Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
religious groups and the religious perspective →
Lutheran Peace Fellowship
This is the twenty-ninth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite.
Today we continue to work through the early 1980s.
Representatives of the General Conference Mennonite Church and the Internal Revenue Service failed to reach an 11th-hour compromise at a meeting in Washington on which would have averted a suit by the 63,000-member denomination against the government agency.
IRS
officials at the meeting denied that there was any administrative solution to the conference’s complaint that it must withhold the income taxes of its employees, thereby acting as a tax collector for the state.
The denomination has argued, and will argue in a forthcoming judicial action, that the IRS requirement violates the concept of separation of church and state as embodied in the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution.
“The 45-minute meeting was cordial, but unproductive,” said Vern Preheim, general secretary for the conference.
“We outlined our concerns about the withholding issue as a historic peace church and described the problem which the IRS requirement poses for us.”
William Ball, the conference’s attorney in the matter, then formally asked members of the IRS’s special working group on withholding issues whether there was any way to exempt the General Conference from the problematic requirement.
Nancy Schuhmann, who chairs the special group, stated that the IRS must abide by its codes of operation and would not be able to offer an exemption on tax withholding to the conference.
IRS officials Susan Cunningham and Gail Libin were also present.
In light of the results of the meeting, attorney Ball will complete the preparation of the conference’s complaint and submit the brief to a U.S. district court after one last check to make sure all administrative possibilities have been exhausted is complete.
The General Conference’s General Board was authorized to initiate a judicial action on the tax withholding question at an international gathering of the conference membership at Estes Park, Colo., in .
More than a year earlier, on , delegates to a special midtriennium conference session instructed the GB to “use all legal, legislative and administrative avenues for achieving conscientious objector exemption” to the tax withholding requirement.
GB also heard a brief report by its general secretary, Vern Preheim, on the progress of the judicial action on the tax withholding issue.
Progress seems to be slow, as witnesses and a co-plaintiff have to be found.
Employees of the conference who are taking action of their own on the war tax issue were assured of adequate and appropriate conference support.
But by the issue, everything had come to a screeching halt:
In the light of a negative judgment rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court against an Amish employer on , the General Conference’s judicial action committee has recommended to the denomination’s General Board that a planned suit against the IRS on the issue of tax withholding “be put on indefinite hold."
The committee’s decision came at the end of a conference call with William Ball, who has been preparing the case on behalf of the church group over the past year.
During the telephone meeting.
Ball indicated that, considering the Supreme Court ruling in the case U.S. vs. Lee, the General Conference would almost certainly lose its case.
In the Amish case, employer Edwin Lee argued that his withholding of Social Security taxes was against both his own and his employees’ consciences.
In the unanimous decision of the court on the Amish question, Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote, “The tax system could not function if denominations were allowed to challenge tax systems because tax payments were spent in a manner that violates their religious belief."
Rather than pursue a negatively shrouded course of action at this time, the General Conference committee also urged the General Board to make more money available “for additional efforts to promote the World Peace Tax Fund.”
In his letter to General Board members, general secretary Vern Preheim concluded: “With closure of the ‘administrative avenue’ during my meeting with IRS, and now closure of the ‘judicial avenue’ via U.S. vs. Lee, we are left with the ‘legislative avenue’ as our only conceivable legal avenue prior to our triennial sessions.
“If no significant progress is made in terms of additional congressional sponsorship of the WPTF legislation, we will have to report a totally negative outcome to the efforts resolved at Minneapolis in .
This will again bring us to the threshold of divine obedience/civil disobedience.”
In coming to that decision, the group weighed the importance of a number of concerns, including the timing of the GC action, the witness value of the suit if it were pushed forward, the fact that a loss in court might set a negative precedent which would eclipse favorable decisions in related cases, and whether proceeding with the action when defeat seems certain would be good stewardship.
Preheim hopes to gather together preliminary response of the General Board to the committee recommendations in the next few weeks.
A full discussion will take place at a fall meeting of the board.
The decision of the board was covered in the edition:
Realizing they had reached a critical juncture in their church’s ongoing struggle against the payment of taxes used for war, members of the General Conference’s General Board decided on to stall its impending suit against the IRS and let delegates to ’s triennial sessions decide on what course of action to take.
A resolution to proceed with the judicial action, which would have tested the constitutionality of laws forcing the church to collect taxes on behalf of the state, was turned down by a vote of six to two, with seven abstentions.
The move to put the suit on indefinite hold was based on recommendations from the church’s judicial action committee and the denomination’s attorney in the matter, William B. Ball of Harrisburg, Pa.
In a letter to general secretary Vern Preheim dated , Ball had been pessimistic about the chances of the judicial action’s success in the light of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case Wisconsin vs. Yoder [sic].
As part of its ruling in that case, the court had stated, “The tax system could not function if denominations were allowed to challenge the tax system because tax payments were spent in a manner that violates their religious belief.”
“We regard that language as most threatening to [the General Conference’s] position, if not foreclosing it completely,” wrote Ball.
Rather than scuttle the proposed litigation completely, GB members agreed at the recent meetings to consider the suit again, “if and when more favorable conditions prevail and depending upon the response at Bethlehem, Pa.” (the location of ’s triennial sessions).
