Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
anti-abortion tax resistance
In Jim Kiser’s opinion piece for the Arizona Daily Star, he notes the concerns of some taxpayers that their money may be funding, quite against their wishes, embryonic stem cell research.
Kiser says that in their attempts to keep from funding activities they believe to be wrong, “the conservatives may find supporters in places where they might never think to look”:
I gleaned some suggestions for them from the Web sites of three groups that have a long history of resisting the use of their members’ tax dollars for morally offensive activities.
The conservatives could withhold $10.40 of their income tax, for instance, and contribute it to a nonprofit organization in which they believe.
That is a strategy suggested by the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.
Such a protest is largely symbolic, of course, but it would be powerful symbolism if practiced by people such as [Mike] Pence, [Tom] DeLay and [Gary] Bauer.
Withholding part of your taxes is illegal, however, and for that reason the conservatives may prefer a suggestion by the War Resisters League that protesters trim their lifestyle to the point they earn so little money they don’t have to pay taxes.
This is legal, and while difficult to do, I am sure the conservatives have sufficient discipline.
I understand, though, it may not fit with some of their other values.
The conservatives should find common ground, however, with the approach of a nonprofit group that wants Congress to pass a law called the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act.
“The Peace Tax Fund is part of a long and distinguished history of religious freedom, freedom of conscience, and conscientious objection to war in the USA,” the Web site says.
“We want to grant conscientious objectors the right to refrain from paying for war, just as they already have the right to refrain from fighting in war.”
Kiser seems to be saying this with tongue-in-cheek — not really suggesting that the conservative “pro-life” crowd learn a thing or two from the peaceniks but implying that these conservatives probably have a fairly partisan notion of which taxpayers’ consciences ought to be respected.
But why shouldn’t tax resistance — the conscientious kind I mean, not the loony “you’re not a real judge because your flag has the wrong kind of fringe around it” kind — become a strategy of dissidents on the right as well as the left?
Imagine a former staff member of Soldier of Fortune magazine and cop beat reporter for the Washington Times, who calls the Vietnam Memorial “Jane Fonda’s wall” and says that “without men, civilization would last until the oil needed changing.”
That’s Fred Reed, and a liberal peacenik he’s not.
I wish to propose a salubrious anarchy, a deliberate renunciation of fealty to country, society, and government, an assertion of independence from folly and moral decay.
Permit me to offer a taxing political idea: When a society ceases to be worthy of support, it is reasonable to withdraw support.
The time, I submit, has come.…
Let me suggest that one owes loyalty to one’s family and friends, to common decency, and to nothing else.
Render under Caesar what you must, keep what you can, and swear allegiance to nothing.
Here I do not mean just the government, but the zeitgeist, the miasmic fetor of trashy culture, the desperate consumerism, the entire psychic odor of a society in decomposition.…
Ask not what you can do for your country, but what it can do for you — you ought to get some of your taxes back.
Do not tie yourself to… anything.
The price of freedom is poverty: freedom grows as your needs diminish.…
I lived years ago in a second-hand house trailer in the woods.
I do not know what it cost, or would cost today, but perhaps fifteen thousand dollars.
It was perfectly comfortable, warm in winter, air-conditioned in summer.
Mornings were blessedly quiet unless you regard birdsong as noise.
A brick barbecue provided a place to produce ribs and drink bourbon and water.
A couple of companionable dogs rounded out the ensemble.
They had the run of the trailer, as was right.
Now, living in a trailer is to the consumerist sensibility simply too degrading and so… I mean, my god, how could you face the neighbors?
(There weren’t any.)
But aside from damage to a servile dependent vanity, what is the drawback?
A couple of hundred dollars buys a remarkably good stereo, music is free, libraries are good, and I for one am more comfortable in jeans and tee shirt than in Calvin and Klein trappings.
When your expenses are few, your susceptibility to economic serfdom is small.
You do not need to work miserably in a pointless job for a boss you would gleefully strangle.
Yes, you need money.
The first principle is never to work in a job that you cannot afford to quit.
This means avoiding any job with a retirement, of which you will become a prisoner.
The second principle is to work at something portable that you can do independently and, preferably, without capital.
Retirement?
Save.…
Finally, work the system.
The government, if you let it, will take roughly half of your income, give much of it to useless bureaucrats, much to various forms of welfare, use much to bomb countries you may have no desire to bomb, and much to force upon you services, such as horrible schools, that you do not want.
The central question regarding government is whether you can take more from it than it takes from you.
It is much better to receive than to give.
Live cheap, work only as much as you like, enjoy life, and keep your taxes down.
A couple more bits and pieces from around the web:
George Weigel is one of those Catholics who thinks the Pope has laid down the letter of the law pretty clearly on the subject of abortion, and all good Catholics clearly ought to get with the program.
He also seems to be one of those Catholics who’d like to change the subject if the Pope’s views on war or capital punishment come up.
(Doesn’t it often seem like religion is just a way of cherry picking irrefutable bits of dogma that happen to coincide with political points of view you wanted to take anyway?)
But be that as it may, he’s officially “gone there” and suggested, in a column for Newsweek that not only must Catholics refrain from voting for Obama, but
…should an Obama administration reintroduce large-scale federal funding of abortion, the bishops will have to confront a grave moral question they have managed to avoid for decades…: does the payment of federal taxes that go to support abortion constitute a form of moral complicity in an “intrinsic evil”?
And if so, what should the conscientious Catholic citizen do?
I’ve vented some schadenfreude before about the trouble the IRS is having in upgrading its decades-old database software.
It’s a big project, with archaic software using the computer programming equivalent of cuneiform that few engineers understand anymore, complicated by a vast government bureaucracy with its red tape and its cumbersome regulations and its temptations to shape the job to squeeze the most money out of the taxpayer (it must be so tempting, right there next to the taxpayer aorta).
Even so, they’ve been bungling it big time.
The latest news shows the project to have “very troublesome” “security and privacy vulnerabilities” such as:
…unscrupulous people could gain access to vast amounts of taxpayer information with little chance of detection… systems could not be recovered effectively during an emergency… administrators to the
CADE
system could access, modify and delete information without being detected… contractors could make changes to system configurations without approval… backup tapes from offsite storage facilities were not adequately tested to ensure that data would be restored without errors or losses… [the] system might be vulnerable to malicious code attacks such as computer viruses.… the auditing controls for the
AMS
system were not sufficient to make sure that illegal browsing, changes or theft of taxpayer files would be detected.
Pro-lifers are already starting to contemplate tax resistance as they expect that the new administration in Washington may rescind prohibitions on federal funding for abortion.
One writes, somewhat histrionically:
The issue at stake here is the use of our tax dollars by the federal government to pay for the performance of abortions or euthanasia.
I, nor any other Roman Catholic, cannot, in good faith, contribute materially (i.e. monetarily), to abortion.
Should I be conscious of the fact that my tax dollars are being used to fund abortion or euthanasia, I can be declared in schism with the Catholic Church and be disallowed by my local bishop from receiving the Eucharist at Mass.
In order to retain my standing as a faithful Catholic, in harmony with the Church, I will be placed in the position of having to perform an act of civil disobedience by becoming a tax resister.
As past tax resisters have all failed utterly in defending their position before courts of law, I will likely suffer legal consequences for my failure to pay taxes to the federal government (granted, past tax resisters have not objected to said taxes on a religious basis, but rather on a constitutional law basis; I believe the result will be the same, however, regardless of the basis of the objection).
To borrow a scenario from Dinesh D’Souza’s book, Letters to a Young Conservative (pages 81–82), should I refuse to pay my taxes, the government will kill me.
D’Souza explains that the government will fine me for not paying my taxes and, after some time, send federal agents out to seize my property.
I will, not unreasonably, attempt to defend my property; given that I will be outnumbered by trained, well-armed federal agents, I will likely lose my life in the ensuing fracas.
So there, in a nutshell, is the problem: as a Catholic I cannot, in good faith, pay money to the federal government that I know will be used to perform an abortion; the government will object to this and either imprison or murder me.
Today in the U.S., war tax resisters are about the only sizable group of conscientious tax resisters (that is, people who resist in a spirit of conscientious objection to what the tax money is spent on — as opposed to people who resist because they think they have the legal or moral right not to have their money taken from them, and those who resist not because of any ideology but just because they think they can get away with it and the material benefit is worth the risk).
But this may be changing.
This year I’ve been noticing a lot more mention of tax resistance in two other battles: the battle for legal recognition of same-sex marriage and the battle against (government funded) abortion.
In the same-sex marriage case, it’s less a conscientious objection position than one that says the resister won’t pay the “dues of citizenship” for what amounts to second-class citizenship.
But that’s close enough for me.
In the abortion case, the rhetoric is much more similar to that of the war tax resistance movement.
Indeed, a Catholic anti-abortion tax resistance pamphlet I recently discovered on-line has a subtitle — “Are You Praying for Life But Paying for Death?”
— that echoes a motto frequently heard in war tax resistance circles.
The rest of the pamphlet also seems very familiar to me, based on war tax resistance arguments (particularly Christian ones) I’ve read.
There’s the attempt to thread the needle between Romans 13 and Acts 5, a discussion of how taxpaying makes a taxpayer complicit and why this makes conscientious objection a moral duty, and finally some advice on practical steps the reader can take.
Myself, I’m of the “the more, the merrier” school on this.
The more people with diverse ideologies and concerns begin to consider tax resistance as an option, the more the idea can take root that in general it’s inappropriate to force people to pay for other people’s priorities.
With the loyally pro-choice Democratic party in the political driver’s seat, pro-life Americans are feeling more hopeless than usual about getting a chance to turn their moral beliefs into legal dictates.
And they’re feeling frustrated at the likelihood that the government will take their tax dollars to spend on practices that they abhor, forcing them into complicity with what they consider evil.
And so I haven’t been surprised to see talk of tax resistance murmuring up from quarters where such murmurs haven’t been heard in years.
And even where tax resistance isn’t explicitly mentioned or consciously considered, there seems to be an unconscious current sending the suddenly unmoored in the direction of that rocky isle.
Exhibit A is today’s Ross Douthat column.
It’s an argument for tax resistance that doesn’t seem to be conscious of it.
This, even though it’s titled “My Tax Dollars At Work.”
Douthat is defending critics of government funding of Planned Parenthood against those who say that Planned Parenthood’s abortion-related services are only a portion of the work that it does, and that over all even people who are against abortion ought to applaud the group for the good it does in, for instance, preventing abortions through sex education and contraceptive availability.
Douthat first demonstrates that providing abortion-related services is a bigger part of Planned Parenthood’s mission than a casual reading of some of the numbers might suggest.
But then he lets loose with this pithy bit:
The phenomenon of an institution that does good with one hand and evil with another is a familiar one in human history — even Hezbollah does a lot of impressive humanitarian work, I believe — and it does not by any means follow that those who oppose the evil are morally obligated to support the institution anyway just because it does other, less morally problematic things besides.
I couldn’t agree more!
Isn’t this often the first knee-jerk criticism of tax resistance we hear?
What about all the good things that government does — those nice roads we drive on, and the fire department, and social security, and freedom, and truth, and beauty, and a mother’s love?
Shouldn’t we feel grateful for paying taxes after all that?
As we pour our hearts and souls into the battle to keep the slaughter of the innocent by abortion out of any health care bill, the discussion has emerged as to whether it is an ethically viable option to refuse to pay part or all of our federal taxes.
Some well meaning souls have already — perhaps without much thought — repeated our Lord’s oft quoted statement: “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s.”
The simple question is this: does this statement of our Lord apply in a situation like the present?
If we know that Caesar is going to use the money to kill our neighbor — one of God’s children — are we required, by God Himself, to give the money to our political leaders?
I think the answer is self-evidently, “No!”
Following the trend of other recent conservative tax resistance promoters,
Terry sticks to the passive voice and the hypothetical: going right up to the
line at which he might have to say “and so I’m going to stop paying my taxes”
and then turning around and beating a safe retreat.
One possible approach to development aid [for poor countries in the current
economic crisis] would be to apply effectively what is known as fiscal
subsidiarity, allowing citizens to decide how to allocate a portion of the
taxes they pay to the State. Provided it does not degenerate into the
promotion of special interests, this can help to stimulate forms of welfare
solidarity from below, with obvious benefits in the area of solidarity for
development as well.
The cynic in me can’t help but notice that in those countries I know of that
have “fiscal subsidiarity” as part of their income tax filing schemes, the
Catholic Church is an explicit line-item beneficiary.
[W]ith a permanent military budget, war tax resistance need not occur solely
during times of open or “hot” warfare. On the contrary, it can take place
annually through small but nonetheless direct measures that impede the
collection of revenue, as Ed Hedemann explained:
Being a war tax resister — despite the myths about this — does not require
a change in one’s life. You could refuse to pay a dollar of your income tax,
and there’s no sacrifice in that, although it’s a dollar or ten dollars that
the government is not going to ignore. You send a letter along with it. It
doesn’t require anything excessive on your part or a change in lifestyle. So
what if they seize a dollar plus interest in penalties?
At the same time, when carried out to the fullest, tax resistance can require
major sacrifices in one’s life, as Hedemann explained:
I refuse to pay any of my federal income tax because I just don’t want to
have any part of [my income] willingly going over to the government. Now,
this does require some sacrifice. For example, if I take a salary job, the
chances are that the
IRS
will eventually find out who I work for and seize the money from my
paycheck. So I’ve been avoiding salary jobs. I work as an independent
contractor for a variety of nonprofit groups.… I can’t have a bank account
with a Social Security number on it.… So I have my money in somebody
else’s Social Security number in an account in another state. I also can’t
own a house or a car because I don’t want that seized. So I’ve rearranged
my life to some degree because I’m so determined to go the extra mile and
not allow the government to [pay for war].
War, however, is not the only motivation for tax resistance. Recall that in
the previous chapter we met “Bob,” whose tax resistance centered in part on
the issue of abortion. When he returned from his tour in Vietnam, he made a
decision never to lend his support to a policy that allows for killing, which
for him simply meant war. “I wrote letters to the secretary of the Treasury,
the IRS,
the Department of Defense outlining my opposition, telling them that I’m
not part of the game anymore.” It was around that time that Bob found out
that his pregnant girlfriend was seeking an abortion and that the
U.S. Supreme
Court was reviewing Harris
v. McRae, a case
that questioned the constitutionality of the Hyde Amendment, which placed
restrictions on the federal funding of abortions through Medicaid.
For a time, Bob worked with Operation Rescue obstructing access to abortion
clinics, but he quickly felt that the organization attracted elements that
betrayed his stance on nonviolence. Eventually, the confluence of his
experience in Vietnam, the national debate over the funding of abortion, and
the discovery of his girlfriend’s pregnancy all led to his move toward tax
resistance, which for him was the most direct and nonviolent means of
intervening in the carrying out of policy. So he began making life
arrangements that allowed him to earn less than the taxable income while
being able to continue speaking out about the “voluntary nature of taxes.”
As Bob sees it, it matters not whether the issue is war, abortion, or any
other government program:
If people continue to fund the monster, the monster is going to continue
to grow and do its evil deeds. It’s gotten to the point where the number,
depth, and quality of the evil deeds have gotten so huge that we need to
defund it. That’s how we can really make this thing turn around: defund it.
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
You can find minutes and reports from ’s NWTRCC National Gathering in Cleveland on NWTRCC’s website.
There is typically a statute of limitations for federal tax crimes.
However, during wartime the statute of limitations for crimes “involving fraud or attempted fraud against the United States or any agency thereof in any manner, whether by conspiracy or not” goes into suspended animation “until 5 years after the termination of hostilities as proclaimed by a Presidential proclamation, with notice to Congress, or by a concurrent resolution of Congress” where the definition of “the term ‘war’ includes a specific authorization for the use of the Armed Forces, as described in section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution (50 U.S.C. 1544(b)).”
There are some indications that the government is seeking to suspend the statute of limitations for federal tax crimes because of the present state of war.
TaxProf Blog reports: “The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration yesterday reported that 372,000 taxpayers erroneously claimed education tax credits in , totaling $532 million (an average of over $1,400 improper credit per taxpayer).”
Those tax resisters lucky enough to be expecting a large inheritance may take heart from this story of someone who successfully engineered her will so that her heir could donate to charity exactly enough of her estate so that she would owe no estate taxes on the remainder.
Anti-abortion political pressure has led to Congress inserting language in the upcoming health care legislation that would prohibit taxpayer money from going to pay for abortion.
Tom Tomorrow wonders when people opposed to their tax money being spent on war will get that kind of respect:
Another aspect of the upcoming health care legislation is that it includes a big role for the IRS.
This isn’t because the IRS is particularly skilled at administering social welfare programs (indeed fraud is rampant in programs like the earned income tax credit or those education tax credits mentioned earlier in this post), but because legislators have various incentives to hide the spending behind their legislation by not spending outright but only via tax credits and deductions and such.
Since increasing funding for the IRS is not politically popular, this all may have the effect of saddling the agency with more responsibility without giving it sufficient resources.
Her evidence for this is remarks that James Dobson made on his Focus on the Family radio show, and in something called the “Manhattan Declaration.”
Dobson responded to the possibility that publicly-funded abortions might be part of the health care industry bill that Congress is currently considering, by saying:
I don’t say this glibly at all.… Shirley and I will not be able to comply.
That is absolutely untenable to us, because it would make us participants in the killing of babies, and we can’t and we won’t do that.
Now I don’t know where all of this is leading or what the implications of it are, but if we have to pay ruinous fines, or have to go to prison, or even if we have to leave this beloved country and spend the rest of our lives in exile, that’s what we are prepared to do.
The Manhattan Declaration calls on American Christians to stand up against abortion, gay marriage, and laws that would prohibit right-wing Christians from discriminating against gay people or from applying their pro-life viewpoints in the workplace.
Its call to civil disobedience is boldly but vaguely worded.
