How you can resist funding the government →
the tax resistance movement →
birth of the modern American war tax resistance movement →
George Willoughby
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
Taxpatriate satyagrahi Jeff Knaebel has a new (to me, anyway) website, Gandhi Swaraj Padyatra to accompany his thousand-kilometer padyatra (a sort of walking pilgrimage) to promote Gandhi’s philosophies.
The Philadelphia Daily News carried an obituary for long-time tax resister George Willoughby.
“The Willoughbys were also tax-resisters, withholding their federal taxes to protest their use for military purposes.
The IRS tapped their bank accounts to pay the taxes, but when the accounts ran dry, agents seized their 1966 Volkswagen.
Friends, brandishing balloons, party horns, cookies and lemonade, invaded the IRS office in Chester and bought the car back for $900.”
From the looks of it, tax resistance is the national pastime in Argentina.
This time, it’s shopkeepers in San Juan, who have announced a tax resistance campaign to protest the fact that the street vendors who compete with them for customers are untaxed.
The mayor says it’s all a bluff, and that in fact the shopkeepers frequently divert goods to the street vendors in an attempt to evade taxes.
The shopkeepers are paying their taxes into a fund that they say they will only relinquish to the government when it begins to crack down on street vendors.
There’s a new issue of More Than a Paycheck, NWTRCC’s newsletter.
In this issue:
The lead story concerns Frank Donnelly, a war tax resister from Maine who pled guilty to tax evasion charges and is due to receive prison time.
It is rare for a war tax resister to face criminal charges.
In this case, Donnelly resisted by working in the underground economy and underreporting his income.
The IRS seems to be treating it as an ordinary tax evasion case.
International news including a note on the World Council of Churches policy on war tax resistance, war tax resistance in Canada, and the upcoming International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns in Norway .
Obits for recently-deceased war tax resisters Dennis Brutus, George Willoughby, and Lillian Willoughby.
On , just a few days after Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his powerful “Beyond Vietnam” speech, Eric Weinberger, the national secretary of the Committee for Nonviolent Action, wrote to to ask if King would publicly sign on to their war tax resistance campaign:
I don’t know how (or if) King responded to this request.
I have seen no indications that he participated in the war tax resistance of the period.
King had been targeted by politically-motivated tax prosecutions in areas where he had been active.
Because of this he had been under particular pressure to keep to the straight-and-narrow when it came to tax filing, so as not to give his enemies a potentially fruitful avenue of attack.
This may have discouraged him from making war tax resistance part of his protest against U.S. militarism and the Vietnam War.
It is also possible that, since King was killed , he just didn’t have time to put any possibly-intended resistance into practice.
The CNVA letterhead as shown on this letter is a clue as to who was associated with the emerging war tax resistance movement of the time.
Many of these names are familiar to me, but some others are not:
A tactic that I’ve encountered on many occasions in my research into tax resistance campaigns is that of disrupting government auctions of goods, particularly those of seized from tax resisters.
Here are several examples that show the variety of ways campaigns have accomplished this:
Religious nonconformists in the United Kingdom
Education Act-related resistance
Some disruption of auctions took place during the tax resistance in protest of the provisions of the Education Act that provided taxpayer money for sectarian education .
The Westminster Gazette reported:
There was some feeling displayed at a sale of the goods of Passive Resisters at Colchester yesterday, the Rev. T. Batty, a Baptist minister, and the Rev. Pierrepont Edwards, locally, known as “the fighting parson,” entering into discussion in the auction room, but being stopped by the auctioneer, who said he did his work during the week and he hoped they did theirs on Sundays.
At Long Eaton the goods of twenty-three Passive Resisters were sold amid demonstrations of hostility to the auctioneer.
A boy was arrested for throwing a bag of flour.
The New York Times reported that “Auctioneers frequently decline to sell goods upon which distraints have been levied.” And the San Francisco Chronicle noted:
Difficulty is experienced everywhere in getting auctioneers to sell the property confiscated.
In Leominster, a ram and some ewe lambs, the property of a resistant named Charles Grundy, were seized and put up at auction, as follows: Ram, Joe Chamberlain; ewes, Lady Balfour, Mrs. Bishop, Lady Cecil, Mrs. Canterbury and so on through the list of those who made themselves conspicuous in forcing the bill through Parliament.
The auctioneer was entitled to a fee under the law of 10 shillings and 6 pence, which he promptly turned over to Mr. Grundy, having during the sale expressed the strongest sympathy for the tax-resisters.
Most of the auction sales are converted into political meetings in which the tax and those responsible for it are roundly denounced.
Edinburgh Annuity Tax resistance
Auction disruptions were commonplace in the Annuity Tax resistance campaign in Edinburgh.
By law the distraint auctions (“roupings”) had to be held at the Mercat Cross — the town square, essentially — which made it easy to gather a crowd; or sometimes in the homes of the resisters. Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine reported of one of the Mercat Cross roupings:
If any of our readers know that scene, let them imagine, after the resistance was tolerably well organized, an unfortunate auctioneer arriving at the Cross about noon, with a cart loaded with furniture for sale.
Latterly the passive hubbub rose as if by magic.
Bells sounded, bagpipes brayed, the Fiery Cross passed down the closses, and through the High Street and Cowgate; and men, women, and children, rushed from all points towards the scene of Passive Resistance.
The tax had grinded the faces of the poor, and the poor were, no doubt, the bitterest in indignation.
Irish, Highlanders, Lowlanders, were united by the bond of a common suffering.
Respectable shopkeepers might be seen coming in haste from the Bridges; Irish traders flew from St. Mary’s Wynd; brokers from the Cowgate; all pressing round the miserable auctioneer; yelling, hooting, perhaps cursing, certainly saying anything but what was affectionate or respectful of the clergy.
And here were the black placards tossing above the heads of the angry multitude — ROUPING FOR STIPEND!
This notice was of itself enough to deter any one from purchasing; though we will say it for the good spirit of the people, that both the Scotch and Irish brokers disdained to take bargains of their suffering neighbours’ goods.
Of late months, no auctioneer would venture to the Cross to roup for stipend.
What human being has nerve enough to bear up against the scorn, hatred, and execration of his fellow-creatures, expressed in a cause he himself must feel just?
The people lodged the placards and flags in shops about the Cross, so that not a moment was lost in having their machinery in full operation, and scouts were ever ready to spread the intelligence if any symptoms of a sale were discovered.
Sheriff Clerk Kenmure Maitland appeared before a committee that was investigating the resistance campaign.
He mentioned that “Mr. Whitten, the auctioneer for sheriff’s sales, was so much inconvenienced and intimidated that he refused to take any more of those sales.”
Q: What was Mr. Whitten’s express reason for declining to act as auctioneer?
A: He was very much inconvenienced on that
occasion, and he believed that his general business connection would suffer
by undertaking these sales, and that he would lose the support of any
customer who was of that party.
Q: It was not from any fear of personal violence?
A: That might have had a good deal to do with it.
Q: Was Mr. Whitten the only auctioneer who declined?
A: No. After Mr. Whitten’s refusal I applied to
Mr. Hogg, whose services I should have been glad to have obtained, and he
said he would let me know the next day if he would undertake to act as
auctioneer; he wrote to me the next day saying, that, after consideration
with his friends, he declined to act.
Q: Any other?
A: I do not remember asking any others. The rates
of remuneration for acting as auctioneer at sheriffs’ sales are so low that
men having a better class of business will not act. I had to look about among
not first-class auctioneers, and I found that I would have some difficulty in
getting a man whom I could depend upon, for I had reason to believe that
influence would be used to induce the auctioneer to fail me at the last
moment.
It was difficult for the authorities to get any help at all, either from auctioneers, furniture dealers, or carters.
The government had to purchase (and fortify) their own cart because they were unable to rent one for such use.
Here is an example of an auction of a resister’s goods held at the resister’s
home, as described in the testimony of Thomas Menzies:
A: I saw a large number of the most respectable citizens assembled in the house, and a large number outside awaiting the arrival of the officers who came in a cab, and the indignation was very strong when they got into the house, so much so that a feeling was entertained by some that there was danger to the life of Mr. Whitten, the auctioneer, and that he might be thrown out of the window, because there were such threats, but others soothed down the feeling.
Q: There was no overt act or breach of the peace?
A: No.
The cabman who brought the officers, seeing they were engaged in such a disagreeable duty, took his cab away, and they had some difficulty in procuring another, and they went away round by a back street, rather than go by the direct way.
Q: Did Mr. Whitten, from his experience on that occasion, refuse ever to come to another sale as auctioneer?
A: He refused to act again, he gave up his
position.
He then described a second such auction:
A: The house was densely packed; it was impossible for me to get entrance; the stair was densely packed to the third and second flats; when the policemen came with the officers, they could not force their way up, except with great difficulty.
The consequence was, that nearly the whole of the rail of the upper storey gave way to the great danger both of the officers and the public, and one young man I saw thrown over the heads of the crowd to the great danger of being precipitated three storeys down.
Then the parties came out of the house, with their clothes dishevelled and severely handled; and the officer on that occasion will tell you that he was very severely dealt with indeed, and Mr. Sheriff Gordon was sent for, so much alarm being felt; but by the time the Sheriff arrived things were considerably subdued.
Sheriff Clerk Maitland also described this auction:
I found a considerable crowd outside; and on going up to the premises on the top flat, I found that I could not get entrance to the house; the house was packed with people, who on our approach kept hooting and shouting out, and jeering us; and, as far as I could see, the shutters were shut and the windows draped in black, and all the rooms crowded with people.
I said that it was necessary to carry out the sale, and they told me to come in, if I dare.
On another occasion, as he tells it, the auction seemed to go smoothly at first, but the buyers didn’t get what they hoped for:
At Mr. McLaren’s sale everything was conducted in an orderly way as far as the sale was concerned.
We got in, and only a limited number were allowed to go in; but after the officials and the police had gone, there was a certain amount of disturbance.
Certain goods were knocked down to the poinding creditors, consisting of an old sofa and an old sideboard, and Mr. McLaren said, “Let those things go to the clergy.” Those were the only things which had to be taken away.
There was no vehicle ready to carry them away.
Mr. McLaren said that he would not keep them.
After the police departed, he turned them out in the street, when they were taken possession of by the crowd of idlers, and made a bonfire of.
A summary of the effect of all of this disruption reads:
So strong was the feeling of hostility, that the town council were unable to procure the services of any auctioneer to sell the effects of those who conscientiously objected to pay the clerical portion of the police taxes, and they were consequently forced to make a special arrangement with a sheriff’s officer, by which, to induce him to undertake the disagreeable task, they provided him for two years with an auctioneer’s license from the police funds.
In , it was found necessary to enter into another arrangement with the officer, by which the council had to pay him 12½ percent, on all arrears, including the police, prison, and registration rates, as well as the clerical tax; and he receives this per-centage whether the sums are recovered by himself or paid direct to the police collector, and that over and above all the expenses he recovers from the recusants.
But this is not all; the council were unable to hire a cart or vehicle from any of the citizens, and it was found necessary to purchase a lorry, and to provide all the necessary apparatus and assistance for enforcing payment of the arrears.
All this machinery, which owes its existence entirely to the Clerico-Police Act, involves a wasteful expenditure of city funds, induces a chronic state of irritation in the minds of the citizens, and is felt to be a gross violation of the principles of civil and religious liberty.
The Tithe War
William John Fitzpatrick wrote of the auctions during the Tithe War:
[T]he parson’s first step was to put the cattle up to auction in the presence of a regiment of English soldiery; but it almost invariably happened that either the assembled spectators were afraid to bid, lest they should incur the vengeance of the peasantry, or else they stammered out such a low offer, that, when knocked down, the expenses of the sale would be found to exceed it.
The same observation applies to the crops.
Not one man in a hundred had the hardihood to declare himself the purchaser.
Sometimes the parson, disgusted at the backwardness of bidders, and trying to remove it, would order the cattle twelve or twenty miles away in order to their being a second time put up for auction.
But the locomotive progress of the beasts was always closely tracked, and means were taken to prevent either driver or beast receiving shelter or sustenance throughout the march.
The Sentinel wrote of one auction:
Yesterday being the day on which the sheriff announced that, if no bidders could be obtained for the cattle, he would have the property returned to Mr. Germain, immense crowds were collected from the neighbouring counties — upwards of 20,000 men.
The County Kildare men, amounting to about 7000, entered, led by Jonas Duckett, Esq., in the most regular and orderly manner.
This body was preceded by a band of music, and had several banners on which were “Kilkea and Moone, Independence for ever,” “No Church Tax,” “No Tithe,” “Liberty,” &c. The whole body followed six carts, which were prepared in the English style — each drawn by two horses.
The rear was brought up by several respectable landholders of Kildare.
The barrack-gates were thrown open, and different detachments of infantry took their stations right and left, while the cavalry, after performing sundry evolutions, occupied the passes leading to the place of sale.
The cattle were ordered out, when the sheriff, as on the former day, put them up for sale; but no one could be found to bid for the cattle, upon which he announced his intention of returning them to Mr. Germain.
The news was instantly conveyed, like electricity, throughout the entire meeting, when the huzzas of the people surpassed anything we ever witnessed.
The cattle were instantly liberated and given up to Mr. Germain.
At this period a company of grenadiers arrived, in double-quick time, after travelling from Castlecomer, both officers and men fatigued and covered with dust.
Thus terminated this extraordinary contest between the Church and the people, the latter having obtained, by their steadiness, a complete victory.
The cattle will be given to the poor of the sundry districts.
Similar examples were reported in the foreign press:
Cork. — A most extraordinary scene has been exhibited in this city.
Some cows seized for tithes were brought to a public place for sale, escorted by a squadron of lancers, and followed by thousands of infuriated people.
All the garrison, cavalry and infantry, under the command of Sir George Bingham, were called out.
The cattle were set up at three pounds for each, no bidder; two pounds, no bidder; one pound, no bidder; in short, the auctioneer descended to three shillings for each cow, but no purchaser appeared.
This scene lasted for above an hour, when there being no chance of making sale of the cattle, it was proposed to adjourn the auction; but, as we are informed, the General in command of the military expressed an unwillingness to have the troops subjected to a repetition of the harassing duty thus imposed on them.
After a short delay, it was, at the interference and remonstrance of several gentlemen, both of town and country, agreed upon that the cattle should be given up to the people, subject to certain private arrangements.
We never witnessed such a scene; thousands of country people jumping with exulted feelings at the result, wielding their shillelaghs, and exhibiting all the other symptoms of exuberant joy characteristic of the buoyancy of Irish feeling.
At Carlow a triumphant resistance to the laws, similar to that which occurred
at Cork, has been exhibited in the presence of the authorities and the
military. Some cattle had been seized for tithe, and a public sale announced,
when a large body of men, stated at 50,000, marched to the place appointed,
and, of course, under the influence of such terror, none were found to bid
for the cattle. The sale was adjourned from day to day, for seven days, and
upon each day the same organised bands entered the town, and rendered the
attempt to sell the cattle, in pursuance of the law, abortive. At last the
cattle are given up to the mob, crowned with laurels, and driven home with an
escort of 10,000 men.
In a somewhat later case, a Catholic priest in Blarney by the name of Peyton refused to pay his income tax on the grounds that the law treated him in an inferior way to his Protestant counterparts.
His horse was seized and sold at auction, where “the multitude assembled hissed, hooted, hustled, and otherwise impeded the proceedings.”
There was precedent for this. During the Tithe War period and thereafter, the
authorities had to go to extraordinary lengths to auction off seized goods. As
one account put it:
In Ireland we pay — the whole people of the empire pay — troops who march up from the country to Dublin, fifty or sixty miles, as escorts of the parson-pounded pigs and cattle, which passive resistance prevents from being sold or bought at home; and we also maintain barracks in that country which not only lodge the parsons’ military guards, but afford, of late, convenient resting-places in their journey to the poor people’s cattle, whom the soldiers are driving to sale; and which would otherwise be rescued on the road.
The women’s suffrage movement in the United Kingdom
The tax resisters in the women’s suffrage movement in Britain were particularly adept in disrupting tax auctions and in making them opportunities for propaganda and protest.
Here are several examples, largely as reported in the movement newsletter called The Vote:
“On a sale was held… of
jewellery seized in distraint for income-tax… Members of the
W.F.L.
and Mrs. [Edith] How Martyn
(Hon.
Sec.) assembled to
protest against the proceedings, and the usual policeman kept a dreary
vigil at the open door. The day had been specially chosen by the
authorities, who wished to prevent a demonstration…”
“The sale of Mrs. Cleeves’ dog-cart took place at the Bush Hotel, Sketty,
on afternoon. The
W.F.L.
held their protest meeting outside — much to the discomfort of the
auctioneer, who declared the impossibility of ‘drowning the voice
outside.’ ”
“Notwithstanding the mud and odoriferous atmosphere of the back streets
off Drury-lane, quite a large number of members of the Tax Resisters’
League, the Women’s Freedom League, and the Women’s Social and Political
Union, met outside Bulloch’s Sale Rooms shortly after
to protest against the sale of Miss Bertha Brewster’s goods, which had
been seized because of her refusal to pay her Imperial taxes. Before the
sale took place, Mrs. Gatty, as chairman, explained to at least a hundred
people the reasons of Miss Brewster’s refusal to pay her taxes and the
importance of the constitutional principle that taxation without
representation is tyranny, which this refusal stood for. Miss Leonora
Tyson proposed the resolution protesting against the injustice of this
sale, and it was seconded by Miss F[lorence]. A. Underwood, and supported
by Miss Brackenbury. The resolution was carried with only two
dissentients, and these dissentients were women!”
“The goods seized were sold at the public auction room. Before selling
them the auctioneer allowed Mrs. How Martyn to make a short explanatory
speech, and he himself added that it was an unpleasant duty he had to
perform.”
“A scene which was probably never equalled in the whole of its history
took place at the Oxenham Auction Rooms, Oxford-street, on
. About a fortnight before
the bailiffs had entered Mrs. Despard’s residence in Nine Elms and seized
goods which they valued at £15. Our President, for some years past, as is
well known, has refused to pay her income-tax and inhabited house duty on
the grounds that taxation and representation should go together; and this
is the third time her goods have been seized for distraint. It was not
until the day before — — that Mrs. Despard was informed of the time and place where
her furniture was to be sold. In spite of this short notice — which we
learn on good authority to be illegal — a large crowd composed not only of
our own members but also of women and men from various Suffrage societies
gathered together at the place specified in the notice. ¶ When ‘Lot
325’ was called Mrs. Despard mounted a chair, and said, ‘I rise to
protest, in the strongest, in the most emphatic way of which I am capable,
against these iniquities, which are perpetually being perpetrated in the
name of the law. I should like to say I have served my country in various
capacities, but I am shut out altogether from citizenship. I think special
obloquy has been put upon me in this matter. It was well known that I
should not run away and that I should not take my goods away, but the
authorities sent a man in possession. He remained in the house — a
household of women — at night. I only heard
of this sale, and from a man
who knows that of which he is speaking, I know that this sale is illegal.
I now claim the law — the law that is supposed to be for women as well as
men.’ ”
“[A] most successful protest against taxation without representation was
made by Mrs. Muir, of Broadstairs, whose goods were sold at the Auction
Rooms, 120, High-street, Margate. The protest was conducted by Mrs.
[Emily] Juson Kerr; and Miss Ethel Fennings, of the W.F.L.,
went down to speak. The auctioneer, Mr. Holness, was most courteous, and
not only allowed Mrs. Muir to explain in a few words why she resisted
taxation, but also gave permission to hold meeting in his rooms after the
sale was over.”
“One of the most successful and effective Suffrage demonstrations ever
held in St. Leonards was that arranged jointly by the Women’s Tax
Resistance League and the Hastings and St. Leonards Women’s Suffrage
Propaganda League, on ,
on the occasion of the sale of some family silver which had been seized at
the residence of Mrs. [Isabella] Darent Harrison for non-payment of
Inhabited House Duty. Certainly the most striking feature of this protest
was the fact that members of all societies in Hastings,
St. Leonards, Bexhill and
Winchelsea united in their effort to render the protest representative of
all shades of Suffrage opinion. Flags, banners, pennons and regalia of
many societies were seen in the procession.… The hearty response from the
men to Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes’s call for ‘three cheers for Mrs.
Darent Harrison’ at the close of the proceedings in the auction room, came
as a surprise to the Suffragists themselves.”
“On , the last item on
the catalogue of Messrs. Whiteley’s weekly sale in Westbourne-grove was
household silver seized in distraint for King’s taxes from Miss Gertrude
Eaton, of Kensington. Miss Eaton is a lady very well known in the musical
world and interested in social reforms, and
hon. secretary of the
Prison Reform Committee. Miss Eaton said a few dignified words of protest
in the auction room, and Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Saunderson explained to the
large crowd of bidders the reason why tax-paying women, believing as they
do that taxation without representation is tyranny, feel that they cannot,
by remaining inactive, any longer subscribe to it. A procession then
formed up and a protest meeting was held…”
“At the offices of the collector of Government taxes, Westborough, on
a silver cream jug and sugar
basin were sold. These were the property of
Dr. Marion McKenzie, who
had refused payment of taxes to support her claim on behalf of women’s
suffrage. A party of suffragettes marched to the collector’s office, which
proved far too small to accommodate them all. Mr. Parnell said he regretted
personally having the duty to perform. He believed that ultimately the
women would get the vote. They had the municipal vote and he maintained
that women who paid rates and taxes should be allowed to vote. (Applause.)
