Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
United States →
Vietnam War, ~1965–75 →
Writers & Editors War Tax Protest, 1967 →
Eric Bentley
Truth be told, part of my harsh reaction to the Iraq Moratorium that I posted here on was probably from envy at how their call to vague and lukewarm action has attracted some 2,000 signers, support from dozens of organizations, and endorsements from various celebs, while the War Tax Boycott is still trying to build up a head of steam, without much in the way of organizational or big-name support.
There was a time, though, when influential people were eager to sign on to a war tax boycott.
On , the New York Times reported:
WRITERS PROTEST VIETNAM WAR TAX
133 Will Refuse to Pay if Surcharge Is Approved
By MORRIS KAPLAN
A number of writers and editors have joined in opposing tax payments to support the war in Vietnam by pledging to withhold payment of President Johnson’s proposed 10 per cent income tax surcharge if Congress approves it.
Many of them have also promised to deduct 23 per cent from their tax bills as an estimate of the percentage used to fight the war.
A statement in support of this dissent has been signed by 133 writers.
Each dissenter has sent $10 or more to the Writers and Editors War Tax Protest, a group headed by Gerald Waker of Manhattan. Mr. Walker, assistant articles editor of The New York Times Sunday Magazine, said the money would be used for expenses and to pay for a newspaper advertisement planned for .
The proposal for a 10 per cent surcharge on corporate and individual taxes is now before the House Ways and Means Committee and is expected to be reported out next month.
The President has said it would relieve a budget deficit of possibly $28-billion.
More Support Sought
Mr. Walker expressed hope that the protest would win the support of from 300 to 500 writers and editors.
Among those who have pledged support are Eric Bentley, drama critic who is Brander Matthew Professor of Dramatic Literature at Columbia University, and Ralph Ginzburg, the New York publisher who is still appealing a Federal Government pornography conviction.
Others include Fred J. Cook, author and magazine writer; Betty Friedan, author of “The Feminine Mystique”; Dwight Macdonald, New Yorker Magazine critic, and Merle Miller, Thomas Pynchon and Harvey Swados, novelists.
A letter accompanying the protest statement points out the possible consequences of willfully refusing to pay Federal income taxes.
Violators of the law could receive up to one year in prison and up to $10,000 in fines.
Others Not Prosecuted
Mr. Walker said, however, that of the 421 signers of a similar no-payment ad last year in a Washington newspaper, not one had been prosecuted and sentenced.
Of an estimated total of 1,500 additional protest nonpayers, he added, none has been prosecuted since the war in Vietnam began.
The Internal Revenue Service has chosen, so far, to collect unpaid taxes by placing a lien on the incomes of those who refuse to pay, or by attaching their bank accounts or other assets.
In addition, a 6 per cent interest penalty is charged each year on the unpaid tax balance.
The group’s appeal for support included a quotation from Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience,” written in and protesting American involvement in the Mexican War.
The writer said, in part:
That’s a weird note to end the piece on.
The Thoreau quote is strangely ellipsized to make it sound like he thought that somehow the United States had been overrun and conquered by Mexico or something, or that civil disobedience was appropriate only when you’ve been invaded by a foreign army and subjected to military law.
Here’s the full quote, which makes its relevance (to the Vietnam War then, to the Iraq War now) more clear:
But enough nitpicking.
This appeal brought in 133 writers and editors. , the list had swelled to 448 (it would go even higher than the 500 that Gerald Walker originally hoped for), and included such names as Nelson Algren, James Baldwin, Noam Chomsky, Philip K. Dick, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Goodman, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Tillie Olsen, Grace Paley, Robert Scheer, Susan Sontag, Terry Southern, Benjamin Spock, Gloria Steinem, William Styron, Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut, and Howard Zinn.
As far as I can tell, the IRS didn’t take legal action against anyone who signed on to this list (though it probably sent threatening letters or engaged in administrative sanctions like levies and liens).
