Tax resistance in the “Peace Churches” → Quakers → 20th–21st century Quakers → Samuel D. Caldwell

From the 16 April 1989 New York Times:

Nuclear Protester May Lose Home Over Tax Stand

Colrain, Mass., April 11— Three years before he founded the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign in St. Louis in 1980, Randy Kehler started protesting the Government’s military budget by not paying his Federal income taxes.

Last month the Internal Revenue Service seized Mr. Kehler’s modest house, tucked in a valley among apple orchards and farms, and told him it would be sold unless he paid $20,000 in back taxes plus $7,000 in interest.

Mr. Kehler, a lobbyist, and his wife, Betsy Corner, say they will neither pay money to the Government nor move out of their house if they are ordered to be evicted. They have urged members of their community not to bid on their house. So far, nobody has.

A spokesman for the revenue service, Frank Keith, said it had not kept statistics on tax protesters since 1985, when there were 21,300. Tax resistance groups estimate that this year, 10,000 to 20,000 Americans will not pay income taxes or will pay less than what they owe to protest military spending.

Tax Money to Charities

Mr. Kehler and Ms. Corner pay state and local taxes each year. They figure out how much they owe the Federal Government and send a Form 1040 to the I.R.S., but the money involved is sent to charities.

“I spent years trying to stop nuclear weapons through legal channels, through legislation and education, but not one single production line has been shut down,” said Mr. Kehler, adding that he was more than willing to sacrifice his home for the sake of his conscience.

The I.R.S., imposes stiff criminal and civil penalties against people and organizations that do not file tax returns or do not pay in full. People who do not pay for reasons of conscience are treated no differently from other evaders. The deadline for filing a Federal income tax return this year is midnight Monday.

The Tax Resistance Movement

Tax resistance organizations say their numbers have been rising gradually, especially among people who choose to deduct a token amount from what they legally owe. Some boycott the Federal excise tax on telephone service, the revenue of which has been used to help finance the military.

Like Mr. Kehler and Ms. Corner, many other tax resisters shape their lives around a decision not to pay taxes. They remain self-employed; employers could withhold the hated taxes from their pay. Most do not have bank accounts or other assets that could be seized. Some deliberately keep their income below taxable levels: $4,950 for a single person, $8,900 for a married couple under the age of 65.

Last week, a Federal district judge in Philadelphia heard arguments in a suit filed by the Internal Revenue Service against a Quaker church that the Government has charged with refusing to withhold over $11,000 in taxes from employees who object to paying them.

How Some Penalties Worked Out

Prosecution of tax resisters does not appear uniform. Bob Bady, a next-door neighbor of Mr. Kehler and Ms. Corner, said he had not filed a return since 1970 and had not been penalized. Rabbi Michael A. Robinson of Temple Israel in Croton, N.Y., began paying only 70 percent of his taxes to protest the Vietnam War, and the revenue service seized his bank account and began a six-year audit that ended in 1988. “In the end, they got more money than they would if I had paid my tax, because of the interest on it,” he said.

Americans have been protesting the use of tax money for military purposes since before the Federal income tax was created in 1913 by the 16^th Amendment. Thoreau refused to pay taxes levied for the Mexican War of 1846–48 and encouraged other citizens to do the same. He spent a night in jail.

The story of how Kehler & Corner lost and then regained their house, and how a community of supporters used the seizure as an educational opportunity, is told in the film An Act of Conscience. Bob Bady is still resisting taxes, now from Vermont.

Michael Robinson had the honor of having been arrested alongside Martin Luther King in 1963. His home was a way station for conscientious objectors fleeing for Canada during the Vietnam War. He moved to California in 1989 and was active in the peace movement there; he died in 2006.

As the Cold War sputtered to a close during the Gorbachev era, the urgency went out of the war tax resistance movement — something I’ve also noticed in my recaps of Mennonite and Quaker war tax resistance — as can be seen by the reduced attention given to the subject in Brethren periodicals during this period.

The January 1989 issue brought the news that the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Quakers) had been sued by the IRS which was trying to force it to turn over taxes that had not been paid by two of its conscientiously objecting employees (source). Excerpt:

In its countersuit, the Quaker group contends that “for the Meeting to pay over to the IRS, in defiance of an employee’s Quaker beliefs, the amount of taxes which had been refused on grounds of religious conscience by that employee, would violate the most fundamental religious principles of the church.”

Samuel D. Caldwell, general secretary of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, said the military tax refusers are not tax evaders. “They would gladly pay their full share of taxes — and more — if they had assurances that it would go to peaceful purposes.”

A section on “Ethical Investing” in the March 1989 issue touched on divestment from government (source):

[T]reasury bonds [are] a very safe investment but one which “raises the issue whether one wants to invest in the current priorities of our government where so much money is spent on the military budget”…

IRAs are another way people can reduce their tax contributions to military spending. Earnings on an IRA are tax-deferred until retirement. In many cases IRAs are tax-deductible. It is also possible for employers to set up tax-deferred retirement plans…

The January 1990 issue introduced readers to tax resistance as a tactic of nonviolent resistance, summarizing the story of the tax resisting town of Beit Sahour in occupied Palestine (source).

A profile of Curtis Dubble (the recently-elected Annual Conference moderator) in the February 1990 issue included his recollection of the war bonds pressure during World War Ⅱ:

“For me there were a couple of struggles,” he says. “In the shoe factory they put pressure on me to buy war bonds. I couldn’t stand that pressure, so I bought a few.” But his conscience wouldn’t allow him to continue to support the war effort in that way, so he cashed them in. The teller at the Myerstown bank “looked at me like I was crazy,” he recalls.

Later, when asked to sew soles on military shoes, he refused.

A feature on married co-pastors in the January 1991 issue included this note about Louise and Phil Rieman (source):

[T]heir strong stance on war tax resistance [is] a challenge their congregation has had to wrestle with. “One of our biggest joys in this congregation,” says Phil, “is the support we’ve felt in asking the church to cooperate with us on this conviction. Perhaps because there are two of us, this has allowed them to be less hesitant, knowing that if one of us is arrested, the pulpit can still be filled.”

The June 1991 issue reported on a tax day protest (source):

Last-minute taxpayers in Iowa City, Iowa, rushing to mail their returns late at night on April 15, were met by demonstrators in front of the post office, protesting tax money being spent for military purposes.

Among the demonstrators was peace activist Marianne Michael, a member of the Panora (Iowa) Church of the Brethren. Said she to a newspaper reporter, “It’s obscene that the government spends so much on the military when there are so many things here at home that we need to work on. The US has a poor sense of values when our tax money is spent on things that destroy human life.”

Meanwhile, the Bible Monitor wasn’t budging. From the June 1989 issue (source):

…we do not believe a Christian is called to picket abortion clinics, refuse to pay “war taxes,” or take a part in the many popular anti-government demonstrations supported by both “fundamental” and “liberal” wings of christendom. In our opinion, such actions are a part of the fanatic fringe and not being faithful.