But that was his own personal view. He would have been delighted not to
have had that process, but he had endeavoured to keep the costs down.
Dr. Marion McKenzie thanked
Mr. Parnell for the courtesy shown them. A protest meeting was afterwards
held on St. Nicholas
Cliff.”
“Mrs. [Anne] Cobden-Sanderson, representing the Women’s Tax Resistance
League, was, by courtesy of the auctioneer, allowed to explain the reason
of the protest. Judging by the applause with which her remarks were
received, most of those present were in sympathy.”
“The auctioneer was entirely in sympathy with the protest, and explained
the circumstances under which the sale took place. He courteously allowed
Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson and Mrs. [Emily] Juson Kerr to put clearly
the women’s point of view; Miss Raleigh made a warm appeal for true
freedom. A procession was formed and an open-air meeting subsequently
held.”
“The auctioneer, who is in sympathy with the suffragists, refused to take
commission.”
“[A] crowd of Suffragists of all shades of opinion assembled at Hawking’s
Sale Rooms, Lisson-grove, Marylebone, to support Dr. Frances Ede and Dr.
Amy Sheppard, whose goods were to be sold by public auction for tax
resistance. By the courtesy of the auctioneer, Mr. Hawking, speeches were
allowed, and Dr. Ede
emphasized her conscientious objection to supporting taxation without
representation; she said that women like herself and her partner felt that
they must make this logical and dignified protest, but as it caused very
considerable inconvenience and sacrifice to professional women, she
trusted that the grave injustice would speedily be remedied. Three cheers
were given for the doctors, and a procession with banners marched to
Marble Arch, where a brief meeting was held in Hyde Park, at which the
usual resolution was passed unanimously.”
“An interesting sequel to the seizure of Mrs. Tollemache’s goods last
week, and the ejection of the bailiff from her residence, Batheaston
Villa, Bath, was the sale held , at the White Hart Hotel. To cover a tax of only £15 and
costs, goods were seized to the value of about £80, and it was at once
decided by the Women’s Tax Resistance League and Mrs. Tollemache’s friends
that such conduct on the part of the authorities must be circumvented and
exposed. The goods were on view the morning of the sale, and as there was
much valuable old china, silver, and furniture, the dealers were early on
the spot, and buzzing like flies around the articles they greatly desired
to possess. The first two pieces put up were, fortunately, quite
inviting; £19 being bid for a chest of drawers worth about
50s. and £3 for an
ordinary leather-top table, the requisite amount was realised, and the
auctioneer was obliged to withdraw the remaining lots much to the disgust
of the assembled dealers. Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, in her speech at
the protest meeting, which followed the sale, explained to these irate
gentlemen that women never took such steps unless compelled to do so, and
that if the tax collector had seized a legitimate amount of goods to
satisfy his claim, Mrs. Tollemache would willingly have allowed them to
go.”
“Under the auspices of the Tax Resistance League and the Women’s Freedom
League a protest meeting was held at Great Marlow on
, on the occasion of the sale
of plate and jewellery belonging to Mrs. [Mary] Sargent Florence, the
well-known artist, and to Miss Hayes, daughter of Admiral Hayes. Their
property had been seized for the non-payment of Imperial taxes, and
through the courtesy of the tax-collector every facility was afforded to
the protesters to explain their action.”
“At the sale of a silver salver belonging to
Dr. Winifred Patch, of
Highbury, Steen’s Auction Rooms, Drayton Park, were crowded on
by members of the Women’s Freedom
League, the Women’s Tax Resistance League, and other Suffrage societies.
The auctioneer refused to allow the usual five minutes for explanation
before the sale, but Miss Alison Neilans, of the Women’s Freedom League,
was well supported and cheered when she insisted on making clear the
reasons why Dr. Patch for
several years has refused to pay taxes while deprived of a vote. A
procession was then formed, and marched to Highbury Corner, where a large
open-air meeting was presided over by Mrs. [Marianne] Clarendon Hyde, of
the Women’s Freedom League, and addressed by Mrs. Merrivale Mayer.”
“Practically every day sees a sale and protest somewhere, and the banners
of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, frequently supported by Suffrage
Societies, are becoming familiar in town and country. At the protest
meetings which follow all sales the reason why is explained to large
numbers of people who would not attend a suffrage meeting. Auctioneers are
becoming sympathetic even so far as to speak in support of the women’s
protest against a law which demands their money, but gives them no voice
in the way in which it is spent.”
“The sale was conducted, laughably enough, under the auspices of the
Women’s Freedom League and the Women’s Tax Resistance League; for, on
obtaining entrance to the hall, Miss Anderson and Mrs. Fisher bedecked it
with all the insignia of suffrage protest. The rostrum was spread with our
flag proclaiming the inauguration of Tax Resistance by the W.F.L.;
above the auctioneer’s head hung Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard’s embroidered
silk banner, with its challenge “Dare to be Free”; on every side the
green, white and gold of the
W.F.L.
was accompanied by the brown and black of the Women’s Tax Resistance
League, with its cheery ‘No Vote, no Tax’ injunctions and its John Hampden
maxims; while in the front rows, besides Miss Anderson, the heroine of the
day, Mrs. Snow and Mrs. Fisher, were seen the inspiring figures of our
President and Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson, vice-president of the
W.T.R.L.”
“…all Women’s Freedom League members who know anything of the way in which
the sister society organises these matters should attend the sale in the
certainty of enjoying a really telling demonstration…”
“From early in the day Mrs. Huntsman and a noble band of sandwich-women
had paraded the town announcing the sale and distributing leaflets. In the
afternoon a contingent of the Tax Resistance League arrived with the John
Hampden banner and the brown and black pennons and flags. These marched
through the town and market square before entering the hall in which the
sale and meeting were to be held, and which was decorated with the flags
and colours of the Women’s Freedom League. Mr. Croome, the King’s officer,
conducted the sale in person, the goods sold being a quantity of table
silver, a silver toilette set, and one or two other articles. The prices
fetched were trifling, Mrs. Harvey desiring that no one should buy the
goods in for her.”
“Miss Andrews asked the auctioneer if she might explain the reason for the
sale of the waggon, and, having received the necessary permission was able
to give an address on tax resistance, and to show how it is one of the
weapons employed by the Freedom League to secure the enfranchisement of
women. Then came the sale — but beforehand the auctioneer said he had not
been aware he was to sell ‘distressed’ goods, and he very much objected to
doing so.… The meeting and the auctioneer together made the assembly chary
of bidding, and the waggon was not sold, which was a great triumph for the
tax-resisters.… Miss Trott and Miss Bobby helped to advertise the meeting
by carrying placards round the crowded market.”
“There was a crowded audience, and the auctioneer opened the proceedings
by declaring himself a convinced Suffragist, which attitude of mind he
attributed largely to a constant contact with women householders in his
capacity as tax collector. After the sale a public meeting was held… At
the close of the meeting many questions were asked, new members joined the
League…”
The authorities tried to auction off Kate Harvey’s goods on-site, at her
home, rather than in a public hall, so that they might avoid
demonstrations of that sort. “On
morning a band of Suffragist
men carried placards through the streets of Bromley, on which was the
device, ‘I personally protest against the sale of a woman’s goods to pay
taxes over which she has no control,’ and long before
, the time fixed for the
sale, from North, South, East and West, people came streaming into the
little town of Bromley, and made their way towards ‘Brackenhill.’
Punctually at the
tax-collector and his deputy mounted the table in the dining-room, and the
former, more in sorrow than in anger, began to explain to the crowd
assembled that this was a genuine sale! Mrs. Harvey at once protested
against the sale taking place. Simply and solely because she was a woman,
although she was a mother, a business woman, and a tax-payer, she had no
voice in saying how the taxes collected from her should be spent. The tax
collector suffered this speech in silence, but he could judge by the
cheers it received that there were many ardent sympathisers with Mrs.
Harvey in her protest. He tried to proceed, but one after another the men
present loudly urged that no one there should bid for the goods. The
tax-collector feebly said this wasn’t a political meeting, but a genuine
sale! ‘One penny for your goods then!’ was the derisive answer. ‘One
penny — one penny!’ was the continued cry from both inside and outside
‘Brackenhill.’ Then men protested that the tax-collector was not a genuine
auctioneer; he had no hammer, no list of goods to be sold was hung up in
the room. There was no catalogue, nothing to show bidders what was to be
sold and what wasn’t. The men also objected to the presence of the
tax-collector’s deputy. ‘Tell him to get down!’ they shouted. ‘The sale
shan’t proceed till he does,’ they yelled. ‘Get down! Get down:’ they
sang. But the tax-collector felt safer by the support of this deputy.
‘He’s afraid of his own clerk,’ they jeered. Again the tax-collector asked
for bids. ‘One penny! One penny!’ was the deafening response. The din
increased every moment and pandemonium reigned supreme. During a temporary
lull the tax-collector said a sideboard had been sold for nine guineas.
Angry cries from angry men greeted this announcement. ‘Illegal sale!’ ‘He
shan’t take it home!’ ‘The whole thing’s illegal!’ ‘You shan’t sell
anything else!’ and The Daily Herald Leaguers,
members of the Men’s Political Union, and of other men’s societies,
proceeded to make more noise than twenty brass bands. Darkness was quickly
settling in; the tax-collector looked helpless, and his deputy smiled
wearily. ‘Talk about a comic opera — it’s better than Gilbert and Sullivan
could manage,’ roared an enthusiast. ‘My word, you look sick, guv’nor!
Give it up, man!’ Then everyone shouted against the other until the
tax-collector said he closed the sale, remarking plaintively that he had
lost £7 over the job! Ironical cheers greeted this news, with ‘Serve you
right for stealing a woman’s goods!’ He turned his back on his tormentors,
and sat down in a chair on the table to think things over. The protesters
sat on the sideboard informing all and sundry that if anyone wanted to
take away the sideboard he should take them with it! With the exit of the
tax-collector, his deputy and the bailiff, things gradually grew quieter,
and later on Mrs. Harvey entertained her supporters to tea at the Bell
Hotel. But the curious thing is, a man paid nine guineas for the sideboard
to the tax-collector. Mrs. Harvey owed him more than £17, and Mrs. Harvey
is still in possession of the sideboard!”
“The assistant auctioneer, to whom it fell to conduct the sale, was most
unfriendly, and refused to allow any speaking during the sale; but Miss
Boyle was able to shout through a window at his back, just over his
shoulder, an announcement that the goods were seized because Miss Cummins
refused to submit to taxation without representation, after which quite a
number of people who were attending the sale came out to listen to the
speeches.”
“The auctioneer was very sympathetic, and allowed Miss [Anna] Munro to
make a short speech before the waggon was sold. He then spoke a few
friendly words for the Woman’s Movement. After the sale a meeting was
held, and Mrs. Tippett and Miss Munro were listened to with evident
interest by a large number of men. The Vote and
other Suffrage literature was sold.”
“A joint demonstration of the Tax Resisters’ League and militant
suffragettes, held here [Hastings]
as a protest against the sale of
the belongings of those who refused to pay taxes, was broken up by a mob.
The women were roughly handled and half smothered with soot. Their banners
were smashed. The police finally succeeded in getting the women into a
blacksmith’s shop, where they held the mob at bay until the arrival of
reinforcements. The women were then escorted to a railway station.”
“The auction sale of the Duchess of Bedford’s silver cup proved, perhaps,
the best advertisement the Women’s Tax Resistance League ever had. It was
made the occasion for widespread propaganda. The newspapers gave columns
of space to the event, while at the big mass meeting, held outside the
auction room…”
“When a member is to be sold up a number of her comrades accompany her to
the auction-room. The auctioneer is usually friendly and stays the
proceedings until some one of the league has mounted the table and
explained to the crowd what it all means. Here are the banners, and the
room full of women carrying them, and it does not take long to impress
upon the mind of the people who have come to attend the sale that here is
a body of women willing to sacrifice their property for the principle for
which John Hampden went to prison — that taxation without representation
is tyranny. … The women remain at these auctions until the property of the
offender is disposed of. The kindly auctioneer puts the property seized
from the suffragists early on his list, or lets them know when it will be
called.”
American war tax resisters
There have been a few celebrated auction sales in the American war tax resistance movement.
Some of them have been met with protests or used as occasions for outreach and propaganda, but others have been more actively interfered with.
When Ernest and Marion Bromley’s home was seized, for example, there were
“months of continuous picketing and leafletting” before the sale. Then:
The day began with a silent vigil initiated by the local Quaker group.
While the bids were being read inside the building, guerrilla theatre took place out on the sidewalk.
At one point the Federal building was auctioned (offers ranging from 25¢ to 2 bottle caps).
Several supporters present at the proceedings inside made brief statements about the unjust nature of the whole ordeal.
Waldo the Clown was also there, face painted sadly, opening envelopes along with the IRS person.
As the official read the bids and the names of the bidders, Waldo searched his envelopes and revealed their contents: a flower, a unicorn, some toilet paper, which he handed to different office people.
Marion Bromley also spoke as the bids were opened, reiterating that the seizure was based on fraudulent assumptions, and that therefore the property could not be rightfully sold.
The protests, odd as they were, eventually paid off, as the IRS had in the interim been caught improperly pursuing political dissidents, and as a result it decided to reverse the sale of the Bromley home and give up on that particular fight.
When Paul and Addie Snyder’s home was auctioned off for back taxes, it was
reported that “many bids of $1 or less were made.”
Making a bid of pennies for farm property being foreclosed for failure to meet mortgages was a common tactic among angry farmers during the Depression.
If their bids succeeded, the property was returned to its owner and the mortgage torn up.
In some such cases, entire farms plus their livestock, equipment and home furnishings sold for as little as $2.
When George Willoughby’s car was seized and sold by the IRS,
Friends, brandishing balloons, party horns, cookies and lemonade, invaded the IRS office in Chester and bought the car back for $900.
The Rebecca rioters
On a couple of occasions the Rebeccaites prevented auctions, though not of goods seized for tax debts but for ordinary debts.
Here are two examples from Henry Tobit Evans’s book on the Rebecca phenomenon:
A distress for rent was levied on the goods of a man named Lloyd… and a bailiff of the name of Rees kept possession of the goods.
Previous to the day of sale, Rebecca and a great number of her daughters paid him a visit, horsewhipped him well, and kept him in safe custody until the furniture was entirely cleared from the house.
When Rees was freed, he found nothing but an empty house, Rebecca and her followers having departed.
Two bailiffs were there in possession of the goods and chattels under execution… Having entered the house by bursting open the door, Rebecca ran upstairs, followed by some of her daughters.
She ordered the bailiffs, who were in bed at the time, to be up and going in five minutes, or to prepare for a good drubbing.
The bailiffs promptly obeyed, but were driven forth by a bodyguard of the rioters, who escorted them some distance, pushing and driving the poor men in front of them.
At last they were allowed to depart to their homes on a sincere promise of not returning.
Reform Act agitation
During the tax resistance that accompanied the drive to pass the Reform Act in the in the United Kingdom, hundreds of people signed pledges in which they declared that “they will not purchase the goods of their townsmen not represented in Parliament which may be seized for the non-payment of taxes, imposed by any House of Commons as at present constituted.”
The True Sun asserted that
The tax-gatherer… might seize for them, but the brokers assured the inhabitants that they would neither seize any goods for such taxes, nor would they purchase goods so seized.
Yesterday afternoon, Mr Philips, a broker, in the Broadway, Westminster, exhibited the following placard at the door of his shop:— “Take notice, that the proprietor of this shop will not distrain for the house and window duties, nor will he purchase any goods that are seized for the said taxes; neither will any of those oppressive taxes be paid for this house in future.” A similar notice was also exhibited at a broker’s shop in York Street, Westminster.
Another newspaper account said:
A sale by auction of goods taken in distress for assessed taxes was announced to take place at Ashton Tavern on , at Birmingham.
From forty to fifty persons attended, including some brokers, but no one could be found except the poor woman from whose husband the goods had been seized, and the auctioneer himself.
A man came when the sale was nearly over, who was perfectly ignorant of the circumstances under which it took place, and bid for one of the last lots; he soon received an intimation, however, from the company that he had better desist, which be accordingly did.
After the sale was over nearly the whole of the persons present surrounded this man, and lectured him severely upon his conduct, and it was only by his solemnly declaring to them that he had bid in perfect ignorance of the nature of the sale that he was suffered to escape without some more substantial proof of their displeasure.
Railroad bond shenanigans
There was an epidemic of fraud in the United States in in which citizens of local jurisdictions were convinced to vote to sell bonds to pay for the Railroad to come to town.
The railroad never arrived, but the citizens then were on the hook to tax themselves to pay off the bonds.
Many said “hell no,” but by then the bonds had been sold to people who were not necessarily involved in the original swindle but had just bought them as investments.
In the course of the tax resistance campaigns associated with these railroad
bond boondoggles, auction disruption was resorted to on some occasions. Here
are some examples:
St. Clair [Missouri]’s taxpayers joined the movement in to repudiate the debts, but the county’s new leaders wanted to repay the investors.
Afraid to try taxing the residents, they decided to raise the interest by staging a huge livestock auction in , the proceeds to pay off the railroad bond interest.
On auction day, however, “no one seemed to want to buy” any animals.
To bondholders the “great shock” of the auction’s failure proved the depth of local resistance to railroad taxes.
Another attempt was made the other day to sell farm property in the town of Greenwood, Steuben county [New York], on account of a tax levied for the town bonding in aid of railroads, and another failure has followed.
The scene was upon the farm of William Atkins, where 200 of the solid yeomanry of the town had assembled to resist the sale… A Mr. Updyke, with broader hint, made these remarks: “I want to tell you folks that Mr. Atkins has paid all of his tax except this railroad tax; and we consider any man who will buy our property to help John Davis and Sam Alley as contemptible sharks.
We shall remember him for years, and will know where he lives.” The tax collector finally rose and remarked that in view of the situation he would not attempt to proceed with the sale.
The White League in Louisiana
In Reconstruction-era Louisiana, white supremacist tax resisters disrupted a tax auction.
There was a mob of fifty or sixty armed men came to prevent the deputy tax-collector effecting a sale, armed with revolvers nearly all.
Mr. Fournet came and threatened the deputy and tax-collector.
The deputy and tax-collector ran into their offices.
I came down and called upon the citizens to clear the court-house, but could not succeed.
I then called upon the military, but they had no orders at that time to give me assistance to carry out the law.
Mr. [Valsin A.?] Fournet came with eight or ten.
When the deputy tax-collector attempted to make a sale Mr. Fournet raised his hand and struck him.
The deputy then shoved him down.
As soon as this was done forty, fifty, or sixty men came with their revolvers in hand.
…very few people attended tax-sales [typically], because the white people were organized to prevent tax-collection, and pledged themselves not to buy any property at tax-sales, and the property was generally bought by the State.
Miscellaneous
The First Boer War broke out in the aftermath of the successfully resisted
auction of a tax resister’s waggon. Paul Kruger wrote of the incident:
The first sign of the approaching storm was the incident that happened at the forced sale of Field Cornet Bezuidenhout’s waggon, on which a distress had been levied.
The British Government had begun to collect taxes and to take proceedings against those who refused to pay them.
Among these was Piet Bezuidenhout, who lived in the Potchefstroom District.
This refusal to pay taxes was one of the methods of passive resistance which were now employed towards the British Government.
Hitherto, many of the burghers had paid their taxes, declaring that they were only yielding to force.
But, when this was explained by the English politicians as though the population were contented and peacefully paying their taxes, some asked for a receipt showing that they were only paying under protest and others refused to pay at all.
The Government then levied a distress on Bezuidenhout’s waggon and sent it to public action at Potchefstroom.
Piet Cronjé, who became so well known in the last war, appeared at the auction with a number of armed Boers, who flung the bailiff from the waggon and drew the waggon itself back in triumph to Bezuidenhout’s farm.
When the U.S.
government seized Valentine Byler’s horse because of the Amish man’s
conscientious objection to paying into the social security system, no
other Amish would bid at the auction.
Between the Wars in Germany, the government had a hard time conducting
auctions of the goods of tax resisters. Ernst von Salomon writes:
Everywhere bailiff’s orders were being disobeyed.… Compulsory sales could not be held: when the young peasants of the riding club appeared at the scene of the auction on their horses and with music, nobody seemed willing to make a bid.
The carters refused, even with police protection, to carry off the distrained cattle, for they knew that if they did they would never again be able to do business with the peasants.
One day three peasants even appeared in the slaughter yards at Hamburg and announced that unless the distrained cattle disappeared at once from the yard’s stalls the gentlemen in charge of the slaughterhouse could find somewhere else to buy their beasts in the future — they wouldn’t be getting any more from Schleswig-Holstein.
Environmental activist Tim DeChristopher disrupted a Bureau of Land
Management auction by making winning bids on everything that he
had no intention of honoring.
During the Poujadist disruptions in France, “They also took to spiking
forced tax sales by refusing to bid until the auctioneer had lowered the
price of whatever was up for sale to a laughably small figure. Thus a tax
delinquent might buy back his own shop for, say 10 cents. At an auction
the other day, a brand-new car went for one franc, or less than one-third
of a cent.”
in roughly the same region
of France:
It was in the south where the wine growers refuse to pay taxes to the government.
A farmer had had half a dozen rabbits sent him by a friend; he refused to pay duty on them, whereupon they control or local customs tried to sell the six “original” rabbits and their offspring at auction.
The inhabitants have now boycotted the auction sales so that the local officials must feed the rabbits till the case is settled by the courts.
In York, Pennsylvania in , a group
“surrounded the crier and forbid any person purchasing when the property
which had been seized was offered for sale. A cow which had been in the
hands of the collector was driven away by the rioters.”