Stanek thinks it’s a clear call for tax resistance, but to me it is so imprecise in this area that it isn’t really a call to action so much as enthusiastic bluster (much the same as the International People’s Declaration of Peace I panned back in September).
But, anyway, this is how the declaration concludes:
As Christians, we take seriously the Biblical admonition to respect and obey those in authority.
We believe in law and in the rule of law.
We recognize the duty to comply with laws whether we happen to like them or not, unless the laws are gravely unjust or require those subject to them to do something unjust or otherwise immoral.
The biblical purpose of law is to preserve order and serve justice and the common good; yet laws that are unjust — and especially laws that purport to compel citizens to do what is unjust — undermine the common good, rather than serve it.
Going back to the earliest days of the church, Christians have refused to compromise their proclamation of the gospel.
In Acts 4, Peter and John were ordered to stop preaching.
Their answer was, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God.
For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”
Through the centuries, Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required.
There is no more eloquent defense of the rights and duties of religious conscience than the one offered by Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
Writing from an explicitly Christian perspective, and citing Christian writers such as Augustine and Aquinas, King taught that just laws elevate and ennoble human beings because they are rooted in the moral law whose ultimate source is God Himself.
Unjust laws degrade human beings.
Inasmuch as they can claim no authority beyond sheer human will, they lack any power to bind in conscience.
King’s willingness to go to jail, rather than comply with legal injustice, was exemplary and inspiring.
Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family.
We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.
I can certainly see how someone already inclined toward seeing tax resistance as the next step in their anti-abortion activism might feel that this statement supports their decision, but I have a hard time seeing the statement as an unambiguous call for tax refusal.
There’s nothing in the Declaration site’s FAQ or What’s Next sections about taxes either.
Even Stanek herself never actually comes right out and says that she is resisting taxes or plans to.
The health care industry legislation that became law today (of which I addressed some of the implications for tax resisters ) includes provisions to accommodate the conscientious objection of people opposed to abortion and of Amish groups who have traditionally taught that the purchase of insurance betrays a mistrust of divine providence.
Amish in good standing will be exempt from the law’s requirement that all Americans have health insurance, which is to say that they will not be subject to the federal excise tax on uninsured individuals.
Health insurance plans will not be required to cover abortions — indeed, states may prohibit abortion-providing plans in their “exchanges” — and those that do cover abortion will have to do so via a separately-funded option that cannot be paid for via the various government subsidies in the law.
President Obama recently emphasized these abortion restrictions by issuing an executive order that reconfirmed the ban on using taxpayer money to pay for abortions.
But neither the orthodox Amish nor the anti-abortion activists seem pleased with these concessions.
Gary Kauffman of The Goshen News interviewed David Yoder, who monitors national law for the Old Order Amish.
He points out that while there is an exception written into the law that shields individual Amish people from having to be covered by health insurance, there is no such shield for Amish employers, even Amish employers of Amish employees, who will be required to provide health insurance for those they hire.
“It’s a huge concern for all Amish,” Yoder said.
“It’s definitely not something we could comply with.”
Yoder also worries that as government-mandated corporate health plans insinuate into the Amish community, the cooperative neighbors-helping-neighbors form of mutual aid that takes the place of health insurance among the Amish will degrade, and, along with it, the quality of health: “Even if there is an exemption for us, health care quality will still go down.
Maybe not immediately, but in five or ten years.”
Meanwhile, many anti-abortion activists aren’t at all convinced that the many safeguards in the law will actually prevent taxpayer money from subsidizing abortions, or enable people who don’t want to fund abortions to find both legally-compliant and conscientiously-acceptable health insurance:
Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, said the idea of tax resistance has been mentioned in response to concerns about unjust wars.
“This bill says most of the plans getting federal subsidies make every enrollee pay a separate payment solely for people’s abortions,” he said.
“Some people have said what an opportunity for a movement of resistance for people of faith who have these plans or are saddled with one; to refuse to pay that particular fee.
If that is the only option we have, that is an interesting idea for Catholics and Protestants to focus on.”
It is a remarkable contrast to this how much the concerns of conscientious objectors to military taxation are ignored by lawmakers.
People who don’t want to pay the salaries of torturers, or who have conscientious qualms about building weapons of indiscriminate slaughter, can be and are ignored.
Convocations of Catholic bishops don’t hold press conferences on their behalf, legislators don’t hold their votes back on a pretense of standing up for them.
The official word from the courts is that it would be too onerous for the government to carve out an exception for such conscientious objectors, though this recent bill and others show that Congress is perfectly capable of carving a little here and a little there when that’s what it takes to get the job done.
But, as with this recent bill, even were Congress to make some sort of concessions to conscientious objectors to military taxation, these would be unlikely to go far enough to be satisfying to any but those who were eagerly looking for an excuse to put their consciences down and get on with other business.
The Treasury seizes the accounts of tax resisters who withheld from their tax returns the percentage of defense spending — The government does not recognize ideological objections as justifying a waiver
Jaime Prats,
Under the rallying cry of “No more VAT,” on began the “rebellion” that was launched by [Madrid President] Esperanza Aguirre against the tax increase agreed on by the government.
So far, the campaign has kept to the distribution of leaflets, the collection of signatures, and the holding of rallies.
“It’s a rebellion in the sense of putting up resistance, not in a military sense,” explained Aguirre.
And much less is it supposed to be an invitation to insubordination, as leaders rushed to announce when Aguirre called for rebellion.
“It’s a way to remove the shame in the system,” declared a resister.
They have seized 276 euros from Hugo, and they claim another 1,713.
Part of the protest consists in redirecting the funds to humanitarian NGOs.
“Taxes are a whole and cannot be cut up in pieces,” says one professor.
Resisters broadcast their acts; evaders hide them.
Anti-abortion movements have taken note of the tax rebellion.
Tax resistance is another thing, as Hugo Alcade and Jorge Güemes know, two Valencian antimilitarists whom the Treasury has prosecuted for having withheld from their tax returns a percentage equivalent to the defense budget, which is approximately 12%.
In Spain, sources from the Conscientious Objection Movement (MOC) calculate that there are some thousand people each year who protest against military spending in this way and who redirect to humanitarian organizations the money deducted from the tax agency.
“It’s a tool of civil disobedience, as was insubordination in the military in its time,” said Carlos Pérez, former resister and spokesperson for MOC from Valencia.
Beyond the moral arguments that may be behind this form of protest, it is a difficult matter to defend legally, for to the Treasury it is a fraud like any other.
Also, it raises other problems when justifying this practice.
What is the difference between this action and resisting taxes for health spending if you pay for your own health insurance?
Or for education if you enroll your children in private schools?
Where is the limit of this practice?
Some professors of the philosophy of law believe that the answer is in the difference in defending something related to the common good from protecting an individual interest.
The first approach, they argue, would have a moral justification.
The second would not.
“Tax resistance is a nonviolent way to remove the shame in the system,” said Jorge Güemes, 32. The surveyor got in contact with the antimilitarist campaign during conflict resolution workshops he attended as a member of the Boy Scouts of Valencia.
“They seemed to me to be just and easy claims to make.”
He started during the tax season.
“In the tax return, I crossed out one of them and scribbled in ‘for objection to military spending’ ” he says.
And the resulting share from the self-made deduction subtracted 12%, equivalent to the military spending in the Budget, which in this case showed a result of 210.43 euros that he redirected to Per L’Horta, an organization that defends the traditional rural landscape in the outskirts of Valencia.
A key part of the campaign consists in making the protest totally open.
So the motive for this particular deduction is not only reflected in the way the tax return is formulated.
In the documents sent to the tax agency, he also sent a letter in which he explained his reasons for objecting, and even sent a receipt for his payment to the NGOs to which the money was sent, “to make it clear that I don’t want to defraud.”
The probability that the Treasury notices the objection is very low.
There are those who have spent years practicing tax resistance and have never met with the government.
However, Jorge was caught immediately.
“They sent me a letter saying that I was wrong, and I replied to them that there was no error, that I had done exactly as I intended.”
There are some who receive notices from the Treasury refunding money.
Jorge who currently works with youth, began a long bureaucratic battle that is still on-going.
First in the arena of the tax administration, which ended with a defeat in the Regional Administrative Economic Tribunal of the Valencian Ministry of Economy and Finance, which dismissed his claims. After this defeat, the taxes, claims and judgments against, a seizure for 263 euros (the 210 original plus a fine of 53 euros), Jorge has not given up the fight.
Now, he is finalizing an appeal to the High Court of Justice of Valencia.
“I have been able to speak out,” he said.
“I continue to object.”
Hugo Alcalde, 38, joined active antimilitarism after the war in Iraq.
“I felt incredibly powerless to see how aggression was carried out so clearly in opposition to civil society,” and therefore came to the conclusion that, “it is more effective to fight against militarization than to stop an ongoing war.”
Hugo began to resist in his tax return, but got no notices from the tax agency until .
Then he received a notice that demanded 450.98 euros from his return.
As with Jorge, he decided to appeal and filed a claim.
The response that the Treasury had was to demand the outstanding amounts corresponding to the taxes for .
“It appears that with my claim they revisited all of my records and my returns that had not yet been audited.”
But the problems don’t end there.
Recently he received notice for the taxes from , “and I suppose that those from will not be far behind.”
From a professor from the institute of Valencia they have seized 276.73 euros by now, and between seizure orders and payments due, interest, and penalties, the Treasury has asks for another 1,713.99 euros.
In total, the debt reaches 1,990.72 euros.
And despite this, he has decided to stand firm until the end.
He has drawn on the five counter-arguments that he has sent to the Treasury: “More than anything I do it for the symbolic character of the protest,” he said.
“Yet I hope to unify all of the processes into one, because otherwise it will be a mess.”
“In the worst case, there will be no choice but to pay the money and charges.
But, despite the fines or the inconvenience of the taxes it is much more comfortable than to spend two years, four months, and a day in jail, as did those condemned for insubordination who abandoned the barracks,” he explained.
Among the arguments put forward to reject the devices of the tax resisters, the Treasury refers to the military and tax obligations of the Spanish.
Alongside conscientious objection, “is also a fundamental right to the defense of the state, which is not only a right but also a duty.”
On the other hand, it points out that the tax obligations are drawn up by “principles of equality and progressivity, according to the economic capacity” of citizens, “not the state of the social conscience of an individual at some particular moment.”
For this reason, to the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the attitude of Jorge, Hugo, and the rest of the war tax resisters is the same as that of any other person who engages in tax fraud.
“There do not exist any mitigating factors in the law to argue for ideological or conscientious reasons that justify a waiver from the tax agency,” the department pointed out.
In any case, it is not considered tax fraud.
For this, it would be necessary that the money not declared would be more than 120,000 euros.
Additionally, there must be bad intent, “for example, to create a structure designed to hide assets,” the same sources said.
Javier de Lucas, professor of the philosophy of law at the University of Valencia, warned a few years ago of the difficulty of justifying this behavior before the Treasury.
De Lucas, who collaborated with the Conscientious Objection Movement, analyzed together with tax experts the possible mechanisms that could be used to support this form of defense, and did not find any.
“Taxes are considered as a whole, and cannot be separated by personal criteria,” he insists.
“It is not clear that a person has the power to decide in what way to make an exception and up to what point one can take this behavior, for example, to health or education.”
Because of all of this, he came to the conclusion that the approach was “technically indefensible.”
The arguments of the Treasury
Defense of the State: In a filing against the resisters, the Ministry of Finance argued that conscientious objection “appears as a fundamental individual right alongside the defense of the State, which is not only a right but also a duty of Spaniards, in Article 30 of the Constitution.”
It also argues that [legal] objection “relates only to the personal obligation of rendering military service (given the extraordinary nature of the armed forces).
Tax Reasons: “Like the obligations of the Spanish in relation to Defense established in Article 30 of the Constitution, taxes are according to the principles of equality and progressivity and according to one’s economic capacity, and not according to the state of the social conscience of the individual at any particular moment, in Article 31.” In the written report of the General Secretary of the Treasury, was added that this Article “in no way authorized deduction, with a claim of a supposed personal conviction, however respectable, a particular quantity of Personal Income Tax or any other tax.”
“I think that the difference is the moral attitude,” suggested Francisco Fernández Buey, professor of ethics and political philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University.
Fernández Buey was one of the first tax resisters in Spain, back in the 1980s, and also then suffered persecution on the part of the Treasury.
“I came to empty the account before they seized it.
I kept the money at home, among the pages of the first volume of Karl Marx’s Kapital,” he recalled gleefully.
The distinguishing feature, according to Fernández Buey, is that it is not comparable to defend approaches “considered acceptable for achieving a more just and beneficial society for the collective good, that would have a moral justification,” with others that only seek “personal interest.”
For example, to stop paying for a public service with the excuse that one has no use for it.
Aside from this problem, Javier de Lucas does consider that there exists a safeguard that serves to differentiate the practice of the resisters from the tax evaders.
“To demonstrate that the money is not withheld from the public interest, it was redirected to other general purposes.
Therefore it is important to account for the percentage of income that is redirected to NGOs.”
There is another, more fundamental question that consists of presenting an idea of defense that is separate from the military.
It is that which Hugo Alcade defines as “human security,” one of the ideas promotes the UN focus on protection and the basic necessities of human beings, contrasted with the conventional meaning of military security.
In the face of this, the Treasury refers to the basic concept of the “military obligations of the Spanish.”
For José Antonio Estévez Araujo, also a professor of the philosophy of law, the legal case against the Treasury is not a significant part of the conduct that is situated centrally in the context of civil disobedience and that, essentially, involves breaking the law.
This type of “symbolic” protest is that which fundamentally intends to “generate controversy.”
And here is, according to this professor at the University of Barcelona, the characteristic that distinguishes tax resistance from acts of crime or of mere convenience.
In contrast with tax evasion, for example, in which the objective is to hide the fraud, tax resisters above all want to publicize their acts: “They seek publicity, controversy, and to open a public debate.”
Therefore, to Estévez Araújo, the behavior of these young antimilitarists is not a case of conscientious objection but of civil disobedience.
“It is not intended to have the right not to comply with an obligation [in this case to entirely pay the taxes], but to debate the issues they raise.”
This professor of philosophy emphasizes the importance of civil disobedience as a means of vindication.
“In Spain we would have the example of the squatters, who are considered civil disobedients, or the more recent Palestinian activist Aminetu Haidar, in the protest campaign she carried out in Lanzarote.”
This formula, which has actively supported the World Social Forum, perhaps has its greatest exponent in the movement of landless workers in Brazil.
“The Constitution of provides that for a land reform that has not been carried out,” he says.
“There are groups of peasants who occupy land, which is an illegal activity,” although fundamentally they count on the approval of the constitutional spirit.
“For this reason, there are even judges who have ruled in their favor.”
Tax resistance is not a method exploited only by left-leaning groups.
The professor Francisco Fernández Buey notes the campaign that was carried out for decades in Sweeden as a form of protest against the country’s high tax burden.
Or more recently, in Venezuela, by the opposition to Hugo Chávez.
In Spain, the most clear example is the campaign that anti-abortion movements encourage.
The proposal consists in withholding taxes equivalent to the percentage of public spending destined to the practice of abortion and to redirect this money to organizations that call themselves pro-life.
“This would have been very striking at other times,” reflected Fernández Buey.
This professor of ethics and political philosophy stresses the paradox that supposes that these right wing positions have migrated from “defending law and order, to advocating behavior of this sort,” with, for example, the anti-abortion campaign.
Some attitudes that could be defined, this time certainly, as a clear invitation to rebellion, in this case tax rebellion.
I get bent when I see the attitude of “tax resistance is conscientious and good when I do it, but when those uncouth people over there do it, there’s something wrong with it.”
That said, it’s an interesting article, and shows that there are strong similarities between the war tax resistance movement (and its critics) in the United States and in Spain.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration reports that the number of tax returns the IRS believes to be claiming fraudulent refunds has skyrocketed this year.
It’s a little unclear to me from the report how much of this is a real trend in taxpayer behavior and how much is an artifact of new IRS procedures or the fact that more people are e-filing, thus making their returns available for automated analysis quicker.
“Bushel Bob” has a website where he explains why he shut down his produce market so as to avoid earning money on which he’d have to pay war taxes.
Now he donates his produce to charity and thereby avoids the tax.
Radley Balko, in Reason magazine, has an interesting interview with Stewart Rhodes about the “Oath Keepers,” a group of American military and police personnel who have taken a vow not to carry out unconstitutional orders.
In revolutions worldwide and throughout history, the turning point has often been when the folks in uniform have started questioning their orders and refusing to attack the citizenry on behalf of the politicians.
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
“Will I Get Audited?” — a frequently expressed worry of people contemplating war tax resistance.
The answer: probably not, though it depends on how you go about it.
But here are some responses from the IRS you can expect, and some options for how you can respond in turn.
(From Ruth Benn on the War Tax Talk blog.)
tax resisters across Italy hold up “#IOnonMIammazzo” hashtag signs to demonstrate that they refuse to sacrifice themselves for extortionate taxes
Tax resistance continues its viral spread in Italy, now semi-organized under the “Io Non Mi Ammazzo” (“I won’t kill myself”) banner.
This latest incarnation of what seems to be a growing and converging set of campaigns was spurred by Facebook post by Scordia bartender Giuseppe “Pippo” Barresi in which he said, in part: “I do not mean to be a tax evader, but given the choice of not paying crazy and unnecessary taxes or reducing my family to hunger, I choose the first option.”
Barresi, as with other recent resisters, is claiming a necessity defence under the criminal code and also a Constitutional right to not be subject to unbearable taxation.
“It’s as if my family were threatened by a wild beast.
Only that beast is the state.”
The right-wing of the domestic internet has lately been outraged about Planned Parenthood, over the issue of abortion in particular.
I’ve lost track of how many tweets I’ve seen that are variations on “I’m going to stop paying taxes if the government doesn’t stop funding Planned Parenthood!”
Easier tweeted than done, of course, and today’s American right-wingers have a pretty poor record of follow-through on threats like these.
But then there’s Ann Barnhardt.