Delegates to the General Conference’s triennial sessions in Estes Park, Colo., empowered the General Board to initiate a judicial action as a follow-up to a special session on the theme of Christian civil responsibility in Minneapolis .
At that meeting, delegates resolved to “use all legal, legislative and administrative avenues for achieving a conscientious objector exemption from the legal requirement that the conference withhold income taxes from the wages of its employees.”
Part of the General Board’s discussions focused on interpretation of that resolution; namely, at what point each of those “avenues” would be considered to have been exhausted.
Some members felt that Ball’s advice closed the legal avenue; others said that the judicial route would not be blocked until a court ruled against a suit brought before it by the conference.
Many agreed that a legal test would be an important public witness and is, for that reason alone, worth considering further.
The administrative avenue to a solution was eliminated after a meeting between GC officials and representatives of the IRS on
, when IRS declined to make any exceptions to rules requiring the conference to withhold taxes from the salaries of its employees.
The World Peace Tax Fund legislation, currently in committee in the U.S. Congress, represents the legislative avenue.
Board members will ask the GC delegate body to answer some of these questions at Bethlehem , and to make a decision about whether or not the conference’s business office should simply go ahead and stop withholding taxes from the salaries of those employees who wish it, thereby breaking IRS regulations.
In such a case, the general secretary and business manager would be immediately responsible, Preheim reported.
The conference’s judicial action committee will prepare appropriate background materials and resolutions for presentation at Bethlehem and present these to the General Board at its meeting for review.
Level one — tax protest. Why is it that those who feel uncomfortable with tax resistance spend more time protesting civil disobedience than war taxes?
Persons filing and paying taxes each April 15 should attach a protest letter, outlining one’s opposition to how 50 percent of the tax money will be spent.
Most importantly, copies of this letter should go to your representative, senators, newspaper editor and should be posted in the church.
Openness is critical.
The IRS is fearful of those who publicize their tax protest — even if it is merely a letter — because it encourages others.
For those who feel exceptionally penitent, file back letters of protest and ask that they be attached to your previous returns.
Level two — tax resistance. This is a clear call to civil disobedience — organized tax resistance with acceptance of penalties.
Having a support group to guide you in this decision is important.
Hopefully, congregational affirmation of such a decision would be forthcoming.
One should be prepared for the IRS to use its unchecked power to collect any income or other tax owed.
Level three — tax avoidance. Legal tax avoidance — keeping one’s income below taxable levels — is certainly in line with living more with less.
Perhaps we ought to have our MCC overseas workers explain to us how half the world can live in poverty on $100 a year, when we with abundance and waste all around us cannot seem to live on less than $10,000.
Legal tax avoidance has the additional blessing of insuring that no income tax is used for war.
Minimum U.S. income levels for 1981 are $3,300 for single people and $5,400 for married couples.
Level four — tax counseling. This level incorporates any of the three levels above, but commits one to a study into the IRS, military budget and federal tax policy.
Just as draft counselors sprang up during the draft years, we need more tax counselors to aid us in responding to the draft on our money.
According to Sen. Pryor, D-Ark., the Pentagon spends more on military bands — close to $90 million — than we spend on arms control — about $20 million.
When will we hear the music?
Perhaps there is no single right answer for everyone, but surely silence is not an acceptable response.
The edition reviewed Affirm Life: Pay for Peace, a small handbook put out by the Historic Peace Church Task Force on Taxes, designed in a loose-leaf form so it could be updated, and meant to help classes and discussion groups explore their response to war taxes.
(There was another review of the book in the edition.)
James W. Nikl, in an letter to the editor, encouraged readers to consider cutting their income to cut their taxes.
“What
would happen if we all cut our incomes in half?” he asked.
“How would it affect the military budget?”
He did the math for a dual-income couple in the 49% tax bracket and found that they would significantly lower their taxes and gain a lot of valuable free time in the bargain.
He concluded:
We have a choice.
We can race our motors all our lives, and the government will take most of what we produce.
Or we can take time to smell the flowers along the way.
In response to a critic who thought Nikl’s tax advice was too materialistic and coldly practical, he responded:
I agree with what [the critic] said about our attitude toward material possessions.
We should put a strong emphasis on the gospel of peace which embraces the needs of those in our community who are without.
I believe, however, that Mennonites should and would prefer to use their own wealth as they see fit and would be much better stewards of God’s bounty than the U.S. government.
I doubt that willfully giving of our tax money so that a small portion will go for human resources is really attractive to many Mennonites.
I would also question whether the good effects of the human resources portion of our tax even comes close to offsetting the bad effects of the military part.
A testimony of an “outsider” in attests that Mennonites were still people of conscience at the end of their first century in North America: “It is well known that the Quakers and Mennonists were formerly some of the best farmers in Pennsylvania.
These people, from having their cattle, horses, farming utensils, etc., so often taken from them for taxes, have sensibly declined as farmers.
Many of them have sold their farms and gone to other states, whilst others of them do not raise 20 bushels of grain, where they once raised 100.”
MCC
has spent over $10,000 to purchase and ship about 1,200 shovels to Laos.
$4,000 of that amount was allocated from MCC’s “Taxes for Peace” fund [which] was established in to receive contributions from church members who had voluntarily withheld portions of their taxes as a symbolic protest against the government’s excessive spending for military purposes.