Nixon won the presidential election in , and among his campaign promises had been to end Johnson’s 10% surtax and somehow salvage “peace with honor” in Vietnam.
A couple of years later, the surtax breathed its last.
It took a few more years to get U.S. troops out of Vietnam.
Writers and Editors War Tax Protest
Attention: Gerald Walker
145 West 86th Street
Apt. 7D
New York, N.Y. 10024
Fellow Writers and Editors:
Join us in signing the enclosed statement proclaiming our refusal to let our
tax dollars support the war in Vietnam. Tell us in writing that we may list
your name with ours in ads and statements. Send us your check for $10.00 or
more (payable to Writers and Editors War Tax Protest) to pay for advertising
and other expenses. Ask other writers and editors to join. Mail copies of
this letter and the enclosed statement, “We Won’t Pay” (which will comprise
the substance of ads we plan to run), to your own list of colleagues. Extra
copies available at $1.00 per hundred, plus 25¢ for mailing.
How we will go about tax refusal
Should President Johnson’s surcharge be adopted by Congress, we will
refuse payment. We will not add this extra war tax to our current tax
when preparing our return and we will enclose a letter with our return
explaining why.
Many of us will also deduct from our tax the 23% which represents the
amount currently being spent on Vietnam.
Possible consequences
It is a violation (up to one year in prison and/or up to $10,000 in fines) of
Sec. 7203 of the Internal
Revenue Code willfully to refuse to pay federal income taxes. However, of the
421 signers of a similar no-payment ad in ,
not one has been prosecuted and sentenced; of the estimated 1500 additional
protest non-payers, none has been prosecuted since the war began. The
IRS, so
far, has chosen to exercise the power to collect unpaid tax money by placing
a lien on refusers’ income or attaching their bank accounts or other assets,
when these can be traced. In addition, a penalty of 6% interest is charged
annually on the unpaid tax balance, a rate estimated to be less than the
collection expense.
Vietnam drags on. Casualties rise, $28 billion are wasted yearly,
U.S. prestige and
moral fabric rot away. No solution, political or military, is in view. The
President’s prescription is more of the same — 45,000 new men (for a total of
525,000) and a proposed 10% income tax increase specifically for this
undeclared, unconstitutional, unprofitable, and unjust war.
“The needs of this country’s riot-shaken cities are being neglected to pay
the war bill,” The New York Times has
editorialized. It is time for escalation by those who want peace in
order to focus on our critical domestic dilemma. Peace marches have not
worked; nor have pickets, protest ads, teach-ins, or pleas to the President’s
conscience by public figures here and abroad. We are not consoled by reports
of atrocities committed by the other side; we want to stop those committed by
our side. So we must now go beyond mere expressions of dissent to strong,
affirmative, and dramatic action by responsible citizens.
We, the undersigned writers and editors for publications and publishing
houses large and small, have not had to give our lives in Vietnam — that has
fallen on younger Americans. But we have lent our passive support in the form
of our tax dollars. From now on, we are willing to lay our middle-class lives
on the line in pledging:
That none of us voluntarily will pay the proposed 10% income tax
surcharge, or any war-designated tax increase.
That many of us will also refuse to pay that part of our current income
tax (23%) being used to finance the war.
Many of us, too, will give an equivalent sum to humanitarian organizations.
Even so, this was not an easy decision to make. We have been law-abiding,
tax-paying citizens all our lives, and we are now subjecting ourselves to
possible legal penalties of up to one year in prison and/or up to $10,000 in
fines for willful non-payment of taxes. But we believe our taxes should not
be used to support a war that violates not only our own Constitution but the
Charter of the United Nations.
By this act, we aim to awaken the Administration to the fact that a
significant number of responsible citizens are so fundamentally opposed to
this war that they are willing to go to this extreme. And we wish to show
other Vietnam-haunted Americans that there is a simple, swift, effective way
to vote no-confidence in the Administration’s policy. It can be done
individually or in groups. It cannot wait until the 1968 presidential
election. Your ballot is your next tax return, and other ads such as this
placed in every newspaper in the land.