In the Dutch West Indies in “The
household effects of a physician who refused to pay the tax were offered
for sale at auction today by the Government. Although the building in
which the sale was held was crowded, there were no bids and the articles
were not sold.”
In Tasmania, in , “Large quantities of
goods were seized, and lodged in the Commissariat Store [but] Lawless mobs
paraded the streets, tore down fences, and, arming themselves with rails
and batons, smashed windows and doors.… The fence round the Commissariat
Store was torn down…”
During the Bardoli tax strike, “There were meetings in talukas contiguous
to Bardoli, not only in British territory, but also in the Baroda
territory, for expression of sympathy with the Satyagrahis and calling
upon people in their respective parts not to cooperate with the
authorities engaged in putting down the Satyagraha… by bidding for any
forfeited property that may be put to auction by the authorities.”
Today, some excerpts from the news archives about war tax resister Richard Catlett:
On , Richard Catlett, who is one of our church members and a war-tax resister, went to prison for failing to file federal income tax forms.
We who belong to the Columbia Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), in agreement with Richard Catlett’s war-tax resistance, condemn last year’s military budget, which was the largest in our history.
Last year the United States spent $32 billion on weapons that have the sole purpose of killing people and destroying property.
The United States alone has enough nuclear weapons to destroy all humans on this earth many times.
The SALT talks and the SALT Ⅰ treaty, while attempting to halt the arms race, have actually increased weapon production in both the United States and U.S.S.R. Similarly, foreign military sales, the proposed neutron bomb and the building of civil-defense shelters, only increase the chances of our nation starting or participating in a nuclear war that would inevitably result in the destruction of our nation.
We strongly support disarmament as it represents the only realistic hope for the survival of our nation, as well as the majority of people on earth.
It is good to have war-tax resisters and we urge others to support disarmament and war-tax resisters like Richard Catlett.
Though Richard Catlett does not like to classify himself, he is what most people would call a radical.
He has been a union organizer, a peace protestor, a civil rights activist, and a registered Socialist.
He performed alternative military service as a conscientious objector rather than go to war.
And he has refused to pay federal income tax because the money is used to buy guns and soldiers.
As a result, he’s gone to prison.
The Columbia [Missouri] resident is 69 years old.
Escorted by a group of fellow Quakers — members of the Religious Society of Friends — he turned himself in Friday to the U.S. Marshal’s office in Kansas City, Mo., to be taken to a federal corrections facility to serve 60 days for “willful failure to file a tax return.”
Catlett isn’t embarrassed to be going behind bars.
“I have absolutely no regrets,” Catlett said last week.
“I’m unregenerate, proud of what I’ve done.”
Catlett sees his refusal to pay federal taxes as a moral issue, not a legal one.
“It’s immoral to pay someone to do what it would be immoral to do yourself,” he said.
“War is immoral, and I can’t pay taxes that will buy war.”
Catlett has consistently paid state and local taxes, though he says he disagrees with the way much of that money is spent.
“But there is a difference between not liking what the government does with your money, and letting them use it for immoral purposes,” he said.
Catlett’s pacifist beliefs go back almost as far as he does.
He says his father would not let him join the Boy Scouts because of their “militaristic tendencies.”
After World War Ⅱ — during which he served with the National Park Service and in a Forest Service camp — Catlett quit paying taxes.
“It was evident that the United States was re-arming Europe, that there would be no attempt to promote peace,” he said.
“We were already at war — the Cold War — with Russia.”
“It’s immoral to pay someone to do what it would be immoral to do yourself.”
Spending most of his life since the war in farming and construction work, Catlett moved to Columbia from Springfield in .
Through his activity against capital punishment, he became acquainted with local Quakers, and joined the newly formed Columbia Friends Meeting shortly after his arrival.
Catlett and his sister started a health food store in , but in the Internal Revenue Service seized his share of the business for back taxes.
He worked in the store for two years after he lost his share of ownership, but now is retired.
“I have no income anymore,”
Catlett said.
“That way I can comply with the terms of probation, because I won’t need to file a return anyway — the government still won’t get any of my money.”
After the 60 days of imprisonment, Catlett still will have three years of probation.
He said he would have served the entire sentence as a year of prison with no probation — “I don’t like the idea of a judge trying to run my life for three years” — except for the needs of his family.
“My wife has supported my needs through this whole thing, so I must support hers,” Catlett said.
“She and Richie (Catlett’s son) need my presence.”
Catlett and his wife, Carol, 30, were married in .
Their son is 20 months old.
Catlett’s case has become well-known in pacifist circles; the actual jailing of war resisters who refuse to pay federal taxes is unusual.
Letters from Friends meetings throughout the country poured into the U.S. District Court offices of Judge Elmo B. Hunter while Catlett’s sentence was under consideration.
The Quakers helped pay part of his heavy legal expenses.
Catlett appealed the District Court verdict to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit; its decision against him was handed down .
Catlett said he could not afford an appeal to the Supreme Court, especially since the chances of the court hearing his case, a misdemeanor, were minuscule.
“Quakers have gone to jail because of their beliefs for centuries,” Catlett said.
“It’s part of our tradition speaking truth to power.”
Quakers believe the taking of a human life, under any circumstance, is a violation of the laws of God.
This stems from the basic principle among Friends that “There is that of God in every man” — that within all persons is contained a part of the eternal and almighty.
Though the 150,000 Friends in the United States are split into a number of groups with varying worship practices and religious beliefs, this anti-war, non-violent stance is a common thread among them.
The local Friends meeting, made up of about 30 members, is affiliated with the Illinois Yearly Meeting, a traditional “silent-meeting” body generally considered liberal theologically.
Silent-meeting Quakers have no clergy.
Catlett finds it difficult to say whether anything positive has resulted from his fight against the IRS and, as he sees it, against war.
“It isn’t like an election, where you just count the votes to see who won.
But the U.S. Attorney’s office was forced to face up to this issue; so was the court,” Catlett said.
“And maybe because of the publicity this has received, more people will stop to think about the issue, too.”
He sees a few personal benefits as a result of the case.
“I know a lot more people now, and it’s certainly gratifying to get the kind of support I’ve received from all over the country,” Catlett said.
“I still have plenty of friends,” he said, “and I think my standing in the community as a man of integrity has been enhanced.”
When he returns to Columbia, Catlett will have many interests to occupy his time.
“I haven’t been bored a day in my life, I’ve never been without plans for the future,” he said.
Catlett said that being sentenced to federal prison has not changed his attitudes toward the government, toward the issue of war and taxes, or toward society.
“When I get out, I’ll continue to work for a more just and equitable society,” Catlett said.
“I realize one individual is not going to change society next month or next year.
“But I do believe a more just and equitable society is possible — otherwise I’d check out and try some other world.”
The author of that piece accompanied it with another backgrounder:
Tax resistance as a form of protesting war in America goes back at least as far as , when Henry David Thoreau refused to pay a poll tax because he disapproved of the United States’ war with Mexico.
Thoreau spent a night in jail for that action, and it appears Richard Catlett of Columbia will spend two months in federal prison for his.
But the actual imprisonment of war resisters who refuse to pay taxes has been unusual in recent years.
George Willoughby, clerk of the Committee on War Tax Concerns of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, said he knows of only two or three other cases in which tax resisters have been sent to jail.
“But the failure to file a return at all as in Catlett’s case is a different form of tax refusal from that taken by most war resisters,” Willoughby said.
The most common form of war tax resistance during the Vietnam War was the refusal to pay the 10 percent federal tax on telephone service.
Time magazine in reported that more than 56,000 Americans took this action as a form of protest against the war.
Others — 1,740 in — filed income tax returns, but withheld payment of a portion of the tax to protest military spending.
In both these cases, the IRS has usually recovered the money through seizure of the protesting taxpayer’s bank account, salary or property.
Perhaps because of this, charges seldom have been filed against war tax resisters.
Willoughby said that though only a small number of Quakers are active war tax resisters — no exact figures are known — the position is one that is endorsed and respected by the Society.
“How far the individual Friend takes his witness for peace is an individual matter, but tax resistance is certainly a logical extension of the Society’s long tradition of peace concerns,” Willoughby said.
He and his wife are tax resisters themselves.
“We feel, now that we are older and the government no longer seeks to use our bodies to make war, that the only effective witness is to try to keep them from using our money to make war,” Willoughby said.
Several non-Quaker organizations also have encouraged tax refusal as a form of war protest, particularly during the Vietnam years.
A proposal before Congress is the World Peace Tax Fund, which would allow taxpayers to channel that portion of their tax payments ordinarily used for military expenditures into peace-related projects.
“It’s much like conscientious objectors to military service; they still serve, but in another capacity,” Willoughby said.
The bill picks up more support in Congress each year, Willoughby said, but he does not expect its passage soon.
“In effect, it allows the taxpayer to tell the government how he wants his money spent.
That’s a power the government is not likely to give up without a fight.”
Here are a handful of artifacts relating to the American war tax resistance
movement circa .
First, some relics that were filed alongside a letter from Herbert Sonthoff to
W. Walter Boyd (though I think this filing may be arbitrary and that the
letters are not related to each other):
At this late date it is pointless to muster the evidence which shows that the
war we are waging in Vietnam is wrong. By now you have decided for yourself
where you stand. In all probability, if you share our feelings about it, you
have expressed your objections both privately and publicly. You have witnessed
the small effect these protests have had on our government.
By ,
every American citizen must decide whether he will make a voluntary
contribution to the continuation of this war. After grave consideration, we
have decided that we can no longer do so, and that we will therefore withhold
all or part of the taxes due. The purpose of this letter is to call your
attention to the fact that a nationwide tax refusal campaign is in progress,
as stated in the accompanying announcement, and to urge you to consider
refusing to contribute voluntarily to this barbaric war.
Signed:
Prof. Warren Ambrose
Mathematics, M.I.T.
Dr. Donnell Boardman
Physician, Acton, Mass.
Mrs. Elizabeth Boardman
Acton, Mass.
Prof. Noam Chomsky
Linguistics, M.I.T.
Miss Barbara Deming
Writer, Wellfleet, Mass.
Prof. John Dolan
Philosophy, Chicago University
Prof. John Ek
Anthropology, Long Island University
Martha Bentley Hall
Musician, Brookline, Mass.
Dr. Thomas C. Hall
Physician, Brookline, Mass.
Rev. Arthur B. Jellis
First Parish in Concord, Unitarian-Universalist, Concord, Mass.
Prof. Donald Kalish
Philosophy, U.C.L.A.
Prof. Louis Kampf
Humanities, M.I.T.
Prof. Staughton Lynd
History, Yale University
Milton Mayer
Writer, Mass.
Prof. Jonathan Mirsky
Chinese Language and Literature, Dartmouth College
Prof. Sidney Morgenbesser
Philosophy, Columbia University
Prof. Wayne A. O’Neill
Graduate School of Education, Harvard University
Prof. Anatol Rapoport
Mental Health Research Institute, University of Michigan
Prof. Franz Schurmann
Center for Chinese Studies, University of Calif., Berkeley
Dr. Albert Szent Gyorgy
Institute for Muscle Research, Woods Hole, Mass.
Harold Tovish
Sculptor, Brookline, Mass.
Prof. Howard Zinn
Government, Boston University
* Institutions listed for informational
purposes only
P.S. The No Tax for
War Committee intends to make public the names of signers, hence if you wish
to add your signature, early return is desirable. Contributions are needed,
and checks should be made payable to the Committee.
The committee will publish the above statement with names of signers at tax
deadline — .
Send signed statements to: NO TAX FOR WAR COMMITTEE,
c/o
Rev. Maurice McCrackin,
932 Dayton St., Cincinnati,
Ohio 45214.
For additional copies of this form, put number you will distribute and name
and address on the following lines:
No. _____ Name ____________________
Address _________________________
Signers So Far
Meldon and Amy Acheson
Michael J. Ames
Alfred F. Andersen
Ross Anderson
Beulah K. Arndt
Joan Baez
Richard Baker
Bruce & Pam Beck
Ruth T. Best
Robert & Margaret Blood
Karel F. Botermans
Marion & Ernest Bromley
Edwin Brooks
A. Dale Brothington
Mrs. Lydia Bruns
Wendal Bull
Mrs. Dorothy Bucknell
John Burslem
Lindley J. Burton
Catharine J. Cadbury
Maris Cakars
Robert and Phyllis Calese
William N. Calloway
Betty Camp
Daryle V. Carter
Jared & Susan Carter
Horace & Beulah Champney
Ken & Peggy Champney
Hank & Henry Chapin
Holly Chenery
Richard A. Chinn
Naom [sic] Chomsky
John & Judy Christian
Gordon & Mary Christiansen
Peter Christiansen
Donald F. Cole
John Augustine Cook
Helen Marr Cook
Jack Coolidge, Jr.
Allen Cooper
Martin J. Corbin
Tom & Monica Cornell
Dorothy J. Cunningham
Jean DaCosta
Ann & William Davidon
Stanley F. Davis
Dorothy Day
Dave Dellinger
Barbara Deming
Robert Dewart
Ruth Dodd
John M. Dolan
Orin Doty
Allen Duberstein
Ralph Dull
Malcolm Dundas
Margaret E. Dungan
Henry Dyer
Susan Eanet
Bob Eaton
Marc Paul Edelman
Johan & Francis Eliot
Jerry Engelbach
George J. Etu, Jr.
Mary C. Eubanks
Arthur Evans
Jonathan Evans
William E. Evans
Pearl Ewald
Franklin Farmer
Bertha Faust
Dianne M. Feeley
Rice A. Felder
Henry A. Felisone
Mildred Fellin
Glenn Fisher
John Forbes
Don & Ann Fortenberry
Marion C. Frenyear
Ruth Gage-Colby
Lawrence H. Geller
Richard Ghelli
Charles Gibadlo
Bruce Glushakow
Walter Gormly
Arthur Goulston
Thomas Grabell
Steven Green
Walter Grengg
Joseph Gribbins
Kenneth Gross
John M. Grzywacz, Jr.
Catherine Guertin
David Hartsough
David Hartsough
Arthur Harvey
Janet Hawksley
James P. Hayes, Jr.
R.F. Helstern
Ammon Hennacy
Norman Henry
Robert Hickey
Dick & Heide Hiler
William Himelhoch
C.J. Hinke
Anthony Hinrichs
William M. Hodsdon
Irwin R. Hogenauer
Florence Howe
Donald & Mary Huck
Philip Isely
Michael Itkin
Charles T. Jackson
Paul Jacobs
Martin & Nancy Jezer
F. Robert Johnson
Woodbridge O. Johnson
Ashton & Marie Jones
Paul Jordan
Paul Keiser
Joel C. Kent
Roy C. Kepler
Paul & Pauline Kermiet
Peter Kiger
Richard King
H.A. Kreinkamp
Arthur & Margaret Landes
Paul Lauter
Peter and Marolyn Leach
Gertrud & George A. Lear, Jr.
Alan and Elin Learnard
Titus Lehman
Richard A. Lema
Florence Levinsohn
Elliot Linzer
David C. Lorenz
Preston B. Luitweiler
Bradford Lyttle
Adriann van L. Maas
Ben & Sue Mann
Paul and Salome Mann
Howard E. Marston, Sr.
Milton and Jane Mayer
Martin & Helen Mayfield
Maurice McCrackin
Lilian McFarland
Maureen & Felix McGowan
Maryann McNaughton
Gelston McNeil
Guy W. Meyer
Karl Meyer
David & Catherine Miller
James Missey
Mark Morris
Janet Murphy
Thomas P. Murray
Rosemary Nagy
Wally & Juanita Nelson
Marilyn Neuhauser
Neal D. Newby, Jr.
Miriam Nicholas
Robert B. Nichols
David Nolan
Raymond S. Olds
Wayne A. O’Neil
Michael O’Quin
Ruth Orcutt
Eleanor Ostroff
Doug Palmer
Malcolm & Margaret Parker
Jim Peck
Michael E. Pettie
John Pettigrew
Lydia H. Philips
Dean W. Plagowski
Jefferson Poland
A.J. Porth
Ralph Powell
Charles F. Purvis
Jean Putnam
Harriet Putterman
Robert Reitz
Ben & Helen Reyes
Elsa G. Richmond
Eroseanna Robinson
Pat Rusk
Joe & Helen Ryan
Paul Salstrom
Ira J. Sandperl
Jerry & Rae Schwartz
Martin Shepard
Richard T. Sherman
Louis Silverstein
T.W. Simer
Ann B. Sims
Jane Beverly Smith
Linda Smith
Thomas W. Smuda
Bob Speck
Elizabeth P. Steiner
Lee D. Stern
Beverly Sterner
Michael Stocker
Charles H. Straut, Jr.
Stephen Suffet
Albert & Joyce Sunderland, Jr.
Mr. & Mrs. Michael R. Sutter
Marjorie & Robert Swann
Oliver & Katherine Tatum
Gary G. Taylor
Harold Tovish
Joe & Cele Tuchinsky
Lloyd & Phyllis Tyler
Samuel R. Tyson
Ingegerd Uppman
Margaret von Selle
Mrs. Evelyn Wallace
Wilbur & Joan Ann Wallis
William & Mary Webb
Barbara Webster
John K. White
Willson Whitman
Denny & Ida Wilcher
Huw Williams
George & Lillian Willoughby
Bob Wilson
Emily T. Wilson
Jim & Raona Wilson
W.W. Wittkamper
Sylvia Woog
Wilmer & Mildred Young
Franklin Zahn
Betty & Louis Zemel
Vicki Jo Zilinkas
Following this was a page explaining how to go about resisting:
For those owing nothing because of the Withholding Tax.
Such persons write a letter to the Internal Revenue Service, to be filed
with the tax return, stating that the writer cannot in good conscience
help support the war in Vietnam, voluntarily. The writer
therefore requests a return of a percentage of the money collected from
his salary.
Note: Of course, the
IRS
will not return the money. However, the writer has refused to pay for the
war voluntarily and has put it in writing. This symbolic action
is not to be belittled since anybody who does this allies himself with
those who will withhold money due the IRS.
For those self-employed or owing money beyond what has been withheld from
salary.
Such persons write a letter to be filed with the tax return, stating that
the writer does not object to the income tax in principle, but will not,
as a matter of conscience, help pay for the war in Vietnam. The writer is
therefore withholding some or all of the tax due.
Note: In all cases, we recommend that copies of these letters be sent to the
President and to your Senators.
Remarks:
The Internal Revenue Service has the legal power to confiscate money due
it. They will get that money, one way or another. However, to obstruct the
IRS
from collecting money due (by not filing a return at all, for example)
seems less important to us than the fact that each is refusing to pay
his tax voluntarily. With this in mind, many of us are placing the
taxes owed in special accounts and we will so inform the
IRS
in our letters.
Willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $10,000 and up to
a year in jail, together with the costs of prosecution. So far, the
IRS
has prosecuted only those who have obstructed collection (by refusing to
file a return, by refusing to answer a summons,
etc.).
Usually, the
IRS
has collected the tax due plus 6% interest and possibly an added fine of
5% for “negligence”. The fact that the
IRS
has rarely, if at all, prosecuted tax-refusers to the full
extent of the law does not mean they will not do so in the future.
Finally, an article from the edition of The Capitol East Gazette:
Two thousand anti-war leaflets on telephone tax refusal were distributed in Capitol East on , by members of CHOICE, a group of local residents who are withdrawing their support for the Vietnam war.
The leaflet explains that the 10% phone tax was enacted in specifically to raise money for the Vietnam war.
According to CHOICE, the phone company will not remove a person’s telephone if he refuses to pay the tax.
The company asks refusers to state why they are withholding the tax and then turns the matter over to the Internal Revenue Service.
According to CHOICE, there are presently 25 known tax refusers in the Capitol Hill area.
Those desiring CHOICE’s leaflet are asked to call LI 6‒9836.
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
a Vietnamese postage stamp featuring Norman Morrison
On , a 31-year-old American Quaker named Norman Morrison went out to the sidewalk in front of U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s office in the Pentagon, doused himself in kerosene, and set himself on fire as a protest against the American war on Vietnam.
His suicide stunned the Society of Friends and made more urgent the already percolating questions about the moribund Quaker peace testimony and how much Friends were willing to put on the line for it.
This is reflected by the increased attention given in the pages of Friends Journal in to the issue of war tax resistance.
In , a “Friends’ Conference and Vigil on the War in Vietnam” asked the “Friends Coordinating Committee on Peace… to prepare a bulletin urging Friends to consider how paying taxes and buying war bonds involved them in financing the military.”
A number of Quakers signed a “No Taxes for Vietnam War” tax refusal vow that was organized by Maurice McCracken’s “No War in Vietnam Committee.”
These included, according to the issue of the Journal, “Franklin Zahn, Bob and Marj Swann, Arthur Evans, Bradford Lyttle, Johan W. Eliot, Staughton Lynd, Wilmer Young, George and Lillian Willoughby, and Marion C. Frenyear.”
The lead editorial in that issue was entitled “To Pay or to Protest?” and the author was determined to give no definitive advice on either side of that question.
The editorial begins by stating the case for Quaker taxpayer misgivings, then moves on to note that “a few pacifists” have been resisting, and to claim that “this year the number of tax-refusers will be far greater than ever before,” while other taxpayers who share their misgivings are either unwilling to take on the risks of tax resistance or believe that such an action amounts to “dodging the law and leaving someone else to carry a burden which they themselves will not assume.”