The Lutheran Peace Fellowship recently issued “A Call to Tax Resistance for Lutherans” statement committing members to tax resistance as a moral stand against the nuclear arms race.
According to Dennis Jacobsen, fellowship coordinator, 23 Lutherans from 11 states endorsed the statement, which said, “We will no longer pay for war while praying for peace.”
The St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Indianapolis made a public decision to withhold payment of the excise tax on its phone bill.
This was done, said the congregation, “in response to the gospel call to be peacemakers and to church teachings that we, as Christians, must devote ourselves to the cause of peace — and, in particular, disarmament.”
In the same edition, James W. Nikl gave some advice on seeking tax shelters and deferrals.
Most of this was fairly dry tax advice, but the article ended with a section that began thusly:
Role of our churches. Recently the Boulder, Colo., Friends Meeting proposed a position of peace secretary for the congregation.
That person would become an authority on taxes and related items and keep the rest of the congregation informed as to how to legally divert their tax dollars from military uses.
We could perhaps create a position on our various church boards and work toward this same goal.
Two members of the Methodist Federation for Social Action have found an innocent way to protest U.S. budget priorities.
John and Pat Schweibert concluded that about 41 percent of their income tax was going for armaments.
So they withheld that amount from what they owed, then handed out a $5 bill to each of 200 unemployed people they found in line at a state employment office.
The distribution, timed for , received coverage in the local paper.
Seattle Catholics gave significantly more to the annual archdiocesan funds appeal after their spiritual leader, Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen, took a strong stand against nuclear war, reports the lay-edited National Catholic Reporter.
“We thought the archbishop’s stand would have some adverse effect on the appeal,” said Paul LeBlanc, archdiocese assistant director of development.
“We didn’t think (the funds) would be this large… The letters to the diocese are running eight to one in favor of the archbishop.”
Hunthausen has attracted nationwide notice for withholding the portion of his federal income taxes used for the military.
A petition with 14,000 names of Old Order Amish in Lawrence County, Pa., was presented to Rep. Eugene V. Atkinson, a Democrat whose district includes Lawrence County.
The Amish are seeking a legislative remedy to having to deduct Social Security taxes from employees’ salaries.
A bill by Rep. Robert S. Walker (R-Pa.), and cosponsored by Atkinson, would exempt members of religious faiths opposed to the program from paying Social Security taxes.
Hanno Klassen sent the Internal Revenue Service two checks this year — each for half the amount he owed.
One was made out to IRS; the other (to cover the military share of his taxes) was made out to the American Friends Service Committee.
Klassen explained his action in a letter to IRS: “The check made out to AFSC is to show that I want to pay what I owe.
But I cannot let my life or my substance be used for killing.
You see, I was a member of Hitler’s destructive forces in World War Ⅱ.
I was used once; I will not be used again.”
This is the twenty-ninth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite.
Today we continue to work through the early 1980s.
Representatives of the General Conference Mennonite Church and the Internal Revenue Service failed to reach an 11th-hour compromise at a meeting in Washington on which would have averted a suit by the 63,000-member denomination against the government agency.
IRS
officials at the meeting denied that there was any administrative solution to the conference’s complaint that it must withhold the income taxes of its employees, thereby acting as a tax collector for the state.
The denomination has argued, and will argue in a forthcoming judicial action, that the IRS requirement violates the concept of separation of church and state as embodied in the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution.
“The 45-minute meeting was cordial, but unproductive,” said Vern Preheim, general secretary for the conference.
“We outlined our concerns about the withholding issue as a historic peace church and described the problem which the IRS requirement poses for us.”
William Ball, the conference’s attorney in the matter, then formally asked members of the IRS’s special working group on withholding issues whether there was any way to exempt the General Conference from the problematic requirement.
Nancy Schuhmann, who chairs the special group, stated that the IRS must abide by its codes of operation and would not be able to offer an exemption on tax withholding to the conference.
IRS officials Susan Cunningham and Gail Libin were also present.
In light of the results of the meeting, attorney Ball will complete the preparation of the conference’s complaint and submit the brief to a U.S. district court after one last check to make sure all administrative possibilities have been exhausted is complete.
The General Conference’s General Board was authorized to initiate a judicial action on the tax withholding question at an international gathering of the conference membership at Estes Park, Colo., in .
More than a year earlier, on , delegates to a special midtriennium conference session instructed the GB to “use all legal, legislative and administrative avenues for achieving conscientious objector exemption” to the tax withholding requirement.
GB also heard a brief report by its general secretary, Vern Preheim, on the progress of the judicial action on the tax withholding issue.
Progress seems to be slow, as witnesses and a co-plaintiff have to be found.
Employees of the conference who are taking action of their own on the war tax issue were assured of adequate and appropriate conference support.
But by the issue, everything had come to a screeching halt:
In the light of a negative judgment rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court against an Amish employer on , the General Conference’s judicial action committee has recommended to the denomination’s General Board that a planned suit against the IRS on the issue of tax withholding “be put on indefinite hold."
The committee’s decision came at the end of a conference call with William Ball, who has been preparing the case on behalf of the church group over the past year.