She’s a Catholic counter-reformist who burned a Koran on camera (“bookmarked with raw bacon”) and who shut down her financial services business in to “Go Galt” and stop paying taxes.
In a post on her blog, Barnhardt explains why the Bible’s “Render Unto Caesar…” verse doesn’t discourage her from refusing to pay federal taxes.
Her conclusion:
Enough is enough. You cannot subsidize this government and still claim that God is “first” in your life.
It is mathematically, metaphysically and morally impossible.
You must choose your allegiances now.
You must now choose who or what it is that you truly worship.
Do you worship God or do you worship your wealth?
Here’s a simple litmus test for you: are you or are you not willing to give up all of your wealth in bearing witness to God in His Truth?
If the answer is no, then stop calling yourself a Christian, because you very simply are not.
The IRS hung up on 8.8 million callers who tried to contact the agency during this year’s tax filing season.
Only 37% of those who called actually managed to hear a non-recorded voice.
The IRS calls these hang-ups “courtesy disconnects.”
Some links of interest:
The Nuclear Resister reprints some historical information about nonviolent resistance to U.S. nuclear
weapons in the Pacific Northwest. Prominent in this history is the
strong stand taken by Catholic Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen, who called
the Trident nuclear submarines the “Auschwitz of Puget Sound” and rallied Christians to oppose it. Hunthausen also refused to pay a portion of his income tax to protest against U.S. military spending. While Hunthausen deserves credit for making a bold, forthright stand and following it up with action, this didn’t happen in a vacuum — the ongoing civil disobedience of the Ground Zero activists influenced him. But he in turn opened the floodgates for other religious leaders to come forward to strongly condemn the American “first strike” policy and nuclear weapons in general. Here’s some excerpts from an interview with Jim Douglass, conducted by Terry Messman:
Terry Messman
Why was Hunthausen such a significant voice in the movement for nuclear disarmament?
Jim Douglass
He gave a speech in which he stated to a very large number of religious leaders gathered in Tacoma, Washington, that Trident was the “Auschwitz of Puget Sound.” And he took a stand of refusing to pay his income taxes in order to resist Trident.
Terry Messman
After he made that statement, we invited him to speak at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley where he urged hundreds of religious leaders to resist nuclear murder and suicide.
Jim Douglass
Yes. And as a result, roughly six months later, he actually stated publicly, “I have now decided to stop paying half of my taxes” — the half of his taxes that would have gone to military appropriations and nuclear weapons.
Terry Messman
It was such an important turning point when an archbishop actually called for massive civil disobedience.
Jim Douglass
Yes, and he not only called for it — he did it! His tax resistance was nonviolent civil disobedience in the most radical sense possible.
Terry Messman
When Archbishop Hunthausen declared that Trident was the Auschwitz of Puget Sound, what effect did it have on your work at Ground Zero? And what effect did it have on the general public?
Jim Douglass
It electrified the general public. And it profoundly encouraged us. We all knew Archbishop Hunthausen. We’d known him for years and he’d already done all kinds of things to support our work. He supported a 30-day fast that we engaged in. He sent information on the Trident campaign to his entire body of priests and religious leaders in the diocese. He brought over to Ground Zero all of his administrative leaders in the archdiocese for a retreat on the issue of Trident. He’d done everything he could — up to refusing to pay his own taxes — before he took that step. So we were one in community with Archbishop Hunthausen before he took that further step.
Terry Messman
What was the response of the Church hierarchy to Hunthausen’s call for massive resistance to the arms race?
Jim Douglass
Well, I would say it was a mixed response. A number of Catholic bishops within the United States made statements of their own against nuclear weapons in the months following Archbishop Hunthausen’s statement. I think they were to some degree, if not largely, inspired by his courage. I found that remarkable because there had been so much silence before then.
Terry Messman
In what way did Hunthausen’s statement play such a huge role in the bishops speaking out?
Jim Douglass
There was nothing vaguely like Archbishop Hunthausen’s statement before him. And following his statement there were many!
Jim Douglass
Archbishop Hunthausen really was a catalyst in a movement of religious leaders, not only Catholics but others as well. Remember that the statement by which he began to become so prominent was made to the Lutheran leaders of the Pacific Northwest. He wasn’t speaking to Catholics; he was speaking to the Lutheran leaders who had invited him to speak because he had already become a leader on this issue. That’s when he made the statement that gained national attention. He had an effect on everybody. In the Pacific Northwest, especially, he was meeting every week with all the other key religious leaders. They ate breakfast together. I joined them a number of times so I met these people and Archbishop Hunthausen was the most prophetic voice and the inspiration in their midst. These were all the most prominent religious leaders at that time in Seattle and everyone at these breakfasts was very supportive of Archbishop Hunthausen. The Jewish leaders were very supportive of Archbishop Hunthausen. So it was right across the board that religious leaders said, “This man is speaking out in a way that is both prophetic and pastoral.”
Wake Forest University is sponsoring something called “The Beacon Project.”
The theory behind the project seems to be that to discover more about how to be most ethical, it would be wise to pay close attention to people who exhibit uncommonly extraordinary moral behavior — moral “geniuses” perhaps.
I can think of some big challenges for an approach like this, but it also seems like it could be very promising.
On August 31, when first-quarter property tax was due in Rutland, we paid 49 percent of the amount due, covering our municipal tax liability, and withheld the 51 percent slated for education.
We will continue this practice every quarter until the Legislature gains the political will to pass meaningful and fair education reform.
I work at two part-time jobs, and my pay at one of those has recently been reduced.
My wife is self-employed.
We have no family members in public school.
Yet habitually frugal as we are, in order to pay the tax levied for the maintenance of Vermont’s education system, we are frequently forced to defer paying some bills or to put off filling some prescriptions.
We can purchase fuel only in small amounts.
In fact, we are denying payment precisely for the greater good, and for the good of Vermont, in the hope that even a small action will speak louder than words and bring to the attention of the Legislature the seriousness of the plight of those whom they are supposed to serve.
We are aware of the repercussions our action may have.
Governments tend not to smile on civil disobedience, especially when it affects their income.
Yet Americans have learned throughout history that when our governments do not act in the public’s interest it becomes necessary for the public to act for itself.
We hope that some other aggrieved Vermonters will join us in this action.
If not, we will stand alone, but we will stand.
Tax receipts in Greece continue to plummet as the government wavers about whether to stick with the euro and people decide to wait out the uncertainty with their money in their own pockets.
I keep waiting for the folks in the anti-abortion movement to catch on to the tax resistance idea, but when it comes to taxes, they’re mostly just talk.
Lately the talk is all about refusing to pay taxes that might end up going to Planned Parenthood, but it’s a rare day when I see a pro-lifer put money and mouth together.
Here’s an example — a video-blog or something of the sort from Garrett Johnson in which he advocates tax resistance in the anti-abortion cause.
Another example is that of Scott Roeder, currently serving a long sentence for murdering a doctor who performed abortions, who gave an interview in which he promoted Constitutionalist tax protest theories.
I’ll keep my ear to the ground and let you know if any of this catches on.
IRS Circumvents “Statute of Limitations” by Ruth Benn.
Normally, the IRS has ten years to collect unpaid taxes from you before they have to give up.
Also, normally, if you decide to voluntarily pay your taxes, you can also decide for which tax year you are paying them, and by IRS policy, they’ll respect that.
Ruth Benn’s tax resistance takes the form of refusing to pay her income tax, but voluntarily paying her self-employment tax.
As the ten year statute of limitations approached on one of her unpaid years of income tax, the IRS tried to pull a fast one and used some sleight-of-hand to apply the money Benn was paying for the current year’s self-employment tax to the expiring year’s income tax amount.
She is hoping to get the agency to change its mind and to respect its own policy, and promises to keep us up to date on how the red tape tangles.
Counseling Notes.
Including a reminder that Social Security levies can continue past the ten-year statute of limitations date because the levy is considered “continuous” when it is first applied (not reapplied with each new Social Security check).
Democrats are keen to force banks to report how much their customers have put into and taken out of their accounts each year.
They hope this will bring to the surface some of the money in the underground economy that the government has been frustrated when trying to tax.
This proposal has gotten a lot of pushback, and has been an on-again / off-again part of the budget package currently oozing through Congress.
The latest guesswork suggests that the Democrats may reactivate the proposal but restrict it to accounts with $10,000 or more in them.
There’s a nice website that’s been established by the caretakers of The Nelson Homestead — the modest home of war tax resisters Juanita & Wally Nelson in Deerfield, Massachusetts.
It has good recaps of the lives and activism of the Nelsons, including photos.
The Biafra Nations League, which is trying to establish a break-away nation more representative of the Igbo people, has issued an ultimatum to oil firms in the area, ordering them to stop paying taxes to Cameroon and Nigeria, which currently claim sovereignty over the region.
Argentina legalized abortion .
Now a group of Argentine legislators have proposed a law that would permit a sort of conscientious objection to taxpayer-involvement in abortion, of a similar sort to what is proposed in the “Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act” in the U.S.
The human war on traffic ticket robots continues, with robots taken out of service by human rebels in the U.S., Italy, France, and Germany & France in recent weeks.
The Catholic Worker published a letter announcing a shake-up in leadership at the national War Tax Resistance office, and what sounds like flagging enthusiasm for war tax resistance as American involvement in the Vietnam War wound down:
War Tax Resistance
War Tax Resistance 912 E. 31 St. Kansas City, Mo. 64109
Dear Friends,
We want to ask you, at the beginning of this letter, to read it carefully and to respond to it as soon as possible.
Some major questions are raised and the answers depend on each of you.
First, as of , both of us will resign our positions on the National Staff.
However, we will stay on as volunteers as long as is needed to help whoever takes over the National Office and until the present debt is paid.
We have decided this after quite a bit of thought and after talking to a lot of people.
The National Office needs some fresh thought and different ideas.
We became convinced of this when only three Centers responded to our last mailing, which we felt was a rather important one.
We too need a change.
Neither of us has lost our commitment to WTR, in fact both of us feel its importance is greater now than before.
So we will not stop urging people to take up war tax resistance, but we would like to couple that with a broader non-violent program.
We have already started a mail order book store dealing solely with non-violence.
After Bob stops working to pay off our WTR debts he will move full time into working with the Non-Violent Studies Institute of which the book store is a part.
Angie will spend her time helping to start a Catholic Worker House, and will also help with the non-violence program.
Although Bob will continue to work until the present debts are paid, whoever takes over the national office will be responsible for programs they initiate and their ongoing expenses.
It seems that this decision on our part in turn calls for some decisions on your part.
Who will become the National Staff?
Is a National Office necessary?
What about Tax Talk and the printing of literature?
What about those people who will need a place to turn to when IRS decides to come down on them for their resistance?
These issues have to be decided soon and therefore we are calling a Working Committee Meeting for .
It is becoming clear that IRS feels much safer in “coming down” on war tax resisters now than they did a number of months ago.
Apparently they feel there is no united movement to cause them any serious trouble.
Are they right?
If ever we needed to show a united group of people it is now.
Well, that’s about all.
Please let us hear from you so we can have all needed arrangements made for the Working Committee Meeting.
Also, please be thinking of people who could take on the responsibility of the National Office.
Hope to hear from you soon.
In peace, Angie O’Gorman Bob Calvert
The National Catholic News Service carried this dispatch on :
Abortion Opponent Loses in Tax Protest on Abortion Decision
Bethlehem, Ohio (NC)—
A farmer who refused to pay his income tax in protest against the U.S. Supreme Court’s abortion decision, has found the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) unsympathetic to him.
The IRS has ordered withdrawal of $490 from the bank checking account of Brendan Finnegan, a Richland County farmer who filed his tax return but withheld what he owed.
Instead of enclosing a check, Finnegan attached a letter and some pictures of aborted babies.
He told the IRS that he would withhold his taxes “until our government passes and enforces law to protect the unborn from abortion.”
His protracted battles with the IRS have been reported in the Catholic Chronicle, the Toledo diocesan newspaper.
Finnegan, his wife Betty, and their three children live on a 500-acre farm.
The IRS action has not discouraged Finnegan.
He says he will withhold payment again this year, and there should be more money involved.
“We had a pretty good year on the farm,” he explained.
A National Catholic News Service dispatch from began with what sounded like it was going to be an exciting tale of tax resistance, but then petered out into a dry article about private school financing and teachers’ union negotiation.
Excerpt:
Cleveland Monsignor Still Potential Tax Resister
By John Maher
Cleveland (NC)—
The word “dapper" fits Msgr. William N. Novicky, superintendent of education for the diocese of Cleveland, as well as it can any man wearing clerical black.
The 52-year-old priest doesn't conform to the image of your average tax resister, but that is what he says he will be if state and federal courts continue to oppose government aid to nonpublic schools as extensively as they have.
“I'm committed to the concept that if the prejudice that is evident in the courts continues against anything that is Catholic,” he said in an interview.
“I think we'll have to resort to nonviolent civil disobedience.
For me, that means withholding taxes.”
Catholic school officials in Ohio are awaiting the decision of a three-judge federal court on a state law that would make more than $81 million in auxiliary services and materials available to nonpublic schools.
In , the same three-judge court ruled unconstitutional a tuition refund law and in the panel struck down a tax credit law that had been passed to replace the refund law.
“I don’t think we’re going to get justice,” Msgr. Novicky said.
“If we had all the money in the world for our schools, I’d still be fighting for equitable treatment on the distribution of tax dollars.
We won’t get it without fighting.
“It’s going to take a long time to undo the damage done by the present (U.S.) Supreme Court justices.
They have done some legal gerrymandering to rule out aid to nonpublic school children.”
Msgr. Novicky contended that the Supreme Court had set up criteria governing aid to nonpublic schools in one decision, and then, after legislation had been drawn up to provide aid under those criteria, made another decision setting up another set of norms.
From the Catholic Worker:
Tax Resistance Notes
On , the East Coast Regional Meeting of War Tax Resistance was held in New York.
The gathering brought out several pressing questions: First, the acute need for a National Office or co-ordinating body to distribute information on War Tax Resistance.
(Bob Calvert, the inspiration and editor of Tax Talk, is no longer able to devote his energy to the newsletter.)
It was decided that WIN Magazine should be approached with the idea of carrying a weekly column devoted to War Tax Resistance.
Second, a resolution was passed calling for a National Conference on to be held at 339 Lafayette St., New York City.
The meeting will discuss proposed changes and make plans for confronting the I.R.S. on .
In a related matter, the “World Peace Tax Fund” has been formed to work for legal statutes which would provide for the withholding of war taxes on the basis of conscientious objection.
The plan calls for alternative uses of the money, ideally peace-related research and the like.
If you are interested, write Kathy Maloney, WPTF, Box 1447, Ann Arbor, Mich. 48104.
Jersey City — Rev. John P. Egan has again notified the Internal Revenue Service that he will not fill out a tax form this year in protest against “the diabolic ways in which the U.S. government spends so much of the money given to it by its citizenry.”
This is the second year that Father Egan has not cooperated with the income tax program even to the extent of sending in a form.
For several years before that, he paid no taxes because “I gave away whatever surplus earning might be subject to tax.”
The only response the activist priest got from his protest last year was a form letter notifying him that he had not filed an income tax form.
“I sent that one back with the notation that I had already told them I was not going to file one,” he said.
“I haven’t heard from them since then.”
In his letter , Father Egan says that “It is hard to think of a better way to celebrate the bicentennial than by tax resistance.
The first protests against the tyranny of the British government were in the form of non-payment of unjust taxes.”
Father Egan protests against the “clear policy of the present administration to keep millions unemployed, supposedly to slow down the rate of inflation,” the “development of the B-1 nuclear bomber at a cost ultimately of more than $1,000 to every average U.S. working person” and use of “food as a weapon to force people to follow the will of a particular government.”
The Catholic Worker reprinted this Peacemaker pamphlet in its issue:
No Money for War
(The following article is from a Peacemaker leaflet updated to figures.
This leaflet is contained in a more complete booklet, The Handbook for Non Payment of Taxes, published by Peacemakers, 1255 Paddock Hills Av., Cincinnati OH 45229, who also publish an outstanding newsletter of nonviolent alternatives and responses.
For more information on tax resistance, contact Mandy Carter, War Tax Resistance National Office, 629 South Hill St., Rm. 915, Los Angeles, CA 90014.
Other literature on tax resistance is available from Angie and Bob Calvert, Nonviolent Studies Institute, 912 East 31st St., Kansas City, Mo. 64109. Eds. note.)
The Peacemaker Movement’s position statement on tax nonpayment says:
“The federal income tax is not only the chief source of monetary support of the war system but it is the chief link connecting each individual’s daily labor with the tremendous buildup for war.
A breaking of this link is important both as a stoppage of war supplies and as a real, personal commitment to peace.
To break this link it is necessary for an individual to withdraw totally from the taxing of incomes federally.
This means that one does not pay taxes either directly or through the withholding system, nor turn over the taxes of workers in his/her employ.
Only after settling the withholding matter can a person be in command of his/her income and choose where the money goes.
Therefore, the Peacemaker position is one of nonpayment of federal taxes, including excise taxes such as the telephone tax.
Ways to participate in nonpayment of federal taxes are (1) Refuse to pay taxes legally owed, (2) Live on an income low enough to be nontaxable.”
Limiting Income
One person can earn up to $2350 a year before owing income tax.
A person with one dependent can earn up to $3100.
Three exemptions allow one to earn up to $3850; four, $4600; five, $5350; ten $9100.
A person over 65 years of age is allowed an extra exemption; so a married couple over 65 can earn $4600 before owing tax.
Some people would rather not put a self-limit on their income, as they feel this would be taking on a standard of living dictated by government.
Others would rather limit their income than break tax laws; some welcome an opportunity to live more simply, withdrawing further from the war economy.
A religious calling to voluntary poverty impels many more.
Those who follow this intentional low income form of nonpayment often find living collectively is more economical and usually seek part time work, short term jobs or limited self-employment.
