Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
United States →
Vietnam War, ~1965–75 →
Chuck Matthei
When Nixon got caught using the IRS to go after his political enemies, one of the consequences was that the agency — though on the cusp of victory in its battle to seize the home of war tax resister Ernest Bromley — surrendered and returned the home to its rightful owners.
Washington, D.C. (AP) —
A pacifist group’s scheduled protest rally at Internal Revenue Service headquarters turned into a victory celebration after the agency reversed its seizure of a home owned by members of the organization.
While about 40 members of the Peacemakers danced and sang outside, IRS Commissioner Donald Alexander received several of their leaders in his office to confirm the decision to drop all assessments against the 25-year-old group.
The action meant the return of the Cincinnati, Ohio, home of Peacemaker founder Ernest Bromley and several friends active in the organization.
Earlier this year, the IRS technically seized the house against a claim of $33,000 the group allegedly owed in back taxes for the years .
None of the occupants was forced to move out.
Talked With Bromley
A spokesman for Alexander said the IRS district office in Cincinnati decided to reverse its lien upon the property following an interview with Bromley.
As to why Alexander personally met with Peacemaker leaders, the aide would say only “he talks with various groups from time to time.”
Bromley did not attend [the protest/celebration, presumably —♇] because of illness, friends said.
The tax assessment against the Peacemakers had followed a probe in of that group and other anti-war organizations by the now-defunct Special Service unit of the IRS.
According to revelations which surfaced during the Watergate scandal, the unit developed an “enemies” list of about 11,000 individuals and groups with anti-war views.
Alexander has long acknowledged that activity as improper and has promised that the list would no longer be used in tax investigations.
Politically Tainted
In the meantime, the Peacemakers protested the levy on grounds that the case was politically tainted and, moreover, that ownership of the Cincinnati house was not tied directly to the organization and hence was not liable to seizure.
The case attracted considerable controversy in the Cincinnati area, including an 8-1 vote of the City Council to request a congressional investigation of the IRS action.
One Peacemakers spokesman, Chuck Matthei, said the group thanked Alexander for the reversal “despite the recalcitrance” but also told him of suspicions that Special Services files are still active in IRS regional offices.
Moreover, said Matthei, the group vowed to continue its advocacy of non-payment of federal taxes so long as any portion of them go to support the defense program.
Matthei said he and most of the other pacifists still active in the group deliberately live below the taxable income level to avoid criminal liability.
I’ve many times mentioned Ammon Hennacy’s tax resistance hereabouts, but have only less-frequently commented on his more-well-known Catholic Worker comrade Dorothy Day’s stance.
The site catholicworker.org now has a search engine with which I have been able to recover some of her writings on the subject, which I’ll excerpt here today.
“Render to Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.” Yes, and we have heard too much of that.
Let E.I. Watkin, founder of the Pax movement in England, author of The Catholic Center, Men and Tendencies, and The Bow in the Clouds, answer as he did in his pamphlet, “The Crime of Conscription.”
Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s. This is a favorite text with the hosts of Christian clerics, Protestant and Catholic, who both in the present and in the past, have abused and still abuse religion to enslave men’s consciences to the unjust bondages of a usurping state.
They omit to notice the context.
Our Lord has just asked for a coin, and having obtained the admission that it bear’s Caesar’s image and superscription, bids his questioners render to Caesar what is his.
This is obviously the coin payable in taxation which bears Caesar’s stamp.
The body and soul of man, however, do not bear Caesar’s image.
Whose image they do bear we are told in Holy Scripture.
It is the image of God.
Obviously, therefore, as we are to render to Caesar what bears his image, namely, money, we are to render to God, not to Caesar, what bears not Caesar’s stamp, but God’s; namely, human beings.
Thus the same text which justifies, indeed, imposes the obligation of paying taxes, denies any right of the state to take a toll of man.
All forced labor, for example, is implicitly declared unlawful.
And still more does the principle here enunciated forbid military conscription.
Whether a war be just or unjust, no government may without grave injustice compel me — bearing as I do the divine image which marks me as God’s bondman, but a freeman in respect to my fellows — to slay and be slain in its quarrel unless I freely consent.
If a government unlawfully outsteps its prerogative and imposes conscription, any one who, from whatever motive, refuses to serve, is whether he intend it or not, fighting for human dignity and freedom, as also is anyone who abets and supports his resistance.
But now in these days it would be desirable to go even further, as did Thoreau, to refuse even the taxes which were to be used to pay for the means to kill our fellow man.
In many cases, however, it is all but impossible to separate the tax from the cost of the commodity needed to maintain life.
We believe that social security legislation, now balled as a great victory for the poor and for the worker, is a great defeat for Christianity.
It is an acceptance of the Idea of force and compulsion.
[The people] pay taxes, and it is the city and the state and the federal government that is robbing them and pilfering them, too, They are taxed for every bite they eat, every shoddy rag they put on.
They are taxed on their jobs, there are deductions for this and that, there are the war bonds, eighteen dollars for a twenty-five dollar war bond, paid on the Installment plan.
And they are not only being taxed, but they are being seduced.
Their virtue is being drained from them.
They are made into war profiteers, they are forced into the position of usurers.
The whole nation, every man woman and child, is forced to become a profiteer — hideous word — in this war.
If you cry aloud for land and home and tools and the good natural life for the poor without which a good supernatural life is impossible, then you are either an escapist and an inhabitant of an ivory tower, or you are a Communist in disguise trying to do away with property.
And you are a communist also if you cry out for peace and against increased armaments — against the making of the hydrogen and atom bombs and the paying of federal taxes for the making of those bombs.
We know, who picketed before the tax offices up on 45th street, because we heard these jibes as we walked to and fro with our signs.
We will have more to write about taxes later.
We believe in paying our local taxes but not federal.
Maybe this is quibbling, but the benefits of hospitals, fire department, street cleaning and health department, etc. make us firm in our decision to always pay our local taxes though we will not pay income tax.
I can scarcely list all the people Ammon [Hennacy] introduced me to, all the friends he has made through his constant protest against war and taxes for war, and his distribution of the Catholic Worker.
But I can give a little glimpse of Ammon’s living quarters, in his little three room bungalow on Lin Orme’s place some five miles out of town [Phoenix, Arizona].
Ammon likes to call our Lord the Celestial Bulldozer to indicate that ones way is smoothed for one, the rough ways made plain and the crooked straight.
He arrived in Phoenix broke, he said, as he came further south out of the dairy region to the farming section of the country where he could work by the day and not by the month and so avoid the withholding tax.
He slept all night on an anarchist’s floor (one of the readers of the CW) and got up at daylight to go to the slave market, as the corner is named in every town in every state, Calif., Texas, Florida, New Mexico and Arizona, where immigrant workers are employed.
Some times there are as many as 200 trucks, sometimes only 25. They go as far as seventy miles away for the day’s work.
Mexican trucks take only Mexicans.
He got on the second truck, owned by the Arena brothers, a corporation which owns land in California, Colorado, and Arizona, and specializes in lettuce, melons, cabbage, celery.
This was , the year the withholding tax began.
At the end of his day’s work he asked if there was a shack on the place where he could sleep, and a fellow worker told him of one down the road and he took his sleeping bag and camped out there for the night.
He stayed there for some months and as it was on land rented by Mr. Orme to the company, he became acquainted with that old gentleman who later invited him to occupy the vacant shack on his own land.
There is one room and two porches, rather than three rooms, really, and before Ammon lived there, twelve Mexicans had camped out there.
I sat on the porch one afternoon with Ammon and drank strong black coffee, brewed on a little kitchen stove, stuffed with mesquite which burned fragrantly while we talked.
How does property fit in, people ask.
It was Eric Gill who said that property is proper to man.
And St. Thomas Aquinas said that a certain amount of goods is necessary to lead a good life.
The recent popes wrote at length about justice rather than charity, that should be sought for the worker.
Unions are still fighting for wages and hours, and it is a futile fight with the price of living going up steadily.
They are fighting for partial gains and every strike means sacrifice to make them, and still the situation in the long run is not bettered.
There may be talk of better standards of living, every worker with his car, and owning his own home, but still this comfort depends on a wage, a boss, on War.