The editorialist then quotes from a letter written by a resisting employee “to her employing group” (why so coy about which group?) in which she writes that while she would be happy to “pay twice as much as required by the present law” for the more benign things the government buys, “I cannot bring myself to furnish money to be used in a way that will bring death to fine young American boys and men and also to Vietnamese men, women, and children.”
If “the employing group” were to cooperate in her request to stop withholding income tax from her salary, the editorialist wonders, “[w]ill it (or its members) be penalized?”
This is another strange example of the Journal taking an issue that was obviously a direct concern to Quakers and to Quaker Meetings, and trying to abstract it and cast it off into the distance somewhere in order to consider it dispassionately and indecisively.
From here the editorialist compares the Quaker war tax resister of today to the Quaker abolitionist “in the years before the Civil War when some members wanted to give all-out aid to the cause of abolition while others counseled caution, advocating strict adherence to the letter of such laws as those requiring fugitive slaves to be returned to their masters.”
Nowadays we tend to view with shame the historical evidence that all Friends did not work wholeheartedly for the abolition of slavery; will the time come when the Friends who follow after us have a similar feeling about those of their predecessors (including the present writer) who lacked the courage to resist conscription of their dollars to do the killing that they themselves refused to do?
After a quick detour through “There are those who say… there are others who counterargue…” territory, the editorialist recommends that people interested in tax refusal contact the Committee for Nonpayment of War Taxes or the Peacemakers, and gives their addresses.
Finally, there is a brief nod in the direction of war tax resistance being a time-honored Quaker practice.
The editorialist mentions that Franklin Zahn has authored a booklet on “Early Friends and War Taxes,” which includes the quote that ends the editorial, from the letter sent by John Woolman & co. to their fellow-Friends in :
Raising sums of money [for] purposes inconsistent with the peaceable testimony we profess… appears to us in its consequences to be destructive of our religious liberties; we apprehend many among us will be under the necessity of suffering, rather than consenting thereto by the payment of a tax for such purposes.
In the issue, an article about a Quaker movement in which people voluntarily taxed themselves 1% of their income for the support of the United Nations began this way: “All Friends, whether or not they would refuse to take up arms, are caught up in the military machine through payment of Federal income tax.”
This seems to indicate that there was still a blind spot that was making it difficult for some Quakers to even see the various alternatives to paying the federal income tax.
A report on the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in the same issue noted:
After consideration, the Yearly Meeting concurred with the concern of the Friends Peace Committee that fresh attention be given to the effort to devise a formula acceptable to the Internal Revenue Service and to Congress, which would permit persons to withhold that proportion of their income taxes applicable to military purposes and apply it to constructive purposes of government.
Because a Monthly Meeting secretary and a youth worker for the Peace Committee have asked their employers to cease withholding income tax from their salaries, the problem is being thrust upon the Yearly Meeting.
Friends, whatever their judgments about a particular action, are sympathetic toward those who engage in it for reasons of conscience.
In furtherance of its concern… the Friends Peace Committee received authorization to seek personal conferences with officials of the Internal Revenue Service to acquaint them with the basis and reality of the concern to refuse payment of taxes for military purposes.
Perhaps such conversations may increase understanding on the part of the officials and may enable them, while carrying out their duty and enforcing the law, to understand and respect the refusers.
A conference at Pendle Hill “on the search for peace” in , concerned the “basic question… [of] whether the militaristic society in which we all live could be influenced through techniques of reason or whether religious pacifists, in their deep alienation, should rather seek a more radical strategy of protest.”
At one point, according to the coverage in the issue of the Journal, William Davidon “spoke frankly and clearly on the moral philosophy behind his refusal to pay those taxes which, he felt, would support the war in Vietnam.”
Martin A. Klaver contributed the lead editorial in the issue — “More on Tax-Refusal” — which is worth reproducing completely here as a good overview of the issue of war tax resistance as it stood at that time:
“Friends Journal,” writes John R. Ewbank, patent attorney and a member of Abington Meeting, Jenkintown, Pa., “might well mention the ‘mildest form of tax-refusal for Milquetoasts’: the refusal to pay the federal tax on telephone usage when billed for it.
The telephone company can carry the accumulated unpaid tax until it equals the deposit, and then assess a charge for nominal discontinuance and reconnection, so that the penalties for prolonged persistence are paid to the phone company instead of to the government.
How long it is worth while to carry the protest is a matter of individual judgment…”
For nearly a hundred years, John Ewbank adds, Americans have not been faced with a levy so conspicuously labeled “war tax” as this revived tax on telephone usage.
According to his letter to the telephone company, “The publicity connected with the telephone tax has been so specifically related to the Vietnam war, and I am conscientiously so opposed to the Vietnam war, that my payment herewith omits the $1.03 federal tax.
There are so few opportunities for protest — even feeble, futile protest — that [this] becomes one of the few available gestures.”
For Milquetoasts or not, feeble or not, the gesture is a form of civil disobedience differing more in degree than in kind from refusal to pay the federal income tax — or that part of it that goes for war.
It seems a little unfair to make it at the expense of the telephone company, which is thereby put to added trouble and expense, if only in its bookkeeping department, but it is a protest.
This year, it appears, the thin ranks of those refusing to pay income taxes for reasons of conscience were somewhat augmented.
An release from the office of A.J. Muste cites a statement signed by 360 persons, declaring that they would refuse to pay taxes voluntarily as long as United States forces continue to be used “in violation of the U.S. Constitution, international law, and the United Nations Charter.”
The release says that some signers are leaving the money they owe the government in banks, where the Internal Revenue Service can seize it, while others will contribute it to CARE, UNICEF, or similar agencies.
It also notes that, according to the Internal Revenue Code, “willful refusal to pay taxes may be punished by jail sentences of up to one year and fines as high as $10,000.”
This is not tax-refusal for Milquetoasts, although in the past fines and jail sentences have been rare indeed.
The law is enforced by placing a lien on the tax refuser’s property or attaching his salary.
There have been a number of instances where actions instituted against individuals were simply dropped.
But if tax-refusal should reach important proportions, the present seemingly casual attitude might change; the IRS might decide that it must do something to show that it is not virtually inviting more and more trouble.
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting was concerned this year with the problem posed by employes of two Quaker groups who have asked their employers not to withhold federal taxes from their salaries.
The Yearly Meeting’s Peace Committee is not only seeking a solution to this problem but is also seeking special conferences with Internal Revenue Service officials to acquaint them with the reasons why some Friends refuse to pay their taxes.
During the Yearly Meeting’s discussion it was brought out that Friends Committee on National Legislation for some time has been exploring the possibility of drafting legislation in this area making it possible for Americans who have conscientious objections to having their property used for war to pay equivalent taxes for other uses.
A number of congressmen have been receptive to the idea, but so far no formula has been found that promises to attract the necessary support.
Meanwhile most Quakers (like this one) pay their income taxes (including the reimposed telephone tax) without a murmur.
But there is a consensus on a fundamental: Friends’ basic belief that in matters of conscience each individual must choose his own course.
If that course brings him into conflict with government, he must decide for himself what he must do: obey in silence, obey and at the same time protest, or resort to civil disobedience of one kind or another.
Whether any government can grant any of its citizens the “right” to violate any of its laws is open to debate.
The citizen can hardly lay claim to such a right, yet when he feels that he has a duty to break the law, when he says, “God helping me, I can do no other,” then we must accord him our respect.
The issue noted that “two young Quaker workers… have voluntarily taken drastic cuts in salary rather than pay taxes for war in Vietnam.”
The two were John L.P. Maynard and Robert W. Eaton, who reduced their incomes to the maximum allowable before federal income tax withholding began — something on the order of $75 per month.
The Conservative branch of the Ohio Yearly Meeting met in .
According to William P. Taber, Jr.’s report on the meeting, “we asked our members to consider supporting tax refusal and the sending of aid to the civilians of all Vietnam.”
On the other hand, at the Westerly (Rhode Island) Monthly Meeting, the message was more mixed: “Many Friends feel that not to pay their taxes is disrespect for the law, breeding anarchy.
Yet they deplore the fact that their tax money is being used to prosecute a morally indefensible war in Vietnam.”
The best they could come up with was to approve a suggestion that Friends accompany their tax payments with a statement of protest.
The pseudonymous history columnist “Now and Then” took up the issue of war tax resistance in the issue:
A scruple against paying taxes which directly or indirectly support war has had a long if sporadic history among members of the Society of Friends.
It received official support in London in when decision was made that fine or punishment for such refusal could be reported by the meeting in the annual listing of “sufferings for Truth.”
At Philadelphia Yearly Meeting every year lately this concern has been voiced by individuals.
In the Meeting went so far as to authorize some minor action on the subject, including a delegation to visit the Internal Revenue authorities and to explain the tender conscience of the increasing number of Friends who refuse part or all of their Federal income tax.
The most intensive consideration of the matter among the Meeting’s membership appears to have occurred more than two centuries ago.
Before the Pennsylvania Assembly was asked by the mother country to supply men and funds for British military enterprises in the colonies.
The Quaker legislators, when they complied, did so uneasily, with the excuses that it was for defense or that the money was voted nominally for the sovereign’s use and that they were not responsible for what use the king (or queen) chose to make of it.
They also accepted as a permanent unqualified mandate the words of Jesus, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” Sometimes Friends distinguished as acceptable mixed taxes and as unacceptable those taxes that were definitely labeled for war.
We are indebted to John Woolman’s Journal (Chapter Ⅴ) for an account of the exercise that arose in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting both in and in .
In the former year a committee was appointed which issued an epistle expressing the feeling that “the large sum granted by the late act of Assembly for the King’s use is principally intended for purposes inconsistent with our peaceable testimony,” and that “as we cannot be concerned in wars and fightings, so neither ought we to contribute thereto by paying the tax directed by the said act, though suffering be the consequence of our refusal.”
Woolman speaks of the conference on the subject “as the most weighty that ever I was at.”
There was not unanimity in the group.
Some who felt easy to pay the tax withdrew, but twenty-one substantial Friends subscribed the epistle; they included John Woolman, John Churchman (who also mentions the matter in his Journal), Anthony Benezet, John Pemberton, and Samuel Fothergill, an English public Friend visiting America.
In the Yearly Meeting of the matter was opened again, and a committee of about forty Friends were appointed to consider “whether or no it would be best at this time publicly to consider it in the Yearly Meeting.”
Visitors from other Yearly Meetings — including John Hunt and Christopher Wilson from England — were asked to join the committee.
The decision was negative.
There was difference of opinion on the subject, and “for that and several other reasons” the committee unanimously agreed that it was not proper to enter into public discussion of the matter.
Meanwhile it recommended that Friends of differing opinions “have their minds covered with fervent charity towards one another.”
One wonders why the different result from two years before and what were some of the “other reasons.”
Part of the answer, I think, is to be found in a letter to John Hunt and Christopher Wilson, sent to them by the Meeting for Sufferings in London.
This letter is dated and is signed by Benjamin Bourne, clerk.
I shall quote it as I have copied it from the manuscript minutes of the Meeting.
It falls in date between the two Philadelphia Yearly Meetings described above, at the second of which Hunt and Wilson were present and in a position to transmit the urgent advice of London Friends.
The main purpose of their mission to Pennsylvania, as is well known, was to prevent the home government’s proposed requirement of an oath for members of the Assembly by asking Friends to refuse to run for election.
The British Friends asked the government to let them attempt first to bring about the purging of the Assembly of Quakers.
In this they succeeded to the extent that most Friends withdrew from the Assembly; thus the threat was averted.
Evidently the same pressure was exercised to encourage Friends to pay provincial war taxes to the British crown and particularly not to publicize their scruple against paying them.
But neither the minutes of Philadelpha Yearly Meeting for (under ) nor its epistles — whether to London Yearly Meeting or to its own members — are so explicit as the letter.
After repeating the primary commission to the English delegates to try “to prevail on Friends in Pennsylvania to refuse being chosen into Assembly during the present commotions in America” and “to make them fully sensible of their danger, and how much it concerns them, the Province, and their posterity to act conformably to this request and the expectations of the government,” the letter continues:
And as you will know that very disadvantageous impressions have been made here by the advices given by some Friends against the payment of a tax lately laid by the provincial assembly, it is recommended in a particular manner that you endeavour to remove all occasions of misunderstanding on this account, and to explain and enforce our known principles and practice respecting the payment of taxes for the support of civil government agreeable to the several advices of the Yearly Meeting founded on the precept and example of our Saviour.
May that wisdom which is from above attend you in this weighty undertaking, and render your labours effectual for the purposes intended that you may be the happy instruments of averting the dangers that threaten the liberties and privileges of the people in general and restore and strengthen that union and harmony which ought to subsist in every part of our Christian Society.
Two brief lists were delivered with the above letter: extracts from London Yearly Meeting minutes of , , , , and , in which the payment of dues to the government is inculcated; and titles of Acts of Parliament, seven chapters in four Acts from the reigns of William and Mary and Queen Anne, “wherein it is expressed that the taxes are for carrying on a war.”
The final phrase was to leave no doubt that English Friends encouraged no escape on the ground that a Quaker conscience could assume the doubtful or peaceful purpose of the legislation.
The grounds on which the scruple among Friends was silenced in are clear.
Friends had long paid such taxes and wished to obey the laws.
If Pennsylvania Friends refused to vote for them as assemblymen or to collect them as tax collectors or to pay them as subjects, the liberties enjoyed in the colony, such as permitting affirmations in place of oaths, would be terminated.
The exhortations in the gospels and New Testament epistles in favor of paying Caesar his dues were applicable.
The early Quaker examples of civil disobedience in other matters were forgotten, and the relevance of the continuing Quaker testimonies against personal participation in war and against the payment of tithes was not cited.
In the latter area Friends were resolutely against payment and suffered ruinous distraints.
Evidently dues for the support of “hireling ministers” seemed more obnoxious than taxes for the prosecution of war.
If Colonial Friends disagreed with the practice of Friends in England or even with one another they would expose the Society to disharmony.
When Woolman’s Journal was reprinted in England in the whole section on paying or not paying taxes was omitted, but in America the problem already was taking a different form.
Friends and others had opposed taxation without representation when the Stamp Act was passed in .
With the outbreak of the Revolution the issue was one of using continental currency or of paying taxes to support war against Great Britain.
This, many American Friends (like Job Scott) and Meetings were willing openly to oppose.
The New York Yearly Meeting issued a statement “on the tragic situation in Vietnam,” saying that it represented “a supreme test” to “the spiritual vitality of the Religious Society of Friends.”
The statement, reprinted in the issue of the Journal included this point:
We call upon Friends to examine their conscience concerning whether they cannot more fully dissociate themselves from the war machine either by tax refusal or by changing their occupations.
The issue noted that “the newsletters of several Friends’ organizations” are encouraging their readers to “protest your telephone war tax” but also suggests that in some cases the protest was a pretty pathetic one: “Stickers saying ‘The Vietnam War Tax Included in This Bill Is Paid Only Under Protest’ are available from the American Friends Service Committee.”
The following issue included a letter-to-the-editor from Franklin Zahn in which he encouraged a more practical approach: “Each month I pay all of my phone bill but 7 percent, informing the company it is against my conscience to pay the direct war tax.
For five months the company added the unpaid balances to each new bill, then wrote it was referring the unpaid total to Internal Revenue Service and wiping my bill clean of debt… How will Internal Revenue handle this?
Past experience with unpaid income taxes indicates IRS may ask for payment but make no bank account seizure until the amount totals more than $5, at which time it takes an extra 6 percent (per annum) as fine.
Not paying direct war taxes is part of Quaker peace testimony.
Don’t pay for a wrong number.”
Franklin Zahn
We’ve encountered Franklin Zahn before.
He was listed as the contact person for “a leaflet on tax refusal” in a issue, and also something described as “the historical material” on the subject — “Early Friends and War Taxes” (perhaps the same leaflet).
Here is some more of his work:
In the issue, he responded in a letter-to-the-editor to an article that apparently suggested “that Friends drop their middle-class attitude of changing law and join the less privileged whose only method has been evading law.”
Zahn responded:
A basic test for conscience is the categorical imperative: What happens if everybody else did the same?
For [draft] evasion, I can see only the tightening up of conscription law.
For open resistance, however, the end of conscription.
For myself, personally beyond the applicable age, the corresponding form of resistance is refusal to pay war taxes.
If everyone in the world practiced it, the result would be close to total elimination of war.
I recently harbored an AWOL who jumped ship fifteen minutes before it sailed for Vietnam, but a better Quaker witness and confrontation would have been for both of us openly to declare our civil-military disobedience — he, his desertion; I, my aiding and abetting, and face the penalties for our actions.
But maybe I should rejoice in that having evaded the law I have lost some middle-classness.
In the issue, he suggested that the spirit of the gospels meant that the “Render Unto Caesar” episode should be interpreted anew:
In the matter of war taxes, were Jesus addressing Christian stewards of God’s wealth who were citizens in a free democracy and responsible for its conduct and were be to pick up an American coin with its inscription, “In God We Trust,” his words might very well be:
If the God you trust is Mars, pay your taxes to him.
In the issue, he gave “a historical summary” of how Quakers had dealt with the issue of war taxes:
With war taxes as with slavery, John Woolman stands out as the pioneer in getting the Society of Friends to face the issue.
His motivation in bringing the concern to Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in came from the increasing willingness of the Quaker government of the colony of Pennsylvania to vote money for war.
The Quaker Assembly had begun to weaken in its peace testimony in .
First it had refused to vote £4000 for an expedition into Canada, forthrightly saying, “It was contrary to their religious principles to hire men to kill one another.”
But later they voted £500 “for the Queen” as a token of their respect, with a rider saying, “The money should be put into a safe hand till they were satisfied from England it should not be employed for the use of war.”
But in a similar request resulted in £2000 being voted, with Isaac Norris echoing Fox in explaining: “We did not see it to be inconsistent with our principles to give the Queen money notwithstanding any use she might put it to, that not being our part but hers.”
That same year William Penn reputedly wrote the Queen (I have not found historical verification): “Our civil obedience is only due to Christ, not to confound the things of God with Caesar’s; for no man can be true to Him that’s false to his own conscience, nor can he extort from it a tribute to carry on any war, nor ought true Christians to pay it.”
[I also have been unable to find a source for this quote —♇]
Whatever influence the letter may have had, the fact seems to be that none of the £2000 voted “for the Queen’s use” was spent on the military expedition.
But the principle of passing the buck for war seems to have been established in the Assembly, which took the view that while Quakers refused to bear arms themselves they did not condemn it in others.
In the Assembly told the Governor it could not vote money for war, but acknowledged that on the other hand it had obligations to aid the government.
The crisis, however, came in the French and Indian War in , when individual taxpayers decided they could no longer pass the war buck to the Assembly.
In of that year John Churchman and other Friends met with Assembly Friends, and about twenty of them said, in part:
“…As the raising sums of money, and putting them into the hands of committees, who may apply them to purposes inconsistent with the peaceable testimony we profess, …appears to us in its consequences, to be destructive of our religious liberties; we apprehend many among us will be under the necessity of suffering, rather than consenting thereto, by the payment of a tax for such purposes; and thus the fundamental part of our constitution may be essentially affected, and that free enjoyment of conscience by degrees be violated;…”
The setting for this ultimatum is of interest: Quaker tax-payers, one-third of the population of the colony, Quaker Assemblymen a majority in a legislature which had non-Quakers like Benjamin Franklin — the most important person in the colony.
The Assembly, when the vote came, said it could not give money for munitions but that, as a “tribute to Caesar,” it was voting £4000 for “bread, beef, pork, flour, wheat, or other grain.”
The Governor who had received the request from New England for a grant to buy a different granular material, told the Assembly that their term “other grain” meant gunpowder and so spent the money.
Woolman’s thoughts about war taxes and his journeying to Philadelphia Yearly Meeting that year with his concern are familiar in his Journal.
One passage, however, seems pertinent to as Friends urge a divided Congress to cut off war funds:
“Some of our members who are officers in civil government are… called upon in their respective stations to assist in things relative to the wars… if they see their brethren united in payment of a tax to carry on the said wars, may think their case not much different, and so might quench the tender movings of the Holy Spirit in their minds.”
On , he; Churchman and others drew up an Epistle to Pennsylvania Friends:
“…The large sum granted… is principally intended for purposes inconsistent with our peaceable testimony; we therefore think that as we cannot be concerned in wars and fightings, so neither ought we to contribute thereto, by paying the tax directed by said act, though suffering be the consequence of our refusal.… Though some part of the money to be raised… is said to be for such benevolent purposes as supporting our friendship with our Indian Neighbors and relieving the distresses of our fellow-subjects, who have suffered in the present calamities, …we could most cheerfully contribute to those purposes, if they were not so mixed, that we cannot… show our hearty concurrence therewith without at the same time assenting to… practices which we apprehend contrary to the testimony which the Lord hath given us to bear…”
The “tax” committee of Yearly Meeting decided that refusal should be an individual matter, and in we find Friends like Joshua Evans conscious there was no solid front: “I found it best for me to refuse paying demands on my estate which went to pay the expenses of war, and although my part might appear at best as a drop in the ocean, yet the ocean, I considered, was made of many drops.”
The effect of such witness was not to stop the war but, as Woolman may have felt of even greater importance, to help Quaker legislators to be true to their own “tender movings.”
In that year the last of the Quaker Assemblymen had resigned and no more ran for the office — in Franklin’s approving words, “choosing rather to quit their power than their principle.”
The 70-year experiment of a Quaker government came to an end over the question of war taxes.