Declining to Pay
Some people prefer to live at least a little above a no-tax level so they can add an act of open refusal to their position of nonpayment.
Others find, after totaling their yearly income, that they are inadvertently above the no-tax level; and then go ahead with an open refusal also.
Many earn more money and have larger amounts to refuse the government.
Any money legally due the government at tax deadline can be openly refused, the refuser deciding whether or not to file a tax return.
Some people prefer, when making their refusals, to write IRS or the President; others prefer to write their local papers and to hand out their own prepared leaflets.
Withholding-Free Income
People wanting to refuse war taxes are often hampered by the withholding tax, as almost everyone works for an employer who takes out tax money from each paycheck.
Unless a person corrects this situation, nonpayment of taxes cannot take place.
Either the taking-out must cease, or the employee must quit.
Withholding Form W-4E may be signed by any employee who had no tax liability for the previous year and expects to have no tax liability for the current year.
This form authorizes the employer to pay the full salary or wage without withholding taxes.
It is meant for students or others who work only part-time.
It must be signed anew in each calendar year of employment.
Some people notify their employer that they object to paying such taxes — having them withheld.
In lieu of other possibilities, one can request that each paycheck be just below the figure where withholding starts.
That figure is $39.99 weekly for one exemption, such as a husband and wife can each claim when both are employed.
The withholding Form W-4 permits two exemptions for a single person or a married person whose spouse is not also employed.
Such an employee can earn $53.99 weekly without having any taxes withheld.
A married person whose spouse is not employed, by claiming the spouse as a dependent, for example, can thus take three exemptions, and be paid $67.99 per week without withholding.
Four exemptions brings the figure to $83.99 weekly.
Six exemptions permits the withholding-free weekly wage to be $109.99; ten exemptions brings the withholding-free weekly wage to $169.99.
Concerned employers have sometimes found creative ways to make up the monetary loss to the employee.
After lowering their weekly pay in this fashion, some people have raised their hourly rate by working three or four days, instead of five; this also opens possibilities for other income.
People are legally entitled to claim as exemptions any persons who are members of the household for the entire year, who earn less than $750 a year and who receive more than half support from the wage earner — relatives need not be members of the household to qualify.
A parent may claim as dependent a child who earns above $750, provided the child is a full-time student or is under 19, and is given more than half support.
Jobs Outside Withholding
Agricultural labor, domestic service, newspaper delivery, and services performed by a minister in the exercise of his ministry are three types of work which do not come under the withholding rule.
Some people pick apples, for instance, or do caretaker-type maintenance, without withholding.
(Although exempted from withholding, such jobs are not exempted from tax, so people in these jobs have prime opportunity to refuse to pay.)
Some people find it possible to work for an employer and still not be on that employer’s payroll.
They are, instead, on the payroll of an “employment service” of their own which supplies their services along with a weekly bill, and receives paychecks made out to the employment service.
This Manpower-type employer then pays the employee the full earning with nothing withheld.
Some have felt it important to make this service a partnership — every member a partner.
There is then no legal obligation to withhold tax.
Doctors, dentists, lawyers, music teachers, tutors, therapists, counselors, and others who have a private practice do not get involved in the withholding system.
Self-employment can also be found in the arts: writing, illustrating, performing as musician, entertainer or lecturer.
People with duplicating skills have opened their own print shops, binderies, mimeograph and addressing services.
Messenger services and parcel delivery services are also in this category of personally-owned and operated businesses.
People with skills as decorators, hairdressers, barbers, bakers, woodworkers, upholsterers can open small businesses where they are self employed and/or work as partners.
House builders have found self-employment by taking on the responsibility of constructing the entire building.
In the same way, house painters, plumbers, electricians have gone out after their own jobs.
Mechanics, engineers, architects, and people with other skills have become consultants in their fields.
They have a practice, work for customers, go out on special jobs for these customers.
People with mechanical skills have opened fix-it shops, garages, paint and body shops.
Nurses have taken private cases in hospitals and homes, thus becoming their own employers.
Taxicab drivers and truck drivers who own or rent their vehicles are self-employed.
Likewise those who own or rent power machinery (tractors, mowers, tree saws).
Some have sold articles on commission and escaped the withholding system.
Some have sold insurance without withholding.
Others have established routes for fresh eggs, or some other repeatedly-purchased food items.
Alternative Funds
Any money held out of government use can, of course, be devoted to something else — notably to something which encourages life and counteracts war.
In several areas, people refusing payment of income and telephone taxes have formed alternative fund groups, pooling the money and deflecting it into constructive uses:
to reimburse members from whom the government has collected refused taxes; to give financial help to members who have become unemployed, imprisoned or otherwise dislocated because of nonpayment.
Some groups have used these funds for supporting or initiating agreed-upon peace actions, or for their community.
Some people will have to make a change in job, life style, place of living.
Some people feel that making such changes has been difficult, at least at first; and that they have made sacrifices for their beliefs.
Others find such changes relatively easy, and seem pleased with having had to make the changes.
Both those who limit their incomes to a nontaxable amount and those who refuse legally-owed taxes have found that their situations lead to conversations with neighbors, friends, strangers — to dialogue on war.
This personal interaction is felt at times to be more significant than the act itself of denying a few dollars to the war machine.
That issue also included this note:
War Tax Resistance is starting an outreach project to counter the American war budget.
To help raise funds for this project, W.T.R. is selling Edmond Wilson’s “The Cold War and the Income Tax,” for $2.95.
Order through War Tax Resistance/NYC, 339 Lafavette St., NYC 10012.
, The Catholic Worker published a letter to the editor from Chuck Quilty regarding his criminal tax case (one I hadn’t encountered before in war tax resistance literature — he’s not listed at NWTRCC’s War Tax Resisters Taken to Court list, for instance.):
Tax Case
2733 8½ Ave.
Rock Island, Ill. 61201
Dear Dorothy,
Here is the latest information on my trial () and my sentencing ().
The charge was two counts of filing false information (i.e. W-4E withholding form).
The trial lasted only one day with Judge Morgan, in effect, denying me a trial by jury.
The judge, in his instructions to the jury, told them that the only fact they had to decide was whether I had signed the W-4E, something I had already admitted.
All personal motivation and beliefs, questions of international law, and constitutional issues were considered irrelevant.
At the sentencing Judge Morgan surprised everyone by reading a prepared speech which was very complimentary, and stated that he wasn’t even going to fine me because I freely gave of my time and money to help those less fortunate than myself.
He gave me 3 years probation on each count to be served concurrently.
We have decided to appeal the decision, not because the sentence was unacceptable, but because of the issues we feel can still be raised.
One remote possibility is that the appellate court would overturn the decision.
More likely, they could rule a mistrial, and we would start over again.
The government might then drop the charges or they could try me again.
This time my personal convictions would be considered relevant and testimony to support my contentions on international and constitutional law would have to be allowed.
Both my lawyer and I were forbidden to mention these during the trial.
The points we feel can be raised by the appeal and/or another trial are:
Signing a W-4E form represents making a legal judgment as to tax liability.
People should not be made criminals for making a legal judgment.
International law. i.e. U.N. Charter, S.E.A.T.O., Geneva, Nuremburg, is binding on U.S. citizens via article six of the U.S. constitution.
The right to practice religious conviction includes tax refusal.
My lawyer has been very generous with his time and is charging me much less than he is entitled to.
Still the expenses come to slightly over $3000 for the trial and appeal.
If any groups can help a little with the expenses it would be greatly appreciated.
We expect Appellate Court decision by .
Love to all!
Chuck Quilty
A National Catholic News Service dispatch dated mentioned in passing “Dr. John Kelly, a Chicago physician who with his family moved to Ireland to protest tax supported welfare programs providing abortions.”
The Catholic Worker printed another letter-to-the-editor from the Ammon Hennacy House in Portland, Oregon, in its issue (this one signed “Mufti McNassar et al.”).
Excerpts:
After years of doing family hospitality, tax resistance and piece-work peace work we’ve finally got a kitchen going as of .
The House of Hospitality still consists mainly of Patrick, myself and our three children.
has proved somewhat of a watershed for us.
A brief but sweet reunion with Daniel Berrigan on was a gift.
And with the babies weaned and the kitchen going well, the signs seem to point to a more concerted and visible resistance on our part.
I can speak only for us now, but tax resistance seems to have grown organically out of war and draft resistance as the mandate for these times.
We said as much to Mr. Short of the IRS in a tax day statement .
In the eight years we’ve been together, Patrick and I have lived below a taxable income, refused to file (but once) and refused to pay social security.
We have not incurred a tax debt, partly as our commitment to voluntary poverty, but mostly to keep our means consistent with our ends: if you make the money, it seems to us, the IRS will get it somehow, and it’s always been our first consideration that they get as little of our money as possible.
We support ourselves mostly by manual labor — 11% of which the government claims as social security.
Even this money is not set aside for the elderly and disabled, but filtered through the general fund.
Legally to work — a natural right and an integral part of being human — one must pay into the death machine.
And so we’ve begun to say no more loudly than before.
It’s always been our belief and an essential part of any small witness that we’ve given, that two people with small children can choose to be poor, can open their home to strangers, can resist openly.
There are times when one is forced to seemingly “hide and watch" — e.g. when the actual survival of another is totally dependent on one’s body or one’s time.
And even tho’ it may seem that we’re not “doing" anything then, the sheer vulnerability of the position forces one to come face to face with fear and with the future: the nuclear family as paradigm for humankind.
The Pacific Northwest is dotted with monuments to death.
To refuse to worship at the idol of nuclear power means risking some comfort in the present to offer the world a future.
We own nothing and therefore have little to lose.
The Catholic Worker reviewed Donald Kaufman’s summary of the Christian argument for war tax resistance:
The Tax Dilemma: Praying for Peace, Paying for War.
By Donald D. Kaufman.
Herald Press, Scottdale, Pa. 15683. 101 pages. $3.95.
Reviewed by Lee LeCuyer.
In this book, Donald D. Kaufman discloses the long tradition of Christians refusing to pay for war.
This tradition is rooted in Jesus’ simple but difficult command, “You cannot serve two masters, God and Mammon.”
Donald Kaufman, pointing out how the early Christians interpreted Jesus’ response to the Pharisees, “Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar — and to God what belongs to God” says “We do know that Christians refused to pay taxes for Caesar’s pagan temple in Rome.
For this reason, we can understand how erroneous it is to deduce from this story about the temple tax a command for the payment of all taxes.”
The dilemma of paying taxes, of praying for peace while financing war, is a clear example of conflicting duties.
Christians are to be obedient to civil authorities, yes.
But they are also to be obedient to God.
Here we observe two masters and two opposing commands.
Since World War Ⅱ, the foundation of international politics has been the “balance of power.”
The enormous human resources wasted in maintaining this precarious and deadly balance have already resulted in much human suffering and neglect.
Ultimately, this can only lead to genocide, the crime of murdering the human race.
Have we not idolized death, making its “power” the only significant foundation of our political relationships?
“You shall have no false gods before me.”
Jesus told Peter that “those who live by the sword shall die by the sword.”
Isaiah told the nations: “Arm but be crushed! Arm but be crushed!
Form a plan, and it shall be thwarted; make a resolve, and it shall not be carried out, for ‘With us is God.’
For thus said the Lord to me, taking hold of me and warning me not to walk in the way of this people:
‘Call not alliance what this people calls alliance, and fear not nor stand in awe of what they fear.
But with the Lord of Hosts, make your alliance — for Him be your fear and your awe.’ ”
This is the message we Christians have tried to bring to the nations.
Be not afraid. Do not fear death.
Fear only Him who can take away more than earthly life, and lay aside your weapons.
As individuals, the only way we have to cast aside our armaments is to stop providing for them.
Perhaps now is the time for Christians to refuse to pay for Uncle Sam’s pagan temple in Arlington, Va., the Pentagon.
Are we expected to finance the most deadly military arsenal in the history of the world?
As Christians, our allegiance is to Christ and His Word.
What is expected of us? — That is the heart of the matter.
“Give back to God what belongs to God,” our trust, our fear, our hope, our faithfulness, and our obedience.
The Introduction to The Tax Dilemma: Praying for Peace, Paying for War, was written by John K. Stoner.
It clarifies the specifically Christian call for tax resistance.
We reprint it here, in the hope that Donald D. Kaufman’s brief but important book will reach a wide audience and initiate a widespread and thoughtful Christian response.
“But what can I do? I am only one person.” ―Author Unknown.
The most common response of people to the unprecedented moral crisis of the world arms race is a sense of futility.
Many people will agree that the survival of the human race itself is in jeopardy.
Few will agree as to what can be done about it.
An even smaller number believe that they personally can do anything.
Moreover, it is distressing to observe how many people attempt to absolve themselves of any personal responsibility for the situation we are in.
They blame the government, big business, fate, God, or the devil.
There is a great deal of passing the buck.
Especially, of passing the buck to Caesar. In the form of taxes, that is. War taxes.
Yes, the word is out: there is such a thing as taxes for war.
The government, if it calls it anything, calls it defense spending.
People with a commitment to speak the truth, such as Christians, have a responsibility to expose the deceptive euphemisms and call a war tax a war tax.
At which point we return to the words of our unknown author, and supply her with another quote.
“I can do something about the taxes I pay for war.”
This book is about doing that something.
But there is much more.
The book issues a challenge to a wide audience — Christian and non-Christian.
God’s claim on humankind is universal.
What does it mean for the church to be praying for peace and paying for war?
Donald Kaufman explores this contradiction from many angles and draws on many sources, but all with a view to finding the path of Christian obedience.
I have heard many Christians say that they do not engage in war tax resistance or protest because it is ineffective.
The government ultimately gets the money, the resister makes no impact, and the exercise is futile.
Apart from the fact that this appeal for success is strange talk for people whose hero and leader ended up being crucified, I hear in this an unspoken message that also doesn’t quite fit.
The general demeanor of these folks toward society and government is one of studious conformity to accepted practice and one does not have to be richly endowed with imagination to infer that tax resistance or protest looks very risky to them.
Which adds up to suggesting that their real reason for not engaging in tax resistance is that they think it would be too effective — in challenging accepted myths, clarifying the moral issue, and inviting the neighbor to take a similar stand.
In this regard, it might just be that the church should embrace tax resistance as the moral equivalent of disarmament.
It has become fairly acceptable in at least some church circles to call on government to take risks for peace in the way of disarmament.
In those circles it has not been unusual to look with some disdain on those who called for tax resistance as a form of response to the arms race.
Given the meager successes of all the disarmament talks of history, including the United Nations Special Session on Disarmament, from a purely strategic point of view it might begin to occur to us that disarmament is such an intractable problem that we shall have to appeal to the people over the heads of the politicians to do something about it.
But on a level deeper than calculating strategies for success, the church should be asking its members what is the right thing for them to do regardless of the consequences.
If the generals, presidents, and ambassadors have decided to continue the arms race, shall the Christians continue to pay for it?
For the church (indeed, for any sizeable denomination of the church) to embrace war tax resistance as a spiritual commitment and a stated policy would be the moral equivalent of a government seriously embracing a policy of disarmament.
Both would involve risk, both would be unprecedented, and both would be right.
But what government is ready to do the right thing on disarmament?
And what church is ready to do the right thing on war taxes?
There are costs and risks involved.
John K. Stoner
Copyright by Herald Press.
, this announcement appeared in that paper:
The annual New England Catholic Peace Fellowship Conference has been scheduled for .
The theme of the NECPF conference, at Mt. Alvernia High School, Newton, Mass., is “Praying for Peace/Paying for War?”
It will include a major address by Elizabeth McAllister, as well as workshops on tax refusal.
Further information on registration and materials is available from NECPF, Center of Concern, Mont Marie, Holyoke, Massachusetts 01040.
The National Catholic News Service sent out this dispatch on :
Tax Resistance Studied by Italian Pro-Lifers
Milan, Italy (NC)—
The Italian pro-life movement is studying a proposal to fight the country's liberalized abortion law through “fiscal conscientious objection,” tax resistance.
A recent communique from the coordinating committee of the Milan based Movement for Life hinted that it may urge pro-life Italians to withhold part of their taxes as a protest against the law which took effect .
The committee said the abortion law made abortion, or actually the killing of children before birth, a social service to which all (taxpayers) must contribute.
Italy’s abortion law allows state funded abortions virtually on demand in the first three months of pregnancy for adult women.
The pro-life movement is also studying ways of pressuring against the election of Simone Veil, a Frenchwoman who supports abortion, as president of the new European Parliament.
The Movement for Life is backing Emilio Colombo, an Italian, for the post.
The first anniversary of the law’s enactment last month prompted various demonstrations throughout the country.
The Movement for Life announced on that it had collected over a million signatures from supporters of a national referendum to repeal the law.
Another dispatch from the same service, dated :
Canadian pro-lifer jailed in tax refusal case
By Joann McGarry
Winnipeg, Manitoba (NC)—
While Canadian pro-lifer Joe Borowski is turning his energies to apostolic work among fellow inmates at Headingly Provincial Jail, his friends and supporters are trying to raise enough money to free him.
Borowski, chairman of the Alliance Against Abortion, has refused to pay federal income tax as a protest against Canadian laws providing federally funded abortions.
His current 90-day sentence for contempt of court arises from his refusal to supply documents on his financial status to the Canadian income tax office.
Borowski began his sentence .
Before the sentence began, Winnipeg lawyer Ernest Wehrle began a “Friends for Joe” fund to raise the money Borowski owes in back taxes.
The fund has about $7,000 in cash and pledges, said Wehrle.
“The amount owed could be anywhere from $10,000 to $25,000, he said.
Accountants for Borowski and the federal Income tax department currently are working out the figure.
Payment of the tax bill would free Borowski from jail, at least until the next tax period, said Wehrle.
“He has always said he’d rot in jail before he’d finance abortions
But I’d say he has achieved his aim and could do more if free to fight in another way,” added Wehrle.