There are not enough prisons to hold the millions in this country who,
according to Gallup and other recent polls, strongly oppose this ugly war.
Time now to end our tacit acceptance of what is being done in Vietnam in our
name.
Much of the text of the above declaration didn’t make it in to the final
advertisement (I’m guessing it was cut down to make room for the many names
of signers, but maybe there was more to it than that). Horowitz himself did
not make the list.
I am enclosing a copy of the statement signed, so far, by 220 writers and
editors who pledge to refuse payment of the proposed 10 per cent income tax
surcharge or any tax increase earmarked for the Vietnam War. At this writing,
seven New York Times writers and editors have signed. We plan to run a
full-page advertisement in the Times in
, giving the quote from
Thoreau, the pledge and the list of names. The placing of the ad will
coincide with Congressional debate on the tax surcharge. By that time we hope
to have 500 persons pledged to refuse payment.
If you would be interested in signing the statement, please fill in the blank
and mail it in as soon as possible. And please tell your writer and editor
friends about it and urge them to do the same. As Thoreau said, “If a
thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a
violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State
to commit violence and shed innocent blood.” During his incarceration for
refusal to pay his war tax, Thoreau was paid a visit by Emerson, who asked,
“What are you doing in here?” To which Thoreau replied, “What are you
doing out there?”
I feel strongly that the collective involvement of writers and editors in the
nation’s politics should not stop with the War Tax Protest. Many of our
colleagues share this view, and are preparing this fall to organize local
chapters of what can become a national writers and journalists association.
An organized and articulate “intelligentsia” can be a political force in
America as it is in France. And it must become a political force if
the increasingly oppressive policies of the present United States government — in Vietnam, in Southern Africa, in Latin America, and here at home — are to
be permanently reversed. Not to organize, not to amplify our voices so that
an ill-informed America may hear alternatives, is to accede, in effect, to
the policies of the present government. For more information, please write me
immediately at 377 Green Street, San Francisco, California 94133.
Included with this letter is a somewhat different version of the proposed ad:
— Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience,
commenting upon American involvement in the Mexican War.
We the undersigned writers and editors, believing that American involvement
in Vietnam is morally wrong, pledge:
None of us voluntarily will pay the proposed 10% income tax surcharge or
any war-designated tax increase.
Many of us will not pay that 23% of our current income tax which is
being used to finance the war in Vietnam.
Following this was a sign-up sheet, asking signers to agree with the statement
“I believe American involvement in the war in Vietnam is morally wrong,” and giving three further options:
“As a writer/editor, I wish to add my name to the Writers and Editors War Tax Protest. I dissociate myself from my government’s actions in Vietnam and I am willing to use my next tax return to vote no-confidence in the present Administration. I enclose a check (payable to Writers and Editors War Tax Protest) for $10.00 or more to help pay for running this statement as a newspaper advertisement and for other expenses.”
“I am in sympathy with what you are doing. Enclosed is my check for $____.”
“I would like more information. Please send me your fact-sheet on tax refusal.”
A number of additional signers had been added to the list by this time:
(Spock was listed out-of-order and in a different typeface in the original.)
While doing some book research today I stumbled on a bunch of documents
concerning the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” tax resistance pledge of
. I found the documents at
The Harold Weisberg Archive:
A three-page letter from David Welsh on
Ramparts letterhead dated
“enclosing a copy of
the statement signed, so far, by 220 writers and editors…” and saying
that they hoped to run the ad in the New York
Times (the Times would turn them down).
The letter asks Weisberg to sign on, and includes a couple of Thoreau
quotes. It also says that Welsh sees this as a first step towards
organizing the American “intelligentsia” to be an organized and articulate
political force. The final page lists the signers to that point. Also
included is Weisberg’s response in which he complements the Thoreau
quote, notes that he signed the pledge and sent it in with a donation,
and then goes on for four paragraphs about Kennedy assassination
conspiracy research, which was his specialty.