During the telephone meeting.
Ball indicated that, considering the Supreme Court ruling in the case U.S. vs. Lee, the General Conference would almost certainly lose its case.
In the Amish case, employer Edwin Lee argued that his withholding of Social Security taxes was against both his own and his employees’ consciences.
In the unanimous decision of the court on the Amish question, Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote, “The tax system could not function if denominations were allowed to challenge tax systems because tax payments were spent in a manner that violates their religious belief."
Rather than pursue a negatively shrouded course of action at this time, the General Conference committee also urged the General Board to make more money available “for additional efforts to promote the World Peace Tax Fund.”
In his letter to General Board members, general secretary Vern Preheim concluded: “With closure of the ‘administrative avenue’ during my meeting with IRS, and now closure of the ‘judicial avenue’ via U.S. vs. Lee, we are left with the ‘legislative avenue’ as our only conceivable legal avenue prior to our triennial sessions.
“If no significant progress is made in terms of additional congressional sponsorship of the WPTF legislation, we will have to report a totally negative outcome to the efforts resolved at Minneapolis in .
This will again bring us to the threshold of divine obedience/civil disobedience.”
In coming to that decision, the group weighed the importance of a number of concerns, including the timing of the GC action, the witness value of the suit if it were pushed forward, the fact that a loss in court might set a negative precedent which would eclipse favorable decisions in related cases, and whether proceeding with the action when defeat seems certain would be good stewardship.
Preheim hopes to gather together preliminary response of the General Board to the committee recommendations in the next few weeks.
A full discussion will take place at a fall meeting of the board.
The decision of the board was covered in the edition:
Realizing they had reached a critical juncture in their church’s ongoing struggle against the payment of taxes used for war, members of the General Conference’s General Board decided on to stall its impending suit against the IRS and let delegates to ’s triennial sessions decide on what course of action to take.
A resolution to proceed with the judicial action, which would have tested the constitutionality of laws forcing the church to collect taxes on behalf of the state, was turned down by a vote of six to two, with seven abstentions.
The move to put the suit on indefinite hold was based on recommendations from the church’s judicial action committee and the denomination’s attorney in the matter, William B. Ball of Harrisburg, Pa.
In a letter to general secretary Vern Preheim dated , Ball had been pessimistic about the chances of the judicial action’s success in the light of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case Wisconsin vs. Yoder [sic].
As part of its ruling in that case, the court had stated, “The tax system could not function if denominations were allowed to challenge the tax system because tax payments were spent in a manner that violates their religious belief.”
“We regard that language as most threatening to [the General Conference’s] position, if not foreclosing it completely,” wrote Ball.
Rather than scuttle the proposed litigation completely, GB members agreed at the recent meetings to consider the suit again, “if and when more favorable conditions prevail and depending upon the response at Bethlehem, Pa.” (the location of ’s triennial sessions).
Delegates to the General Conference’s triennial sessions in Estes Park, Colo., empowered the General Board to initiate a judicial action as a follow-up to a special session on the theme of Christian civil responsibility in Minneapolis .
At that meeting, delegates resolved to “use all legal, legislative and administrative avenues for achieving a conscientious objector exemption from the legal requirement that the conference withhold income taxes from the wages of its employees.”
Part of the General Board’s discussions focused on interpretation of that resolution; namely, at what point each of those “avenues” would be considered to have been exhausted.
Some members felt that Ball’s advice closed the legal avenue; others said that the judicial route would not be blocked until a court ruled against a suit brought before it by the conference.
Many agreed that a legal test would be an important public witness and is, for that reason alone, worth considering further.
The administrative avenue to a solution was eliminated after a meeting between GC officials and representatives of the IRS on
, when IRS declined to make any exceptions to rules requiring the conference to withhold taxes from the salaries of its employees.
The World Peace Tax Fund legislation, currently in committee in the U.S. Congress, represents the legislative avenue.
Board members will ask the GC delegate body to answer some of these questions at Bethlehem , and to make a decision about whether or not the conference’s business office should simply go ahead and stop withholding taxes from the salaries of those employees who wish it, thereby breaking IRS regulations.
In such a case, the general secretary and business manager would be immediately responsible, Preheim reported.
The conference’s judicial action committee will prepare appropriate background materials and resolutions for presentation at Bethlehem and present these to the General Board at its meeting for review.
Level one — tax protest. Why is it that those who feel uncomfortable with tax resistance spend more time protesting civil disobedience than war taxes?
Persons filing and paying taxes each April 15 should attach a protest letter, outlining one’s opposition to how 50 percent of the tax money will be spent.
Most importantly, copies of this letter should go to your representative, senators, newspaper editor and should be posted in the church.
Openness is critical.
The IRS is fearful of those who publicize their tax protest — even if it is merely a letter — because it encourages others.
For those who feel exceptionally penitent, file back letters of protest and ask that they be attached to your previous returns.
Level two — tax resistance. This is a clear call to civil disobedience — organized tax resistance with acceptance of penalties.
Having a support group to guide you in this decision is important.
Hopefully, congregational affirmation of such a decision would be forthcoming.
One should be prepared for the IRS to use its unchecked power to collect any income or other tax owed.
