and Military Tax Campaign, 44 Bellhaven Road, Bellport, NY 11713; (516) 286‒8825. Newsletter, literature, escrow account.
National Council for a World Peace Tax Fund, 2111 Florida Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20008: (202) 483‒3751. Newsletter, literature, slideshow.
Center on Law and Pacifism. P.O. Box 1584, Colorado Springs, CO 80901; (303) 635‒0041. Publishes People Pay for Peace: A Military Tax Refusal Guide ( edition).
Peacemakers, P.O. Box 627, Garberville, CA 95440. Handbook on Nonpayment of Taxes for War ( edition — $1.50) and The Peacemaker (monthly — $10 year).
War Resisters League, 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012; (212) 228‒0450. Guide to War Tax Resistance, , $6 plus postage.
An obituary for Dwight Macdonald in the Catholic Worker touched on his tax resistance.
Excerpt:
In , he joined the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” in refusal to pay taxes for the Vietnam War.
This was his first act of civil disobedience.
Dwight defended his action as “the deliberate, public, and non-violent breaking of a law because to obey it would be to betray a higher morality.”
The National Catholic News Service sent this dispatch over the wires on .
Excerpts:
British Churchmen Urge Disarmament Steps
By Robert Nowell
London (NC)—
Two top church leaders in Great Britain have urged nuclear disarmament initiatives by their country and a third revealed that he is waging a tax protest against England’s military spending.
On a new booklet on conscientious objection to military taxation carried the text of a letter in which a prominent Anglican, Canon Paul Oestreicher, announced to the government that he was withholding part of his income tax “as an act of conscientious objection to the manufacture, possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons” by the British government.
Canon Oestreicher is assistant general secretary of the British Council of Churches.
Canon Oestreicher wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer announcing that he was withholding a token sum of 30 pounds (about $46) “as a symbol of my duty as a Christian citizen to refuse to be party to a policy which I believe to be of doubtful legality and certainly immoral.”
His letter was printed as an appendix to a booklet on military tax resistance issued by the Quaker Council for European Affairs.
The Service sent out this dispatch on :
Bishop Thanks War Tax Resisters for “Witness”
St. Paul, Minn. (NC)— Bishop Raymond Lucker of New Ulm has thanked war tax resisters “for their witness” while stating that he does not “personally hold that position.”
“I believe that the arms race is evil.
I believe that the very possession of nuclear weapons as long as we are making no sustained commitment to achieve multilateral disarmament is evil,” wrote the Minnesota bishop in a column published in The Catholic Bulletin, newspaper of the St. Paul-Minneapolls Archdiocese.
The paper also serves the neighboring New Ulm Diocese.
Bishop Lucker compared war tax resistance with other forms of civil disobedience to unjust laws or immoral public policy, saying for example that he would go to jail rather than obey a law requiring him or a Catholic hospital under his jurisdiction to participate or cooperate in an abortion.
He said he resolves the problem of not supporting the “madness” of the arms race by not earning enough income to be subject to federal taxes.
“I do not want to contribute to this madness,” he wrote. “What I do is take such a small salary that I no longer pay income tax.
I make sure that my annual salary each year is less than $3,600.
This is no special hardship; my needs are few.
I have no family to support.
I am free to contribute to the poor.”
In Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle announced that he was refusing to pay half of his federal income tax as a symbol of his resistance to U.S. involvement in the nuclear arms race.
He said he was giving the money instead to worthy charitable causes.
In at least 10 Catholic priests around the country, including eight in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, refused to pay a portion of their taxes as a protest against U.S. nuclear arms expenditures.
The eight Pittsburgh priests announced that they would again refuse to pay the part of their taxes that goes to pay for nuclear war and nuclear weapons.
They planned to hold a press conference and prayer service in Pittsburgh before delivering their tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service.
In discussing civil disobedience Bishop Lucker cited “many instances in history where Catholics and other Christians disobeyed a law rather than violate their conscience.”
“They used non-violent means and were willing to pay the consequences,” he wrote.
“Frequently their witness was what got an unjust law or sinful public policy changed.”
Among cases he cited were those of early Christian martyrs who refused to worship the Roman emperor, St. Thomas More’s refusal to acknowledge King Henry Ⅷ as head of the Church of England and the non-violent resistance to racist laws in the United States by the Rev. Martin Luther King and his followers.