By , according to James Pemberton, it was clear the war-makers were extracting their toll: “The tax in this country [is] pretty well collected and many in this city particularly suffered by distraint of their goods and some being near cast into jail.”
Two decades later, when the bigger test of the Revolutionary War came and the “fighting” Free Quakers separated, tax refusal was so well established that some Quakers appear almost to have over-reacted.
In The Quakers in the American Colonies, Rufus Jones writes:
“There was plenty for the overseers to do in these early days of the war.… Shutting their hearts against the pleadings of mercy for their brothers and sons who had joined the ‘associators’ or paid war taxes, or placed guns for defence upon their vessels, or paid fines for refusing to collect military taxes, or in any way aided the war on either side, they cleared the Society of all open complicity with it.
The offense was reported to one Monthly Meeting, and at the next the testimony of disownment would go out.”
While by today’s permissive standards of the Society such peace witness seems more hysterical than historical, we need to be aware that in this period as in the Civil War, “tax” sometimes meant the substitutionary amount paid in lieu of military service by COs.
In New England the question of paying war taxes to the rebelling colonial governments was the precipitating cause for the split-off of Free Quakers.
There, as elsewhere, when the Revolutionary War broke out, Friends generally agreed they should not pay specific war taxes but on “mixed” taxes — the subject of the 1755 Epistle in Pennsylvania — there was no consensus.
Job Scott in New England Yearly Meeting was the most erudite and detailed advocate of not paying mixed taxes.
In his essay, subtitled “A truly conscientious scruple with respect to the payment of such taxes as are in part demanded for and applied to the support of war and fighting,” and addressed to “Friendly reader,” he reasoned in 1780:
“Now then, if a collector of taxes comes to me and in Caesar’s name demands a tax of £20 which I am persuaded is so far mixed, part for war and part for other charges, that my conscience forbids my paying it… I am not to blame for not paying it: if Caesar pleaseth to separate them I can gladly pay the one part and refuse the other.… though magistry be a divine ordinance, yet it does not follow that every requisition of the civil magistrate ought to be actively obeyed, anymore than because it is a duty indispensable and incumbent on all mankind to pay all their just debts, that therefore we must pay all demands however unjust.”
Tradition-minded Friends who used the Caesar argument sometimes pointed to George Fox who in , paying a specific war tax for the Dutch war, made a distinction between this and direct military service.
But the homeland of Quakerdom by had also moved towards tax refusal; in London Yearly Meeting minuted its censure on “the active compliance of some members with the rate (tax) for raising men for the Navy” and directed local Friends to have such cases under their care.
Those who paid war taxes without even waiting for the process of distraint were considered to have acted “inconsistently.”
In less material on taxes was published by Friends.
Perhaps there is here a fruitful field awaiting some researcher of yearly and quarterly minutes [indeed there is –♇].
Was there less interest in the problems, or was refusal taken for granted?
Did non-Friend Thoreau’s ringing call to refusal in the Mexican-American War preempt the field?
Whatever the reasons, as Friends face today’s violence with its automated battlefields and nuclear missiles — where the conscription of human bodies for mass armies may become less important — and conscription of money for sophisticated technology more important — the relevancy of the tax question to a modern, effective peace testimony has reached an all-time high.
In its issue, the Journal noted that the IRS had made a half-hearted attempt to seize Zahn’s “1955 Dodge station wagon” for $6.58 in resisted phone tax.
Although contemplating lying in front of the car as a final protest before the towing, Franklin calmly removed his personal effects from the car and showed no agitation at this seizure of his property.
At the last minute, however, the IRS men suddenly removed the chains, saying, “We just got new orders — we’re calling off the dogs.”
The mood changed from one of tense formality to joviality as the men left.
“It was as though,” Franklin says, “they were glad the little bluff had failed.”
A letter-to-the-editor from Zahn appears in the issue, in which he responds to “a frequent objection to war tax refusal: that it logically leads to a host of other tax refusal.”
He suggests that because military expenses are such an overwhelming part of the federal budget, only war resisters are likely to find tax resistance to be a tempting tactic.
And anyway, “if a few other than war objectors choose to refuse, I see no objection to their doing so.”
In the issue, Zahn writes in to make a fresh case for war tax refusal:
In refusing personal service, one considers one’s integrity — conscience: Can I be part of a machine geared to agony and death?
But often a different criterion is applied to refusal to pay: How effective a protest is it?
If the protest-value of tax refusal is the only consideration, Friends may feel the effort is better spent in writing a legislator or phoning the White House.
(But I have found that a letter to the government saying I am refusing to pay war taxes is one letter officials never ignore.)
Arguments against the effectiveness of war tax refusal can be self-fulfilling prophecies.
Friends may not wish to join a public witness which is so small it attracts little notice — therefore it remains small.
Yet it is possible that an announcement of intention to pay no further war taxes would be the most single effective act against the arms race that members of the Society of Friends could take.
But sudden, dramatic decisions for effectiveness are not in the manner of Friends.
Perhaps we should forget all about witness and consider tax refusal purely as personal integrity.
This basis, after all, is the one for our day-to-day decisions in matters of principle.
We refuse to steal, not as some witness in influencing others, but because for us stealing is wrong.
We refuse to cheat, not as some protest against dishonesty or against anything else, but because cheating is not the way of the life of the Spirit.
Questions of effectiveness become irrelevant.
The corresponding question for taxes could be, explicitly: Should I, a person in whom there is that of God, voluntarily pay all money asked of me for the purpose of injuring and killing millions of other persons in whom there is also that of God?
If trying to hold back some one-third of our federal income tax (which will go next year for current military uses) is too boggling, we can start modestly and refuse payment of only ten dollars — a small pinch of incense not voluntarily laid on Caesar’s altar.
It can, to our conscience, be a symbol of our refusal of total submission to the military-industrial complex.
But it can also symbolize the positive.
It can be given to the Right Sharing of World Resources of Friends World Committee.
It is possible a small amount like ten dollars will not even be collected by IRS.
Each of us can try such an experiment for one year, and from then proceed as way opens.
Finally, in the issue, the Journal announced Zahn’s death (nearly a year after ).
It called him “a peace activist and worldly ascetic” and said that he practiced “religious asceticism — regular meditation, vegetarianism, celibacy, and voluntary poverty — as both the sustenance for his personal spiritual life and public witness to the power of love and truth in the world.”
He was among those conscientious objectors who at first accepted alternative civilian service, and then decided to resist the draft entirely.
He also was among those who tried to sail into nuclear weapons test zones to disrupt the tests.
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
War tax resistance continued to come up frequently in the pages of the
Friends Journal in .
In the issue, Clifford Neal Smith
examined radical, communal economic restructuring as one potential Quaker
approach worth considering — not state Communism, but something along the
lines of Hutterite communities that took their inspiration from
Acts 2:45–46: “All that believed were together, and
had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them
to all men, as every man had need.” Smith suggested “that Friends give thought
to the possible restructuring of our Meetings into communes” along these lines.
In particular, he thought, “the communal way will recommend itself to Friends
who with to resist the payment of war taxes, for, as the Hutterites have
found, there is a considerable tax saving to the communal way, particularly as
practiced by a religious organization.” He also anticipated that “in the event
that Friendly testimony against the military-industrial complex should become
effective enough to be recognized by the establishment as the real foe of the
present system,” communes would help Quakers be more resilient against the
persecution that would inevitably follow.
In the same issue was a letter-to-the-editor by Philip van der Goes in which
he made the hopeful suggestion that the government allow taxpayers to
designate on their tax forms which federal agencies they want to fund.
In the following issue, Betty Gulick wrote a piece in which she expressed that
Quakers, by “personally lending support to the most violent of societies (our
own) by our taxes, our jobs, our investments, by silence and by our merely
going along with things as they are,” lose the credibility they need to have
to recommend nonviolence to the “aggressive victims of aggressive prejudice
and poverty.”
In that issue also was an article about activists in Puerto Rico who had
constructed a chapel in a
U.S. Navy firing
range on the island of Culebra, in defiance of a Federal injunction. One of
those arrested was Dan Balderston. The article reprinted his statement, from
which I take the following excerpt:
My people, the Quakers, have always insisted that God is to be obeyed and not
men, and that we are neither to be satisfied with the state of things, nor
with a promise of salvation in the hereafter, but live as though the Kingdom
were already here — without doing violence or harming our brother. They
refused to own their brothers as slaves, refused to kill or to pay taxes to
kill — for example, my great-great-grandfather, Lloyd Balderston, refused to
pay war taxes during the Civil War and the government expropriated several of
his hogs. The Quakers have fallen with the rest of the Babylonians, but there
is a remnant which seeks to recall the voice of Jesus to the Society of
Friends, and I think that we of A Quaker Action Group seek to act for that
remnant and to find once more the spirit of the early Christians and the
early Friends.
In seeking the will of Jesus for our time, some of us have been led to break
the laws of the United States — thus A Quaker Action Group sent the sailboat
Phoenix to North Vietnam with medical supplies in violation of the law
against “trading with the enemy,” and thus I have refused to register for
war, and last year refused to pay the ten percent war tax on telephones.…
Jane Meyerding wrote in from prison, where she was serving time for her action
in destroying draft board,
U.S. Attorney, and
FBI records. Excerpts:
We have to stop this war. We have to end the military takeover of our
economy, our minds, and our young men. We have to retake control of this
nation in order to stop its wanton destruction of lives here and abroad.
Of course, these things will not be accomplished simply because we want them
to be. The first step in the direction of change is to look for opportunities
to act effectively. This first step is harder than it sounds. I had to be
practically hit over the head with it before I opened my eyes to see how I
could be useful. (I thank God the action was successful even with my
reluctance to accept disruption of my “business as usual.”)
After the opportunities are discovered, they have to be taken. We
all have opportunities to stop paying war taxes, to publicly remove our
support from the government’s war policies, to “aid and abet” those who take
direct action against the institutions of war. Why do we so often leave the
most radical and risky parts of our witness to the young men who have already
put at least some aspects of their futures in jeopardy by refusing to comply
with the draft?
With so much to be done, we all just have to become activists of one
sort or another. From now on — each time a step away from war and toward peace
needs to be taken — if I do not take it, you will have to; if you do not take
it, I shall have to. None of us can afford to miss any more opportunities.
So, what will I be doing when I get out? As much as I can of what needs to be
done. With as many friends (and Friends) as possible.
The issue noted that the Ann Arbor
(Michigan) Meeting was asking telephone tax resisters to pay their phone bills,
minus the excise tax, as a group, in order to “[p]rotest the obscenity of war.”
Brinton Turkle shared his decision to start resisting in the
issue:
One of the most familiar Quaker stories concerns William Penn’s reluctance to
give up wearing his sword when he became a Friend. With great wisdom (and
some humor, I think), George Fox is supposed to have told William Penn to
wear his sword as long as he could. On , I sent this letter to the Internal Revenue Service and thus took
off a sword I had been wearing long enough:
Sirs:
To repudiate a government that no longer represents me, I am not filing a
federal, state, or city income tax this year.
I am self-employed. In the past, federal taxes I have filed but refused to
pay in protest were simply seized from my savings account. To make my
earnings less accessible for uses I abhor, I have been deliberately remiss
in keeping records of my income and expenses. An accurate assessment of my
taxes is therefore impossible.
I expect harassment and retribution to follow my defiance of a government
that has made my nation the greatest scourge mankind has ever suffered.
Imprisonment may end my career as a creator of books for children. It is a
privilege to be able to bring enrichment and delight to young people. It is
work I do with love and pride. My work is not murder.
I would not release a bomb or pull a trigger. I would not pay another man to
do these things, nor would I buy his weapons.
My Lai stops with me.
Brinton Turkle
How long was it before the awareness of the sheer senselessness of
encumbering himself with a sword caused William Penn to discard it? What a
relief it must have been to him to be rid of it!
It was a long time until the awareness of the enormity of underwriting murder
brought me to the act of civil disobedience I have just committed. About
twenty years ago, I began to see that America’s war machine rolled on our tax
dollars and nothing else. Tentatively, I sent notes to Internal Revenue with
my tax payments disapproving of our national priorities and the Korean war.
When the horrors piled up in Vietnam five years ago, I sent a letter of
protest instead of payment with my federal income tax file. I thought I was
facing prison, but it turned out that I was not a criminal — only a
delinquent. There followed a correspondence of one-sided passion between me
and a computer. Internal Revenue took the money from my savings account with
six percent interest.
The war continued. A Quaker president in the name of peace-seeking opened up
the war in Cambodia and Laos and began to show unmistakable signs of
affliction: Either he was captive to his own overweening ambition, or else he
was in pawn to the Pentagon and the industries it supports. Perhaps he was
doubly afflicted and thus worthy of a compassion that I did not have the
goodness to give him.
Holding in the Light a man to whom truth is a mere expedience, a man who is
using his power to tear our country apart, a man who has caused the death and
maiming of thousands, is beyond my present capabilities. My tax status,
however, as a self-employed person gives me a peculiar opportunity, and I
have grasped it.
I have heard the objections. Some of them I cannot answer. One does what one
must. Swordlessness will never be understood by some.
Father Daniel Berrigan has summed it up for this Quaker:
“…To be right now in some serious trouble with respect to the ‘powers and
principalities’ of this nation means to occupy a most important geographical
position — if one wishes to struggle with others all over the world for their
freedom; and by the same token to be in no trouble at all is to share in what
I take to be a frightening movement towards violence and death. To resist
that movement is one’s choice.”
A choice has been made, and I feel pounds lighter.
The issue brought the news
that the New York Yearly Meeting planned to file a friend-of-the-court brief
in the AFSC lawsuit challenging mandatory employer income tax withholding from
the paychecks of conscientiously resisting employees (see
♇ 15 July 2013). The
issue added that the Meeting
also “agreed to publicize… a two-year-old minute regarding the non-payment of
the telephone tax for war by the Yearly Meeting Office. It urges Friends who
are also nontaxpayers to join in a possible advertisement” and proposed a
“minute on the deliberate nonwithholding of wage tax levies for Internal
Revenue Service when requested by Yearly Meeting employees. The complex
procedure would notify Internal Revenue Service of the percentage of wages not
withheld and the possible setting up of a special fund of these monies for
peaceful uses.”
The “Sufferings” column of the
issue include listings for Paula & Howard Cell, who “[h]ad an automobile
seized by Internal Revenue for refusal to pay the war tax on their telephone,”
for Bill Himmelbauer, who was “[s]entenced to one year in prison for refusal
to pay war taxes on his income. To do this he openly altered his W-4 form,”
and for Lilian & George Willoughby, who “[h]ad an automobile seized by
Internal Revenue for refusal to pay the war tax on their telephone.”
Robin Harper
The issue brings the first
mention of the war tax resistance of Robin Harper, who will periodically
appear in the context of war tax resistance in the magazine for
. His first
appearance comes in the “Sufferings” column:
Robin and Marlies Harper, London Grove Meeting, Pennsylvania: Falsely
assessed, after a decade of resistance to military taxes, for $32,000 in
alleged unpaid taxes, interest, and penalties. The Harpers actually refused
less than $8000, including penalties, over these years.
The “Sufferings” column in the
issue gave an update:
[The Harpers s]ucceeded in convincing
IRS to
reduce its claim upon the family for a decade of unpaid federal income taxes
from thirty-two thousand five hundred dollars to a bit more than seven
thousand dollars.
Robin explained: “Under duress, I sent
IRS
income tax returns for to
set the record straight — a clear compromise in order to protect our family
from great financial hardship should
IRS
proceed to seize such unwarranted sums from me.”
The issue mentioned Harper
among a number of war tax resisters, and described his resistance thusly:
Conscientiously opposed to participation in war of any form, Robin began his
tax resistance in in opposition to the
nuclear arms race. The war in Indochina has deepened his conviction. He
insists that during he contributed $3,385 to “organizations engaged in constructive
programs designed to repair ravages of war abroad and counteract the ugly
wounds inflicted by segregation and discrimination at home…” The
IRS,
however, claims he owes $3,206 plus $1,502 in penalties and $2,700 in
interest. Robin is asking the
U.S. Tax Court to
reject all
IRS
claims for the 10-year period.
In the issue, Harper is
mentioned as being “a member of the War Tax Concern Support Committee” who
addressed the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting about that subject, “urging a
symbolic tax refusal of a small portion of these taxes as a witness to the
Peace Testimony.” Alas, “[a]fter a deep and searching discussion, there
remained some who did not feel comfortable with this kind of witness. Later in
the week a revised minute was presented, and after renewed searching it was
adopted.” No details are given about this revised minute.
I next notice Harper in the Friends Journal
archives in the edition,
which finds him again (still?) battling the
IRS in
court:
In three court hearings, attended by as many as 40 supporters, tax resister
Robin Harper… testified recently that he could not be compelled against his
religious beliefs to participate in the collection of taxes for war purposes.
In the final hearing, Edwin Bronner, Haverford College history professor,
appeared as an expert witness to spell out the 300-year history of the
Friends Peace Testimony.
The government apparently considered the arguments presented, including an
excellent brief prepared by volunteer attorneys, as too compelling.
Department of Justice lawyers abruptly withdrew their subpoena issued to
Harper a year earlier to force him to present documents and answer questions
in federal court in Philadelphia.
In the issue, Harper wrote at length
about war tax resistance in the Society of Friends. He mentioned the cases of
three Philadelphia Yearly Meeting employees who were resisters, and how the
IRS had
filed lawsuits to try to compel the Meeting to levy their salaries.
In her decision in , Judge Norma
Shapiro denied the validity of the [refusal to pay] penalty but upheld the
levy, which the yearly meeting then paid “under duress.” In each instance the
yearly meeting incurred legal expenses, but the individual employee
reimbursed it for the full amount of the actual
IRS
collection.
Harper then proposed a series of queries “for the purposes of discussion and
discernment… mindful that beneath each lies the Grand Query: ‘What does the
Spirit require of me?’ ”:
Query 1: If I am opposed to the military conscription of my body, am I called
to bear witness to the military conscription of my tax dollars?
Query 2: How do I approach the dilemma of paying taxes for constructive
government programs while resisting payment for war preparation?
Query 3: Does the fact that billions of military tax dollars are unearmarked
and hidden “in the mixture” in the
U.S. treasury
lessen my burden to bear witness?
Query 4: Have I sought clearness on what to do with the money I have refused
to pay in military taxes? Are alternative funds that use my refused taxes to
pay for peace and social justice initiatives an adequate spiritual response
from me?
If the Peace Tax Fund were passed by Congress, would the escrow account
thereby established be an acceptable alternative?
Query 5: How much inconvenience or suffering am I prepared to accept for the
“moral disarmament” of my federal taxes, such as penalties and interest on
refused taxes, seizure of bank accounts, salaries, or other assets, or loss
of credit?
Query 6: As a military tax refuser, am I sufficiently sensitive to the impact
my witness may have on loved ones, co-workers and others who may not share my
conviction but whose personal, spiritual, financial, or professional
well-being might be affected by my witness?
Query 7: When a Quaker employer must choose between compliance with
government demands and honoring the conscientious witness of an employee,
where does its allegiance lie? What issues of faith make this decision a
difficult one?
Query 8: Honoring the conscientious witness of an employee may place serious
risk on the Quaker employer, its members, and other employees. How do Friends
institutions balance support of employee conscience against these risks?
Query 9: Should Quaker employers rest easy serving as collectors of federal
military taxes by routinely withholding income taxes from their employees and
remitting them, without protest, to the Internal Revenue Service?
Query 10: When making a strong, public witness against military taxes by
protest or refusal to pay, is a Quaker institution likely to strengthen or
weaken the peace movement? The Religious Society of Friends? The possibility
of doing successfully the work for which the institution was created? (This
query is taken from page 189 of the Handbook on Military
Taxes and Conscience, edited by Linda Coffin…)
In the issue, Harper responded
with a letter-to-the-editor to a critic of war tax resistance as a Quaker
practice who had published a piece . Harper recommended a carefully-designed form of war tax
resistance that might overcome the critic’s objections:
[L]et us suppose a conscientious taxpayer, engaging in open civil
disobedience,
refuses to render 100 percent of her/his federal income tax to
the Internal Revenue Service (say “no” to war).
carefully calculates the tax liability and redistributes the entire
sum to recipients engaged in building up civil society in peaceful
ways, thus excluding any personal benefit. Includes list of
recipients/amounts and a “letter of conscience” along with tax return — a
transparent witness (say “yes” to peace).
declares to
IRS
that he/she recognizes a moral responsibility to contribute to the
general welfare by paying one’s fair share of taxes — hence this
“alternative service” for the tax (taking personal responsibility).
clarifies to
IRS
that the full tax would gladly be paid, provided the government
would assure the taxpayer that it would be spent exclusively for
nonmilitary purposes, as defined by Congress, which is the
legislative architecture of the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Bill,
still pending in Congress (support legal relief for this dilemma of
conscience).
Finally, in the issue, Harper’s
war tax resistance got a mention in an article by Parker J. Palmer, based on a
speech he gave on the occasion of the 80th
anniversary of the founding of the Pendle Hill Quaker Center:
I am going to end with a small story that has big meaning for me. Back in the
day, a wonderful man named Robin Harper was head of buildings and grounds…
Robin was and still is a conscientious war tax refuser. Not only did this
mean the possibility of prosecution and imprisonment, but tax resistance made
very heavy demands on his life. He had to be employed by people who would
agree not to withhold any taxes, which shrinks one’s job opportunities
dramatically, and he could not own any real property that could be seen by
the IRS
as capable of being turned into cash. But he has never done time because his
integrity is so self-evident, not unlike that of John Woolman.