In a letter to the Canadian Register, Catholic newspaper published in Toronto, Borowski said jails are “greatly overlooked missions” for religious work.
“The spiritual hunger is great.
It’s an old frontier that has just been overlooked or neglected,” said Borowski.
Borowski receives Communion every day, say the two priests who visit him regularly.
“You could say Joe is a very ‘apostolic’ guy.
Whenever I go to see him, he has three or four guys waiting to see me,” said Father Pat Morand, Borowski’s pastor.
Borowski has initiated a court case against the federal government in which he hopes to show that the nation’s abortion laws contravene the Canadian Bill of Rights.
The Catholic Worker included this article:
Tax Resistance
By Bill Barrett
The Christian tradition has always supported and encouraged those believers who could not, in good conscience, participate in the organized killing of war.
Though the majority of Christians in each age have not always followed this position, there have been moments in Western history when Christian pacifism substantially affected all of society.
When thousands upon thousands of lay men and women joined the Third Order of Saint Francis of Assisi, promising never “to take up lethal weapons, or bear them about, against anybody,” feudalism in Western Europe collapsed.
Feudal lords were unable to fight their wars because so many peasants had joined the Third Order.
Since their founding in , the Quakers, Mennonites, and Brethren, the “historic peace churches,” have given a consistent witness of conscientious objection.
Though relatively few in number, their presence has been a continual reminder to the American conscience.
In centuries past, the main need of a warring state was soldiers; Napoleon once boasted that he “could use 25,000 bodies a month.”
Although armies still enlist thousands of youth and are eager for more, we must recognize that there is a demand today for ever-increasing monies to finance the technology of war.
War’s menace has been transformed into a spectre more horrible than ever.
Today, even more than soldiers, governments require tremendous amounts of money to develop and build their nuclear weapons systems.
The Pentagon maintains 140 different systems with the capacity to destroy every Soviet city of over 100,000 people forty times, at a cost of over 150 billion dollars.
This money must be raised by the federal government, and it is raised through our taxes.
As more people realize this and make the connection between our tax money and U.S. military spending, tax resistance grows.
Money for War
There are two main approaches to conscientious objection to war taxation, and they are not mutually exclusive.
The first of these is the more direct: refusing to pay for what one will not do.
Federal taxes are paid on many items, though not all are military related.
F.I.C.A. Social Security withholding and the federal gasoline tax, for example, do not finance military spending.
But there are other federal taxes specifically intended for military expenses.
The federal telephone excise tax was first imposed by the War Tax Revenue Act of ; it was repealed and reinstated several times until World War Ⅱ when, in , the first tax on all telephone service was enacted to underwrite that war.
Due to expire in , the tax was extended in to raise money for the Vietnam war.
Now due to expire in (unless Congress again renews it), this tax continues to pay the war debts of Vietnam.
Many people refuse to pay this tax, usually less than one dollar each month, when it appears on their phone bills.
One simply pays the balance of the bill, enclosing a note of explanation to the phone company.
Most telephone companies consider this a matter between the individual and the government, and simply inform IRS that the tax is not being paid.
In fact, as long as the telephone company is paid the money owed it for phone service, Federal Communications Commission regulations make it illegal for service to be cut off.
Though IRS occasionally sends notices of tax due and even “final notice before seizure,” no one has yet faced criminal penalties for refused telephone tax.
Besides the federal telephone tax, an important source of revenues for the Pentagon is the federal income tax.
Resisting income tax is a bit more complicated because of the withholding system, but because so much of the military’s money is generated by this source, more and more Christians are exploring ways of refusing to pay it.
One way, perhaps the simplest, is the way of voluntary poverty.
If one earns less than a certain amount ($3300 for a single person in ), the federal government claims no tax due.
Not only is nothing contributed for the building of bombs, but the choice of voluntary poverty allows one to share in a rich tradition of the Church.
Some people who do earn taxable incomes refuse a small symbolic portion of their income tax, or they pay the tax but write a letter of protest about the government’s incredible priorities which increase military spending year after year while cutting budgets in areas of human need, such as food, housing and education.
(What horrible proof that “even when they are not used, by their cost alone armaments kill the poor by causing them to starve.”
Message from the Holy See to the UN, )
Some resisters withhold the portion of their taxes that would go to the military (47.3% in ), while others refuse to pay any federal income tax, realizing that a large portion of whatever they pay will be used for exactly those purposes to which they object in conscience.
Although the U.S. Tax Code does not care what is done with refused taxes (it cares only that it receive the money), most conscientious objectors to war taxes contribute the amount they have refused, whether from telephone or income taxes, to a group or project that they believe is working toward peace.
A great deal of helpful information on ways of refusing war taxes, and on the legal consequences, is available from the Center on Law And Pacifism, 300 W. Apsley St., Philadelphia, PA 19144, telephone 215: 844‒0365, especially in their publication People Pay for Peace: A Military Tax Refusal Guide for the Radical Religious Pacifist ($2.00).
Besides the direct action of tax refusal, there is also a second approach, for while the right to conscientious objection to participation in war is recognized by U.S. Selective Service law, the U.S. Tax Code makes no such provision.
Even First Amendment rights have not been acknowledged by the Tax Court system, which has ruled that IRS regulations take precedence over constitutional requirements!
There is, however, a bill in Congress that would recognize the right of conscientious objection to military taxation.
The World Peace Tax Fund Act, H.R. 4897 in the 94th Congress, would direct that portion of the taxes of conscientious objectors that would otherwise go to military spending be diverted instead to peace education and similar programs.
While the bill does have a number of co-sponsors in the House, Representatives need to hear that their constituents support the right of conscientious objectors to legally prevent their tax money from buying more nuclear weapons.
Copies of the bill, and more information, can be had from the National Council for a World Peace Tax Fund, 2111 Florida Ave. NW, Washington DC 20008, telephone 202: 483‒3752.
Selective Service law presently makes some provisions for conscientious objectors to war.
Tax law does not.
But conscience must be followed, whether a government declares it legal or not.
The Second Vatican Council wrote, in its document on The Church Today (GS 16), “In the depths of their conscience, people detect a law which they do not impose on themselves, but which holds them to obedience.
Always summoning them to love good and avoid evil, the voice of conscience can, when necessary, speak to their hearts more specifically: do this, shun that.
For people have in their hearts a law written by God.
To obey it is the very dignity of the person; according to it they will be judged.”
That article was followed by this ad:
The archives show next to nothing for (at least with the search terms I chose), so I’ll skip ahead to next.
The Catholic Worker devoted a page to tax resistance:
Conscience and Tax Resistance
Letter to the IRS
314-4th St. Brooklyn, NY 11215
Chief Collection Branch
Department of the Treasury
Internal Revenue Service 4901
Friend(s),
It’s taken me a while to respond because it’s been a very busy month at the house and it takes me time to express truth.
You asked for a tax return.
I wish to give what I have of life in serving others; and, since Federal taxes go primarily for war, I cannot help you in any way with data gathering and collection.
Rather, I wish to have back the $635.17 income tax and $373.95 FICA you took in , to use for building peace and living with the poor.
, I have been a pacifist and member of the Catholic Worker movement.
I quit the Navy Reserve and, rather than report for induction into the Army, briefly went to jail.
During this time I have lived and worked with the poor, actively promoting peace and running city and country “houses of hospitality” for homeless and helpless people.
I’ve done agricultural labor and all sorts of poor and subsistence work that poor people must bear — the basic labor that rich, comfortable, and professional people depend upon to live — though they little realize it.
For three and a half years, I lived with a Quaker family and have many Quaker friends who have strongly influenced me.
Currently, I help run the Arthur Sheehan House of Hospitality and the Christian Help In Park Slope (CHIPS) Shelter in Brooklyn.
I also am a poet and go to library school.
Since I refused to take part in killing or coercion, the only thing that makes sense is to refuse cooperation with the process of paying for it.
Cooperation builds a public spirit of deference and legitimacy that facilitates the process.
The process of taxation supports developments more far-reaching, serious, and monstrously perverse than even simply killing.
This country is spending more of the budget for war than ever before in peacetime.
We make, use, and export weapons which kill indiscriminately (even babies in womb or at breast) and en masse; and weapons which mutilate, pollute air, ground, and water, and corrupt forever the genetic heritage of future generations.
The government plans first strikes and preemptive war, destabilizes governments, foments discord and treachery, and brokers arms races.
Further, it actually has placed and planned to use weapons which can destroy every living thing.
Fear, greed, grasping to get one-up on others, and war, have distorted perspectives and led the Federal Government in every area and at every level (including health, education, welfare, agriculture, commerce, etc.) to adopt what amounts to an anti-life mentality.
I look long and hard to find anything the Federal Government does which is not in its own interest and is in a right spirit.
Support for abortion, though a relatively small part of the budget — an extreme case in point — is a sign that the spirit is anti-life.
Although for civic peace and good neighborliness, I file and go along with state and city taxes, despite whatever foolishness local government gets into, I draw a line.
All of these anti-life actions have been condemned by the Catholic Church. I am Catholic.
The American bishops, Vatican Council, Popes — I think by now most responsible religious bodies — have condemned especially weapons of indiscriminate destruction — even possession of such weapons.
Several American bishops have called for war tax refusal.
I believe the only way to peace is peace. Only winning hearts is effective.
Violence originates in human hearts; peace begins in self with faith, poverty of spirit, and fundamental change of heart.
Then, to make peace with each other, it is necessary to make peace with the earth.
Experience convinces me war is incompatible with any true problem-solving, dialogue, reconciliation, or ministry — war is futile for achieving peace.
It lacks room for forgiveness.
State resort to violence makes violence seem legitimate and helps create a climate of contradictions and violence.
All other violence pales in comparison to preparation of instruments for world destruction.
The government which prepares such things lacks qualifications to resolve conflicts, within or without.
I believe the only way to resolve social conflicts is to resolve and eliminate causes — works of mercy versus works of war.
I believe I must one day face Jesus as judge (Who said: “If you deny Me before men, I shall deny you before My Father in Heaven”).
He commanded “Love your enemy,” “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is, Who lets His rain fall on the just and unjust.”
He warned: “He who lives by the sword will die by the sword” and “What you’ve done to the least of these you’ve done to Me.”
He took judgment and killing out of our hands, because it is sacrilegious to kill within God’s family and killing leads to destruction of the killers — body, soul, mind, heart.
He left us the right to use, in constant prayer, only whatever truth and love God abundantly grants us.
We each face, in a way, the choice that humans have faced since the beginning, as in the story of Adam and Eve: to choose good only and thus find paradise or to choose the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and thus bring on ourselves pain, death, and destruction of everything most beautiful and precious to us in the world we know.
I want to give allegiance only to hope — to say “Yes!” to life, and to say “No!” to mad fear and scapegoating — while it still may possibly not be too late.
The Federal Government may go one way.
I go another — trying to build a spirit in the world, such that some day I may even be happy to contribute to what the government does; and the government may even be willing to allow me to contribute freely or not.
Can you imagine? That is world peace!
I care for your salvation. I pray you may have peace and freedom from the madness of arms.
Will you gather a harvest in spirit for Truth and Love rather than money for war and worse?
If you want to pursue this further may we meet and talk?
Daniel Marshall
Conscience & Military Tax Campaign
One of several groups promoting various ways to refuse taxes is the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign.
It is seeking people who will resolve to start withholding the full military portion of their Federal income taxes when notified that 100,000 people are ready to join in this action.
The Campaign encourages people to start at least symbolic withholding now, and offers support as well as advice on how to do it.
CMTC was organized by supporters of the World Peace Tax Fund.
Some may feel they cannot take such a risk because they are encumbered with assets and family obligations.
CMTC can furnish material that will explain how certain steps towards tax refusal can be taken with minimum risk.
One can withhold taxes in such a way as to not expose oneself to a jail sentence.
For further information, contact: Conscience & Military Tax Campaign, 44 Bellhaven Road, Bellport, NY 11713.
People Pay for Peace
An updated and enlarged edition of People Pay for Peace: A Military Tax Refusal Guide for Radical Religious Pacifists and People of Conscience, by Bill Durland, will be available by .
People Pay for Peace has been used for several years by people of religious and moral conscience who are contemplating or actually resisting participation in military expenditures for war, planning for war or weapons research.
Over 50% of U.S. income tax dollars goes to the military (for past, present and future uses), while social services expenditures continue to be cut by the current administration.
The new edition (published by The Center on Law and Pacifism, P.O. Box 1584 Colorado Springs, CO 80901 and available on order from them) is enlarged to include the following subjects: Part Ⅰ is entitled “Introduction to Military Tax Refusal” and contains four chapters.
Chapter One discusses the background of the movement including motivations and a history of war tax resistance.
Chapter Two outlines theological responses to paying taxes for war — both Christian and Jewish, including the relationship of civil disobedience to the Gospel and Torah.
Chapter Three deals with several philosophical questions on the “why’s” and “why not’s” of doing war tax resistance.
Chapter Four discusses the military budget, alternative funds and community organization.
Part Ⅱ is entitled “How to Refuse to Pay the Military Tax.”
This part also has four chapters.
Chapter One deals with the employee as tax refuser, with special emphasis on the problem of withholding and adjusting one’s W-4 form in order to have sufficient allowances so that by income tax time one may have some control of one’s tax payment, thereby allowing a war tax deduction.
Chapter Two is concerned with the problems encountered by employers, self-employed and community organizations as war tax resisters.
Such questions as the loss of tax exempt status are addressed in this chapter.
Chapter Three provides an historical background of the income tax and information on current trends in military spending.
War tax credits, deductions and refunds and, finally, an analysis of telephone tax refusal are also covered in this chapter.
Chapter Four reprints a number of examples of letters of conscience of people who explain to the IRS their reasons for war tax refusal.
Part Ⅲ is entitled “What the IRS Will Do To You” and treats the administrative process (the audit) in Chapter One; the collection process (the lien, levy, seizure) in Chapter Two.
Attention is given to specific questions such as: Can you be fired?
What are the specific problems of husbands and wives or other people with joint accounts?
What are the IRS penalties and interest?
What can you do about collection?
Part Ⅳ explains the court process.
Chapter One discusses both civil and criminal courts, especially the Tax Court, and the process involved in electing to go there.
Is it true you can be fined $500 for exercising your constitutional right to use the Tax Court?
What are the statutes of limitations for the IRS in prosecuting your case?
Chapter Two deals with current criminal and civil cases with a discussion of winning and witnessing and conscience and the courts.
Part Ⅴ reviews the major constitutional cases on war tax resistance brought before the courts by the Center on Law and Pacifism over the past several years.
Each chapter includes reprints of major sections of legal briefs and writs used at the Appellate Court and Supreme Court level.
These reprints are offered because they can be modified for use at all court levels by war tax resisters handling their own cases.
Chapter Seven of this section concludes with some observations about the future for war tax resistance.
War Resisters League Tax Refusal Guide
People at the War Resisters League, many of whom themselves have refused taxes, have put together a comprehensive Guide to War Tax Resistance.
Drawing on their own experiences and the kinds of questions many people have asked them through the years, they have compiled information on types of tax refusal and their consequences, a history of tax refusal, accounts of resisters, a list of local tax refusal centers or contacts, and an historical analysis of military spending.
Another section is on ways to resist collection.
The Guide is a very useful resource and easy to understand.
It is 120 pgs. long, with 8½×11 inch pages, and can be gotten for $6 plus $1 postage from: War Resisters League, 339 Lafayette St., NY, NY 10012.
―Peggy Scherer
When we last left Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen, he had issued a rousing cry for resistance to nuclear arms, and had suggested war tax resistance as one way to go about it, but had been a little coy about how he himself was going to respond come tax time.
In , he cleared that up.
From the National Catholic News Service:
1-1-27-82 ARCHBISHOP HUNTHAUSEN HOLDING BACK HALF OF TAXES IN NUCLEAR PROTEST (600 — EMBARGOED until .
Not to be published or broadcast before that date.)
Seattle (NC)—
Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen of Seattle has announced that he will withhold 50 percent of his federal income taxes as “a means of protesting our nation’s continuing involvement in the race for nuclear arms supremacy.”
The archbishop’s announcement, in the form of a pastoral letter, came seven months after he suggested to delegates to the Pacific Northwest Synod Convocation of the Lutheran Church in America that one possible non-violent form of Christian resistance to “nuclear murder and suicide” would be to refuse to pay 50 percent of one’s federal income taxes.
In his letter dated and released in the issue of his archdiocesan newspaper, the Catholic Northwest Progress, the archbishop stated that he is “aware that this action will provoke a variety of responses,” but urged all persons to “continue to discuss this nuclear arms issue in a spirit of mutual openness and charity.”
He also said that he was not suggesting that all who agree with his peace and disarmament views should imitate his action of income tax withholding.
“I recognize,” he said, “that some who agree with me in their hearts find it practically impossible to run the risk of withholding taxes because of their obligations to those personally dependent upon them.
Moreover, I see little value in imitating what I am doing simply because I am doing it.
I prefer that each individual come to his or her own decision on what should be done to meet the nuclear arms challenge.”
Citing a previous pastoral letter he wrote on the subject.
Archbishop Hunthausen stated that certain laws may be peacefully disobeyed under serious conditions, and that there may be times “when disobedience may be an obligation of conscience.”
“I believe,” he said “that the present issue is as serious as any the world has faced. The very existence of humanity is at stake.”
What he hopes his words and actions will do, the archbishop continued, is “to awaken those who have come to accept without thinking the continuation of the arms race, to stir even those who disagree with me to find a better path than the one we now follow, to encourage all to put in first place not the production of arms but the production of peace.”
The federal income tax which he withholds, the archbishop said, will be deposited in a fund to be used for charitable purposes.
When Archbishop Hunthausen called for unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United States in an address to the Lutheran synod meeting and suggested nuclear tax resistance as one possible response to nuclear arms spending, his comments received national news coverage.
His speech led Catholic and non-Catholic church leaders in the state of Washington to begin programs of prayer, study and discussion on war and peace issues in their churches.