Our whole modern economy is based on preparation for war and that is one of the great modern arguments for poverty.
If the comfort one has gained has resulted in the death of thousands in Korea and other parts of the world, then that comfort will be have to be atoned for. the argument now is that there is no civilian population, that all are involved in the war (misnamed defense) effort.
If you work in a textile mill making cloth, or in a factory making dungarees or blankets, it is still tied up with war.
If one raises food or irrigates to raise food, one may be feeding troops or liberating others to serve as troops.
If you ride a bus you are paying taxes.
Whatever you buy is taxed so you are supporting the state in the war which is “the health of the state.”
The argument may go this way, but we still can choose what seems to us the most honorable occupations, which have to do with human needs.
We can choose the kind of work most necessary to do, and if possible where there is no withholding tax for war.
Ammon Hennacy in working by the day, at hard farm labor, has not paid income tax for years.
One can so cut down one’s standard of living that no income tax is required; families with many children pay no income tax.
One can protest in many ways this contribution to the atom and hydrogen bomb.
If one owns property the government then can take a lien on it.
If one has money in the bank, the government can confiscate it.
So truly such protest as this calls for the most profound poverty and a voluntary doing without property.
How obey the laws of a state when they run counter to man’s conscience?
“Thou shalt not kill,” Divine law states.
“A new precept I give unto you that you love your brother as I have loved you.”
St. Peter disobeyed the law of men and stated that he had to obey God rather than man.
Wars today involve total destruction, obliteration bombing, killing of the innocent, the stockpiling of atom and hydrogen bombs.
When one is drafted for such war, when one registers for the draft for such a war, when one pays income tax, eighty per cent of which goes to support such war, or works where armaments are made, one is participating in this war.
We are all involved in war these days.
War means hatred and fear.
Love casts out fear.
St. Augustine in his City of God says that God never intended man to dominate his fellows.
He was to dominate the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, what crawled upon the earth, but men were not to dominate each other.
He preferred shepherds to kings.
It was man himself who insisted on having a worldly king though he was warned what would happen to him.
God allowed the prophets to anoint the kings and once men had accepted their kings they were supposed to show them respect, to obey the authority they had set up.
To obey, that is, in all that did not go against their conscience.
St. Peter was ordered by lawful authority not to preach in the name of Jesus, and he said he had to obey God rather than man, and he left prison to go out again to the market place and preach the Gospel.
Over and over again, men had to disobey lawful authority to follow the voice of their conscience.
This obedience to God and disobedience to the State has over and over again happened through history.
It is time again to cry out against our “leaders,” to question whether or not, since it is not for us to say that they are evil men, they are sane men.
It is all very well to say we must go to the source of all strength, to drink at the living fountain of Christ, but can we go from that fount of Love to a factory where nerve gas and incendiary bombs are manufactured?
When we have talked of a general strike it is of such work and of such evil that we are thinking; when we talk of non-payment of taxes it is of the money which is going to Indo-China in the form of these incendiary bombs and the planes to drop them that we are thinking.
It is not thus that we can love God and our brother; it is not in this way that we can love our enemy.
When it is said that we disturb people too much by the words pacifism and anarchism, I can only think that people need to be disturbed, that their consciences need to be aroused, that they do indeed need to look into their work, and study new techniques of love and poverty and suffering for each other.
Of course the remedies are drastic, but then too the evil is a terrible one and we are all involved, we are all guilty, and most certainly we are all going to suffer.
The fact that we have “the faith,” that we go to the sacraments, is not enough.
“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” with napalm, nerve gas, our hydrogen bomb…
Each one of us must make our decisions as to what he should do, each one must examine his conscience and beg God for strength.
Should one register for the draft?
Should one accept conscientious objector status in the army or out of it, taking advantage of the exceptions allowed, but accepting the fact of the draft?
Should one pay tax which supports this gigantic program?
I realize how difficult this is to decide.
If one is unmarried and strong physically, it is easier to make a decision to do only day labor or work without pay.
But there are many whose mental and physical strength is not equal to this decision and there is a withholding tax taken from even the smallest salary.
Sometimes one can only make a gesture of protest.
It is not for any one to judge his fellow man on how far he can go in resisting participation in preparation for war.
In the very works of mercy which we are performing, we at the Catholic Worker are being aided by those who earn what they do only because they pay income tax for war.
Oh yes, the editors of The Catholic Worker know only too well how far we too are involved in the city of this world.
Perhaps Bob Ludlow, who left us much against our will, felt that he was being more honest in permitting a withholding tax to be taken from his meager wage as hospital attendant that working for nothing for the Catholic Worker.
Who knows the heart of another?
The temptation is always there to go out on one’s own, to walk the lone path of a St. Francis rather than the community way of a St. Benedict.
[Ammon Hennacy] has had to abandon his life at hard labor and to replace that discipline of work he is fasting Fridays; during our recent retreat he fasted, and again in August for nine days he will picket and fast in reparation for Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the cruel weapons of destruction which we have made.
All men are responsible, but Ammon by not paying income tax, and by penance, is doing reparation.
And the other trouble?
It was Federal income taxes and investigations for Ammon Hennacy, Charlie McCormick, Carol Perry and me.
Charlie has had no income for all the years he is with The Catholic Worker, but the rest of us could acknowledge having earned money on which we did not pay taxes, and which we refuse to pay because eighty per cent of the money so gathered goes for wars past and present.
The others were treated with great courtesy, but one of the revenue agents made a coldly insulting remark to me based on my past, which was entirely uncalled for.
But perhaps he was only stupid so I acted as though I did not hear it.
I would like to urge upon the bishops the idea of the non-payment of taxes by Catholic parents for school taxes, when they are sending their children to Catholic schools and so are paying double for their education.
Yes, we must set ourselves with all the force we possess, against war, and the making of instruments of war, and our means are prayer and fasting, and the non-payment of federal income tax which goes for war.
The message of The Catholic Worker is that simple one for all the rank and file, for the masses, that we have free will, we can make our choice, that our personal responsibility which we exercise is what matters.
Ammon [Hennacy], in his non-payment of taxes for war, and his civil disobedience, is bringing that message to countless thousands of people.
When we got home from our little tour of the neighborhood and I had explored the view from the eleventh floor, Ammon came for supper and brought us up to date on his journeyings as well as on the news of our own workers in Chicago.
He had no sooner arrived in town on Saturday when he was called on to picket in front of the courthouse for Roseanna Robinson.
They are keeping up a vigil night and day, people joining for a stint of three hours at a time.
I certainly hope to join them sometime these next few days.
Roseanna is a young colored woman who had refused to pay any income tax 85 per cent of which goes for war, or to file any returns.
She had been given an indeterminate sentence and she is now for two weeks on hunger strike.
I suppose they will forcibly feed her.
The newspapers are paying little head to this, so it is necessary to have the picket line, and Karl Meyer has gotten out a leaflet which is signed by The Catholic Worker, 164 West Oak street and the War Resisters League which takes in all those who are not Catholic who wish to participate but might hesitate if it were only under Catholic leadership.
There is much to be done in these small Indian schools throughout the country [the United States South-West], and a peace army could be at work there right now, without waiting to be drafted.
There would be no pay besides a living, and so no bother about income tax, and so no contributing to war in this way.
I could not help but think of Don Milani’s statement in his defense against the charges made against him of advocating resistance to conscription for war.
He said that even those who cooked for troops contributed to war.
How involved we all are, what with the hidden taxes we pay for war, the high standard of living all of us enjoy, even when we refuse to pay income tax, so much of which goes for war, and when we build prisons for draft refusers.
Every summer for a Peacemakers training program has been held at our Tivoli farm for the last two or three weeks of August.
The old mansion and the Peter Maurin house are filled with guests, and campers come and set up their tents on the lawn facing the river.
The organizer of the Peacemakers’ school is Wally Nelson, who has been in the workhouse in Cincinnati for the past two weeks, fasting.
He and several others were arrested during a vigil for DeCourcy Squire, an 18 yr. old Antioch student who had been hospitalized after fasting since her arrest and subsequent sentence of 9 mo. for participating in a peace demonstration.
(DeCourcy has since been released.)