When I was a young man here, I shared Robin’s abhorrence of war (as I do to
this day), but I could not imagine taking the risks and making the sacrifices
required of me. I was at that stage of moral development where I had very
high ethical aspirations and equally high levels of guilt about the way I
continually fell short. One day I went to Robin and told him of my dilemma.
“I believe what you believe,” I said, “and I want to put my beliefs into
action, but I just cannot bring myself to do what you do.”
Robin responded plainly,simply, and with great compassion. “Keep holding the
belief,” he said, “and follow it wherever it may lead you. As time goes on you
will find your own way of resisting violence and promoting peace, one that
fits with your gifts and your calling.” That is Quakerism at its best. That
is community at its best. That is teaching at its best. That is friendship at
its best.
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
Mentions of war tax resistance in the Friends Journal in tended to either look back fondly at resisters of the past, or to look forward to a time when a peace tax fund law would magically dispel the dilemma of praying for peace while paying for war.
Paul Zorn’s article from which cast a skeptical eye on the value of Quaker war tax resistance picked up some dissent in the issue.
An ad from the issue of Friends Journal:
“Why have people risked their jobs, their homes, their families, and even spent time in prison to take a stand for peace?
The Standing Up for Peace Contest invites young people, ages 15–23, to talk face-to-face with people who refused to fight in war, pay taxes for war, or build weapons for war.
To enter the contest, participants express their perceptions by writing something or creating a work of art or music.
The contest commemorates the 50th anniversary of the U.S. law that provided alternative service for Conscientious objectors…
The contest is sponsored by ten national peace organizations.”
Merrill Barnebey felt that Zorn “fails to fully grasp the significance and timeliness of tax resistance.
For one thing… Quakers who do not protest war taxes are establishing a credibility gap.”
He also felt that tax resistance helped to pressure Congress to pass the Peace Tax Fund bill.
Also in the issue, Elwood Cronk told a story of how a meeting that was involved “an ecumenical effort to establish a food cupboard” reacted with hostility to war tax resisters in their midst:
A couple, wishing to make a war tax witness to IRS, presented the meeting with a check for $100, the portion of tax they were withholding.
Their accompanying letter stated they felt this was an appropriate gift to the meeting, in view of federal budget cuts in social services.
They asked that the money be accepted as a start-up fund for the food cupboard.
…One person walked out, another questioned their motivation, and the meeting declined the check.
The one positive thing which did happen occurred the next Sunday.
A member of the adult class proposed that war taxes be discussed that day.
An obituary notice for Ronald E. Chinn in the issue noted that Chinn “helped found a university endowment fund for lectures on peace issues, using money withheld by Alaskan war tax resisters.”
an ad for the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund from the issue of Friends Journal
In the issue, Kenneth Miller wrote in to share the exciting news that, after persistent lobbying and lots of hard work, Peace Tax Fund bill supporters had managed to convince Nancy Pelosi to cosponsor the bill.
(Pelosi at the time was just starting her career as a U.S. Representative.
She became Speaker of the House in and is currently the Minority Leader there.
She is no longer a cosponsor of the present peace tax fund scheme.)
The issue announced a new edition of Conscience Canada’s book The First Freedom which “reviews the legal history of conscientious objection for taxpayers in Canada and provides an overview of new charter decisions and recent court cases.”
“Honoring employees’ requests not to withhold the military portion of their federal income tax is now the official policy of Baltimore Yearly Meeting,” began a short piece in the issue.
“In taking the action as requested by individual employees, the yearly meeting emphasized its history of supporting military tax resistance through urging passage of the U.S. Peace Tax Fund Bill, as well as supporting other religious organizations involved in military tax refusal.
In , the yearly meeting minuted that it ‘stands in loving support of those moved by conscience to witness against making payments for war and preparation for war, including those who refuse to pay military taxes voluntarily.’ ”
D.H. Rubenstein penned an op-ed piece for the issue in which he reviewed the difficulty that Friends and Friends Meetings had with the issue of war taxes, and held out hope that Congress would throw Quakers a rope by passing some sort of Peace Tax Fund plan.
Excerpts:
It is a perplexing problem to be a citizen of a country whose policies include militarism and war as a means of relating to other nations and at the same time be a member of a religious society whose traditions are contrary to such policy.
Conscientious objection to military service is now accepted.
But what about paying taxes to support war and militarism?
When Friends gather to consider this dilemma it is often expressed that each person must decide on the basis of the individual’s own leading how to resolve the claims of conscience between being a law-abiding citizen and a faithful Friend.
Rarely is unity achieved.
Another entanglement is the matter of Friends organizations and their involvement in the payment of war taxes.
One of the key questions is whether or not such organizations have a “corporate conscience” and a responsibility to act in accord with traditional Quaker witness and its historic peace testimony.
Relatively few individual Friends are prepared to refuse to pay war taxes — an illegal, punishable offense — and suffer the consequences of such refusal.
How could they, therefore, adopt a policy which would make the corporate body and its officers liable for such consequences?
In other words, is it fair for me to expect a higher order of morality from the corporate body than from its individual members?
(Please consider a slight digression.
Is it fair to assume that if a legal way of not paying war taxes existed we would take that option?
If the answer is yes, we should commit ourselves to the promotion and support of the Peace Tax Fund Bill… whose aim is to provide that specific option.)
Friends are staunch in their belief that that of God within each individual should be the guiding light by which life is lived.
Quaker experience, however, has verified the need for the admonition of Paul, who cautioned believers in Rome, “Do not be conformed to this world…” (Rom. 12:2).
The light of the Spirit is available to each one of us: its accessibility without distortion by our own willfulness or societal influences is a hazard we do not always recognize.
It is this of which Paul reminds us.
This is one of the reasons our corporate wisdom has established that although the Light is available to each of us, it is essential we gather together for communal seeking and sharing in order that our findings be validated in the group, which is less likely to be misled than the individual.
If we are unable to discern God’s leading, that is a very different matter than God saying no.
It means further seeking is required until clarity is achieved.
It does not mean no action is required.
We need to recognize that at present we are involved in actions which by implication indicate Friends support and believe in militarism and war.
This is what our present tax paying and tax collecting actions declare.
What do we believe?
Must our apparent schizophrenia on this subject be a permanent state, or can we thresh our way out of it?
The Peace Tax Fund would create a legal alternative.
The enactment of an economic conversion bill (several now in Congress) could provide for a specific application of CO tax funds to a basic civilian need and away from the military-industrial behemoth.
Our energies applied to the support and adoption of these two legislative proposals might supply some ameliorative therapy for our dilemma while we pursue some serious threshing.
That same issue included a profile of George & Lillian Willoughby that included a section on their tax resistance:
George Willoughby at a Tax Day demonstration in Philadelphia in
Working for Peace, not Paying for War
Another significant protest in the Willoughbys’ lives has been their ongoing tax resistance.
“I object to taxes that go completely out of my hands and have no connection to me — that are supporting things I cannot tolerate, such as bombs and nuclear energy,” Lillian says.
After years of refusal to pay their federal telephone tax, IRS officers seized the Willoughbys’ Volkswagen to collect the $100 they owed.
But the Willoughbys’ many friends raised more than a thousand dollars through a “peace bond” mailing so they could submit the winning bid and recover the car.
The extra funds were donated to the Philadelphia War Tax Resistance Fund.
“One IRS official complained,” George recalls, “ ‘Here we seize your car to raise money for IRS, and you are using it to raise money for your cause!’ ”
After that incident, there were no more seizures of automobiles of tax resisters in the Philadelphia area for the next nine years, the Willoughbys say.
Explaining their tax witness, Lillian notes, “Some sacrifice is involved, and not everyone can do it.”
For George, it is a matter of integrity and empowerment.
“Tax resistance is something I can do to withdraw support from the government,” he says.
“Why should I give them money to do evil things I wouldn’t do myself?”
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
There was a great deal about war tax resistance in the Friends Journal in , in part because of the occupation of the Randy Kehler/Betsy Corner home which the IRS was trying to auction off, and in part because of the IRS suit against the Journal to try to force it to pay its editor’s resisted taxes, and in part because of the Peace Tax Fund bill’s first congressional hearing.
A note in the issue pointed out that politicians were playing a name game that had apparently fooled some Quakers into thinking that the telephone excise tax had been transformed into something benign:
The telephone tax continues as a source of money for military expenditure, contrary to recent confusion about its status.
The tax, which was due to expire in , was extended under the Act for Better Child Care.
Those who proposed the act were searching for a way to finance their new program and seized upon the telephone tax as their “new” source of money.
However, the phone tax revenues continue to go into the General Fund, as always, and are not earmarked for the child care programs. More than 50 percent of the General Fund is used for military expenditure.
The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee recommends that conscientious resistance to the telephone tax continue, as it can have a powerful impact if enough people are involved.
an ad for NWTRCC in the issue of Friends Journal
That issue also had a follow-up on the “Alternative Revenue Service” protest:
In , the Alternative Revenue Service reports that individuals redirected $104,740 of their federal income taxes away from the military to areas of human need.
The total includes $12,898 redirected through the ARS, $38,416 redirected by Alternative Funds, and $53,426 that individuals redirected to social action and relief programs. The Alternative Revenue Service campaign is designed to educate taxpayers about how their federal income tax dollars are used.
The service provides the EZ Peace Form, which participants can use in registering their opposition to military spending at the time they file their taxes.
The service reports that 70,000 EZ Peace Forms were distributed nationwide last year.
This year’s form is simplified, with clearer instructions.
The issue brought the news that the Peace Tax Fund promoters had finally managed to get a Congressional Committee hearing for their bill, which was scheduled for .
“The hearing will be informational to determine the need for such legislation, not a preparation for floor action.
The need is assessed from the testimony of both individuals and religious bodies.
The hearing will support the bill by providing a permanent public record, by lending it legitimacy, by possibly attracting more serious consideration from prospective cosponsors, and by providing a record of congressional scrutiny.
The hearing will be brief, not lending itself to extended exchanges.
However, written testimony can be added and will become part of the official record.”
A follow-up in described the latest Peace Tax Fund bill as one that “would amend the Internal Revenue Code to permit qualified conscientious objectors to have part of their federal taxes — that part equal to the military portion of the federal budget — to be paid into a fund for peace-related projects.”
It encouraged readers to submit “written testimony for the official hearing record,” to publicize and perhaps attend the hearing, to contact Congressional representatives and encourage them to attend and to support the bill, and to donate money to the cause.
The issue described how the hearing before the House Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures went — “the first actual hearing held since a Peace Tax Fund Bill was first introduced in Congress .”
Excerpts:
“If we give the right to a person to withhold their body from a war as a conscientious objector, that person should be able to withhold his money as well.”
So spoke Sen. Mark Hatfield in his lead-off testimony…
…Several hundred spectators from across the country packed the hearing room.
Many attended as concerned individual taxpayers.
Others came as members of religious denominations and peace groups long associated with the Peace Tax Campaign.
Three chartered buses, one from Lancaster, Pa., two others from Philadelphia, swelled the numbers by some 150 supporters.
When the last of them filed in from a late-arriving bus to find all spectator seats occupied, Chairman Charles Rangel stopped the hearings momentarily, inviting standing-room only observers to move forward and to occupy empty seats normally reserved for officials and the press.
Many did so.
Veterans of peace demonstrations, several parents holding small children, young bearded men in simple dress, older couples from the peace churches created a colorful patchwork as they mixed with congressional aides, heads of foundations, and Capitol bureaucrats in business suits.
…Over 2,300 letters in support of the Peace Tax Fund Bill were bound in large volumes and set on a front table to be presented to the committee.
From 50–100 such letters a day continued to arrive as of the time of the hearing.
Following the introductory testimony of Mark Hatfield, lead sponsor of the bill (S.689) in the Senate, there were also presentations by four members of Congress: Andy Jacobs (lead sponsor of the bill in the House), Nancy Pelosi, and John Conyers.…
…[A] panel of religious leaders testified.
One, Thomas Gumbleton, Roman Catholic bishop from Detroit, and past president of Pax Christi, pointed out that two of the first leaders of the church, John and Peter, said that sometimes it is necessary to obey God before obeying the law.
How much better it would be, Gumbleton said, for COs to be able to pay all their taxes, knowing their money would be used for life-affirming purposes.
William Davidson, retired Episcopal bishop of western Kansas, a CO in World War Ⅱ, has actively opposed war .
“Having lived past draft age, I have been saddened and conflicted each year having to pay taxes to support war,” he said.
The Episcopal Peace Fellowship has consistently supported war tax resistance as a religious witness.
John A. Lapp, executive secretary of Mennonite Central Committee, Akron, Pa., spoke on behalf of the three historic peace churches (Mennonites, Quakers, and Church of the Brethren).
The issue of war-related taxes is one of religious freedom, Lapp said.
“Many of us feel the pain of having our religious institutions serve as tax collectors for war.”
During committee questioning, Representative Jacobs asked Rabbi [Phil] Bentley [with the Jewish Peace Fellowship], “Is [passage of this bill] going to give rise to requests for similar legislation from people who don’t want their money going for a golf course?”
…[Friends Journal] editor-manager Vint Deming, associate editor Melissa Elliott, typesetter Susan Jordhamo, and board members Robert Sutton and Sam Legg joined several hundred other citizens in packing the hearing room…
The hearing was informational, to give legislators material to use in future considerations, rather than to schedule the bill for action.
As such, it gave supporters a chance to formally present the case, get testimony in the written record, and show the depth and breadth of people’s interest in the bill.
The pace of this legislative process is frustratingly slow, but, for many of us, the hearing was a heartening experience.
There, we heard people testify in a formal legislative setting to our most deeply held beliefs.
One activist-participant said, “All my life I’ve been on the side that opposes government decisions.
It was a weird experience to see all those peace movement people in the same room with legislators.
I’ve never seen anything like that before, nor ever imagined it.
It gave me a different vision of what might be possible.”
The Peace Tax Fund Bill has come a long way , with many technical refinements, and it has a long way to go in gathering widespread support.
On we witnessed one small step in validation, acknowledgment of our beliefs, and moving the dream closer to reality.
Perhaps one day we will look back, as do those who watched the process of legalizing conscientious objection, and be glad we were involved in making it legal to follow our beliefs with our money-as well as with our bodies.
“This is not a political issue, but a moral issue of conscience,” responded Bentley…
Jacobs, in response, thanked the Rabbi and others of religious conscience who had testified.
“I am a sponsor of this bill,” he said, “but I am not a pacifist.”
He called to mind one of his favorite movies, Friendly Persuasion, and the lines spoken toward the end of the film: “It’s good to know that somebody is holding out for a better way of settling things!”
Terrill Hyde, tax legislative counsel for the Department of the Treasury, presented the Bush Administration position opposing the PTF.
She mentioned “problems of complexity, confusion, and increased administrative burden,” sure to arise if the bill were passed.
There would be no deterrent either, she said, to restrain taxpayers from inappropriately claiming CO status.
If taxpayers were allowed to designate the uses for which their tax dollars were spent, “our entire budgetary process would be undermined.”
There would likely be loss of revenue to needed federal programs.
Others, however, presented differing views.
Several speakers argued that there would likely be substantial increases in revenue as a direct result of the bill.
Many who currently refuse to pay a portion or all of their taxes would gladly pay.
Also, large costs resulting from IRS efforts to collect from tax resisters would be avoided.
Answering the criticism of how the act might increase paperwork and administrative costs, several people testified to the simple nature of the bill and of the tax filing process.
As to IRS claims that the bill raises possible legal questions, a panel of two law specialists responded.
Mark Tushnet, professor of law at Georgetown University, said, “A nation that wants to protect the religious freedom of its citizens can reasonably be expected to enact legislation to enable the freedom to be expressed.”
It seems perfectly appropriate, he concluded, that such legislation be enacted.
“It is needed in addition to the Religious Freedom Act.”
Philadelphia, Pa., attorney and war tax specialist Peter Goldberger agreed.
“Legislation of this kind has a noble history in our country,” and he quoted from a letter from then-President George Washington to Philadelphia Quakers.
The nation’s laws, Washington wrote, must always be “extensively accommodated” in cases of individual conscience.
Alan Eccleston, a Quaker and an organizational development consultant from Hadley, Massachusetts, told about how, in his own tax witness, he has endured penalties, punishments, and the threat of losing his home.
The IRS has a lien on his house right now.
“Conscience must be taken into account.
Spiritual values are real.
They are not to be treated as incidental or expendable to fit the needs of the state.
This is what the First Amendment is all about.”
Ruth Flower, legislative secretary of Friends Committee on National Legislation, emphasized that the Peace Tax Fund Act would not offer an escape to those who do not wish to pay their taxes, because they would have to pay the same amount either way.
It would, however, provide a legal way out of violating one’s religious beliefs in order to comply with the laws of the land.
Her point was born out by Patricia Washburn, who gave perhaps the most moving testimony of the hearing.
She talked about the challenge presented to each of us, and to her personally, in Micah 6:8: “…what does the Lord require of you but to act justly, to love constantly, and to walk humbly with your God?” Walking humbly requires us to acknowledge the seeds of violence in our own hearts, rather than projecting them onto someone else.
“Loving constantly” can be a discouraging and difficult task, especially in today’s climate of distrust and alienation.
“I am not opposed to paying taxes, but I find no alternative form of tax payment… Thus, I see no current alternative to withholding the military portion of my taxes… I pray that my witness is done in love and that it will help to build a bridge across the chasm of violence and fear.”
After the hearing and following the press conference, [Marian] Franz [executive director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund] gave a brief workshop on lobbying for the bill.
She pointed out that the testimony would now be entered in written record and could be referred to in the future.
She added, “the fact that we got a hearing is absolutely amazing.”
Many other pieces of legislation have not yet been so lucky, and the demand is great.
“If all members of the committee had been present, they all would have been deeply moved, and we would be a lot further down the road.”
Franz encouraged people, when lobbying, to talk in terms of conscience, as defined by Pope John ⅩⅩⅢ, who said, “Deep inside, each one of us finds a law that we did not put there.
It tells us to do this and shun that.”
That is what puts the issue of paying taxes for war in the arena of religious decisions and touches on every individual’s right to follow their faith — whether they are housewives, bureaucrats, lawyers, teachers, or politicians.
That is why it is important to keep trying to open doors and ears and minds.
Marian Franz has a suggestion for how to approach people: “Talk to aides and legislators as though you’re sharing something personally.
You will often find that when you are talking about conscience, people are moved deeply.”
The issue also plugged “Good Use: Songs of Peace, Tax & Conscience” — “a tape of War Tax Resister Songs, featuring Charlie King, Luci Murphy, Geof Morgan, Lifeline, and others.
It was produced by Don Walsh, who donates the royalties.”
The lead editorial (by Vinton Deming) in the issue concerned the ongoing Randy Kehler/Betsy Corner case:
Finding Affinity
Randy Kehler and his wife, Betsy Corner, have been tax resisters .
They have given the tax money instead to a variety of groups doing constructive community work.
the IRS has been trying to sell their house in Colrain, Mass., in an effort to collect $25,896 in back taxes — but it hasn’t been easy.
First of all, there’s been a growing tax resistance movement there in Franklin County.
Bob Bady and Pat Morse, for instance, had their house seized and auctioned in .
(They still live in the house, however, and the buyer hasn’t taken possession.)
Shelburn Falls dentist Tom Wilson had his dental license revoked when he refused to cooperate with IRS.
(He continues his practice, however; even the local sheriff remains one of his regular patients).
So when the word got out that IRS planned to auction Betsy and Randy’s house, supporters in large numbers turned up on the announced day to oppose the sale.
There were lots of signed bids (such as an offer to clean the teeth of an IRS agent, others pledging to do community work or to be peace activists for life) — but no cash buyers came forward.
Not a one.
So, in , IRS upped the ante.
Betsy, Randy, and daughter Lillian, 12, were given an eviction notice.
When Randy decided to stay, he was held in contempt and tossed in the county jail for 6 months.
This didn’t go unnoticed by friends and neighbors, however.
A sign-up sheet got circulated, and volunteers committed themselves to stay in the house around the clock.
There’s been a continuous presence there .
Groups from as far away as Washington, D.C., have signed up to come and help out.
In , members of Mount Toby (Mass.) Meeting formed such an affinity group for a week.
Meanwhile, Randy stays in jail and makes the most of his time there.
He has made friends with many of the prisoners, has organized a chess tournament, and does what he can to interpret his tax witness.
Allan Eccleston, member of Mount Toby Meeting, has been approved as the meeting’s official minister and visits Randy twice a week.
So what’s next?
IRS has scheduled another auction, this time out of the area in Springfield, Mass. — in the hope, it seems, of attracting a buyer for the house, someone who doesn’t know about this whole chain of events.
Randy will not be there to talk about it, but lots of his friends will.
Even if the house is sold, the issue will be far from over.
The house is part of a land trust (Randy and Betsy own the house but not the land on which it stands) — and there’s the likelihood of a continuing nonviolent presence in the house to welcome any potential new buyer.
How might Friends respond?
I asked this question in of Francis Crowe, long-time head of the American Friends Service Committee office in western Massachusetts and a supporter of Randy and Betsy.
She suggests:
Form an affinity group to help sustain the presence in the house.
(To be scheduled, contact Traprock Peace Center…
Funds are also needed to support the action (checks made out to “War Tax Refusers Support Committee”…).
Letters to the editor on the subject of taxes and militarism are always helpful.