Archbishop Hunthausen, 60, did not reveal the amount of federal taxes he usually pays or how much one half of his taxes would be.
His chancellor, Father Michael Ryan, said he did not think the archbishop would publicize the amount because it was the symbol of the action that was important rather than the amount of money involved.
Father Ryan also said the archbishop “realizes he’s responsible for facing the consequences” of civil disobedience, but “I don’t think he’d want to speculate on” the penalties he may face.
Deliberate refusal to pay taxes can be punished by fines or imprisonment or both.
3-1-27-82 NC DOCUMENTARY: ARCHBISHOP HUNTHAUSEN ON TAX RESISTANCE (1,080 — EMBARGOED until .
Not to be published or broadcast before that date.)
Seattle (NC)—
This is the text of a pastoral letter by Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen of Seattle announcing his decision to withhold half his federal income tax in protest over U.S. nuclear weapons policy.
The letter, dated , was released in the Seattle archdiocesan newspaper, the Catholic Northwest Progress.
My dear people of God:
As you Know, I have spoken out against the participation of our country in the nuclear arms race because I believe that such participation leads to incalculable harm.
Not only does it take us along the path toward nuclear destruction, but it also diverts immense resources from helping the needy.
As Vatican Ⅱ put it, “The arms race is one of the greatest curses on the human race and the harm that it inflicts on the poor is more than can be endured.” (“The Church in the Modern World,” n. 81)
I believe that as Christians imbued with the spirit of peacemaking expressed by the Lord in the Sermon on the Mount, we must find ways to make known our objections to the present concentration on further nuclear arms buildup.
Accordingly, after much prayer, thought, and personal struggle, I have decided to withhold 50 percent of my income taxes as a means of protesting our nation’s continuing involvement in the race for nuclear arms supremacy.
I am aware that this action will provoke a variety of responses.
Many will agree with me and support me as they have done in the past.
Other conscientious people will be puzzled, uncomprehending, resentful, and even angry.
For the sake of all, I shall clarify what I am attempting and not attempting to do by my tax-withholding action.
I do so in the prayerful hope that all continue to discuss this nuclear arms issue in a spirit of mutual openness and charity.
How ironic if we as Christians were to discuss the issue of disarmament for peace in a warlike fashion!
I am not attempting to say that there is but one way of dealing with the problem of the arms race and the nuclear holocaust toward which it leads.
I recognize the need for a number of different strategies for the promotion of arms reduction.
Accordingly, I welcome the diverse efforts of many individuals and groups, including the efforts of some of my fellow bishops to call attention to the seriousness of this matter and to suggest practical ways of acting with regard to it.
I am not attempting to divide the Christian community.
I pray that because of our openness and respect for one another we can grow together by our concentration on the goal of world peace and the eventual elimination of nuclear arms despite our disagreements over the best way to achieve such goals.
I am not suggesting that all who agree with my peace and disarmament views should imitate my action of income tax withholding.
I recognize that some who agree with me in their hearts find it practically impossible to run the risk of withholding taxes because of their obligations to those personally dependent upon them.
Moreover, I see little value in imitating what I am doing simply because I am doing it.
I prefer that each individual come to his or her own decision on what should be done to meet the nuclear arms challenge.
I am not pointing a finger of accusation at those who disagree with what I plan to do.
I would hope, however, that such persons will respect those whose views differ from theirs.
No one has answers that are absolutely certain in such complex matters.
I am suggesting that we must maintain a continuing and open dialogue.
I am not attacking my country.
I love my country.
As I said in a previous pastoral letter on this subject (): “It is true that as a general rule the laws of the state must be obeyed.
However, we may peacefully disobey certain laws under serious conditions.
There may even be times when disobedience may be an obligation of conscience.
Most adults have lived through times and situations where this would apply.
“Thus Christians of the first three centuries disobeyed the laws of the Roman Empire and often went to their death because of their stands.
They were within their rights.
Similarly, in order to call attention to certain injustices, persons like Martin Luther King engaged in demonstrations that broke the laws of the state.
The point is that civil law is not an absolute, it is not a god that must be obeyed under any and all conditions.
In certain cases where issues of great moral import are at stake, disobedience to a law in a peaceful manner and accompanied by certain safeguards that help preserve respect for the institution of law is not only allowed but may be, as I have said, an obligation of conscience.”
I believe that the present issue is as serious as any the world has faced.
The very existence of humanity is at stake.
I am not encouraging those who wish to avoid paying taxes to use my action as an excuse for their not paying.
I plan to deposit what I withhold in a fund to be used for charitable peaceful purposes.
I am saying by my action that in conscience I cannot support or acquiesce in a nuclear arms buildup which I consider a grave moral evil.
I am saying that I see no possible justification for the willingness to employ nuclear weapons capable of destroying humanity as we know it.
I am saying that everyone should think profoundly and pray deeply over the issue of nuclear armaments.
My words and my action of tax withholding are meant to awaken those who have come to accept without thinking the continuation of the arms race, to stir even those who disagree with me to find a better path than the one we now follow, to encourage all to put in first place not the production of arms but the production of peace.
I urge all of you to pray and to fast, to study and to discuss, and then to decide what you shall do to combat the evil of the nuclear arms race.
I cannot make your decision for you.
I can and do challenge you to make a decision.
May God be with you, His joy, His peace, His love.
Raymond G. Hunthausen, Archbishop of Seattle
IRS Could Prosecute Tax Resisting Archbishop
By Jerry Filteau
Washington (NC)—
If Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle holds back half of his federal income tax in protest over U.S. nuclear arms policy, as he has said he will, the Internal Revenue Service could prosecute him.
In addition to having his assets attached to pay the taxes and interest or penalties on them, the archbishop could face up to five years in prison and $10,000 in fines for each year that he refuses to pay.
“We’ve got to administer the law regardless of the political or philosophical persuasion of the taxpayer,” said Larry Batdorf, an official of IRS’s national media relations office in Washington.
Archbishop Hunthausen said in a TV interview in Seattle that he planned to withhold 50 percent of his federal income taxes to protest U.S. involvement in the nuclear arms race.
In a pastoral letter to his archdiocese a few days later he stated his position more fully and explained it.
Batdorf, following IRS policy, declined to comment specifically on Archbishop Hunthausen’s action or how the IRS would respond, but he outlined the general IRS position and policy regarding those who try to resist or evade their taxes.
He cited the court case of Autenreith v. Cullan, in which a tax resister was trying to withhold part of his taxes in protest over the Vietnam War, as a key legal precedent for IRS policy in such cases.
Batdorf quoted the pertinent part of the judge’s ruling: “The fact that some persons may object on religious grounds to some of the things that the government does is not a basis upon which they can claim a constitutional right not to pay a part of the tax.”
“We feel that the court has ruled very clearly” on that type of protest of conscience, said Batdorf.
He said that during the Vietnam War one popular form of tax protest was to refuse to pay the excise tax on one’s telephone bill.
The IRS assessed and collected the taxes from “about 700 to 800 a year” who engaged in that protest, he said.
He said he did not have any specific figures distinguishing IRS cases involving protests of conscience from those involving mistakes on one’s tax return or fraudulent tax evasion.
But in general, he said, the IRS audits some 2 million tax returns a year, settles most of those cases civilly, and gets about 1,600 criminal convictions a year for tax evasion.
He said in most cases the procedure is to try for a civil settlement first.
If the person refuses to file a return or files a low return, the IRS computes the tax, informs the person of its findings, and notifies the person that he has 90 days to make corrections or petition the findings in court.
If the person does not petition, said Batdorf, the tax is presumed correct.
After the court decides in favor of the IRS or the person fails to go to court, the IRS is free to collect the money and can use various means to do so, including attachment of wages or assets.
If the case goes to criminal prosecution, he said, the maximum penalty upon conviction for tax evasion, which is a felony, is five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
The actual penalties in each case are determined by the courts, not by the IRS, he said.
Another dispatch, from , read:
Church Refuses IRS Demand
Ames, Iowa (NC)—
A Catholic church in Ames has refused to cooperate with demands by the Internal Revenue Service to garnishee the wages of an employee who is a tax protester against the nuclear arms race.
Thomas Cordaro, employed by St. Thomas Aquinas Church as a lay campus minister for the parish’s Catholic Student Center at Iowa State University, owes the government $828.23 in federal income taxes.
He has refused to pay the taxes because of his religious beliefs.
He used the money instead to help found and run Loaves and Fishes Hospitality House, a shelter and meal center for the poor.
Father Thomas Geary, administrator of the parish, said an IRS representative from Des Moines, Iowa, served levies four times to the parish secretary, each time declining to wait to meet with the pastor.
He said he was frustrated at the lack of personal contact and called the IRS office, but the personnel there were unwilling to discuss the matter.
The parish council unanimously resolved “that St. Thomas Parish refuse to pay the IRS levy because we are not a tax collecting agency and because we see underlying moral implications that we have not had time to sufficiently explicate.”
Father Geary sent the IRS a letter communicating the parish council’s resolution and his decision to refuse to garnishee Cordaro’s wages for the government.
The decision means that the government could take the church to court to force it to pay the money.
According to an IRS spokesman, under Section 6332 of the IRS code an employer that refuses to honor a levy for garnishment of wages becomes “liable in his own estate to the extent of the levy not honored.”
If the IRS must take the employer to court to enforce the payment of that liability, the spokesman said, the court can force the employer to pay a penalty of 50 percent of the levy in addition to the levy itself.
Archbishop James Byrne of Dubuque, Iowa, the archdiocese in which Ames is located, has privately supported the parish’s decision to refuse to honor the levy in support of Cordaro’s conscience.
Father Geary said that the parish council’s decision was not based on the taxes and their use, but on concern for “respecting the conscience of Cordaro.”
“Also this council decision does not necessarily reflect the thinking of the parish members, who are now struggling with the issue before deciding what path to follow,” he said.
Cordaro agreed that the parish council is still struggling with the issue of his tax protest and said its action should not be interpreted as a condemnation of the arms race.
He said his decision to withhold his taxes as a witness against the nuclear arms race “is intricately linked to my concern for the poor,” and all his financial resources are used to rent and maintain the hospitality house for the poor.
Saying his action “is well within Catholic orthodoxy,” Cordaro cited the statement by the Vatican to the United Nations on disarmament in , which said that the arms race itself “is an act of aggression which amounts to a crime, for even when they are not used, by their cost alone armaments kill the poor by causing them to starve.”
Following a similar rationale, Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle recently announced that he was refusing to pay half of his federal income tax as a protest against U.S. involvement in the global arms race.
He said the tax money would go into a fund for charitable activities.
In rejecting the right of citizens to withhold taxes because of conscientious objection to a government policy or program, the IRS cites the decision of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, which was upheld by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
That court ruling said in part, “The fact that some persons may object on religious grounds to some of the things that the government does is not a basis upon which they can claim a constitutional right not to pay a part of the tax.”
An article in the Catholic Commentator said that Archbishop Hunthausen had addressed “300 peace activists attending a meeting at Notre Dame University” in South Bend, Indiana and had again announced his tax resistance there.
Aside from that, the article just recycled already-familiar quotes and background.
However, the Catholic Worker printed a few excerpts from the talk:
“…Render to Caesar without question, and without question we will get nuclear war.
“As Christians, we once had a commitment of refusing incense to Caesar.
The Church resisted that idolatry, at the cost of martyrdom.
What has happened to the Christian belief in the Cross and rejection of idolatry?
“Now, on a more blasphemous scale than any homage paid to a first-century Caesar, we engage in nuclear idolatry.
It is not God in Whom we place our trust, but nuclear weapons…
“I believe deeply that God’s love is infinitely more powerful than any nuclear weapon, and that, in seeking to rediscover the Cross, we are on the edge of a discovery more momentous to the world than that of nuclear energy.
Nonviolence. Jesus’ divine way of the Cross, is, in its own way, the most explosive force of history.
Its kind of force, however, is a force of life — a divine force of compassion which can raise the people of this earth from death to life.
I invite you to join me in finding our way back to that nonviolent force of life and love at the heart of the Gospels, which offers a way out of our nuclear tomb.”
An editorial by Father Michael J. Savelesky, printed in the issue of the Inland Register (newspaper of the Diocese of Spokane, Washington), went out over the wire on .
It compared Hunthausen to the biblical prophet Jeremiah, and concluded:
Already people are calling Archbishop Hunthausen a prophet in our own time.
There is a subtle abdication of personal responsibility here.
If the archbishop is indeed a prophet, then we individually and collectively are obliged to face the truth he speaks.
His tax refusal will hardly affect the Gross National Product, but it does shock us into confronting in our own lives the moral issue of nuclear arms.
No one of us escapes that responsibility.
Even to do nothing is a moral stance whose consequences we bear.
A dispatch:
Tax Protester Gets Support in Iowa, Criticism in Florida
By NC News Service
Tax protester Tom Cordaro, who refused to pay $828 in taxes because of the nuclear arms race, has drawn support from the Dubuque Iowa, archdiocesan priests’ senate and criticism from a writer, a lawyer and a priest in Florida.
In an unanimous vote the Dubuque priests’ senate backed Cordaro and his parish, St. Thomas Aquinas, in Ames, Iowa, which has refused Internal Revenue Service (IRS) demands to withhold money from his wages.
Individual members of the priests’ senate also pledged $2,500 for a defense fund to be used if litigation with the IRS over the tax protest ensues.
Meanwhile, in Florida, writer and Scripture scholar Dick Biow and an attorney, Aldo Icardi, both of Winter Park in the Diocese of Orlando, and an unidentified priest, who all disagree with Cordaro, have sent the IRS $145 to cover some of the taxes Cordaro owes.
They said they acted out of concern for armed forces personnel and a “deep sense of shame that one of our co-religionists" would withhold taxes.
Cordaro is a lay pastoral minister for his parish’s Catholic Student Center at Iowa State University.
Because of his religious beliefs he withheld his federal income tax payment and used it to set up Loaves and Fishes Hospitality House, a shelter and meal center for the poor.
The IRS has served levies on St. Thomas Parish four times but according to Father Patrick Geary, parish administrator, has declined to discuss the matter with the pastor.
The parish council passed a resolution stating St. Thomas will “refuse to pay the IRS levy because we are not a tax collecting agency and because we see underlying moral implications that we have not had time to sufficiently explicate.”
Father Geary informed the IRS of the parish decision and the government could take the church to court over the issue.
Biow, a writer whose articles have appeared in the Florida Catholic, newspaper of the dioceses of Orlando and St. Petersburg, the priest and the lawyer listed three reasons for opposing Cordaro and for extending partial payment of his taxes.
They stated that they “would not like to see even one member of our armed forces deprived of the weapons needed to save his own life while he is protecting that of Mr. Cardaro” and that they “pay these reparations out of a deep sense of shame that one of our co-religionists would select such a callous and brutal way of articulating his anti-defense posture.”
“We hope to deny him the opportunity of playing the public martyr,” they added.
A convert to Catholicism, Biow served as a fighter pilot in World War Ⅱ and his son is now a student at the U.S. Naval Academy.
He has studied Scripture for the last 20 years and served as a Scripture consultant to Bishop William D. Borders of Orlando, now an archbishop who heads the Baltimore See.
Biow said he thinks the Reagan administration’s military budget is too big.
But he also said that seeking a strong national defense is good sense.
And, he said, those who believe a cut in military spending will mean more money for the poor are mistaken.
Reagan “is running the military on credit and he could do the same for the poor,” Biow said.
“People who want to help the poor could do a better job if they stopped tying in their arguments with military spending.
Reagan has to be convinced — or politically forced — to help the poor.”
A National Catholic News Service dispatch gave some more details about Hunthausen’s tax resistance (excerpt):
On his tax resistance the archbishop commented that the amount of money involved “will not be great” since “my total income for will be only about $9,000–$10,000.”
He said he will engage in the resistance by withholding half the amount due when he makes his quarterly estimated tax declaration.
He will divide the unpaid tax money “among a peace group — probably the Peace Academy — a pro-life group and perhaps a direct-service charity like our Society of St. Vincent de Paul,” he said.
“Increasingly I see the linkage between peace, life and charity issues, especially as I see the impact on people’s lives of the worsening economy,” he commented.
Asked if he would continue to withhold taxes until the arms race stopped, the 60-year-old Seattle prelate said, “I have not thought that through completely, but what has recently come home to me is the thought that I should be more closely living the poverty of the Gospel and should be giving away more of what I earn.
“In that case I would have no tax to pay.
However, I want to be sure that I am putting myself in that position for the sake of the Gospel and not because I want to avoid the difficulties of tax resistance.”
A dispatch from gives the appearance of a rapidly-developing story:
Priests Hold Back Taxes to Protest Nuclear Arms
By Jerry Filteau NC News Service
At least 10 U.S. priests refused to pay part of their federal income tax to protest American military expenditures and the nuclear arms race.
There was no way to tell how many others may have done so without saying anything about it publicly.
In Oakland, Calif., Father James A. Schexnayder said he “will not be part of a plot to incinerate humanity” and withheld half his taxes “as a conscious resistance to our nation’s nuclear arms race and our selfish and oppressive military interference in Central America.”
Father Schexnayder, 44, is director of the Oakland diocesan permanent diaconate program.
He said he had been considering tax resistance for some time but was “in a sense stimulated” by the similar decision of Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle, which received national publicity .
In Pittsburgh eight priests held a press conference on , to explain their decisions to withhold part of their taxes to protest “the militaristic priorities of the federal budget and to resist our country’s obsessive participation in the arms race.”
“We are fully aware of the illegality of our action according to the U.S. Tax Code laws,” they said in a prepared press statement.
“We pray that the tension caused by our ‘peace gestures’ may turn people’s minds and hearts to the illegality and immorality of the arms race.”
The priests, all from the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, were Fathers Donald McIlvane, John Brennan, Patrick Fenton, Jack O’Malley, Robert Schweitzer, Donald Fischer, Mark Glasgow and John Oesterle.