Level three — tax avoidance. Legal tax avoidance — keeping one’s income below taxable levels — is certainly in line with living more with less.
Perhaps we ought to have our MCC overseas workers explain to us how half the world can live in poverty on $100 a year, when we with abundance and waste all around us cannot seem to live on less than $10,000.
Legal tax avoidance has the additional blessing of insuring that no income tax is used for war.
Minimum U.S. income levels for 1981 are $3,300 for single people and $5,400 for married couples.
Level four — tax counseling. This level incorporates any of the three levels above, but commits one to a study into the IRS, military budget and federal tax policy.
Just as draft counselors sprang up during the draft years, we need more tax counselors to aid us in responding to the draft on our money.
According to Sen. Pryor, D-Ark., the Pentagon spends more on military bands — close to $90 million — than we spend on arms control — about $20 million.
When will we hear the music?
Perhaps there is no single right answer for everyone, but surely silence is not an acceptable response.
The edition reviewed Affirm Life: Pay for Peace, a small handbook put out by the Historic Peace Church Task Force on Taxes, designed in a loose-leaf form so it could be updated, and meant to help classes and discussion groups explore their response to war taxes.
(There was another review of the book in the edition.)
James W. Nikl, in an letter to the editor, encouraged readers to consider cutting their income to cut their taxes.
“What
would happen if we all cut our incomes in half?” he asked.
“How would it affect the military budget?”
He did the math for a dual-income couple in the 49% tax bracket and found that they would significantly lower their taxes and gain a lot of valuable free time in the bargain.
He concluded:
We have a choice.
We can race our motors all our lives, and the government will take most of what we produce.
Or we can take time to smell the flowers along the way.
In response to a critic who thought Nikl’s tax advice was too materialistic and coldly practical, he responded:
I agree with what [the critic] said about our attitude toward material possessions.
We should put a strong emphasis on the gospel of peace which embraces the needs of those in our community who are without.
I believe, however, that Mennonites should and would prefer to use their own wealth as they see fit and would be much better stewards of God’s bounty than the U.S. government.
I doubt that willfully giving of our tax money so that a small portion will go for human resources is really attractive to many Mennonites.
I would also question whether the good effects of the human resources portion of our tax even comes close to offsetting the bad effects of the military part.
A testimony of an “outsider” in attests that Mennonites were still people of conscience at the end of their first century in North America: “It is well known that the Quakers and Mennonists were formerly some of the best farmers in Pennsylvania.
These people, from having their cattle, horses, farming utensils, etc., so often taken from them for taxes, have sensibly declined as farmers.
Many of them have sold their farms and gone to other states, whilst others of them do not raise 20 bushels of grain, where they once raised 100.”
MCC
has spent over $10,000 to purchase and ship about 1,200 shovels to Laos.
$4,000 of that amount was allocated from MCC’s “Taxes for Peace” fund [which] was established in to receive contributions from church members who had voluntarily withheld portions of their taxes as a symbolic protest against the government’s excessive spending for military purposes.
The Lutheran Peace Fellowship recently issued “A Call to Tax Resistance for Lutherans” statement committing members to tax resistance as a moral stand against the nuclear arms race.
According to Dennis Jacobsen, fellowship coordinator, 23 Lutherans from 11 states endorsed the statement, which said, “We will no longer pay for war while praying for peace.”
The St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Indianapolis made a public decision to withhold payment of the excise tax on its phone bill.
This was done, said the congregation, “in response to the gospel call to be peacemakers and to church teachings that we, as Christians, must devote ourselves to the cause of peace — and, in particular, disarmament.”
In the same edition, James W. Nikl gave some advice on seeking tax shelters and deferrals.
Most of this was fairly dry tax advice, but the article ended with a section that began thusly:
Role of our churches. Recently the Boulder, Colo., Friends Meeting proposed a position of peace secretary for the congregation.
That person would become an authority on taxes and related items and keep the rest of the congregation informed as to how to legally divert their tax dollars from military uses.
We could perhaps create a position on our various church boards and work toward this same goal.
Two members of the Methodist Federation for Social Action have found an innocent way to protest U.S. budget priorities.
John and Pat Schweibert concluded that about 41 percent of their income tax was going for armaments.
So they withheld that amount from what they owed, then handed out a $5 bill to each of 200 unemployed people they found in line at a state employment office.
The distribution, timed for , received coverage in the local paper.
Seattle Catholics gave significantly more to the annual archdiocesan funds appeal after their spiritual leader, Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen, took a strong stand against nuclear war, reports the lay-edited National Catholic Reporter.
“We thought the archbishop’s stand would have some adverse effect on the appeal,” said Paul LeBlanc, archdiocese assistant director of development.
“We didn’t think (the funds) would be this large… The letters to the diocese are running eight to one in favor of the archbishop.”
Hunthausen has attracted nationwide notice for withholding the portion of his federal income taxes used for the military.
A petition with 14,000 names of Old Order Amish in Lawrence County, Pa., was presented to Rep. Eugene V. Atkinson, a Democrat whose district includes Lawrence County.
The Amish are seeking a legislative remedy to having to deduct Social Security taxes from employees’ salaries.
A bill by Rep. Robert S. Walker (R-Pa.), and cosponsored by Atkinson, would exempt members of religious faiths opposed to the program from paying Social Security taxes.