A psychiatric examination was ordered for Wally when he refused to co-operate with his arrest and trial.
Found by court psychiatrists to be “sane,” he was sentenced for “loitering” to ten days in the workhouse, $25 and costs.
Again refusing to co-operate with legalized injustice, he was dragged from the police van by his legs, an action that caused his wife Juanita to follow him, cradling his head in her hands.
When they arrived at Wally’s cell, Nita bent over to kiss him, was arrested for “disorderly conduct” and fined $25 and costs.
This she refused to pay, and was ordered to the workhouse.
Detailed stories of these arrests are given in the February 10th issue of the Peacemaker, (10208 Sylvan Avenue, (Gano) Cincinnati, Ohio 45241).
I hope that many of our readers will subscribe to the Peacemaker, since news of the conscientious objectors who are in prison and much other war-resistance news can be obtained there.
Peacemakers have led in direct action for many years.
Wally and Juanita have both refused to pay income tax for many years, and it is of them particularly I wish to write, with the most heartfelt sympathy for their suffering and the greatest admiration for their dedication.
It is their vocation to realize and to lead others to realize the horror of the times through which we are passing.
Wally has explained that his fasting during the jail sentences he has undergone was the result not of willful refusal but of a total inability to swallow food while imprisoned.
Simone Weil, the French woman whose brilliant writings on man and the state, work and war, were widely published after her death, suffered during the second world war in the same way.
She was literally unable to swallow enough food to keep her alive, in the face of world starvation.
In the stories of the saints, one reads of such sensitivity, such penances undergone, such fastings endured and they are little understood by the secular world.
I am convinced that this vocation, this calling, to give oneself to one’s brother, in loving communion, in loving understanding of the heinous crimes that are being committed today was at the root of Roger La Porte’s immolation in front of the United Nations .
It is as though such men said, “We will suffer with you, since we have no way of stopping the bombing, the burning, the napalm, the defoliation, the destruction of homes and an entire countryside.
There is no act of ours extreme enough, no protest strong enough, to deal with this horror.”
Wally Nelson was in prison for thirty-three months during World War Two and fasted for a hundred and eight days (with forced feeding by tube) as a protest against racial segregation of prisoners.
He had had time to think out his position while in Civilian Public Service camp, as forced labor camps which were set up for conscientious objectors were called.
These very camps were a concession to pacifists, who had been imprisoned and brutally treated during World War One.
But Wally decided to walk out and did so and was arrested and jailed.
His example and that of other absolutists led to further concessions.
In this present undeclared war in Vietnam, to which ten thousand more men were shipped off yesterday, the conscientious objector position is recognized, and paid employment is offered in home hospitals as “alternative service.”
To accept this is still to submit to the draft, hence the continued protests against war, and the drafting of youth to wage this hideous struggle.
[To Hennacy,] Obedience, of course, was a bad word.
Authority was a bad word.
In vain I pointed out to him that when the retired army major for whom he worked in Arizona told him to do a particular job, he did it, and he did it as he was told to.
He admired the army officer because he knew farming.
And he cooperated with Ammon in paying him by the day and thus evading the federal income tax which the tax man was trying to collect from Ammon.
I visited Art Harvey of South Ackworth, New Hampshire who has a mail order book shop handling a great number of books by and about Gandhi.
Art and Ammon Hennacy served six month terms in Sandstone Prison in Minnesota for trespassing on a missile base some years ago.
He carries on a practical application of Karl Meyer’s tax refusal (see article in this issue) by having teams of workers in orchards where they prune trees, harvest apples and later blueberries and work seven months of the year.
They work and live in a style which frees them from the payment of taxes for war.
Perhaps about a hundred are engaged in this way of life, which results usually in some settling in communities of the moshavim variety, each having some small acreage and a house built by themselves.
Considering the New England climate, no small achievement!
It certainly means an emphasis on the ascetic, on sacrifice.
The other young man who visited Russia was Karl Meyer, who at present is serving his sentence of a two-year term (and thousand dollar fine) at Sandstone Federal Prison, for obstructing the income tax system by refusal to pay taxes for war.
He had made the San Francisco-to-Moscow walk some years before, joining the march at Chicago.
The walk ended at Moscow University, where the students, though not agreeing with the American visitors, demanded that the time of their talks be extended.
He also distributed leaflets in Red Square!
The Catholic Worker has received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service stating that we owe them $296,359 in fines, penalties, and unpaid income tax for .
As the matter stands right now, there might be a legal battle with delays and postponements which may remind us of Dickens’ Bleak House.
Or, since we will not set up a defense committee to campaign for funds, it may terminate swiftly in the confiscation of our property and our bank account (never very large).
Our farm at Tivoli and the First Street house could be put up for sale by government agents and our C.W. family evicted.
One of the most costly protests against war, in terms of long-enduring personal sacrifice, is to refuse to pay federal income taxes which go for war.
The late Ammon Hennacy, one of our editors, was a prime example of this.
He earned his living at agricultural labor, always living on a poverty level so as not to be subject to taxes, though he filed returns.
Another of our editors, Karl Meyer, recently spent ten months in jail for what the I.R.S. called fraudulent claims of exemption for dependents.
He ran the C.W. House of Hospitality in Chicago for many years, working to earn the money to support the house and his wife and children.
Erosanna Robinson, a social worker in Chicago, refused to file returns and was sentenced to a year in prison.
While in prison she fasted and was forcibly fed.
It will be seen that tax refusal is a serious protest.
Wars will cease when we refuse to pay for them (to adapt a slogan of the War Resisters International).
The C.W. has never paid salaries.
Everyone gets board, room, and clothes (tuition, recreation included, as the C.W. is in a way a school of living).
So we do not need to pay federal income taxes.
Of course, there are hidden taxes we all pay.
Nothing is ever clear-cut or well defined.
We protest in any way we can, according to our responsibilities and temperaments.
(I remember Ammon, a most consistent, brave, and responsible person, saying to one young man, “For the love of the Lord, get a job and quit worrying about taxes.
You need to learn how to earn your own living.
That is most important for you.”)
We have to accept with humility the fact that we cannot share the destitution of those around us, and that our protests are incomplete.
Perhaps the most complete protest is to be in jail, to accept jail, never to give bail or defend ourselves.
In the fifties, Ammon, Charles McCormack (our business manager at the C.W.), and I were summoned to the offices of the I.R.S. in New York to answer questions (under oath) as to our finances.
I remember I was asked what happened to the royalties from my books, money from speaking engagements, etc. I could only report that such monies received were deposited in the C.W. account.
As for clothes, we wore what came in; my sister was generous to me — shoes, for instance.
Our refusal to apply for exemption status in our practice of the Works of Mercy is part of our protest against war and the present social “order” which brings on wars today.
In the issue of The Catholic Worker I wrote of the crisis The Catholic Worker found itself in when we received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service stating that we owe them $296,359 in fines and penalties and unpaid income tax for .
This was a very impressive bill, and we wondered what it would be if they started figuring out what they thought we owed them !
The New York Times, in a story signed by Max Seigel, with a four column head and a picture of a few of us at lunch in our headquarters at 36 East First Street, brought our situation to the attention of a vaster group of readers, and followed up the story with an editorial [“Imagination, Please” — excerpt: “Surely the IRS must have genuine frauds to investigate.
Surely there must be some worthwhile work this agency could be doing instead of obstructing acts of corporal mercy for the poor.”].
The New York evening Post also editorialized on our situation.
The National Catholic Reporter and the Commonweal editors also registered their protest and other papers followed suit.
Letters come in daily from our friends, reassuring, comforting, indignant at the government, a few of them indignant at us, that we cause them so much worry.
We certainly are grateful and must apologize that we cannot keep up with the mail and get them all answered.
There is not any real news for them at the moment, nor will be until our edition of The Catholic Worker.
I will have to appear before a Federal Judge on to explain why the CW refuses to pay taxes, or to “structure itself” so as to be exempt from taxes.
We are afraid of that word “structure.”
We refuse to become a “corporation.”
We repeat — we do not intend to “incorporate” the Catholic Worker movement.