After a brief press conference and prayer service at the Pittsburgh Diocesan Building, the eight were joined by other opponents of nuclear weapons in a march to the Pittsburgh Federal Building for a protest demonstration there.
Hearing of the tax protests in Pittsburgh and Oakland, the Indianapolis archdiocesan newspaper, The Criterion, called an associate pastor at a local socially active parish to see if he knew of any priests in the Indianapolis area who were doing the same thing.
The priest, Father Cosmas Raimondi, said yes, he knew of one — “me.”
He had made no public announcement of his decision, but he said that a few days earlier he had filed his federal tax return with a covering letter notifying the IRS that he was paying only half the tax due.
“In my own conscience I don’t feel that I can support a strong militarist spirit in government,” Father Raimondi explained.
“I respect civil law but I also feel that God’s law of love is superior to that civil law.”
He said he preferred to not to call his action of conscience “civil disobedience,” but rather “divine obedience.”
Father Raimondi said he objected to not only the nuclear arms race, which he said must be ended by “mutually monitored steps of disarmament, but also U.S. military aid to “repressive regimes” in Central America and the current program of draft registration in the United States, which he said will lead to a mandatory draft.
The fact that Father Raimondi said nothing of his tax protest until he was called by a newspaper indicated that there may be other priests in the country, influenced by Archbishop Hunthausen’s decision and by the numerous denunciations of the arms race by other American bishops in the past year, who have also engaged in tax resistance without publicity.
In virtually all cases the amount of money involved is slight, since the taxable income of diocesan priests is normally very low.
For religious order priests and nuns, tax resistance is not an option because of the vow of poverty they take.
Under federal law salaries received by members of religious orders are considered income of the religious order itself, not personal income.
Father Schexnayder said his protest was “largely symbolic” because half his taxes only came to about $60.
His tax resistance drew mixed reactions from other Oakland clergymen.
Three local military chaplains contacted by the Oakland diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Voice, expressed different views.
A retired National Guard chaplain, Father Paul J. Engberg, called it “anarchism” and said it was contrary to American principles of respect for law and working within the system if changes are needed.
Father Robert Ríen, chaplain of the 349th Military Airlift Wing, said, “If he feels in conscience that he has to do this, then I support him 100 percent.
At the same time, I hope brother priests will support me in bringing the ministry we share to the people in the military sector.”
Another National Guard chaplain, Father Ronald Lagasse, called Father Schexnayder’s protest “laudable” but “ineffective.”
It might “prick people’s consciences, but won’t go any further than that.
There’s no basis on which to build,” he said.
He and Father Ríen emphasized that military personnel do not want war.
Those in the military, said Father Lagasse, are going through the same qualms of conscience as everyone else on nuclear weapons.
Father Brian Joyce, president of the diocesan priests senate, praised Father Schexnayder for drawing attention to the nuclear arms race as “an issue of conscience, a major one that every Christian has to seriously address.”
But he said he would not take the same action for several reasons, including questions he had about its effectiveness and whether it was the right approach.
“For instance, while I oppose nuclear arms, I don’t necessarily oppose defense, and at the same time I have a lot of respect and admiration for what Jim (Father Schexnayder) is doing,” he said.
(Contributing to this story were Stephen Karlinchak in Pittsburgh, Dan Morris in Oakland and Jim Jachimiak in Indianapolis.)
Archbishop Hunthausen, whose announcement of tax resistance drew national attention, said in that the federal taxes he was refusing to pay were being placed in an escrow account for the World Peace Tax Fund.
Bills to establish that fund are pending in Congress.
If enacted, the legislation would change the U.S. tax code to let conscientious military tax objectors direct the military portion of their tax money to non-military peace-related purposes such as peace research, disarmament efforts, international health, education and welfare programs, and the retraining of workers displaced by conversion from military to non-military production.
A citizens’ organization, Conscience and Military Campaign-U.S., has established the World Peace Tax Fund escrow account to accept payments in anticipation of the legislation.
Correction and Insert
At least 11 (NOT 10) U.S. priests…
After 16th paragraph beginning, The fact that… INSERT the following:
Another priest who said nothing until a newspaper called him and asked was Father Joseph O’Hara, a sociologist at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa.
When he was contacted by The Witness, Dubuque archdiocesan paper, Father O’Hara said he had refused to pay any taxes and had informed the IRS that this was a protest over the nuclear arms race.
Last year Father O’Hara refused to pay his taxes as a protest against the administration’s military support of El Salvador despite the Salvadoran government’s record of human rights violations.
Another tax protester in the Dubuque Archdiocese is Thomas Cordero, a lay minister employed by St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Ames, Iowa.
In the parish council voted unanimously to refuse IRS orders to the parish to garnishee his wages for payment of the taxes owed.
Members of the archdiocesan priests senate agreed to contribute $1,200 out of their pockets to reimburse the parish if the IRS succeeds in legally forcing the parish to pay the taxes plus applicable penalties for its refusal to comply with the garnishment orders.
Father O’Hara said that the money involved in his tax protest was not much, and he had not yet heard a word from the IRS about his refusal to pay taxes last year
PICK UP original 17th paragraph beginning.
In virtually all…
ADD to list of contributors at end of story: …and Father Thomas Ralph in Dubuque.
The Cordero case got more attention in a dispatch:
Tax Protester, Archbishop Clash Over IRS
By Father Thomas Ralph
Dubuque, Iowa (NC)—
Archbishop James J. Byrne of Dubuque and tax protester Tom Cordaro, a lay minister at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Ames have clashed over whether the parish should pay the Internal Revenue Service Cordaro’s unpaid back income taxes.
After a meeting between the two foundered, Cordaro held a five-day prayer vigil next to the archbishop’s house and other protesters picketed the archbishop.
In a statement released Archbishop Byrne stated his position.
St. Thomas Parish, the archbishop said, owes Cordaro a month’s salary for his services as a lay minister during .
Under the law of the Internal Revenue Service code, these unpaid funds are subject to taxation and the parish is obliged to honor the levy.
The archbishop further stated that he had been advised by legal counsel that the parish church is not “the proper or appropriate party to litigate the merits” of Cordaro’s refusal to pay federal income taxes as a protest against the nuclear arms race.
The archbishop’s response came two days after Cordaro ended a five-day prayer vigil at the Chapel of Perpetual Adoration adjoining the archbishop’s residence in Dubuque and returned to Ames.
Cordaro had been in Dubuque when he and Father Patrick Geary, pastor at the Ames parish, met with Archbishop Byrne at Cordaro’s request to discuss the archbishop’s decision that the parish must honor the IRS order to garnishee his wages for $1,300 in back taxes.
The archbishop requested confidentiality regarding the discussion, and when Cordaro said he could not honor the request the meeting ended.
Cordaro began his prayer vigil to protest the archbishop’s refusal to state publicly his reasons for his decision.
At a press conference at the Catholic Worker House before leaving Dubuque , Cordaro said the real tragedy of the past week had not been the archbishop’s demand for payment of his back taxes but “that those in the church with power and influence, who knew an injustice was done, have remained silent.”
He named moral theologians, religious communities, other bishops, teachers and presidents of the universities as examples of those he expected to speak out.
“The archbishop’s silence has made it impossible for me to obey his wishes,” Cordaro said, “and I will continue to withhold my taxes.
Blind obedience to authority is in itself immoral.”
Many groups and individuals in the Dubuque Archdiocese support Cordaro’s position of having the courts decide whether he can withhold payment of his taxes on religious grounds.
On the archdiocesan priests’ senate voted 23-1 for a resolution calling for the archbishop to clarify his decision for halting the tax protest.
The parish council at St. Thomas Aquinas voted unanimously the previous week to support Cordaro’s fight and refuse the IRS demand to garnishee his wages.
Cordaro had been refusing to pay his federal income taxes , giving all but $50 of his $874-a-month parish salary to Loaves and Fishes Hospitality House in Ames which furnishes food and shelter to the needy.
Father Richard P. Funke, vice chancellor of the archdiocese, said that neither he nor the archbishop had seen the priests’ senate resolution and questioned why the resolution was made public before the archbishop had seen it.
“The archbishop is equally concerned about the nuclear build-up,” Father Funke said, “but we are talking about two completely different issues.
“The church has the obligation to support the right of conscience and in this has been supportive of Mr. Cordaro and others in their protests of the nuclear arms race.
“The church also has an obligation to support obedience to duly authorized authority such as the government in its right of taxation for purposes of providing protection, order, freedom and services to its citizenry.”
Portions of taxes go to support “the elderly, the needy, the kind of people Cordaro seems to be concerned about,” Father Funke said.
“How he can withhold 100 percent of his taxes is a real problem to me.”
A legal battle over the right of the government to force a church to garnishee tax moneys in violation of a person’s conscience is being considered by Cordaro and the parish council, of which he is a member.
Approximately $9,000 in pledges has been received to support his legal defense, he said.
Gordon Allen of Des Moines, a constitutional lawyer and the chief counsel for the Iowa Civil Liberties Union, has offered to handle the case without cost.
Archbishop Hunthausen spoke about his tax resistance and the reasoning behind it — and took some questions from a skeptical audience — at a talk in Brooklyn ( dispatch):
New York (NC)—
The possibility of the human family’s destroying itself in a nuclear holocaust presents the greatest spiritual crisis in history, Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle said in an address in New York .
Declaring that he saw no political solution to the crisis, he said that “conversion” was needed “at a depth in our lives we’d rather not know.”
Archbishop Hunthausen spoke at St. James Cathedral in Brooklyn, N.Y. following Sunday Vespers, one of several bishops appearing in a “Shepherds Speak” series sponsored by the Brooklyn Diocese.
The archbishop from Washington state was a focus of national news when he suggested that refusing to pay part of ones income tax could be an appropriate way of protesting the nuclear arms race, and again when he announced that he was refusing to pay half his own tax.
Instead, he said, he would put the money in a fund for such purposes as helping the poor, fighting abortion and promoting disarmament.
In his address Archbishop Hunthausen offered no analysis of how his approach would resolve the military issues involved in national defense but kept his argument on a religious level.
Faith in Christ he said, will liberate Americans from “fear of the Russians” and other fears motivating production of nuclear weapons.
These include the “fear of losing our wealth,” he said.
Archbishop Hunthausen reported that others had tried to convince him that the “realistic way of preserving peace was to build nuclear weapons and plan for the possibility of a first strike.
“I do not understand any of this as realistic,” he said.
Americans, he added, must get a new understanding of reality “or we shall be destroyed.”
As an alternative he advocated the “reality” of the kingdom of God as taught by Jesus.
Archbishop Hunthausen described the way of Jesus as “faithful non-violent action” and said he was seeking to follow that way in his tax protest.
As a result of taking this action, he said he has “begun to experience conversion myself.” Carrying the action a step further Archbishop Hunthausen said he would participate in a “non-violent peace blockade” trying to stop the U.S.S. Ohio, America’s first Trident nuclear missile submarine, when it is taken to its Puget Sound base .
Archbishop Hunthausen was enthusiastically applauded by nearly all of the audience, which numbered about 200–300.
He received standing ovations when he was introduced, at the conclusion of his brief talk, and again at the end of a question period.
However a few individuals had come to express opposition.
One of them, James Crockett, a retired layman from a Brooklyn parish, had prepared a large sign that he held up outside as people departed.
It read: “Archbishop Hunthausen: Would you have us abandon the defense of our homeland and our loved ones?”
During the question period, the archbishop was challenged by S.Z.F. Rutar, a layman of another Brooklyn parish who is the area chapter president of the National Alliance of Czech Catholics.
He told of leaving Czechoslovakia after seeing many friends killed by communists and went on to question Archbishop Hunthausen’s commitment to preserving American freedom.
“I love my country and it is because I love my country that I say what I do,” the archbishop responded.
“I would like for my country to put its confidence in the God we profess to believe in.”
Finally, Bill Samuel summed up the history and current state-of-the-art of American war tax resistance in an article for New Catholic World (reprinted in the Catholic Worker):
Refusing War Taxes
By Bill Samuel
Tax refusal is such an obvious and fundamental means of protest and resistance that it has been used for centuries for a variety of purposes.
Movements of tax refusers are reported as far back as in Egypt.
Tax refusal movements focusing on opposition to war date back at least as far as , when Danish peasants refused to pay taxes to support King Christian Ⅱ’s war against Sweden.
In the United States, war tax refusal is older than the country.
The Quaker-controlled Assembly of the Pennsylvania Colony in refused a royal demand to appropriate money for an expedition into Canada.
In , when the Assembly voted large amounts for the French and Indian War, many Quakers and Mennonites refused to pay taxes. , this was true throughout the colonies, and a number were imprisoned as a result.
The Quaker testimony became so strong that a number of Quakers were disowned by their Monthly Meetings (parishes) during the Revolutionary War for paying war taxes.
But it was not only Quakers and those of other traditionally pacifist religious groups who are engaged in war tax refusal.
The most famous early American war tax refuser was Henry David Thoreau, who was jailed for refusing to pay taxes for the Mexican War.
He eloquently defended his action in his landmark essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience”:
“If a thousand (people) were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the state to commit violence and shed innocent blood.”
Over , there continued to be persons refusing taxes on grounds of objection to war, but war tax refusal was not a major part of peace efforts.
It took the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the growth of the Cold War, to make tax refusal again an important issue in the peace movement.
A number of peace activists, including A.J. Muste, began war tax refusal in .
In , about 250 people seeking a more radical approach to peace met in Chicago.
War tax refusal was one of the major issues at the conference, which spawned the radical pacifist Peacemaker movement.
Nonpayment of taxes for war has been a central tenet of this movement since its founding.
A handful of people associated with the Peacemakers were imprisoned on various charges connected with tax refusal during .
Until , little was published on war tax refusal except leaflets and magazine articles.
Two important books were issued that year.
The Peacemakers issued the first edition of their Handbook on Nonpayment of Taxes for War, which reported the experiences of a number of individuals and endeavored to explain both the whys and the hows of war tax refusal.
The other publication, Edmund Wilson’s The Cold War and the Income Tax, was written by a prominent literary figure who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the same year.
This blistering attack on militarism and the income tax system was greeted with critical acclaim and received mass distribution as a Signet paperback.
Although war tax refusal grew in the two decades following Hiroshima, it remained largely an act of deeply committed pacifists, a tiny minority on the fringes of American society.
It only became a mass movement when large numbers of Americans were killing and being killed in a war that was difficult to justify.
President Johnson aided the growth of tax resistance by identifying specific taxes as needed to finance the war.
The telephone tax, scheduled to expire in , was reimposed explicitly to finance the Vietnam operation and was extended twice during the Vietnam War.
For there was also an income tax surcharge to raise revenue for the war.
People who strongly opposed the Vietnam War, but who were not necessarily pacifists, were moved to resist those taxes.
Because it was both clearly associated with Vietnam and easy to refuse, the telephone tax was at one time refused by hundreds of thousands of Americans.
The War Resisters League (WRL) was the principal group promoting war tax refusal during the early Vietnam war years.
By it seemed to merit its own organization.
With considerable help from the WRL, War Tax Resistance was launched at a New York press conference on .
Aiming at the masses of Vietnam War protesters, WTR defined as a war tax resister anyone who refused at least $5 of some federal tax.
WTR struck a real chord.
Its initial hope was to encourage the formation of WTR branches in at least 25 cities.
Within a year, it had 160 WTR Centers in all parts of the country.
Tax resistance demonstrations were held, especially at filing deadline, in cities and towns all over the U.S.
Most national peace groups participated in the campaign.
Local churches of many denominations refused the phone tax.
Two editions () of a book, Ain’t Gonna Pay for War No More by Robert Calvert, on the reasons for and the methods of war tax refusal were published.
During , the movement attempted to conquer a major obstacle to income tax resistance, the withholding system.
Resisters began to claim additional exemptions on the withholding forms (Form W-4) they filed with their employers to reduce or eliminate withholding.
A number of resisters were indicted on withholding fraud charges.
A handful went to prison, but others won court decisions that an open aboveboard act could not be considered fraud.
Withholding resistance became more sophisticated as Form W-4 was made more complex.
Resisters began claiming allowances justified by large itemized deductions rather than additional dependents.
Large amounts were claimed as “war tax deductions” on tax returns.
This tax refusal method forced the IRS to allow the taxpayer appeals through the civil courts.
The movement also developed a concrete positive component, inspired by Karl Meyer’s article “A Fund for Mankind” in the issue of The Catholic Worker.
Alternative funds pooling refused taxes began to spring up in cities all across the country.
These funds would grant or loan money for a wide variety of social service and social change purposes.
Sometimes the money was dispersed in public and dramatic ways, such as handing people subway tokens with a leaflet at subway stations in poor areas.
Decisions about use of the funds have usually been made collectively by donors.
Most of the funds will return deposited tax money in the event of IRS seizure.
For this reason, many funds have retained all income tax deposits, spending only the interest earned on them.
There were about 55 funds in existence by .
In , a group of war tax refusers and others concerned in the Ann Arbor, Michigan area began meeting together to find a legal alternative to paying taxes for military purposes.
Under the able leadership of Quaker physician Dr. David Bassett, this group developed the World Peace Tax Fund Bill using the legal resources of volunteers from the University of Michigan Law School.
This proposed legislation would allow persons to declare themselves conscientious objectors to military taxation on their tax returns.
Their taxes would be diverted to a new government trust fund, the World Peace Tax Fund.
The military portion of the taxes paid by conscientious objectors would perform alternative service through support of a national peace academy, disarmament efforts, international exchanges and other peace-related programs.
The non-military portion would be returned to the Treasury for use in civilian government programs.
In , a related committee composed largely of church and peace group lobbyists was formed in Washington.
They persuaded Rep. Ronald Dellums (D.-Calif.) and nine other U.S. Representatives to introduce the bill that year.
The Ann Arbor and Washington committees, working from their own homes and offices on a volunteer basis, developed support for the bill from around the country from thousands of individuals and many Church, peace and political groups.
In , the two committees consolidated their efforts into the National Council for a World Peace Tax Fund, operating from a staffed office in Washington.