Hanno Klassen sent the Internal Revenue Service two checks this year — each for half the amount he owed.
One was made out to IRS; the other (to cover the military share of his taxes) was made out to the American Friends Service Committee.
Klassen explained his action in a letter to IRS: “The check made out to AFSC is to show that I want to pay what I owe.
But I cannot let my life or my substance be used for killing.
You see, I was a member of Hitler’s destructive forces in World War Ⅱ.
I was used once; I will not be used again.”
This is the thirty-first in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite.
Today we reach 1984.
The magazine helpfully summed up the current state of war tax resistance, particularly among American Christians, in its edition:
“Were you able in 1983 to find the resources to support religious, charitable and peace efforts equal to the taxes you were required to pay for the military establishment?”
The Friends Committee on National Legislation uses this question to encourage people to examine the consistency of their peace witness while filling out income tax forms.
In current military expenditures consumed 33 percent of federal appropriations, or 46 percent if the cost of past wars (interest on the national debt and veterans programs) is included, reports Delton Franz of Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section Washington Office.
During each Monthly Meeting (similar to an individual congregation) in the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (similar to a conference body) was asked to examine this question:
Is the voluntary payment of war taxes consistent with the Quaker peace testimony?
When the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting convenes its annual session in , this question will be on the agenda.
Concern about “war taxes” is reaching beyond the traditional peace churches.
The United Church of Christ and the United Methodist Church have adopted statements of support for members who conscientiously oppose payment of taxes for military purposes.
The United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. has initiated a churchwide study on war tax resistance.
While the religious community in the United States has moved toward greater support for conscientious objection to paying taxes for military purposes, the Internal Revenue Service has beefed up its efforts to penalize tax “protests” of all kinds.
An estimated 4,700 taxpayers were fined $500 each during for expressing their religious, moral or political views on their income tax forms.
Congress enacted this automatic $500 fine as a provision of the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of .
The Internal Revenue Service began enforcing the penalty soon after its passage by Congress.
At least 30 people, including those of Mennonite, Quaker, Catholic and other religious backgrounds, are challenging the constitutionality of this regulation in court.
Lawyers believe that the penalty violates freedom of speech and that the expression of religious convictions on income tax forms is not “frivolous.”
Courts are expected to issue summary judgments (decision made by a judge only, no jury) in a number of cases in the coming year.
Internal Revenue Service officials invited Mennonite representatives to meet with them in to discuss the application of the penalty for “frivolous” returns.
IRS officials told U.S. Peace Section staff that the penalty is a processing penalty, designed to protect the efficiency of processing millions of tax returns.
People who have filled their tax forms out correctly and have simply not paid the full amount of taxes owed are not subject to this penalty.
However, taking a “war tax” credit or deduction or writing other comments on the tax form itself can result in a penalty.
The IRS officials agreed that the World Peace Tax Fund bill would be a solution if it were enacted.
Abatement of the penalties already imposed is highly unlikely, but senators who helped formulate the legislation remain concerned about its application against Mennonites and Quakers in particular.
The Fellowship of Reconciliation group in North Manchester, Ind., has organized a Tax Resister’s Penalty Fund to ease the financial burden on conscientious tax resisters.
People can submit a request for financial assistance to cover interest and penalty charges resulting from not paying military tax.
If the request is approved, an appeal letter is sent to all people who have expressed interest in contributing to the fund.
In this way, the cost of a $500 penalty could be distributed among 200 people if each paid only $2.50.
In , 250 people were on the Tax Resister’s Penalty Fund mailing list.
In MCC U.S. Peace Section approved guidelines for a “War Tax Witness Relief Fund.”
This fund was established to provide financial assistance to people within the MCC constituency who face hardship from court cases resulting from a war tax witness.
People in financial straits because they contributed the military portion of their taxes to a charitable organization and then had to face an IRS levy, property seizure, or garnishment of wages would also be eligible for assistance.
To date, no money has been budgeted for the U.S. Peace Section War Tax Witness Relief Fund and the existence of the fund has not been publicized.
U.S. Peace Section, however, will consider aiding those who are unable to acquire assistance from their congregation or conference.
U.S. Peace Section continues to accept contributions of redirected telephone and federal income tax money to its “Taxes for Peace” fund.
Donations to this fund have supported special projects and the ongoing work of U.S. Peace Section.
“The payment of taxes in the service of our common life is a necessary and a good thing.
It is therefore unusual and inappropriate to refuse tax payment,” begins a declaration printed in several national daily newspapers in the Netherlands on and signed by 69 Amsterdam area ministers, including at least seven Mennonites.
The statement, pointing out the Dutch government’s agreement to place nuclear weapons in the Netherlands, goes on to say, “In this critical phase we consider tax objection as a necessary means of protest.
We wish tax monies no longer to be misused to continue along this dead-end road.”
The edition brought readers up to date on the story of John Dyck, a Canadian war tax resister whose story had been introduced :
Like the rest of us, John R. Dyck of Rosthern, Sask., files his tax return.
But unlike most of us, he sends Revenue Canada a check for only 90 percent of his unpaid taxes.
And he includes a letter informing the Canadian government that, for reasons of conscience, a check for the balance has been sent to the Peace Tax Fund in Victoria, B.C.