We intend to continue our emphasis on personal responsibility, an emphasis which we were taught from the beginning by Peter Maurin who used to quote Emmanuel Mounier’s Personalist Manifesto, and his Personal and Communitarian Revolution, Peter was our teacher, and being a Frenchman, a peasant, he emphasized decentralization, manual labor, voluntary poverty.
Voluntary poverty meant that everyone at the CW worked without salary, and contributions came from them, and from our readers, which kept the work going.
Rumblings first came from the Internal Revenue service after many on the CW staff, together with other peace groups, demonstrated against war in the Fifties and Sixties and were jailed for Civil Disobedience.
Writing about jails and courtrooms resulted in much publicity.
But it was Ammon Hennacy and Karl Meyer who wrote most consistently on Tax Refusal, and its importance.
“Wars will cease when men refuse to pay for them.”
…And while you are at it, write to TAX Talk, published by War Tax Resistance, 339 Lafayette St., N.Y., N.Y. 10012 which contains letters from all over the country from individual tax resisters, telling what is happening to them.
Stimulating and invigorating.
Good make up and good format.
First Rate.
While I write, Arthur J. Lacey comes in to hand me my mail and it contains a notice from one of our two lawyers.
“Please be advised that I have been contacted by the Conference Section of the Internal Revenue Service and we have arranged for the hearing on .”
Good news first!
On we received absolution from the U.S. Government in relation to all our tax troubles.
In the Catholic Worker this year we told of the notice we had received — that we owed the government nearly $300,000 in back income taxes which included penalties for “late filing and negligence.”
The examining officer of the Manhattan District had arrived at these figures through the reports we had obediently made to Albany on our appeals for funds, which we send out once or twice a year.
We accept this compromise with our local state because we are decentralists, personalists, anarchists (in addition to being pacifists).
When we first thought about Federal income taxes, most of which go for war or “defense,” we simplistically considered ourselves exempt because we had no income; no salaries are paid at the Catholic Worker, nor ever have been .
I myself have been questioned because of my writings, and lecture fees which were not really fees but offerings made to the work which covered all expenses of travelling and supported the work besides.
A crowd of people living together as we do, in houses of hospitality, has to give something of an account to each other as to how well we are living up to our profession of voluntary poverty.
We are always bound to have healthy guilt feelings about that, and keep trying to do better.
Certainly a number of us do work on the side to provide what we need for books or rent on cheap apartments in the neighborhood, since our house at 36 East First Street is always so crowded.
But with the growing tax resistance throughout the United States, the government has become concerned.
Telephone calls and official visits made us realize that trouble was impending.
And we have been having it and have reported on it in both the and issues of our paper.
Now we are happy to report the outcome.
In a conference in with William T. Hunter, litigation attorney from the Department of Justice, one of the Assistant Attorney Generals of the United States, we reached a verbal settlement couched in more human and satisfactory terms than the notice we later received.
“They” were willing to recognize our undoubtedly religious convictions in our conflict with the state, and were going to drop any proceedings against us.
They had examined and looked into back issues of the Catholic Worker, and they had noted the support we had from the press (the New York Times news story and the editorials of the Times and the New York Post), and had come to this conclusion that ours was a religious conviction.
They had come to the conclusion also that it was not necessary that the Federal Government seek for any other kind of a “conviction” against us.
The conference took place in a law office in Manhattan, 9:30 of a Monday morning.
John Coster, our lawyer, Mr. Hunter and Ed Forand, Walter Kerell, Patrick Jordan, Ruth Collins and I attended.
There were no hostilities expressed.
As peacemakers we must have love and respect for each individual we come in contact with.
Our struggle is with principalities and powers, not with Church or State.
We cannot ever be too complacent about our own uncompromising positions because we know that in our own way we too make compromises.
(For instance, in having a second-class mailing privilege from the government we accept a subsidy, just as Mr. Eastland does in Mississippi!
[This refers to Senator James Eastland, who was a beneficiary of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in federal cotton subsidies, overseen by a Senate committee he sat on.])
It was Jesus who said that the worst enemies were those of our own household, and we are all part of this country, citizens of the United States and share in its guilt.
Yes, we would survive, I thought to myself, even if the paper were eventually suppressed and we had to turn to leafleting, as we are doing now each Monday against the I.B.M. Wall-Street offices, trying to reach the consciences of all those participating by their daily work in the hideous and cowardly war we are waging in Vietnam.
I must not forget the beautiful young ghinkgo tree which we purchased from the city last year, and which we planted in honor of Carmen Mathews, herself a great lover of the countryside (and of drama).
She rescued us from a foreclosure when a first mortgage fell due and so has become part of this house on First Street, and of the bits of greenery back and front of it.
The fact that prisoners on Riker’s Island so I have been told, grow these trees which brighten our streets makes that tree especially dear to me.
When I pass it, I make the sign of the cross on its bark, to encourage it to grow fast and strong.
Maybe we can plant another this year in gratitude to God for saving us from the hands of the tax gatherers.
Fr. McNabb, the French Dominican, said that when Jesus left his apostles, “Peter could go back to his nets, but Matthew could not go back to his tax gatherings.”
Letter from the Internal Revenue Service:
From: District Director, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, PO Box 3100, Church St. Station, New York, N.Y., 10008
To: The Catholic Worker Movement, 36 East 1st Street, New York, N.Y. 10003
Gentlemen:
After examining your financial records and reviewing your activities for the above years, we find that you are not required to file annual returns for the years shown, and no further action is necessary regarding the proposals in our letter of .
…of our own conflict with the IRS.
We live in what we can only regard as a temporary truce.
We have not applied for or received tax exemption.
The letter we received (and published) from the N.Y. State Offices of the IRS stated:
After examining your financial records and reviewing your activities for the above years (), we find that you are not required to file annual returns for the years shown, and no further action is necessary regarding the proposals in our letter of .
Thank you for your cooperation.
Sincerely yours, District Director Internal Revenue Service
The Washington official representative who met with us conveyed to us the respect they held for our religious principles and assured us that the presented bill for almost $300,000 could be ignored.
The matter would be dropped, it was indicated (but, “for the present” was the qualifying clause in my own mind).
Mr. Nixon’s first statement that he would attack the problem of “permissiveness” was a warning note.
The jailing of newspaper reporters, the Ellsberg trial — in fact, any criticisms of government policies or actions was going to meet with repressive measures.
The tax refusal movement all over the country grows.
The conflict between State and people is coming out into the open here in the United States.
The Totalitarian State is not just Germany (Hitler), Italy (Mussolini) and the USSR (Stalin), but is here and now with the “all encroaching State” as our Catholic bishops once called it, involving China and ourselves, as well as Russia.
We assure our readers that we try to get rid of our gifts as fast as they are given to us.
But the threat still hangs over us of prosecution for not paying income tax.
We are not tax-exempt.
On principle we refuse to pay income tax, because so great a portion goes for wars, preparation for wars (defense, it is termed), and providing other countries with billion of dollars to buy our instruments of war and material and plants to make their own.
There is a sizable movement truly the foundation of the peace movement which is based on tax refusal.
(Contact Robert Calvert, War Tax Resistance, 912 E. 31st St., Kansas City, Mo. 64109.)
Our refusal goes deep.
Our motivation is fundamentally religious.
We are told by Jesus Christ to practice the works of mercy, not the works of war.
And we do not see why it is necessary to ask the government for permission to practice the works of mercy which are the opposite of the works of war.
To ask that permission to obey Christ by applying for exemption, a costly and lengthy process, is against our religious principles.
It is an interference of the state which we must call attention to again and again.
A father who educates a young man or woman other than a blood relative is taxed for his generosity.
A poor family who takes in another poor family (as many of them do in time of unemployment or crisis), cannot count that as tax deductible.
Of course the poor suffer from the withholding tax which is taken from their weekly pay.
To understand their rights, they must plough through booklets and forms put out by the government (which I am sure I could not manage to do) before they are able to collect money at the end of the year which is owing to them due to some change of circumstance.
To get the advice of the Internal Revenue Department means standing in lines, paying excessive fares by bus or subway, with generally little redress of their grievances.