More sponsors are needed in Congress for the Peace Tax Fund bill.…
At a rally in support of Betsy and Randy, Juanita Nelson — who, with husband Wally, has been a tax refuser for decades and is known to many Friends — offered these words by Goethe: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has Genius, Power, and Magic in it.”
Good advice as another tax season is upon us, when many of us seek to find our way on this difficult question of taxes for war.
In a later issue, David Zarembka reported in a letter-to-the-editor about how the occupation / blockade of the Kehler/Corner home was proceeding:
On , federal marshalls arrested seven members of the Flowing River Affinity Group who were occupying the Kehler/Corner home and removed the furniture into storage.
At , the IRS sold the house to the highest bidder in an auction for $5,400. The seven affinity group members were released from jail later in the afternoon.
So was Randy, who had served two months of his sentence.
Do not think, however, that Betsy and Randy have lost their home in an exotic cause!
As soon as the federal marshalls left the house, an affinity group reoccupied it, and other groups, including one from Washington, D.C., of which I am a member, have continued to occupy the house on a 24-hour basis.
Affinity groups, which occupy the home for a week each, have been organizing , but new ones are still being formed…
The “buyers,” a young couple with a two-month-old son, have visited the house several times but have not as yet forced the issue.
They are consulting with their lawyers.
Betsy and Randy have become members of the Colrain Neighbors Affinity Group, which will occupy the home for the week beginning .
They and their twelve-year-old daughter, Lillian, will move back into their home when they can comfortably live there once again.
I would hope that this action would lead Friends to consider how their cooperation with the federal tax collection process — even those who are symbolic tax resisters or those who force the IRS to take their taxes from them — allows the present military system to thrive.
A report in that issue on the Canadian Yearly Meeting that had taken place noted that:
Canadian Yearly Meeting, in its role of employer, was asked to refuse to remit that portion of its employees’ taxes that will be used to support the military.
Concern was expressed by the yearly meeting’s trustees, who would bear the legal results of such actions.
Although the yearly meeting came close to supporting a minute for this action, it agreed to seek clearness with the trustees and monthly meetings and return to this issue next year.
an ad from the issue of Friends Journal
The issue was largely devoted to war tax resistance.
It began with an editorial from Vinton Deming concerning his war tax resistance and the response of his employer, the Journal.
Excerpt:
From the outset, I knew it wasn’t a very practical thing to do.
The government was too powerful, and all the tax laws were against me.
I’d just end up paying much more in the end, so why not choose a better way to work for peace?
A good letter to my congressman, for instance, or a tax vigil at the federal building on Apri1 15.
But this was in .
Our war in Vietnam was just over, but the Cold War continued.
As the Reagan years unfolded, with still larger military expenditures and big cuts in domestic programs, I became even more clear: I must resist as fully as possible the payment of taxes for war.
The Journal board was always supportive of my witness.
It refused twice to honor IRS levies on my wages.
In doing so, Friends openly accepted the possibility of being taken to court one day and fined severely.
The board wrote to IRS: “Our position of noncompliance to the requests of the Internal Revenue Service is not an easy one.
We do not question the laws of the land lightly, but do so under the weight of a genuine religious and moral concern.”
Well, as they say, “What goes ’round comes ’round.”
, Friends Journal was told by the U.S. Justice Department to pay up or we’d be taken to court.…
I am grateful for the steadfastness of the Journal’s board of managers.
, it has been faithful to the Quaker peace testimony.
The road has been an uncertain and confusing one at many points, but Friends have shown courage in continuing.
In my own personal war tax journey, these words by John Stoner have served to guide: “We are war tax resisters because we have discovered some doubt as to what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God, and have decided to give the benefit of the doubt to God.”
Sam Legg, clerk of the Friends Journal Board of Managers, gave his take on the Deming situation and on why the Journal had decided to throw in the towel and pay the IRS’s demands.
Excerpts:
… Vinton refused to pay any federal taxes.
Each tax year he sent a blank 1040 along with a letter to the president explaining his opposition to war and his unwillingness as a Friend to pay for it.
Since there was no Peace Tax Fund, Vinton reasoned, he would instead contribute the money to worthwhile projects and see that it was used for peaceful purposes.
In , the IRS served a levy on Friends Journal for $22,714.16, Vinton’s taxes for the period, plus interest and penalties.
The IRS asked Friends Journal to withhold part of Vinton’s salary each month, but the Journal Board refused, writing that “We… are in support of Vinton Deming’s conscientious witness.”
In , Friends Journal received a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice reminding us of the levy on Vinton’s salary and asking us to try to “resolve this matter short of litigation.”
That is, to pay the original assessed amount plus interest and a possible 50 percent penalty on the total.
We were given until to respond.
If we were to continue refusing to honor the levy, an immediate court action would follow.
The U.S. Supreme Court decision, Smith vs. Oregon, as Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and the American Friends Service Committee have learned, teaches us that there is no way we could win such a case in court, nor could our assets be protected from seizure.
More troubling, this seizure could make others who are not involved in our decision, undergo unwelcome investigation.
Finally, a court case offers IRS the opportunity to set a legal precedent requiring the payment of the 50 percent penalty (which a sympathetic judge excused in the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting case last year).
We fear that the inevitable negative decision could establish that precedent and thereby restrict other individuals’ or groups’ religious freedom.
And so, most reluctantly, the Friends Journal Board has agreed to negotiate with IRS and to pay the least amount IRS will accept ($31,300) as settlement of this claim.
Our painful recognition of failure is heavy upon us.
We have to accept that our witness in its present form can no longer serve a useful purpose.
We can hope Vinton’s action and our support will have brought the issue of tax refusal to the attention of others, thereby becoming a part of the tradition of citizen pressure that in the long run eliminates or diminishes social evils such as slavery and war.
Our protest is on record.
What we will do now is support the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of … which aims to reestablish the first amendment religious rights lost in the Smith vs. Oregon decision.
We also urge support for the U.S. Peace Tax Fund Bill… which makes the same witness, but provides money to finance peace-enhancing projects.
(Needless to say, if there had been a Peace Tax Fund in , Vinton’s taxes would have been paid gladly, and there would have been no need for an IRS levy.)
We ask all those who share our concerns to join in these legal approaches to the continuing effort to convince ourselves and others of the futility of armed conflict and the necessity of finding other means to resolve human disputes.
The immediate financial challenge to the Journal is a very real one.
In a year in which we already face a substantial budget deficit, the payment of such a large lump sum adds an enormous burden.
Vinton has engaged to repay the Journal through payroll deductions over time.
We have been heartened as well, as word of our tax witness spreads, to receive gifts of support from our readers.
One contributor writes: “I hope everyone at the Friends Journal can be made aware of Friends’ approval of [your] Board action.
To help this happen, I encourage the Journal to go as public with the story as is consistent with respect for Vint’s privacy and the Journal’s limited resources.
I am convinced that other Friends will wish to help financially when so informed.”
For such words, and unexpected gifts, we are most grateful.
Readers wrote in with their feedback about the Journal’s decision, and some of their letters were printed in the issue:
Duane Magill wrote to “applaud” and “sympathize” with the Journal’s stand.
“As a war tax resister myself for the past quarter of a century, I have had some brushes with the IRS myself and know what it is like.
I also appreciate your giving publicity to the subject.
I know that not many Quakers take this position, and giving the matter this extensive coverage just might encourage more to take this stand.”
Yvonne Boeger wrote in on behalf of the Live Oak (Texas) Meeting to say that the meeting had recently “discussed the importance of war tax resistance as a means of witnessing to Friends’ long-standing opposition to all forms of war and violence” and that the Meeting was supportive of the Journal’s (and Deming’s) action.
“We send the enclosed check as a token of our support and solidarity in Friends’ resistance to war.
Thank you for the example you have set for us all.”
Lillian and George Willoughby wrote to express gratitude for the Journal’s “courage in standing in support of Vint Deming.”
They wrote: “Most important is the example of a Quaker religious employer providing support to staff who endeavor to live according to Friends’ teachings.
The Journal has run considerable risk and incurred heavy expenses.
We enclose our check as a demonstration of our support.
We think that many other Friends will want to help carry the financial burden of this witness.”
An editorial note in the letters column expressed “thanks to all those who have sent checks!” and a later editorial note (in the issue) said that they had received “$8,000 from individuals and meetings, $7,000 from a Sufferings Fund of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting,” and almost $4,000 from Deming himself.
Mennonite war tax resister (and, according to his author bio, “itinerant prophet and spiritual retreat leader”) John K. Stoner wrote about the call he got from an IRS employee.
Excerpts:
We talked for about ten minutes, as I explained why Janet and I had said “no” to paying the full amount of our income tax.
The man could not understand why anyone would invite the collection pressures of the IRS upon themselves by withholding some taxes.
But by the time the conversation was over, he was a little closer to understanding that this was, for us, a matter of faith and a question of the practice of our religion.
It was a Mark 13:9 kind of experience of being called before the authorities, “before governors and kings,” because of Jesus, as a testimony to them.
By the sound of Mark 13, Jesus expected this kind of thing to happen regularly to his followers.
Mark 13 is a good text to remember when everybody around you is quoting Romans 13.
The Christian Peacemaker Teams organization is promoting symbolic war tax refusal as a way to make a clear witness in the matter of war taxes.
Taxes for Life is a plan to have taxpayers redirect to education an amount equivalent to 1 penny for every billion dollars in the military budget.
For tax year this is $3.03, which can be mailed to Christian Peacemaker Teams… Listen to your conscience when you pay your taxes.
Write a letter of witness to the IRS, with copies to Congress and your local newspaper.
Redirect some taxes to education through CPT.
If the IRS calls, tell them that it makes you a little bit nervous to break their law and that you do not enjoy being harassed by the collectors of blood money.
Go on to say that you are far more apprehensive, however, about breaking God’s law.
Tell them that you hear God’s warning rising up from the bulldozed mass graves of Iraqi conscripts, fathers and husbands, and the nightmares of their children.
Explain that you are really afraid to harden you heart to the cry of the victims and that you have decided you will not take their blood upon your hands.
When Randy Kehler was thrown in prison on contempt of court charges for refusing to vacate the home that had been seized by the IRS, he prepared a statement that he hoped to read.
The court denied him permission to address it.
The Journal printed the statement he’d hoped to have made, which is a good thing: it would be a shame if such an articulate statement was left to sit unread in a file folder somewhere.
My refusal to give up our home is not an act of contempt or defiance of your court order.
I regard it as an act of conscience and also an act of citizenship.
The two go hand in hand.
The first obligation of responsible citizenship, I believe, is obedience to one’s conscience.
Obedience to one’s government and to its laws is very important, but it must come second.
Otherwise there is no check on immoral actions by governments, which are bound to occur in any society whenever power is abused.
I want to assure you, however, that I am not someone who treats the law lightly.
Even when a particular law seems at first to have no clear purpose or justification, I try to give it — that is, give those who created and approved it — the benefit of the doubt.
In an ideal sense, I see law as the codification of those rules and procedures by which the members or citizens of a community, be it local or global, have agreed to live.
A decent respect for one’s community requires a decent respect for its laws.
At their best, such laws express the conscience of the community, causing conscience and law to coincide.
The international treaties and agreements that my wife, Betsy, and I cited in the legal documents recently submitted to, and rejected by, this court are wonderful examples of the coincidence of law and conscience.
These agreements, each one signed by our government, include the United Nations Charter, which outlaws war and the use of military force as methods of resolving conflicts among nations; the Hague Regulations and Geneva Conventions, which prohibit the use or threatened use of weapons that indiscriminately kill civilians and poison the environment; and the Nuremberg Principles, which forbid individual citizens from participating in or collaborating with clearly defined “crimes against humanity,” “war crimes,” and “crimes against peace,” even when refusal to participate or collaborate means disobeying the laws of one’s government.
These international accords — which, as you know, our Constitution requires us to regard as “the Supreme Law of the Land” — are at least as much affirmation of conscience, rooted in universal moral standards, as they are statements of law.
Betsy and I regret that you chose to deny our request for a trial, which would have allowed us to argue the relevance of these international laws before a jury of our peers.
Even in the absence of such laws, however, I believe that citizens would still have an affirmative obligation to follow their conscience and refuse to engage in or support immoral acts by governments.
It is not true, as is commonly thought, that if large numbers of people put conscience ahead of the law and decided for themselves which acts of government were immoral, civilized society would break down into violence and chaos — that is, greater violence and chaos than there is now.
In fact, the opposite would likely occur.
There would likely be greater compliance with those laws that are fundamentally just and reasonable — in other words, most laws — and there would be greater public pressure to abolish or reform those laws (and policies) that are unjust or unreasonable.
There would be exceptions for the worse, of course.
In the name of conscience, certain individuals would, no doubt, do some terrible things and cause much injury and death, which happens now.
On balance, however, the historical record is clear: from the Spanish Inquisition and the African slave trade, to Stalin’s purges, Hitler’s Holocaust, the genocide of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and our own devastation of Vietnam and Iraq, far more killing and suffering, has resulted from people following “legal” orders and obeying the law than from people refusing to do so in obedience to conscience.
My own refusal to kill (which led me to spend nearly two years in federal prison rather than cooperate with the Vietnam draft), Betsy’s and my refusal to pay federal taxes used for killing (which caused the IRS to seize our home), and now our refusal to turn over our home in lieu of taxes, are all acts of conscience.
It has not been easy for us to deliberately violate the law in these instances, and in so doing incur the anxiety and disapproval of some of our friends and family, as well as the scorn and censure of many members of the community.
We are painfully aware that even though we do pay our town and state taxes, and even though we have given away to the poor and to the victims of our war-making in other countries every cent that we have withheld from the federal government, nevertheless we are still regarded by some as irresponsible and not contributing our fair share.
These are times, however, when all of us are confronted with difficult choices.
Betsy and I, and many others like us, feel we must choose between knowingly and willingly paying for war and killing, and openly and nonviolently breaking the law with respect to federal taxes.
Our consciences compel us to choose the latter.
For me, the issue is larger than simply the taking of another human life, or even the instance of a particular war in which many lives are lost.
I have increasingly come to see the larger issue as war itself.
Whereas there has always been a moral imperative to end war and refrain from killing, today the imperative is much greater.
Today the logic of peace, the logic of nonviolence, is also the logic of survival.
It is impossible to dis-invent today’s nuclear, chemical, biological, and so-called conventional weapons of mass destruction.
Therefore, we have no alternative but to effectively abolish war.
This is the one essential adaptation the human species must make — and, I firmly believe, can make — if life as we know it is to continue.
War today is the scourge of the planet.
It is tragic enough that war is daily claiming the lives of people, maiming more, leaving orphans and widows, and destroying homes, schools, and hospitals — to say nothing of the irreplaceable treasures of human civilization destroyed in Baghdad last year and in Dubrovnik over the past several months.
What makes war today even more tragic, more horrible, are the incalculable economic, social, and environmental costs that go along with it.
Instead of using our human and material resources to produce food, medicine, housing, schools, and other desperately needed commodities, the world’s nations, led by our own, are annually spending trillions of dollars to purchase more and more weapons of even greater destructive capability.
The hundreds of millions of children, women, and men whose lives are ravaged by poverty, hunger, and homelessness — around the world and here in the States — are as much victims of our addiction to war and militarism as are those who are hit directly by the bullets and bombs.
While the awful gap between the rich minority and the poor majority of the world’s people grows wider and wider, war’s assault on the earth — the earth that sustains us all — becomes more savage and less reversible with each new armed conflict.
The severe and longterm ecological damage to the Persian Gulf region that resulted from only a few weeks of war last year is just the tip of the iceberg.
The cumulative impact of the many smaller, less publicized wars elsewhere around the globe is no less severe and, ultimately, no less threatening to the well-being of people everywhere, including the United States.
Furthermore, here at home, where ecological damage to our own environment is proceeding at a frightening pace, the single largest polluter by far, producing more toxic and radioactive waste than any other single entity, is the U.S. military.
I am not at all suggesting that our country bears sole responsibility for the global state of affairs.
But we bear a good deal of it, and therefore any steps we take to move away from war will have great influence upon other countries around the world.
Even before the collapse of the Soviet Union, we had the most powerful armed forces in the world, the most sophisticated weaponry, and by far the largest number of military bases outside our own borders.
Since World War Ⅱ, we have used our military might to bomb, invade, or otherwise intervene in more countries around the world than any other nation.
We were the first to develop the atomic bomb, and we are the only nation ever to use it.
For years we have led the Soviets in atomic test explosions, and we ani continuing these tests even though Soviet testing has stopped.
In addition, we have long been the world’s largest arms merchant, today supplying 40 percent of the entire overseas arms market.
We have been told that all of this is necessary for our security, but the opposite is true.
This military colossus we have created has greatly undermined our security — by creating more enemies than it destroys, by wasting our precious resources and poisoning our environment, by degrading our democracy with “national security” secrecy, covert actions, and official lying, and by undercutting our highest Judeo-Christian values with the insidious doctrine of “might makes right.”
Betsy’s and my actions that have brought us to court are testament to our belief that there is another way for us to live in the world, and another way for us to resolve our conflicts with our fellow human beings.
It is a way that is rooted in the best of our values: the values of generosity and justice, of human dignity and equality, of compassion and mutual respect.
The seeds of this alternative way — the way of nonviolence that Dr. Martin Luther King tried to teach us — already exist within our society, and within each person.
We have only to honor and nurture those seeds, individually and collectively.
This is a prescription based not on wishful idealism, but on practical necessity.
It is our only real hope for survival.
The transformation required cannot be accomplished without our accepting some measure of personal responsibility for the mess we are in.
It would be futile to expect our government, or any other, to initiate it.
In any event, we cannot afford to wait.
The transformation must begin with us.
Because we profess to be a self-governing people, it is all the more our responsibility.
We can exercise this responsibility by means of the choices each of us is called upon to make.
For example, we can choose to speak out publicly against governmental practices and priorities that we know to be wrong.
Many of us can also choose not to hand over to the federal government some part of our tax money — instead redistribute it to those in need, until such time as those in need become our government’s first priority.
And each of us can choose to continue leading lives based on materialism, consumerism, and environmental exploitation, or we can find ways of living based on simplicity, sharing, and respect for the Earth.
The choices we make as individuals will determine the choices we make as a nation.
This is, no doubt, a dangerous and ominous time to be alive in the world.
Yet it is also a very exciting time to be alive.
People all over the world, despite the opposition of their governments, are taking initiative to bring about momentous and long overdue changes.
These winds of change are sweeping the planet, and they are not likely to stop at our borders.
If the people of Prague and Moscow can overthrow Soviet communism and bring about democracy and human rights; if the people of Soweto and Johannesburg can abolish South African apartheid and establish an egalitarian, multi-racial society; then, I feel sure, it is equally possible for us to dismantle U.S. militarism and replace it with attitudes and institutions of nonviolence.
It is my great hope, my silent prayer, that Betsy’s and my struggle to see that the fruits of our labor are used for nurturing and healing, rather than for killing and war, will somehow contribute to that process.
Following this, Christopher L. King had a piece promoting the Peace Tax Fund.
He described it as the brainchild of David Bassett, who some twenty years before had come up with the idea of allowing taxpayers to perform “alternative service” money the way conscientiously objecting draftees could with their labor.
King wrote that he was surprised to find little awareness of the bill in Quaker circles and described some of the work that he and his comrades were doing for the bill.
Those of us who meet each month and a quiet group of supporters in the surrounding communities believe in our consciences that war and militarism are wrong.
We don’t believe they should be the major tools of our foreign policy.
We sympathize with citizens like Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner of Colrain, Massachusetts, who have chosen to pay no taxes because they are pacifists.
We empathize with those brave souls who choose alternative lifestyles so they can keep their income below taxable levels.
It often means their children must learn to sacrifice at an early age.
It means stepping out of the mainstream culture.
Most of us don’t want to change our lifestyles radically or go to jail for our beliefs.
Some might argue that if we are true to our faith, we have no other choice.
On the other hand, there is a need to resist the fundamental tyranny that requires that we must become rebels if we wish to stand firmly for peace.
King’s article was pretty vague on the mechanics of what the Peace Tax Fund bill would actually accomplish, and it was written as if there were no reason why a conscientious objector to paying to war might not find it a satisfactory solution.
The issue included a brief review of the video Paying for Peace: War Tax Resistance in the United States, which was produced by Carol Coney.
Excerpt:
Among those interviewed are Brian Willson, a war tax resister and Vietnam veteran who in was run over by a train while blocking munitions shipments at the Concord naval weapons plant in California.
Also interviewed is Maurice McCrackin, a minister who was sentenced to jail for war tax resistance in ; Ernest and Marion Bromley, who have lived under the taxable income level to avoid paying taxes for military purposes; and Juanita Nelson, an early civil rights organizer who was the first woman to spend a night in jail for war tax resistance.
The issue included an op-ed from Allan Kohrman suggesting Quakers ought to be more patriotic, perhaps singing “God Bless America” during their Sunday meetings, and in particular should rethink their permissive attitude toward civil disobedience and war tax resistance.
“Many Friends seem to define civil disobedience as breaking any law they feel is morally wrong.
Some will not pay war taxes, testifying that God has called them to resist.
I would argue that paying taxes is a basic responsibility of citizenship, a function of my almost mystical relationship to my country.
God calls me to pay my taxes much as God calls others to resist them.”
That’s what “an almost mystical relationship to my country” will get you, I guess.
Another note in that issue concerned two Quakers in Germany — Christa & Klausmart Voigt — who had been prosecuted for war tax resistance.
“About 40 Friends from all over Germany attended the hearing, which was overseen by five judges.”