An undated letter from the Protest to “Fellow Signers” noting that “We
now have over 350 names” and “hope to achieve, or surpass, 500 by
” so they can put
the ad in the Times
“.” The letter notes that the anticipated 10% Vietnam War
tax surcharge has run into snags in Congress, but still expects a
modified version to pass. It also solicits funds, noting that they’re
only about half way to the budget they need to place a full-page
Times ad.
A second page includes the text of a Thoreau quote and of the tax
resistance pledge.
A third page includes a “coupon” that signers can fill out to register
their pledge with the Protest office, and begins the partial list of
signers. The next two pages continue the list, and then the following
page includes “Additional Signers” (including Weisberg).
The last two pages are a “Fact Sheet” explaining the reasoning behind the
protest, the process that resisters can go through to make their
resistance effective, a summary of the possible legal consequences, the
possibility of filing a legal challenge, and the Protest’s willingness to
reach out to other groups interested in taking a similar stand.
Only the first page is interesting. It’s a hand-drawn invitation to a
“Deficit Party” fundraiser “to help pay for our newspaper ad” to be held
on “at Betty Friedan’s
apartment [at] The Dakota”: “Eric Bentley, Betty Friedan, Paul Goodman,
James Leo Herlihy, Larry Josephson, Dwight Macdonald, Gloria Steinem,
[&] Gerald Walker invite you to join them, and all the other signers
of the Writers and Editors War Tax Protest…”
The first page is the last of a three-page list of pledge signers (the
first two pages are missing); the second page is a list of “Additional
Signers” with marginal notes indicating that the number had risen to 309,
and then to 324.
A letter from Lawrence M. Bensky & Gerald Walker of the Protest
to “Fellow Signers” dated . It notes that Congress did not institute the expected 10%
income tax surcharge by tax filing season, and so if people want to
resist, they’ll have to choose the other option, which was to refuse to
pay some portion of their ordinary income tax: “we urge you to do so.
Obviously, the effectiveness of our action hinges on the number of
participants.” It notes that 50 more people have signed the pledge since
the ads appeared “in
Ramparts, The New York
Review of Books of ,
and The New York Post of ”
which brings the total signers up to that desired 500 threshold.
Hundreds of people have written us to request tax-refusal information;
many of these were non-writers and non-editors who were sufficiently
impressed to follow our lead, and these information requests continue to
come in without any sign of tapering off.
The letter notes that contributions have been coming in as well, but
proposes not to spend any more money on advertising, but to keep the funds
in reserve in case the government retaliates against any signer, so as
“to focus publicity on such cases; and where a case offers the
opportunity to press a legal test of the government’s right to ‘draft’
our money for Vietnam, we will contribute to the costs of legal defense.”
The letter then recommends that people look into the newly formed “Tax
Resistance Project of the War Resisters League.”
The next page lists some sympathetic organizations, discusses the
possible government retaliation actions against signers, and includes a
coupon resisters could send to the War Resisters League if they want to
be included in their coordinated tax resistance action.
The next page gives “some facts about tax refusal and its consequences”
including a how-to guide giving several options for how to resist.
The final page announces a protest to be held at the
IRS
headquarters in Washington on :
Join us in an act of collective tax resistance. Bring your completed
tax return, form 1040, or a statement explaining why you’re not filing,
and together we will return forms and statements accompanied by either
no money or an insufficient amount of money. The
action at
IRS
will be preceded by a public meeting nearby.
Dr. Arthur Waskow of the
Institute for Policy Studies and Dave Dellinger, Chairman of the
National Mobilization Committee, will be among the speakers.
We act because for many verbal opposition to the war in Vietnam is no
longer enough. Resistance has become necessary. Our consciences dictate
it. The young men resisting the draft have shown a way and we who are
not subject to the draft must develop creative parallels. Tax
resistance is such a parallel act because it confronts the
administration directly and challenges it at a vital point. It
liberates the tax resister by showing him that he does have choices.