(A cheering note for us, with our very large family, which seems to increase day after day, is that when confronted by the government forces not long ago, Washington representatives from the Department of Justice were willing to concede that we were not making profits out of the poor, that we were motivated by religious principles, and that they would so notify the New York offices of the Internal Revenue Dept. which had handed us a awful bill for taxes due, along with penalties and fines, over a space of four or five years.
The New York office then sent us a brief notice concluding that our income did not obligate us to file returns.)
To talk economics to the rich and Jesus to the anarchists gathered in convention [a conference at New York’s Hunter College] these two days (and have to write this column) is a job.
Besides, I did not “talk Jesus” to the anarchists.
There was no time to answer the one great disagreement which was in their minds — how can you reconcile your Faith in the monolithic, authoritarian Church which seems so far from Jesus who “had no place to lay his head,” and who said “sell what you have and give to the poor,” — with your anarchism?
Because I have been behind bars in police stations, houses of detention, jails and prison farms, whatsoever they are called, eleven times, and have refused to pay Federal income taxes and have never voted, they accept me as an anarchist.
And I in turn, can see Christ in them even though they deny Him, because they are giving themselves to working for a better social order for the wretched of the earth.
Proceeded to the Kansas City, Mo. House of Hospitality and War Tax Resistors’ Center in adjoining buildings and run by Bob and Angela Calvert who are gardening every inch of the land in their front and back yards.
It is much to the edification of the city block families and we hope their imitation.
Spent a Sunday afternoon with Karl Meyer and Jean and their three beautiful children, and all happy in the life of voluntary poverty where he receives an income low enough to be untaxable and so will not anticipate any more jail terms. His work is with the retarded in sheltered workshops.
Some of the best all around accounts of this ferment which is going on, among the young especially, is in The Peacemaker, 1255 Paddock Hills Ave., Cincinnati, Ohio 45229. This small packed newspaper deals extensively and specifically in works for peace, listing all those imprisoned for conscience — refusing conscription; one valiant woman is confined on Terminal Island for refusal to pay taxes (Martha Tranquilli, Terminal Island, San Pedro, Ca. 90731).
All those activities which we Catholics call “works of mercy,” are also performed by many Protestant, Quaker, and other groups in the country.
I remember a young woman who came to help us years ago, who, after her first, early enthusiasm had worn away, used to sigh wearily and say — “What’s it all about?”
I am sure many of our friends and readers also pose, more seriously, the same question.
For instance, what are Ernest and Marion Bromley all about?
Why is this frail, elderly man in jail right now for “disorderly conduct,” that is, for distributing leaflets about the nefarious workings of the Internal Revenue Service and their ways of penalizing people for advocating tax refusal.
Remember, it is the Federal taxes paid by each of us that supply arms that are keeping wars going, I cannot go into the important discussion of Tax Refusal now.
(Subscribe for The Peacemaker, 1225 Paddock Hills Ave., Cincinnati, Ohio 45229 or write to War Tax Resistance, 339 Lafayette St., New York, N.Y. 10012.)
What I want to bring out is how a pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions.
And each one of our thoughts, words and deeds are like that.
Going to jail, as Ernest Bromley has done, short though his stay may be, causes a ripple of conscience among us all.
And of remembrance too.
Did they search him and list every item contained in every pocket?
Did they strip him and search every nook and cranny of his body, as they did the young women arrested during the protests against air raids drills (psychological warfare) in the 50’s?
As they are doing now to Martin Sostre in Dannemora prison even after every visit from friends or lawyers.
What sadistic impulse is it that causes guards to continue these searches?
Ernest Bromley is sharing, in his (we hope) brief jail encounter, the sufferings of the world.
And we hope, like the apostles, he rejoices in having been accounted “worthy to suffer.”
The Peacemaker, every issue, has a list of those imprisoned for conscientious objection to war.
I was happy to see that Martha Tranquilli was due for release .
The Peacemakers discussed, among other subjects like voluntary poverty, life styles, etc., the kind of demonstrations to show our determination not to pay income tax which goes for building up monstrous implements of war.
Wally Nelson and his wife Juanita were there, both of whom are familiar with arrests and jailings.
I got acquainted with them years ago when Koinonia, in Central Georgia, was literally under fire from the small-towners all around them.
Next issue, I will try to write more about federal income tax which is providing the weapons for war — why we pay local taxes and not the federal income tax.
We recognize the seriousness of this and the risks involved for families.
The Bromley case is an example.
Their house was sold from under them in Cincinnati but they have not yet been evicted.
The price paid was excessively above its value.
It looks like the government is trying to make an example of them.
(It was not bought by friends and given back to them — an erroneous rumor; the Bromleys would not have put up with a connived sale which would mean still more money going to the government for war.)
This is a good and historic case, involving as it does, simple, plain and powerless (?) people.
I’d like to call special attention to a story in this issue of the paper — it is Peggy Scherer’s story, on the front page, of the Peacemaker victory [the IRS surrendered in their attempt to seize and sell Ernest and Marion Bromley’s home].
(It is the completed story of the news box which appeared on page three of the last issue.)
It is a story of gentle persistence, the power of Truth — faith in Truth (remembering that Christ is our Truth).
He is the Way, the Truth, the Life.
Chuck Matthei had told me the story of his interviews with the head of the Internal Revenue Service, the almost daily dialogue that went on between them, and the frank and “manly” admission, made finally by the IRS chief, that a mistake had been made, that the Peacemakers had Truth on their side.
I felt a great sense of joy and thanksgiving, a sense of hope too, that our officials in Washington D.C. could be approached in this way — with dignity and perseverance, with courtesy, with the recognition that we are all, each one of us, whether government official or radical (one who gets to the roots of things), children of God.
We do believe that we are all brothers and sisters.
We believe, too, that we can only show our love for God by our love for our brothers and sisters.
So we share our joy with you, our readers, and hope we all have a sense of renewed strength and energy to continue our opposition to all violence, to all wars.
We point out that one way not to have to pay income tax, so much of which goes to the military, into stockpiling, into sales of weapons to other countries, is to seek more ways of living a life of voluntary poverty, to follow our Lord Jesus and his loveable servant St. Francis.
[Speaking of Pentecostal Christian groups on the Mexican border:] I could tell of other works these groups have done, but there is no space here.
I only wish that the cause of peace, the rejection of war and service in the armed forces, and refusal to pay income tax could be part of their way of life.
Jesus told us to love our enemies and St. Francis’ followers made a rejection of feudal service to the war lords of the time part of their religious commitment.
In the Catholic Worker organization itself was targeted by the IRS for failure to pay income tax.
Eventually the IRS backed down in the face of public ridicule and Catholic Worker resistance.
Some of the Catholic Worker articles about this were written by Dorothy Day and I’ve already excerpted them in an earlier Picket Line post focusing on her writings.
The issue published a couple of reader reactions to the kerfluffle:
Dear Dorothy,
Ho, you are on the right track.
I just read your tax exemption article in the issue.
You are absolutely correct.
I don’t know how you will do it.
But you owe to all those you help, not the money represented, but the faith and steadfast purpose for which you stand — the guiding light.
I pray for you.
I hope some way you can make it — somehow.
Love, Dick Mayer 409 West 11th St. Newton, Kansas 67114
Dear Friends at CW,
I just read the 39th Anniversary issue and am tremendously excited by the article: “If the Present Is Different…”
We are in a bit of a “predicament,” between seizure of our car and auction by the IRS.
The IRS has adjourned the open auction and declared an auction for sealed bids; peace people around here are ready to rise to that challenge also.
We are starting a peace action center in this area.
We’d be interested in literature lists of books and pamphlets written by CW people.
We read that the CW has to appear in court to justify its tax refusal and its refusal to ask for exemption — as if mercy had to ask permission!
We are in a three-family intentional communlty of Mennonite background.
War tax resistance is one of our pillars and we’ve not yet found our way out of tbe maze of incorporation into some status that gives us the kind of freedom we seek.
But our existence together, our resistance and service, are dally victories.
So we keep on.
Peace and Joy be with you, David Jansen of the Bridge
It may sound like a long shot, but have you considered trying to make friends with the tax collector?
It’s a strategy that’s so crazy it just might work!
Here are some examples of where tax resisters or their allies have tried it:
The Peacemakers were eventually successful in winning back war tax resisters Ernest and Marion Bromley’s home, which had been seized for back taxes.