Klausmart had “placed his money in an account for a peace tax initiative,” and at press time they were still awaiting the court’s decision.
There was another note about the Tax Resisters’ Penalty Fund in the issue, which described it this way: “When a request for assistance comes in, the committee that oversees the fund takes it under consideration, then notifies people who have agreed to participate of the amount each would need to contribute to cover the tax resister’s penalty and interest debt.
Contributions are not used to cover the tax liability itself.
The fund is administered in cooperation with the North Manchester (Ind.) Fellowship of Reconciliation.”
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
Some Quaker war tax resisters of the past and present made appearances in the Friends Journal in .
Another article on George and Lillian Willoughby, in the issue, mentioned how early American Quakers had been sensitive to the issue of war taxes:
In colonial America, tremendous pressure was exerted on Penn and other Quakers to support militias, to provision the British army, to pay taxes for unexplained uses that might well turn out to be military expeditions.
Governing a large colony (Pennsylvania) in which Quakers were a minority, and in which the majority wanted protection from Indian attacks, forced further compromises.
Only with the advent of John Woolman, who with others sent a letter to the Pennsylvania assembly concerning a royal levy, [a portion of the PDF is illegible at this point] -tion of Christ and Fox.
As reported by Peter Brock in his The Quaker Peace Testimony, , it states in part:
And being painfully apprehensive that the large sum granted by the… Assembly for the King’s use is principally intended for purposes inconsistent with our peaceable testimony, we therefore think that as we cannot be concerned in wars and fightings, so neither ought we to contribute thereto by paying the tax directly by the said act, though suffering be the consequence of our refusal.
Despite the influence of John Woolman and Anthony Benezet, Friends remained divided on the question of “rendering unto Caesar” that which “Caesar” claimed.
The Willoughbys, the article said, “have acted on their beliefs — through war tax refusal” and other means.
An obituary notice for Louis E. Jones in that issue noted that among the ways he “championed Friends causes” was by “for many years avoiding paying federal income tax, instead contributing to charitable causes.… He served as Downers Grove Meeting’s treasurer for many years, giving him the opportunity to witness against war taxes in the form of refusing war/excise tax for phone service.”
A retrospective on the life and work of the pacifist activist A.J. Muste in the issue noted:
Throughout , he often faced jail and prosecution for refusing to pay income taxes (he constantly followed the dictates of the Quaker John Woolman, who insisted that “The spirit of truth required of me as an individual to suffer patiently the distress of goods, rather than pay actively”)…
That same issue also noted that the Quaker Council for European Affairs planned to “present a resolution, under Article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights on Freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, to the Council of Europe” that would enshrine a “right for individual taxpayers to direct a portion of their taxes away from military uses and towards peace-building, international development, and other alternatives to war.”
The note mentioned the difficulties with the resolution: “1) the state’s need to maintain a uniform tax system is deemed more important than designing a tax system through which some taxes are diverted for conscientious objection, and 2) in the absence of legislation that allows for the diversion of taxes away from military purposes, the courts have no power to rule in favor of peace tax protestors.”
That issue also noted that the American Friends Service Committee had nominated Ghassan Andoni for the Nobel Peace Prize, and mentioned that “[d]uring the First Intifada, , Andoni was an active participant in Beit Sahour’s tax resistance.”
An obituary for Glenn S. Mallison in the issue noted that “[d]uring the Vietnam War, he refused entry to IRS agents who confronted [his] family’s refusal to pay phone taxes.”
The issue reported that “New York Yearly Meeting approved a statement against paying for war.”:
The following minute was approved at their Spring Business Sessions on : “The Living Spirit works to give joy, peace, and prosperity through love, integrity, and compassionate justice among people.
We are united in this Power.
We acknowledge that paying for war violates our religious conviction.
We will witness to this religious conviction in each of our communities.”
This statement reflects Quakers’ steadfast testimony that any participation in war, including payment of taxes for war, is a violation of our faith.
By compelling support of war-making through taxation, our government and political leaders have forced many people of faith to subordinate God’s Word to the dictates of the state.
The statement seeks to uphold a foundational principle of our nation that freedom to practice our religious faith is a matter of moral imperative, and is not dependent upon the grace of rights or privileges granted by the legislature.
For nearly 350 years, members of the Religious Society of Friends have upheld a testimony of peace and nonviolence that embodies the belief that God’s spirit, present in every person, empowers all of us to resolve disputes without resorting to the machinery of war.
Quakers, Mennonites, and people of other faiths came to the New World to escape persecutions in Europe for their religious convictions.
The work of these “peace churches” in the United States eventually led to the legal recognition of the right of all persons not to be forced into military service in violation of their conscience.
To date, however, the United States government has failed to respect the right of religious conscience, recognized by the First Amendment’s guarantee of free exercise of religion, not to be compelled to support war through the collection of taxes.
The U.S. Congress has before it legislation introduced by Congressman John Lewis of Georgia and supported by 35 Representatives… (the “Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Bill”) that would provide conscientious objectors [subject] to military taxation with an option.
Individuals who establish a sincere religious objection would have their tax payments directed towards nonviolent and life-affirming means for protecting and promoting national security, consistent with their faith.
Until that time, many Quakers and others are being forced to choose between being faithful to their religious convictions and being in compliance with our federal tax laws.
“As a religious body, we cannot in good conscience support war, and we have borne that witness for over 350 years,” said Christopher Sarnmond, general secretary of New York Yearly Meeting.
“We are clear that violence only begets more violence, in a neverending cycle of horror that diminishes all humankind.
Being required to pay almost half our taxes to support war-making is a violation of our religious convictions, and we will be seeking ways to redress this, individually and corporately.”
In an op-ed in the issue, Stan Becker used his column inches to present the dilemma of Quakers paying for the Iraq War and other such militarism.
He asserted that “[V]ery few Friends have been able to conscientiously refuse to pay the military portion of their income tax and succeeded in doing so” because “[t]he Internal Revenue Service simply does what is necessary to get its monies.”
The option of “living below the taxable income level,” he insisted, “is nearly impossible as well.”
To the rescue is “the Peace Tax Fund legislation that would allow pacifists to have their taxes used only for nonmilitary purposes.”
Meanwhile, he suggested that Friends calculate how much of their time and money is going to pay for war and try to counterbalance this with some peace-minded donations.
Nadine Hoover had an article in the same issue in which she mentioned her frustrations at trying to forward the cause of war tax resistance in the New York Yearly Meeting:
In , a member of Peace Concerns Committee of New York Yearly Meeting approached me outside the auditorium at yearly meeting: “We were talking in committee today about how we are being prepared for something, something historic.
We don’t know what it is, but we feel ready!
We thought of asking people and your name came up.
What do you sense we are being prepared for?”
The answer was laid upon me in that instant.
I replied: “Don’t ask the question if you’re not prepared to yield.
Our dear Friend Sandra Cronk warned us of the dis-ease that settles in when we think we are ready but, when the Light comes, we refuse to yield.
You really do not want to know the answer.”
“Yes, yes!
We do.
We really do.
We’re ready.”
“Okay.”
I said, “It’s a corporate conviction against paying for war.”
He paled and said, “Oh, no.
That may be a bit too much.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.
You wanted an historic action that would not change your life.
Well, let me see…”
He smiled.
That was the end of that conversation…
But…
Seven years after that conversation, New York Yearly Meeting approved a statement of faith testifying to the Power of the Living Spirit and acknowledging that paying for war violates our religious conviction.
This statement not only reaffirms our Peace Testimony, but shifts from supporting or encouraging individual acts of conscience to claiming a corporate testimony laid upon all of us.
U.S. courts have rejected cases on war tax resistance saying they cannot accommodate individuals, but the courts may not say no so easily to an entire religious body.
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
In , most of the mentions of war tax resistance in the Friends Journal were brief and retrospective.
The issue noted that Christopher Moore-Backman had lost a federal district court suit in which he had asserted “that the use of his federal income tax payments for military spending substantially burdened his religious exercise in violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”
An obituary notice for Alfred Frederick Andersen in the issue noted that “[h]e refused to pay federal income taxes for most of his adult life, and the family home was sold at auction by the IRS in .”
A review of a book on conscientious objectors of World War Ⅱ mentioned that, among the activities such conscientious objectors took after the war, “Stephen L. Angell, a Quaker CO and a social worker, started his own business during the Vietnam war to avoid paying taxes toward a war he could not morally support.”
And an obituary notice for Angell, in the issue said that “[i]n , to avoid paying taxes for the Vietnam War, he resigned from Nassau County Health and Welfare Council and formed a consulting organization that would pay him less than taxable wages.”
There were also some mentions of Robin Harper’s war tax resistance in that issue (I covered these in the Picket Line).
A retrospective on the lives of George & Lillian Willoughby in the issue remembered:
Lillian had always felt a deep calling to refuse to pay income taxes since such a large percentage went to war costs.
One day after lunch, George and some students and I [Lynne Shivers] were chatting under the trees.
Two IRS agents approached us and announced that they planned to confiscate the Willoughbys’ red Volkswagen Beetle.
We were stunned and said little.
A few minutes later, Lillian walked briskly toward all of us, carrying a briefcase with papers she needed as a dietary consultant.
She opened the car door and got in, saying, “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have to get to work!”
And she drove away!
Friends bought the car when it was auctioned off and gave it back to the Willoughbys, but the IRS did not use an auction again in the Philadelphia region for the next 30 years.
The IRS called it “The Willoughby Principle.”
[I]n the mid-60s, when all four of their children were going to college, the couple took money-making more seriously and started to feel the government’s sticky fingers reaching into their paychecks.
That’s when Lillian called a halt: “I quit paying taxes — and I mean all taxes — because I was not about to support the old men’s dreams.” The old men, she said, were those who were foisting things like military buildups, selective service, and governmental secrecy upon the nation.
Lillian Willoughby wasn’t having any of it.
George was right with her.
It’s a “myth,” he said, recalling those days, “that you can’t do anything, that it’s impossible and you’re trapped.
This is the kind of slavery, kind of servitude you get into.
We allow ourselves to be enslaved by these shibboleths, these rules laid down on us.
You don’t need bars and whips to keep people in line; you just need ideas!”
Neither Willoughby bows willingly to such regimentation.
Although tax resistance has been just one part of the Willoughbys’ personal protest to the nation’s military involvement, they did make some fundamental life changes which helped to avoid the tax man.
Lillian, who was working as a dietitian in the mid ’60s, changed her job status from employee to consultant, thus avoiding automatic deductions.
In later years, when the children were through school, the couple reduced their income so no taxes were due; now retired, they live on Social Security.
Recently they gave their home and land in nearby Deptford, N.J., to a land trust, so they no longer own property.
And they “rent” a car from a friend for $1 a year, remembering an earlier time when the IRS “collected” their VW bug because the couple refused to pay their telephone tax.
Lillian Willoughby (photo by Elizabeth McGuinness)
McGuinness next describes some of the couple’s other history in anti-war activism, including George’s conscientious objector status during World War Ⅱ and later work with the American Friends Service Committee, Lillian’s work with war refugees and her civil disobedience action at the Nevada nuclear weapons testing grounds in , George’s participation in the sailing of the Golden Rule to the South Pacific nuclear testing area, Lillian’s participation in a multi-day sit-in at the Atomic Energy Commission, George’s participation in the San Francisco to Moscow peace march and then in another from New Delhi that was stopped before it could continue to Beijing, and the couple’s involvement in the Movement for a New Society network.
These are briefly described, among several other examples of determined direct action.
At the time the book was published, George was secretary of Peace Brigades International, and Lillian was “helping plan a nonviolence and feminist conference.”
The chapter opens with the couple going to a tax day protest, which the plays out later in the chapter:
George and Lillian Willoughby have proceeded with the other tax protestors to City Hall.
TV crews, radio and newspaper reporters move among the group; photographers and cameramen take pictures of the Halloween-masked “Ronald Reagan” and the gray-faced, khaki-clad “contra” taking part in a bit of street theater.
The audience is led through tax-protester parodies of well-known songs.
Lillian is among the speakers here, telling how, back in the ’40s, she refused to buy War Bonds, although her employer was pressuring for 100% employee participation; how she stopped paying taxes in the ’60s; how she and George turned their property into a land trust.
She invites anyone interested in details to see her.
But, Lillian said privately, she would never tell anyone to totally stop paying taxes as she did: “We figure we just raise people’s consciousness; they have to figure out what they’re going to do themselves.”
The edition of Cycle,
a student paper from Fitchburg (Massachusetts) State College, gives us a good
peek into the rhetoric and tactics of the war tax resistance movement at that
time:
In , the United States government spend $103
billion to pay for present and past wars and to be prepared in case of future
wars. This was 66% of the entire federal budget of $156 billion. One hundred
and three billion dollars exceeds the gross national product of all but six
nations.
Of this $103,198,100,000, $29 billion was spent on the Vietnam war, to
continue a conflict whose brutality, immorality, and illegality have sickened
most Americans and the vast majority of the people of the world. Already, this
war has brought death to more than 42,000 Americans and more than two million
Vietnamese. It is a spur to the arms race and continually threatens world
peace.
Almost $20 billion will be invested this fiscal year in making more frightful
our nuclear missile and bomber arsenal, weapons already so destructive that
they can deliver ten tons of explosive power for every person on the globe.
$330 million will be spent on chemical and biological weapons that are
polluting the environment and endangering the people in the United States and
other countries without even being used; simply by being improperly stored.
$7.5 billion will go toward research on new and yet more fearful weapons.
$1.2 billion has been authorized for the Anti Ballistic Missile
(ABM)
system in .
$500 million to $1 billion is the estimated budget of the
CIA.
Vast sums will be paid to the corporations and research institutes that design
and build the weapons. In , the following companies, a handful of the biggest among thousands
engaged in war production and research, enjoyed these military contracts:
General Dynamics
$2.2 billion
Lockheed Aircraft
$1.8 billion
General Electric
$1.4 billion
United Aircraft
$1.3 billion
McDonnell-Douglas
$1.1 billion
AT&T
$777 million
The following amounts were spent in
for projects that
seem to have little to do with primary human needs:
For moon and other space exploration $3.4 billion.
For farm subsidies to wealthy landowners $3.1 billion.
In comparison to the enormous expenditures for acts and instruments of
military violence, luxury space programs, and subsidies to the wealthy, and at
a time when city governments are crying for more funds, the United States
government spent these sums on improving the health, education, and general
welfare of the people within this country.
Slum rebuilding $1.9 billion.
Other poverty programs $7.2 billion.
Health programs $1.8 billion.
Educational programs and subsidies $3.7 billion.
Direct, nonmilitary foreign aid to underdeveloped countries totaled about $1.6
billion.
The U.S.
appropriation to the United Nations was $109 million, about the cost of one
Polaris submarine.
In , the total of all
non-military expenditure was approximately 34% of the military expenses.
Throughout the United States, young people by the hundreds of thousands are
rebelling in disgust and anger against this squandering of resources on war,
and neglect of the day-to-day practical needs of the people. They are not
alone in seeing only massive social disruption and probably nuclear war as
eventual consequences. They are risking their freedom, careers, and often
their lives to protest and resist what they see to be wrong.
In the face of this shameful and alarming situation and in solidarity with the
youth resisting it, we, as participants in War Tax Resistance, are resolved to
confront our own complicity in war, waste, and callousness. We resolve to end
to the extent we can our cooperation in a federal tax program geared to death
more than life. The least measure of our resistance will be not to pay
voluntarily $5 of federal taxes due.
We are prepared to bear the consequences of our actions, be these criticism
and unpopularity, financial penalties, confiscation of our bank accounts and
property, and, perhaps, imprisonment. These seem to us small inconveniences
beside the agony of those killed or bereft by war, and the numb hopelessness
of those crippled by poverty.
We invite all Americans to join us in some form of tax refusal. War tax
resistance is not always easy, particularly for those whose taxes are withheld
from their wages, but for most there is some variety of tax refusal that they
can conscientiously adopt. It may be by not paying part or all of a balance
“owed,” or by not paying federal telephone tax. War Tax Resistance has
prepared literature and is setting up counseling services designed to help
each individual find the best way of tax refusal and resistance for him. A
list of Methods of War Tax Resistance follows this statement of purpose.
We also are developing a war tax resistance promotional program that will
include advertisements, demonstrations, meetings, a bulletin, and other
literature distribution. If you become a war tax resister, we hope you will
allow yourself to be publicly identified with the movement and permit your
name to be used on tax resistance literature.
War Tax Resistance will do more than concentrate on the weeks just before
April 15. We are planning a year round educational and resistance program. If
you agree with conscientious tax resistance as a means for opposing war, we
hope you will communicate with us now. The included coupon is for your
convenience.
Methods of Refusal
Refuse to pay at least $5 of your tax
The first goal of War Tax Resistance is to convince as many people as
possible to refuse at least $5 of some tax owed the government. Nearly
everyone can do this by refusing their federal telephone tax or part of
their income tax. If hundreds of thousands refuse to pay $5, they will
establish mass tax refusal. Besides having the burden of collecting the
unpaid amounts, the government will be faced with the political fact of
massive noncooperation with its warmaking policies.
Better yet, refuse to pay all the taxes you can
Even if some of your taxes are withheld, you can refuse to pay the balance
and other taxes. These might include: taxes on additional income, the 10%
surtax, and the telephone tax.
You can refuse to pay that percentage of your tax that goes for war
Two thirds or more of the federal budget pays for wars past, present, and
future. To protest against war, a person can refuse that percentage of his
tax. He can base his refusal on the percentage of the total national
budget used for war, on the cost of the war in Vietnam, or on other
calculations. Some people pay part of their tax and contribute the rest as
a peace tax. Some give to the
UN, or a
relief agency, or some other organization engaged in peaceful,
constructive work.
You can refuse to pay the 10% surtax
This surtax was imposed in to help pay
for the war in Vietnam. Refusing to pay it is a direct protest against the
war.
You can refuse to pay the federal telephone tax
The federal telephone tax was revived in
to help pay for the war. Thousands are already not paying it. In all cases
known to us but one, the telephone companies have continued service and
referred the tax collection to
IRS.
To Reduce or Eliminate the Withholding of Your Taxes You Can
Claim additional dependents
If you claim a sufficient number of dependents on your W-4 form you can
reduce the amount of taxes withheld from your salary to zero. The law
reads that a dependent has to live in your household and be supported
by you. The fact is that many people, particularly draft age young men
and the Vietnamese, depend on you. So long as you declare at the end of
the year that by the government’s standards you owe so much and are
refusing to pay it, the moral point is made
The law reads that it is illegal — fraudulent — to state on a tax form
that someone claimed as a dependent falls within that category, as
defined by the
IRS,
when he does not. But no fraud appears to be involved if the people
claimed as dependents are identified as being outside the
IRS
categories. The issue has not been tested in the courts.
Make your employer an ally
Although the law reads that it is illegal not to withhold taxes from an
employee’s wages, your employer may be sympathetic to your protest and be
willing to assist — and make a protest of his own — by not withholding
from your salary. It is always valuable to raise the question.
Organize an employment agency
Have your agency hire you and then have your present employer hire the
agency to supply him with you. Naturally, an agency that you control will
not withhold taxes from its employees. Getting organized is complicated,
but if you and a few friends get together you can work out the problem.
Write us for information.
Also You Can
Demand a refund
There are four ways to do this:
You may request a refund right on the 1040 form and stand a good
chance of receiving it. Ask for a tax credit on Part Ⅴ of the
form.
You may file form 843 for a refund.
If the above demands are refused, go to the Income Tax Board of
Appeals. If the Board turns you down, sue.
You can also sue the government to refund all your taxes on the
grounds that the taxes have been used for illegal and immoral
purposes.
Protest by letter or in person
Any protest to
IRS
or other government officials will help express opposition to the war and
to militarism. If you are unable to refuse taxes, protest them as
vigorously as you can.
Maximize the Impact
Talk about your tax refusal with friends, neighbors, co-workers. This sort of
direct contact changes many minds. Distribute tax refusal literature.
Inform the newspapers and other mass media in your neighborhood that you are
resisting war taxes and why. Start a war tax resistance group in your
community.
Organize or join demonstrations at your local
IRS
office.
Inform yourself thoroughly and become a tax refusal counselor. Let your
community know through ads, leaflets,
etc. that a
counseling service is available.
Keep the War Tax Resistance Clearinghouse informed by writing or phoning about
your activities. Communication is the lifeblood of any movement.
We invite war tax resisters to send War Tax Resistance the first $5 or more
refused the federal government. This money will be used to publicize and
expand the war tax resistance movement.
Until now, the government has not imprisoned anyone for conscientious tax
refusal. A few have been given short sentences for refusing to reveal
information about their incomes. In general, the
IRS has
been content to take money from tax refusers’ bank accounts, garnishee part of
their wages, or, on rare occasions, seize and auction property.
![No Income Tax For War! Now Particularly the U.S. War in Vietnam. Statement: Because so much of the tax paid the federal government goes for poisoning of food crops, blasting of villages, napalming and killing of thousands upon thousands of people, as in Vietnam at the present time, I am not going to pay taxes on 1966 income. Name ___. Address ___. [In order to withdraw support from war, particularly the savage and expanding war in Southeast Asia– Some are refusing to pay their total tax, or some portion. ☐ Some have in advance lowered their income so as to owe none. ☐ (for our information, would you like to check which form of nonpayment you are following?) NOTE: There are laws which (although not usually applied to principled refusers) cover possible fine and jail term for non-payment of a legally-owed amount.]](noIncomeTaxForWar.png)