A Washington Post clipping dated
— “Marchers Protest War
Taxes” concerning a protest of about 40 people at the
IRS
Building. Protesters included Barbara Deming, Dave Dellinger, William C.
Davidon, Arthur Waskow. The article includes a photo of Waskow and of
protesters marching with “Don’t Pay War Taxes” signs, but the copy
quality is low.
A letter dated from Eric
Bentley, John Leonard, Peter Spackman, Gloria Steinem, and Gerald Walker
to “Fellow Signers” about “how best to wind up the group’s affairs.” They
plan to donate the group’s remaining funds to the Civil Liberties Legal
Defense Fund, which has made a reciprocal agreement to give legal
assistance to any Protest signers who run into trouble in the coming
year. “The Writers and Editors War Tax Protest was always a temporary
organization, and its limited goals have now been achieved. We remain
pledged as individuals, however, to the moral and financial support of
any of our number who is prosecuted or harassed because of non-payment or
simple membership.”
WEWTP certainly added its bit to the anti-war clamor which produced the current atmosphere and the many swift changes that have taken place in it. We ended up with 528 signers. And if there were that many strongly anti-war people from one small area of American Life, surely the political computers in Washington were capable of extrapolating that figure to the population as a whole. So [President] Johnson got the message. Thanks for lending your voice and your name to ours.
The “current atmosphere” of changes since the start of the Protest
project included the abandonment of the 10% income tax surcharge plan,
the Tet Offensive, the resignation of Secretary of Defense McNamara,
Johnson’s decision not to run for another term, and the opening of peace
negotiations.
A press release from the Protest dated
. At this time, the Protest
had attracted 437 signers, and “at least one-third” of these had pledged
not only to refuse to pay any war surcharge, but also “not to pay the 23
per cent of their current income tax which is being used to finance the
war in Vietnam.”
The protest was announced today at a press conference in New York’s
Algonquin Hotel, traditionally a gathering place for New York’s
literary world. Three writers and three editors spoke for the group:
Eric Bentley, drama critic, professor of Columbia, and author of
several books on the theater; James Leo Herlihy, well-known novelist
and short story writer; and Sally Belfrage, author of “Freedom Summer.”
Publishers included Richard Grossman of Grossman Publishers; Aaron
Asher of Viking Press; and Arthur A. Cohen of Holt, Rinehart &
Winston.
One of the group’s organizers announced that today’s advertisement had
been rejected for publication by seven major newspapers before being
printed by the New York Post. The New York Times, where ten of the
advertisement’s signers are employed, twice rejected it, the second
time after the advertisement had been changed to meet their earlier
objection. Other newspapers which refused to accept the prepaid
full-page advertisement were The Boston Globe, the Washington Post, the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
the Christian Science Monitor, the National Observer, and the Chicago
Tribune. A spokesman for the Writers and Editors War Tax Protest
expressed regret that the nation’s press, “which is so quick to condemn
violent demonstrations, actually encourages them by frustrating
conscientious expression of dissent from our actions in Vietnam.”
A newspaper clipping dated
that, in the form of an article about the ad, essentially
reproduces it, including the complete list of signers. It is unclear what
newspaper the clipping is taken from.
“Writers Vow Tax Revolt Over War” — a news clipping from the
Washington Post. It gives the number of
signers as 448, and explains that the Post
refused to print the ad “on the grounds that it was an implicit
exhortation to violate the law.”
A letter from Lawrence M. Bensky & Gerald Walker to “Fellow Signers”
dated . It gives the
number of signers as 450. “Two months have been spent dickering with the
NY Times (where 11
of the signers work), which has just refused an ad revised to meet
earlier Times objections.” (Harding Bancroft of the
Times eventually said: “the advertisement was
turned down by the Times in accordance with our general policy that we do
not accept advertising urging readers to perform an illegal action.”) The
letter notes that some signers have wondered why the Protest continues to
stress the 10% surcharge which by now is looking less politically viable.
Finally, the letter announces the above-mentioned “Deficit Party.”