In a retrospective, they claimed:
The Peacemakers were resolute that their confrontation with the government would be on their terms. Believing that the legal system is an instrument of oppression and exists to protect the state and the property of the powerful, they refused to take their case into the courts.
Instead they worked to make the truth known through personal meetings with IRS officials, through continuous leafletting, through appealing to their supporters country-wide to demand justice.… They put enormous energy into building relationships with IRS officials that would allow for honest dialogue.
And always, they challenged and responded to the bureaucracy in a highly personal manner.
Initially it appeared that IRS’ reversal had been an act of faith in the Peacemakers; that it had been touched by the group’s philosophy of truth and their consistent methods.
It wasn’t that complete a victory.
The Commissioner had been sufficiently impressed by these people to where he called for a special investigation — which verified the Peacemakers’ statement.
Dorothy Day wrote of this:
Chuck Matthei had told me the story of his interviews with the head of the Internal Revenue Service, the almost daily dialogue that went on between them, and the frank and “manly” admission, made finally by the IRS chief, that a mistake had been made, that the Peacemakers had Truth on their side.
I felt a great sense of joy and thanksgiving, a sense of hope too, that our officials in Washington D.C. could be approached in this way — with dignity and perseverance, with courtesy, with the recognition that we are all, each one of us, whether government official or radical (one who gets to the roots of things), children of God.
We do believe that we are all brothers and sisters.
We believe, too, that we can only show our love for God by our love for our brothers and sisters.
So we share our joy with you, our readers, and hope we all have a sense of renewed strength and energy to continue our opposition to all violence, to all wars.
Ernest and Marion Bromley pose in front of their home.
Quaker Thomas Watson was seized by the American army during the revolution, and condemned “to be stripped and ironed, and on the next afternoon to be publicly hanged” for refusing to take the continental currency that Congress was using to finance the war, his family was given little hope for him.
“You may go home,” one petitioner was told, “and rest assured your uncle will be hanged.”
But the wife of the prisoner had a warm friend in the landlady of the inn at Newtown; and when was woman’s kindness ever invoked for the relief of suffering, or woman’s tact required in vain?
She was advised not to apply in person for the release of her husband.
The landlady had learned Lord Sterling’s fondness for the creaturely comforts of life; and knew that wine had the effect to soften the severity of his temper.
To take advantage of this disposition, she invited him to a sumptuous dinner.
He did full justice to the delicacies of the table, and willingly partook of the generous old wine, which had been reserved for special occasions.
As the wine warmed the General’s good-nature and disposed him to kindlier feelings, she cautiously introduced the case of the condemned; pitied his condition, cold, and in irons; regarded his treatment as needlessly severe; and at length requested that his fetters might be removed and his clothes restored to him.
He could not resist this appeal of his hostess; and a note was sent to the guard in answer to her request.
The good woman continued her entreaties, and still plied the wine; when, at the proper moment, the wife was introduced.
She fell on her knees before him, burst into a flood of tears, and told him who she was, and, with all the earnestness, feeling, and eloquence of a loving wife pleading for the one she loved best on earth, begged him to spare her husband’s life.
Her entreaties were of a nature hard to be withstood.
He remained some time silent; then, raising her to her feet, he said, “Madam, you have conquered.
I must relent at the tears and supplications of so noble and so good a woman as you.
Your husband is saved.”
He immediately wrote a pardon for the prisoner, and ordered his discharge.
The happy pair now returned to their homes rejoicing.
Such friendly meetings do not always end well.
Quaker Henry Paxson found this out when he was visited by the tax collector some 300 years ago:
Paxson kindly treats [the tax collector] with best he had, and when he had filled his wem, and drank plentifully of good cider, he distrains the plates he had eaten on, and the tankard he so freely toped out of, but the wife begged the tankard, and bid him take something in lieu of it.
In , a delegation of Quakers met with the sheriff, his sub-lieutenants, a judge, magistrates, and a tax collector in their area of Pennsylvania.
They reported:
[We] had opportunity of laying before them the reasons and grounds of our refusal to comply with several requisitions, made for the support of, or that have near connection with, war; and to open our principles, and the consistency thereof with the doctrines of the Gospel, as set forth in the New Testament and pointed out by the prophets, and the inconsistency of Christians oppressing one another for conscience sake.
They generally appeared friendly, and to receive our visit kindly, some of them particularly so; and most of them acknowledged that the prophecies concerning the disuse of carnal weapons, pointed to the Gospel dispensation, and was much to be desired.
We had good satisfaction in the performance of this service, believing truth owned it, and that there is encouragement for Friends to use further endeavors of this kind.
The Rebecca Rioters could be cruel, or even deadly, to the keepers of the toll gates they were destroying.
More frequently, they would allow the keepers a few moments to collect their personal belongings and remove them from the building before they demolished it.
And on some occasions, the encounters were almost cordial:
The gate-keeper begged of them not to destroy the furniture, as it was his own; and his wife and child were in bed, but they might do as they liked with the gate and toll-house.
Rebecca went to the door, and ordered her [Rebecca’s] daughters not to touch anything but the gate and the roof of the toll-house, and not to break the ceiling for fear the rain would harm the woman and child in bed.
In their hurry, however, to unroof the house, one of them slipped between the rafters, and his foot got through the ceiling.
Rebecca expressed her sorrow at the accident, as it might cause inconvenience to the gate-keeper.
They behaved remarkably well to the gate-keeper, and frequently desired him and his wife not to be alarmed, as they would not injure them in the least; but at parting Rebecca desired him not to exact tolls at that gate any more.
There was no more persistent foe of the IRS than Vivien Kellems, but:
Miss Kellems stresses that she holds no animosity toward the officials who enforce the tax laws.
When IRS Commissioner Johnnie M. Walker took office earlier she sent him a note outlining their differences but congratulating him on his appointment.
“He sent back a nice thank you note,” she said.
During the tax resistance campaign for women’s suffrage in Britain, good relationships between the resisters and the auctioneers who were enlisted to sell off their goods for taxes allowed them to better use these auctions as rally and propaganda opportunities.
On one occasion:
…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.
When Kate Raleigh’s property was seized by the tax collector:
Miss Raleigh naturally made use of the occasion for propaganda purposes, conversing with the tax collector for some time on the subject of Woman Suffrage, and presenting him with Suffrage literature, which he accepted.
Before taking his leave he expressed himself as, on the whole, in favour of women’s claims to enfranchisement.
The movement against Thatcher’s Poll Tax initially tried to reach out to the councils who were responsible for setting the budgets that implemented the tax, and to the labor union representing the tax collectors who would be enforcing it, to ask them not to cooperate.
However, this met with very little success.
War tax resister Robin Harper met with a tax auditor and a “frivolous tax coordinator” at an IRS office in .
He described how it went:
I quickly assured them that an accurate accounting should of course be established, but that in no way could I alter my refusal to deliver my tax dollars into the U.S. military machine.
Earlier I had described how my Conscientious Objection was rooted in our Quaker Peace Testimony and how I had performed two years of civilian alternative service with a self-help housing project during the Korean War.
With his defensive posture evaporating, Mr. Means [the “frivolous tax coordinator”] told us that his father fought in the Korean War and came home tormented by post traumatic stress disorder.
Thereafter he would have nothing more to do with guns, “because he had seen what guns can do.”
That gave my supporter, who had lived through World War Two in Germany, an opening.
Drawing a parallel with my war tax refusal, she pointed out how German income taxes funded the governmental atrocities of the Third Reich.
…
At one point, when I was describing how the International Center has been installing solar water purification units in Central American villages, Mr. Means broadened our discussion, noting that the scarcity of safe water is becoming a global problem.
In my followup letter to our interview, I sent him a copy of an eye-opening article from the Resist newsletter discussing this issue in depth.
Near the end I took the opportunity to unfurl the large chart which chronicles my war tax redirection these past forty-one years and to describe how I was first propelled into war tax protest by U.S. nuclear atmospheric bomb testing in Nevada and the Pacific.
After more than three hours (and well past normal lunchtime), the two finally closed the interview with smiles and friendly handshakes.