The second check represents the estimated portion of Canadian taxes designated for the military.
This is in that John and Paula Dyck quietly insisted on not having their taxes spent on bombs and guns.
They believe that Christian non-resistance means more than simply refusing to fight in a war.
It also means not paying others to arm and fight for you.
A small but growing number of Canadians are sending a portion of their taxes to be held in trust by the Peace Tax Fund.
They are hoping that the Canadian government will recognize their conscientious objection to military taxes and provide an alternative.
As a retired pensioner, Dyck must calculate the taxes he owes and forward that amount with his income tax return.
Every year he checks with Ernie Regehr at Project Ploughshares (a peace research group) on the exact percentage of Canada’s budget that goes to the Department of National Defense.
Last year it was 10.5 percent.
He subtracts the military percentage and encloses a letter informing Revenue Canada of his actions, his reasons and the number of his account at the Rosthern Credit Union.
“I tell them, ‘If you want it, take it.’ But I won’t send it myself.”
Consequences.
Last year Dyck found out the hard way what happens when the government wants to collect unpaid taxes.
He says he was prepared to accept the consequences of his actions, but not for the ruthless, impersonal way Revenue Canada operates.
One day the Credit Union manager showed him an official letter that had arrived that morning garnisheeing his account.
His personal notice of the action did not arrive until a week later.
And even though the credit union account held sufficient funds, a second bank account in Saskatoon was also garnisheed.
Then, without notice, his two pension checks stopped coming.
The government ended up with $360 more than was due and Dyck has not heard from them since.
Presumably his “credit” at Revenue Canada will be used to cover the taxes he won’t pay for .
When Dyck visited the Revenue Canada office in Saskatoon to ask why he had not received a notice about the diversion of his pension checks, he was treated rudely.
“The man used some pretty rough language.
He gave me the impression that he would walk over anyone to get the money.”
Although he can recall the money in the Peace Tax Fund trust account if he wishes, he would prefer to have that money used in a hoped-for court challenge, based on the new Canadian Charter of Rights.
“On principle, I don’t mind paying twice,” he says.
The Conscience Canada organization, an outgrowth of the Peace Tax Fund Committee, expects such a challenge to cost at least $50,000.
Dyck himself is not inclined to get involved in a court case.
He has had trouble finding a lawyer who is sympathetic.
Besides, “the court route should be taken by some organization that has enough money and can do it right.”
What is Caesar due?
John R. Dyck is not a man to get up on a soapbox and trumpet his cause.
But the word gets around.
There are Mennonites in his hometown who don’t agree with him and others who ignore him.
His pastor chooses his words carefully when talking about the subject.
“I don’t suppose he has a great deal of support in the church; people feel we should obey the government.”
Dyck is now 70 years old.
When asked why he has taken such a stand when others rest in quiet retirement, he begins to talk about a lifetime spent in church-related service, of the example of his parents, about the books he has read and the years spent overseas with Mennonite Central Committee in Paraguay, India, Korea and Jordan, where he observed the effect of Western militarism.
“They all left their mark on me.”
He is committed to a vigorous, active faith based on a personal experience of God’s salvation and presence.
John doesn’t mind if people disagree with his stand.
“I don’t have any corner on the truth.
I know what it is for me at this moment.
A person should stay true to one’s convictions.”
About his critics he adds, “People say, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
I know that.
I have no illusions that anyone in Ottawa is listening — at the moment.
It has to start small, and I want to support this movement.”
But aren’t we supposed to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s?
“Sure. But does Caesar deserve all he asks for?”
A letter to Revenue Canada from Annie Janzen of Victoria, B.C., indicated that she was joining John Dyck in his protest.
“I object on conscientious grounds to my taxes being used for war purposes…
I have sent 12.2 percent (of income tax owed to Revenue Canada) of the net federal tax payable to Conscience Canada.”
“Form 1040 is the place where the Pentagon enters all our lives and asks unthinking cooperation with the idol of nuclear destruction.
I think the teaching of Jesus tells us to render to a nuclear-armed Caesar what that Caesar deserves: tax resistance.”
These are the words of Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen (right), who two years ago decided to withhold half of his federal income tax and thereby helped launch a religious “war tax” resistance movement that is growing rapidly.
According to the Internal Revenue Service, war tax resistance has increased nearly fivefold in the last three years.
War tax resistance groups say that actual numbers are higher, that IRS tabulations miss many people, including those who simply don’t file or who don’t specify reasons for underpaying.
In the edition, Donald E. Martin wrote about “sponsoring” children from war-torn areas, and noted that doing so “helped to cut down the amount of money we spent on ourselves and the amount of taxes we paid toward paying for war.”
There were also several passing mentions of war tax resistance here and there that I didn’t think were worth excerpting here.
This is the twenty-third in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it
was reported in back issues of Gospel Herald, journal
of the (Old) Mennonite Church.
Here’s how Larry Cornies of the Gospel Herald
reported on the negotiations between the General Conference Mennonite Church
and the
IRS
(the Mennonite Church, with which Gospel Herald was
associated, was supporting the General Conference action but from a bit of a
distance):
Representatives of the General Conference Mennonite Church and the Internal
Revenue Service failed to reach an 11th-hour
compromise at a meeting in Washington on
which would have averted a suit by the 63,000-member denomination against the
government agency.