He said that Jehovah’s Witnesses in the United States were beaten and jailed before the U.S. Supreme Court recognized their right to refuse to salute the flag because they believe the action would violate the First Commandment.
“Hundreds of thousands of Americans are working to change the interpretation of the Constitution which allows abortions taking life away from the unborn.
We have a right to dissent.
We must dissent.
The issue is not going to go away,” he wrote.
He also wrote that a Christian soldier has an obligation to disobey an order that is immoral and that a person “can be a good Catholic and a conscientious objector” to all war or to a particular war.
“Each of us in our own way must respond to the Lord’s call,” Bishop Lucker wrote.
He said that not engaging in direct civil disobedience but not earning enough money to be subject to U.S. income taxes “is one way for me.”
The Service sent out this dispatch on :
Tax Resistance Funds Go to Catholic Agencies
By Brian Baker
Albany, N.Y. (NC)—
Catholic and Catholic-affiliated agencies were among 33 social service and community organizations that received donations from a war tax resistance fund in Albany.
On , the day before the deadline for filing tax returns, the Military Tax Resistance and Alternative Fund distributed more than $5,500 in checks, ranging from $50 to $600, to the non profit organizations.
The money came from people who, for reasons of conscience, refused to pay the portion of their federal income tax that they estimated would be used for military purposes.
At least five of the recipient organizations were agencies affiliated with the Diocese of Albany, among them Catholic Family and Community Services of Schenectady.
The tax resistance fund has grown each year, from $1,000 when it was begun in to $5,500 .
total was $1,500 more than despite a new federal law passed last summer which adds a $500 penalty for filing a frivolous return on top of already existing penalties for failing to pay all taxes owed.
Maureen Casey, a spokesperson for the fund and a member of St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Albany, said she has been a tax resister for three years because “it is wrong to kill people, either personally or through war.”
“I see what I am doing as the continuation of a tradition followed by many respectable people, including Dorothy Day,” a pacifist and foundress of the Catholic Worker movement, Ms Casey added.
Donald Roberts, a public affairs officer for the Internal Revenue Service, said that tax resisters could have assets seized or levies placed against their salaries to recover the taxes and applicable penalties.
In addition, he said, if the IRS decides to launch a criminal investigation a resister could be prosecuted and imprisoned.
He added, however, that the agencies receiving donations from a tax resistance fund face no legal risks for doing so.
This “news in brief” item was carried by the Service on :
Indianapolis (NC)— An Indianapolis parish has been ordered to pay for its pastor’s act of civil disobedience.
The Internal Revenue Service has issued a notice of levy on the salary of Father Cosmas Raimondi of Holy Cross Parish for $604.18 for unpaid income tax, penalties and interest.
While Father Raimondi was associate pastor at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish, Indianapolis, in he informed the IRS that he was withholding 50 percent of his income tax “as a protest against the nuclear arms race, military intervention in Central America and efforts to reinstate a mandatory military draft.”
And a follow-up on this, from a dispatch:
Friends Pay Priest’s Taxes After IRS Seizes His Car
By Jim Jachimak
Indianapolis (NC)—
An Internal Revenue Service case against an Indianapolis pastor has been settled, but the priest’s tax protest has not ended.
The IRS seized Father Cosmas Raimondi’s car on to cover federal income taxes which he withheld in but other parties have decided to pay the tax so the car can be returned.
Taxes, penalties and interest owed by Father Raimondi, pastor of Holy Cross Church, amounted to $608.14.
The car, a Honda Civic, was valued at $2,500 by the IRS.
“I have been informed that people who care about me are getting the car back by paying the taxes, which I would rather not have happen,” Father Raimondi said. “But that is their decision.”
He withheld $564.87 from the IRS to protest the nuclear arms race, U.S. intervention in Central America and draft registration.
the IRS has been attempting to collect the back taxes.
He said his action has focused attention on the issue of militarism and caused the parish council at Holy Cross to discern “the good and moral thing to do given the teachings of our church.”
In an IRS levy against Father Raimondi’s salary ordered the Holy Cross parish council to pay the amount he owed.
The council announced that it had decided not to honor the levy.
Father Raimondi said that he plans to take a reduction of salary in the future so that he will not be required to pay any federal income tax.
Jane Sammon wrote an article on tax resistance for the Catholic Worker.
There’s very little meat in it, but it does have the earliest mention I’ve found so far in this archive to the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (with a post office box address in East Patchogue, New York, and Kathy Levine listed as the contact person).