Mr. Means even admitted that his title of “Frivolous Tax Coordinator” was really a substitute for “Tax Protester Coordinator,” an internal administrative category which Congress had abolished in recent Taxpayer Bill of Rights legislation.
Despite their training to be suspicious (all taxpayers are trying to get away with something), IRS folk, like all human beings, can be positively affected by openness, honesty and sincerity.
Transparency can often trump suspicion.
I have learned how we all hunger for caring, person-to-person exchanges.
Look how a one hour audit stretched into more than three hours, much of which involved genuine sharing far beyond the scope of the audit!
As our discussion rose above tax details, Mr. Means, the tax protester “sheriff,” was led to cast aside some of his official person and let his personal feelings and thoughts come through.
He also became increasingly interested in discerning what makes war tax refusers tick.
I am sure he came to understand that our witness is anything but “frivolous.”
Today, some excerpts from The Catholic News Archive concerning tax resistance in .
First, from the Catholic Worker:
“Peacemaker” Refuses Taxes
By Ernest Bromley et al.
The federal government’s Internal Revenue Service on began proceedings against Gano Peacemakers, Inc. and against Ernest and Marion Bromley for taxes and penalties amounting to over $30,000, for .
The address for both is 10206 Sylvan Ave., Cincinnati, Ohio.
The locality is on the map as Gano.
As many people are aware, Gano Peacemakers, Inc. is a nonprofit corporation established by the Bromleys and others soon after they went to Gano as a community in .
It has held property, but has never operated a program, had any income from work or contributions, or had a treasury.
In , the mailing address of the Movement of Peacemakers, together with its organ, The Peacemaker, was brought to Gano, as Ernest Bromley had accepted responsibility for circulation and editing.
The Peacemaker files were brought from Yellow Springs, the financial records were brought from the former business address in Cleveland, and the sharing fund from Oberlin.
As is well known by all volunteers who have kept the records and everyone close to the Peacemaker Movement, The Peacemaker finances have continued entirely apart from the finances of the people at the house in Gano.
False Information
IRS arrived at this figure through the assertion that the Peacemaker Movement and its organ, The Peacemaker, housed at that address, are synonymous with Gano Peacemakers, Inc., which holds title to the house where the Bromleys live.
The erroneous claim, expressed in notations and figures on numerous IRS forms, is that the finances of the Peacemaker Movement are one and the same as the corporation holding title to the property.
Figures on these forms claim that all subscriptions to The Peacemaker and contributions to the Movement are income to Gano Peacemakers, Inc.
These IRS tables and figures, received at the house in Gano, go so far as to assert that all recipients of checks from The Peacemaker bank account are employees of Gano Peacemakers, Inc., and assessments are listed for FUTA, FICA and payroll income tax which they claim Peacemakers should have withheld from all those receiving checks.
People said to be employees are named in the documents; most are the families of imprisoned war objectors who received monthly checks for their period of need.
Apparently, IRS took these from copies of canceled checks kept by the Farmers and Citizens Bank, Trotwood, Ohio.
Whether IRS has made this move with the calculated intention of disrupting and diminishing the Peacemaker Movement and The Peacemaker is, of course, not known.
It should be stated that the Bromleys and others who refuse taxes for war have consistently refused to give IRS any information—partly because they wanted to make collection as difficult as possible, even though the amount might be very small—and partly because they wanted to offer total noncooperation with the machinery of a racist and murdering government apparatus.
Having gathered information which is totally-false as the basis for a claim, IRS should not be permitted to proceed in ignorance of the total misrepresentation they have made with regard to activities at Gano.
If IRS does proceed on the basis it has claimed, no assets called Peacemaker will be immune to its seizure at any time, be it a checking account where subscriptions are deposited or funds contributed for aid to imprisoned war objectors’ families.
Anything considered to be the Movement’s can be grabbed.
If that should happen, Peacemaker would find other ways to continue to communicate with each other and meet their obligations to families of imprisoned war objectors.
Claim Against the Bromleys
Ernest and Marion Bromley’s nonpayment of taxes for war antedates the founding of Peacemakers.
They have for many years made public their stand against paying taxes for war, and have refused to give IRS any information.
It is rather ironic that after making the house at Gano available without charge for The Peacemaker editing and circulation work, they are now being accused of receiving income from the operation of the Peacemaker Movement.
What Response to Make?
It is not likely that either individual refusers or any persons acting for Peacemakers will begin to fill out tax forms, open its mailing lists to IRS, show names of contributors and do any of the things people do who are merely looking for a better deal from IRS.
Even if such cooperation were acceptable to Peacemakers, it is no guarantee that IRS would accept the explanations.
And one thing quite repugnant to Peacemakers is the thought of applying to IRS for a right to continue.
There is the possibility that IRS is proceeding without knowledge of how far-fetched their claims are.
Those who know the principles on which Peacemaker finances are handled may wish to write to the IRS accountant who signed the papers.
He is Samuel T. Lay, IRS, P.O. Box 476, Cincinnati, OH, 45201.
Such a communication would be for the purpose of informing the IRS that their claims against the Peacemaker Movement are erroneous.
It would be particularly helpful if those knowing how the sharing fund operates would inform the IRS that those receiving checks are not employees either of Peacemakers or Gano Peacemakers, Inc.; that they have not performed any services for Peacemakers; and that they may have never had any other connection with Peacemakers than receiving financial aid during a resister’s prison sentence.
There is no true basis for a collection in the material IRS has assembled.
It may be that they will acknowledge this fact if they receive information from those who know how incorrect their assumptions are.
If letters go to IRS, it would be helpful if copies are sent to The Peacemaker.
Chuck Matthei reports that the Peacemakers’ winter continuation meeting in Indianapolis discussed mounting an educational campaign about tax refusal in the Cincinnati area.
They also foresee a non-violent, direct action response to the war-tax machine if an eviction or auction takes place.
Chuck stressed that the action would involve a no bail/no fine commitment from participants.
Although the Peacemakers wish to make refusal to support war, not concern to protect property, the issue in their tax case, they are collecting pledges of assistance for the Bromleys, should the need arise.
For more information, or to participate, contact:
The Peacemaker
10208 Sylvan Av.
Cincinnati, Ohio 45241
The National Catholic Reporter reported in its issue:
American Telephone and Telegraph reports that 22,000 people refused to pay the telephone excise tax in protest against the Vietnam war in , up from 17,000 and 12,000 in .
The Internal Revenue Service wants AT&T to disconnect all those phones, but AT&T says tax problems are IRS’ business.
Apparently, IRS wants as little to do with 22,000 prosecutions as AT&T wants to do with the $200,000 a month It would cost to disconnect protesters’ phones.
The issue of that paper, toward the end of a larger article about peace movement retooling toward the tail end of the Vietnam War, noted:
Bob Calvert of War Tax Resistance said his organization will continue to urge tax resistance in protest against the large amount of the federal budget — more than half — which goes into the military.
He said local tax resistance centers are preparing reports describing the amount of federal taxes taken out of each state, the amount returned through revenue sharing, the real needs of the state and the amount of money from the state which goes into the military.
Mike DeGregory penned an argument for war tax resistance for the issue of Catholic Worker:
Render to God: The Imperative to Resist
By Mike DeGregory
“There are two things I’ve got to do in this world — die and pay taxes.”
This sentiment presents a serious theological problem for the modern world: equating the demands of the nation state with those of God.
Given the violence and militarism of our times, the problem becomes a question of idolatry.
As such, the payment of taxes must be examined with all its implications.
God and State
Since biblical times there has existed a tension between allegiance to God and allegiance to the state.
Periodically, acts of resistance were made as a witness affirming God as the source of life in opposition to the state.
Recently this tension has been manifested in this country when hundreds of thousands of Americans, motivated by belief in a higher authority, refused allegiance to the state.
Draft resistance to the Vietnam war was widespread, and the war tax resistance movement reached a high point.
Now, however, that the ceasefire accords have been signed and American troops will be withdrawn from Vietnam, many consider war tax refusal an inappropriate anachronism.
Such a view is a misunderstanding of the nature of war and tax resistance.
Mr. Nixon has repeatedly said, “Peace, peace with honor,” but there is no peace.