In , the bill was introduced in the Senate for the first time by Sen. Mark Hatfield (R-Oregon).
The World Peace Tax Fund Bill (H.R. 4897, S. 880) was introduced again in by Rep. Dellums and 29 co-sponsors (as of ) in the House and Sen. Hatfield in the Senate.
In the first years after the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam, the war tax refusal movement lost a lot of its energy.
Although there continued to be many more tax resisters than before the Vietnam era, the organized movement faltered.
National WTR published the last issue of its Tax Talk publication in and formally dissolved .
Many local WTR groups lapsed into inactivity.
Most of the national peace groups lost interest.
Individual resisters often had difficulty finding needed information and support.
As the much-heralded “Vietnam dividend” releasing resources for domestic needs failed to appear and military spending continued to rise, interest in war tax resistance began to grow, particularly within the religious community.
In , the Center on Law and Pacifism was formed.
The brainchild of Catholic attorney and lay theologian William Durland, it was conceived as a radical religious pacifist group focusing on the relationship of pacifism to law and legal institutions.
The Center has provided legal counsel to a number of war tax refusers.
It has not won any major legal victories, but its existence as an expert resource for support encouraged many to become war tax resisters.
A Center workshop in called for a People Pay for Peace campaign involving the refusal of at least $2.40 (U.S. military budget per day per capita) in federal taxes.
During the tax filing season, local groups formed in a number of cities, resulting in many new war tax resisters and a number of public witness actions.
The Center issued the first edition of People Pay for Peace: A Military Tax Refusal Guide in , and has issued a revised edition or a supplement to the book each year since.
At the same time, interest was increasing in historically pacifist churches.
The General Conference Mennonlte Church had been considering the issue for years, beginning its forum newsletter God and Caesar in .
The issue became a major one for the New Call to Peacemaking (NCP), a joint effort by Mennonites, Quakers and Brethren to revitalize their peace witness.
At the first NCP national conference in , the gathering called upon individual church members “seriously to consider refusal to pay the military portion of their federal taxes as a response to Christ’s call to radical discipleship.”
It further called “on our denominations, congregations, and meetings to give high priority to the study and promotion of war tax resistance in our own circles and beyond.”
This strong stand received considerable publicity in the mass media.
Particularly among Mennonites and Quakers, greatly increased consideration of the issue has resulted and many more individual members are engaging in war tax resistance.
A second NCP conference in reaffirmed the position.
In , Long Island peace activist Ed Pearson and others active in the World Peace Tax Fund movement launched a new national campaign to focus mass war tax resistance on passage of the bill.
The Conscience and Military Tax Campaign seeks 100,000 people to sign a Resolution stating that they are either now resisting the payment of war taxes or will do so by the time 100,000 have signed.
An Escrow Account of refused military taxes is maintained, to be turned over to IRS after enactment of the World Peace Tax Fund bill.
On , Catholic Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen of Seattle spoke to a regional Lutheran gathering, sharing “a vision of… a sizable number of people… refusing to pay 50 percent of their taxes in nonviolent resistance to nuclear murder and suicide.”
Although he later stated in a pastoral letter that this was a secondary aspect of the speech, his vision received considerable national publicity and sparked many Catholics and other mainstream Christians to consider seriously war tax refusal for the first time.
There is now a growing war tax resistance movement which has begun to reach Americans in the mainstream.
This movement has the potential of becoming a major component of a large and influential campaign to halt the arms race.
(Bill Samuel is a Quaker who has worked on tax refusal for years.
This article first appeared in New Catholic World.)
Resources
Conscience and Military Tax Campaign, 44 Bellhaven Road, Bellport, NY 11713; (516) 286‒8825. Newsletter, literature, escrow account.
National Council for a World Peace Tax Fund, 2111 Florida Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20008: (202) 483‒3751. Newsletter, literature, slideshow.
Center on Law and Pacifism. P.O. Box 1584, Colorado Springs, CO 80901; (303) 635‒0041. Publishes People Pay for Peace: A Military Tax Refusal Guide ( edition).
Peacemakers, P.O. Box 627, Garberville, CA 95440. Handbook on Nonpayment of Taxes for War ( edition — $1.50) and The Peacemaker (monthly — $10 year).
War Resisters League, 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012; (212) 228‒0450. Guide to War Tax Resistance, , $6 plus postage.
An obituary for Dwight Macdonald in the Catholic Worker touched on his tax resistance.
Excerpt:
In , he joined the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” in refusal to pay taxes for the Vietnam War.
This was his first act of civil disobedience.
Dwight defended his action as “the deliberate, public, and non-violent breaking of a law because to obey it would be to betray a higher morality.”
The National Catholic News Service sent this dispatch over the wires on .
Excerpts:
British Churchmen Urge Disarmament Steps
By Robert Nowell
London (NC)—
Two top church leaders in Great Britain have urged nuclear disarmament initiatives by their country and a third revealed that he is waging a tax protest against England’s military spending.
On a new booklet on conscientious objection to military taxation carried the text of a letter in which a prominent Anglican, Canon Paul Oestreicher, announced to the government that he was withholding part of his income tax “as an act of conscientious objection to the manufacture, possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons” by the British government.
Canon Oestreicher is assistant general secretary of the British Council of Churches.
Canon Oestreicher wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer announcing that he was withholding a token sum of 30 pounds (about $46) “as a symbol of my duty as a Christian citizen to refuse to be party to a policy which I believe to be of doubtful legality and certainly immoral.”
His letter was printed as an appendix to a booklet on military tax resistance issued by the Quaker Council for European Affairs.
The Service sent out this dispatch on :
Bishop Thanks War Tax Resisters for “Witness”
St. Paul, Minn. (NC)— Bishop Raymond Lucker of New Ulm has thanked war tax resisters “for their witness” while stating that he does not “personally hold that position.”
“I believe that the arms race is evil.
I believe that the very possession of nuclear weapons as long as we are making no sustained commitment to achieve multilateral disarmament is evil,” wrote the Minnesota bishop in a column published in The Catholic Bulletin, newspaper of the St. Paul-Minneapolls Archdiocese.
The paper also serves the neighboring New Ulm Diocese.
Bishop Lucker compared war tax resistance with other forms of civil disobedience to unjust laws or immoral public policy, saying for example that he would go to jail rather than obey a law requiring him or a Catholic hospital under his jurisdiction to participate or cooperate in an abortion.
He said he resolves the problem of not supporting the “madness” of the arms race by not earning enough income to be subject to federal taxes.
“I do not want to contribute to this madness,” he wrote. “What I do is take such a small salary that I no longer pay income tax.
I make sure that my annual salary each year is less than $3,600.
This is no special hardship; my needs are few.
I have no family to support.
I am free to contribute to the poor.”
In Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle announced that he was refusing to pay half of his federal income tax as a symbol of his resistance to U.S. involvement in the nuclear arms race.
He said he was giving the money instead to worthy charitable causes.
In at least 10 Catholic priests around the country, including eight in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, refused to pay a portion of their taxes as a protest against U.S. nuclear arms expenditures.
The eight Pittsburgh priests announced that they would again refuse to pay the part of their taxes that goes to pay for nuclear war and nuclear weapons.
They planned to hold a press conference and prayer service in Pittsburgh before delivering their tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service.
In discussing civil disobedience Bishop Lucker cited “many instances in history where Catholics and other Christians disobeyed a law rather than violate their conscience.”
“They used non-violent means and were willing to pay the consequences,” he wrote.
“Frequently their witness was what got an unjust law or sinful public policy changed.”
Among cases he cited were those of early Christian martyrs who refused to worship the Roman emperor, St. Thomas More’s refusal to acknowledge King Henry Ⅷ as head of the Church of England and the non-violent resistance to racist laws in the United States by the Rev. Martin Luther King and his followers.
He said that Jehovah’s Witnesses in the United States were beaten and jailed before the U.S. Supreme Court recognized their right to refuse to salute the flag because they believe the action would violate the First Commandment.
“Hundreds of thousands of Americans are working to change the interpretation of the Constitution which allows abortions taking life away from the unborn.
We have a right to dissent.
We must dissent.
The issue is not going to go away,” he wrote.
He also wrote that a Christian soldier has an obligation to disobey an order that is immoral and that a person “can be a good Catholic and a conscientious objector” to all war or to a particular war.
“Each of us in our own way must respond to the Lord’s call,” Bishop Lucker wrote.
He said that not engaging in direct civil disobedience but not earning enough money to be subject to U.S. income taxes “is one way for me.”
The Service sent out this dispatch on :
Tax Resistance Funds Go to Catholic Agencies
By Brian Baker
Albany, N.Y. (NC)—
Catholic and Catholic-affiliated agencies were among 33 social service and community organizations that received donations from a war tax resistance fund in Albany.
On , the day before the deadline for filing tax returns, the Military Tax Resistance and Alternative Fund distributed more than $5,500 in checks, ranging from $50 to $600, to the non profit organizations.
The money came from people who, for reasons of conscience, refused to pay the portion of their federal income tax that they estimated would be used for military purposes.
At least five of the recipient organizations were agencies affiliated with the Diocese of Albany, among them Catholic Family and Community Services of Schenectady.
The tax resistance fund has grown each year, from $1,000 when it was begun in to $5,500 .
total was $1,500 more than despite a new federal law passed last summer which adds a $500 penalty for filing a frivolous return on top of already existing penalties for failing to pay all taxes owed.
Maureen Casey, a spokesperson for the fund and a member of St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Albany, said she has been a tax resister for three years because “it is wrong to kill people, either personally or through war.”
“I see what I am doing as the continuation of a tradition followed by many respectable people, including Dorothy Day,” a pacifist and foundress of the Catholic Worker movement, Ms Casey added.
Donald Roberts, a public affairs officer for the Internal Revenue Service, said that tax resisters could have assets seized or levies placed against their salaries to recover the taxes and applicable penalties.
In addition, he said, if the IRS decides to launch a criminal investigation a resister could be prosecuted and imprisoned.
He added, however, that the agencies receiving donations from a tax resistance fund face no legal risks for doing so.
This “news in brief” item was carried by the Service on :
Indianapolis (NC)— An Indianapolis parish has been ordered to pay for its pastor’s act of civil disobedience.
The Internal Revenue Service has issued a notice of levy on the salary of Father Cosmas Raimondi of Holy Cross Parish for $604.18 for unpaid income tax, penalties and interest.
While Father Raimondi was associate pastor at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish, Indianapolis, in he informed the IRS that he was withholding 50 percent of his income tax “as a protest against the nuclear arms race, military intervention in Central America and efforts to reinstate a mandatory military draft.”
And a follow-up on this, from a dispatch:
Friends Pay Priest’s Taxes After IRS Seizes His Car
By Jim Jachimak
Indianapolis (NC)—
An Internal Revenue Service case against an Indianapolis pastor has been settled, but the priest’s tax protest has not ended.
The IRS seized Father Cosmas Raimondi’s car on to cover federal income taxes which he withheld in but other parties have decided to pay the tax so the car can be returned.
Taxes, penalties and interest owed by Father Raimondi, pastor of Holy Cross Church, amounted to $608.14.
The car, a Honda Civic, was valued at $2,500 by the IRS.
“I have been informed that people who care about me are getting the car back by paying the taxes, which I would rather not have happen,” Father Raimondi said. “But that is their decision.”
He withheld $564.87 from the IRS to protest the nuclear arms race, U.S. intervention in Central America and draft registration.
the IRS has been attempting to collect the back taxes.
He said his action has focused attention on the issue of militarism and caused the parish council at Holy Cross to discern “the good and moral thing to do given the teachings of our church.”
In an IRS levy against Father Raimondi’s salary ordered the Holy Cross parish council to pay the amount he owed.
The council announced that it had decided not to honor the levy.
Father Raimondi said that he plans to take a reduction of salary in the future so that he will not be required to pay any federal income tax.
Jane Sammon wrote an article on tax resistance for the Catholic Worker.
There’s very little meat in it, but it does have the earliest mention I’ve found so far in this archive to the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (with a post office box address in East Patchogue, New York, and Kathy Levine listed as the contact person).
The following letter, published in the Catholic Worker, shows that a broader set of concerns than war and militarism were motivating some tax refusers in that milieu:
A Tax Resister’s Letter
Garden City, NJ
To: Internal Revenue Service,
On , I addressed a memo to you acknowledging receipt of your notice and explaining why it is not possible for me to fulfill the time requirements according to the law.
I have written three letters to the Internal Revenue Service explaining why I was not willing to pay taxes.
The first letter would have been around , the second in , and the last one in .
Let me try to explain my position a little more at length.
I recognize the right of a government to impose taxes.
Any system of taxation, however, must be eminently just.
It must distribute the responsibility to support the work of governing according to the ability of people to pay.
Our system of taxation places an undue burden on the poor and the lower middle class.
The economically capable have always been well protected from the imposition of a truly proportionate share of economic responsibility for governing and have been, as well, the objects of special benefits in the distribution of monies and services.
The injustices within the system are sufficient, I believe, to call the system itself unjust, and, for this reason, I have said in a previous letter that I am even unwilling to file or cooperate in any way in the system.
This position is not as clear to me as it seems in this statement, but it is certainly the direction of my thought.
The uses of tax money by the government are quite troublesome, as is the failure to use tax money for quite obligatory purposes.
Another way of saying this is that the actual priorities of government impel me to support policies and programs that I consider immoral, if I pay the taxes required.
Outstanding among these policies is the continuing enormous expenditure to support the planning, development and manufacture of arms for war.
Related to this is the continuing encouragement of the sales of arms to foreign countries through tax credits and other means to facilitate these sales.
I will not participate in this policy or in any program related to it.
If I should subtract from taxes due the proportion that supports the government’s policy on arms, as has been suggested to me, this simply means that the same proportion of whatever I might pay would still go to the support of those policies, since there is no way that I can direct where my money might go.
A significant enough proportion of tax dollars now goes to murder unborn children through abortion.
I simply refuse to participate in this, and the same problem presents itself to me as above.
I cannot subtract a proportion of my tax dollar since the same proportion of whatever I might pay would still go for legalized abortions.
As a whole, our country is not particularly generous to those in need, neither in our own country nor in other countries.
In our own country, there are substantial subsidies for the rich and even for the very rich, but the poor are not given the assistance necessary.
This is true not only of the economically poor but also of the needy in other aspects.
The drug addict, for example, who wants to turn his or her life around has great difficulty finding a program that will help since the government has allotted so little for this type of program.
And the list of similar problems is rather long, I suspect.
Likewise, among the developed countries, our own, the richest, is at the bottom of the list in terms of the proportion of our budget that goes for aid to underdeveloped countries.
Given these two realities, I decided long ago that I would use the money I was not paying in taxes to help the poor in the places where I have worked and in other areas as well.
I am not refusing to pay taxes in order that I might get rich or be better off.
A little investigation will show that I am far from rich.
I cannot tell you what proportion of my income goes to help the poor, I suspect it is at least 40–50%.
I can’t prove that and I have no desire nor interest in proving it.
I do not keep records of this and I could not even conceive of looking for a tax deduction if I were going to participate in the system.
I recognize that my position may be somewhat extreme.
I have been told that I have to take that opinion into serious consideration.
It seems to me, however, that there is no other route for me.
I am not asking the government to bless my position and grant me a pardon of taxes due.
I simply wait for the government to do whatever it feels it has to do in this case.
Andrew P. Connolly
Another IRS property seizure targeting war tax resisters was the subject of a Catholic Worker letter:
We Can Take This Stand…
Canton, Maine
Dear friends,
On , two Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agents came to our home and delivered a notice of seizure of all our real estate.
This includes our home, a small woodlot across the street, our blueberry field of 13 acres, and, finally, another woodlot of 21 acres.
They said it would be offered at a public sale within 30 days.
The IRS figures we owe $62,000 in unpaid taxes and penalties for the years .
But we have not filed tax returns for much longer, Elizabeth not , and Arthur not or so.
Twice, in New Hampshire, IRS agents came to visit, once around and again around .
Probably, they concluded we had nothing much worth taking, and, perhaps, were not subject to much tax anyway.
After we came to Maine, earned a bit more and began paying the state income tax, the IRS must have obtained data from these forms in order to prepare their demands.
Our reason for non-cooperation with the IRS is a reluctance to support war preparation, especially nuclear weapons, and the export of arms and military forces to many places around the world.
A large part of income and social security taxes goes to pay for these things.
It seems necessary that someone stand against them as distinctly as possible, without using violence.
We can take this stand, while continuing our family life, farming, and volunteer work for various causes.
Our kids seem to be thriving.
Elizabeth is active in church and the school board.
Arthur works on organic certification and the coming clear cutting referendum.
Of course, it will be a major jolt to lose our home, after living here for ten years.
We have made progress toward fixing the roof, foundation, chimneys, etc.
Our blueberry field, too, is a pity to lose.
Our property is valued by the town at $64,000.
It will probably bring less than $35,000 at an auction.
Real estate is very depressed in price around here, and very few properties are sold.
If the buyer is willing, we would hope to enter into a long-term lease, so that we could continue as before.
If not, we will have to look for another place to rent.
Obviously, we will not want to own any more real estate.
The blueberry field is likely to be leased to us no matter who owns it.
It needs constant work to remain productive, and no one else wants to do that work.
So far, the neighbors and friends we’ve told have been supportive, offering us places to stay and help with figuring out what is best to do.
Yesterday, we met with some of them, including other Maine war tax resisters, a couple from our church “family," neighbors and representatives from Quaker City, NH, where there is a land trust we could join.
Since most of you could not be at that meeting, we would appreciate your prayers, even if you don’t agree with us, and your ideas and reflections. [RFD, Canton, ME 04221. (207) 388‒2860.]
The percentage of U.S. tax-filers who pay no federal income tax at all jumped during the pandemic to nearly 60%, but, according to the Tax Policy Center, the numbers are expected to drop this year back to the pre-pandemic level of about 40%.