The Vietnam war continues with intense fighting.
It is the Vietnamese people who suffer.
Over 200,000 refugees have been created since the ceasefire began, while American planes daily bomb Cambodia, and frequently bomb Laos.
Outside Indochina, a similar “peace” prevails.
America continues to arm other smaller nations for fratricidal wars, most recently in a $2 billion agreement with Iran.
And America’s nuclear overkill continues to increase, as does the military budget.
This is peace only in an Orwellian sense.
William James has described the true nature of this “peace” in his The Moral Equivalent of War:
“Peace” in military mouths is a synonym for “war expected”…
Every up-to-date dictionary should say that “peace” and “war” mean the same thing, now in posse, now in actu.
It may even be reasonably said that the intensely sharp competitive preparation for war by the nations is the real war, permanent, unceasing; and that the battles are only a sort of public verification of the mastery gained during the “peace” interval.
No Mere Protest
The existence of perpetual war makes war tax resistance relevant and necessary.
Tax resistance is not just another form of protest.
It is a refusal to participate in something, namely war.
It involves a change of worldviews, a conversion.
It demands a commitment to a new way of living.
It can be a truly religious response, stemming from moral obligation rather than expediency.
In this moral sense, it is for everyone, not just the courageous few.
For in modern society, how we use our money and how we relate to money determines what kind of lives we lead and the kind of persons we are.
For many Christians, this decision of how to relate to the issue of taxes is easily answered: pay them, for Christ said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
The spirit of the Gospel is peace and nonviolence.
A biblical response to the “Render to Caesar” passage does not mean blind obedience to the state.
Rather, it suggests the responsibility to judge the “things” of Caesar in light of the “things” of God.
The essential part of the passage is the latter clause: “Render to God the things that are God’s.” Jesus intended no equality between God and Caesar.
Therefore, before rendering to Caesar one must judge if the things of Caesar are compatible with the things of God.
More specifically, today we must ask: is the payment of an income tax of which more than 50% finances the works of war, compatible with the things of God who desires from us the works of mercy?
We are faced with the moral imperative of examining war and our role in it as taxpayers.
In conscience we must decide whether to pay or not.
The New C.O.
In the modern process of violence, our technological society increasingly replaces men with machines.
The “big business” of modem war relies more and more on citizens’ money than on their bodies.
In light of this, it becomes essential that tax resisters be seen as the new conscientious objectors to war, withholding their financial as well as their bodily resources.
In the past, draft resistance has been seen as the refusal to place the pinch of incense on the altar of a false god.
Tax resistance deals more fundamentally with this same idolatry.
For tax money is the very gold of which the false idols of war are made.
War tax resistance is an alternative to this idolatry.
Some will object that war tax resistance, even with its corresponding alternate life funds, is ineffective.
This is perhaps correct, but as I see it, irrelevant.
Too often actions are undertaken simply for effect.
The words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer sum up the effectiveness of war tax resistance: “One asks, what is to come?
Another, what is right?
And that is the difference between the slave and the free man.”
“When it becomes the ‘sacred duty’ of a man to commit sin, one no longer knows how he should live,” said Reinhold Schneider.
“There remains nothing else for him to do but bear individual witness alone.
And where such witness is, there is the Kingdom of God.”
In this is the effectiveness of war tax resistance.
One of the best (and shortest) rationales for war tax resistance is Peter Maurin’s statement, “The future will be different if we make the present different.” If we continue to pay for war and the instruments of war, will we ever have peace?
(Ed. Note: For more information about tax resistance, write War Tax Resistance, 912 E. 31st St., Kansas City, Mo. 64109.)
The National Catholic News Service included this among its dispatches on :
Five Anti-War Priests Refuse to Pay Part of Income Tax
Pittsburgh (NC)—
Five priests of the Pittsburgh diocese have filed income tax returns but deducted 20 percent from their taxes which they contend would go to support a “totally immoral war” in Southeast Asia.
“The bombing in Cambodia going on right now is without any foundation in law — let alone morality,” said Father Jack O’Malley, spokesman for the group.
“The Thieu government in South Vietnam holds five of our brother priests as political prisoners because they have dared to speak out against the immoral actions of their government.
It is our taxes which is keeping Thieu in power,” Father O’Malley said.
The five priests waited until the deadline day of to file their tax returns at the Internal Revenue Service office here at .
Father O’Malley said the priests recognize that wrong is also being done by the North Vietnamese government. “But that country is not our ally,” he said.
“It is a privilege and duty to pay taxes,” the priest said.
“It is likewise a duty to resist evil in conscience.
When that evil is done by one’s own government, the duty is no less.”
During Holy Week the five priests prayed for an end to the bombing in Cambodia and an end to fighting and violence by all parties in Southeast Asia.
The other priests taking part in the tax resistance were:
Fathers Mark Glasgow, Patrick Fenton, Warren Metzler and Donald McIlvane.
A letter-to-the-editor in the Catholic Worker, signed by “Ammon Hennacy House” (Grand Rapids, Michigan), included this paragraph:
At this writing we have just ended a week-end tax resistance conference with about twenty-five people from around the state.
We have been promoting tax and draft resistance as part of our nonviolence workshop group Life Force.
With the beginnings of a tax resisters’ fund we are seeking an alternative to the violence and exploitation of banking.
Also, we are exploring possibilities of an insurance fund.
With four active children, we feel the need to be providing them with assurance of medical care in emergencies.
The National Catholic News Service included this among its dispatches on :
War Resister Gets Tax Refund
Altamont, N.Y. (NC)—
Mark Brockley of St. Lucy’s Parish here received a refund check from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for $250.50 for , which was the total amount IRS had withheld from Mark’s wages for .
The unusual aspect of Brockley’s case is that he received the refund after claiming his infant niece as a dependent on his 1040 form, knowing that she would not qualify as his dependent under the IRS definition.
Brockley explained in a letter to IRS officials that his niece, who was born the day of the Vietnam cease-fire, “represents all children, whether they be Mexican-American babies born in a migrant farm worker’s tent or Cambodian youths huddled in a village under American attack, who depend on each of us to create a livable world for them to grow up in and inherit.”
An IRS official said that if an audit showed that Brockley had claimed a dependent to which he was not entitled, any tax owed would be subject to normal IRS collection procedures.
Brockley is among a small but growing number of people who resist payment of federal taxes because of conscientious objection to government policies, especially to the large portion of the budget which supports the military.
He is 22 and single and describes himself as having been “gung ho for the war” (in Indo-China) until about his junior year in high school when his feelings began to change.
His feelings continued to grow until he was arrested in for protesting the mining of North Vietnamese harbors.
After a demonstration in support for the Berrigans during their trial for conspiracy, Brockley learned about the war tax resistance.
He then took steps to prevent the withholding of taxes from his wages, which is illegal.
“But since the government already had taken over $200 of my money for the year,” he said, “I thought in conscience I should get it back.”
To emphasize that his action was not meant to evade or defraud IRS, Brockley sent the letter explaining his irregular 1040 form.
He stated in part, “I intend that the government you represent shall not receive one penny more of my tax money while it continues policies to which I cannot in conscience lend my support.”
Brockley reconciled his duties as a citizen and his tax actions by noting that “people forget that Jesus did not simply answer, yes, when they asked him if you should pay Caesar’s tax.
It is well established that when you see a clash between Caesar’s law and the Gospel, the Christian’s allegiance is owed to the Gospel.”
The refunded money, Brockley said, is being donated to the Life Giving Fund.
This fund is used to support “groups we consider alternatives to the government’s priorities,” he added. “None of us is interested in tax evasion for personal gain.
We’ve given out over $1000 so far.
“Someday maybe I could get some land and be as self-sufficient as possible — so I could keep my income below the taxable level,” he said.
“That way I could follow my conscience without having to break the law.”
Mike Cullen, who had come to the United States from Ireland twelve years before, and had founded the Casa Maria Catholic Worker hospitality house in Milwaukee, was deported in .
Press reports (e.g. National Catholic Reporter, ) noted that the judge in the deportation case had “listed the cause of deportation as burning of draft files, interfering with administration of the selective service law, counseling others on conscientious objection, tax resistance, and burning his own draft card.”