IRS
officials at the meeting denied that there was any administrative solution to
the conference’s complaint that it must withhold the income taxes of its
employees, thereby acting as a tax collector for the state. The denomination
has argued, and will argue in a forthcoming judicial action, that the
IRS
requirement violates the concept of separation of church and state as embodied
in the First Amendment in the
U.S. Constitution.
“The 45-minute meeting was cordial, but unproductive,” said Vem Preheim,
general secretary for the conference. “We outlined our concerns about the
withholding issue as a historic peace church and described the problem which
the IRS
requirement poses for us.”
William Ball, the conference’s attorney in the matter, then formally asked
members of the
IRS’s
special working group on withholding issues whether there was any way to
exempt the General Conference from the problematic requirement.
Nancy Schuhmann, who chairs the special group, stated that the
IRS must
abide by its codes of operation and would not be able to offer an exemption on
tax withholding to the conference.
IRS
officials Susan Cunningham and Gail Libin were also present for the
discussions.
In light of the results of the
meeting, attorney Ball will complete the preparation of the conference
complaint and submit the brief to a
U.S. district court
after one last check to make sure all administrative possibilities have been
exhausted.
The General Conference’s General Board was authorized to initiate a judicial
action on the tax withholding question at an international gathering of the
conference membership at Estes Park,
Colo., in
.
More than a year earlier, on ,
delegates to a special midtriennium conference session instructed the General
Board to “use all legal, legislative, and administrative avenues for
achieving[”] conscientious objector exemption to the tax withholding
requirement.
John J. Hostetter, Jr. attacked
the new war tax resistance craze in a commentary titled “Render unto Caesar”:
In the , issue of the
Gospel Herald, the forms of protest on nuclear
weaponry advocated by
MCC,
Peace Section, include the following, “We call for acts of tax resistance to
be undertaken since our federal income taxes fuel the arms race. We suggest
giving funds denied for use in building nuclear weapons to groups working for
peace and disarmament, and to groups meeting human needs.”
Such statements are damaging and completely misleading. It gives the
impression to the uninformed that an option for taxpayers is withholding part
of their tax liability and sending it somewhere of their own choosing. Rather,
the choice is whether one pays his tax or whether he pays his tax plus penalty
and interest. The only other possibility at present is fraud for deliberately
not reporting income, which is even more serious.
Pick and choose from the budget? Most ethical and religious protestors
base their action on the notion that one can pick and choose in the budgetary
items of the government, as a shopper at a department store. It is implied
that taxes are a voluntary contribution to the government by its citizens and
therefore, if they don’t like the way the money is spent, they can withhold
the part of the contribution they don’t like.
The courts have long ago settled this also. There is a classic quotation from
Judge Learned Hand, “Over and over again courts have said that there is
nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as
possible. Everybody does so, rich and poor, and all do right, for nobody owes
any public duty to pay more than the law demands; taxes are enforced
exactions, not voluntary contributions.”
While one can so arrange his affairs to pay as little as possible within the
law, this does not imply the right to pay the part one likes and refuse the
rest any more than one can dictate how the groceryman uses the money paid for
groceries. Once the tax liability is assessed, it is no longer the taxpayer’s
money. Otherwise very few would pay any taxes since we all feel we have better
ways to spend money than the way the government spends it.
Some object to the defense budget, while others feel just as strongly about
the welfare program. Although far less than one tenth of one percent of church
people protest taxes to the point of refusing to voluntarily pay all of their
taxes without confiscation, yet probably a high percentage of Christians as
well as non-Christians would opt to send their tax money to a “Peace Fund”
were that option available. At present it is not. Perhaps in the future the
Congress may grant such an election in much the same way that taxpayers can
direct $1 of their taxes to the presidential election campaign. Even if such
were possible, it wouldn’t change the size of the budget for defense.
In the Waitzkin case of , the court said that
conscientious objectors couldn’t withhold 50 percent of their tax on the basis
of “war crimes” deduction. Neither religious beliefs nor international law
relieve citizens of tax liability. Tax is neutral on religious matters and is
imposed on all citizens, even though each may object to some specific
governmental expenditure on religious grounds.
Likewise in the McDade case, the “war crimes” deduction was disallowed. The
taxpayer’s belief that the government shouldn’t force its citizens to
participate in taking of lives didn’t relieve her of an obligation to pay tax.
In another case, the taxpayer’s deduction for “conscientious objection to
military expenditures” was denied and the negligence penalty imposed. Military
protest deduction wasn’t permitted under the code. Taxpayer lacked standing to
contest military expenditures of the government. (Reimer) In the Van Tol case,
the war tax credit was denied; sincerity of the taxpayer’s objection to war
didn’t excuse the tax liability.
The government gets the money. A few observations could be made. First,
such protestations, as sincere as they are, are not accomplishing what may be
the desire of the protest, in that the government ends up with more, not less,
money for undesirable purposes as a result of the protest. Not only will the
tax be collected, but penalty and interest as well. (The average increase is
$207 for penalty alone.)
Second, in the case of war or defense, not one cent less will be spent for
bullets, bombs, or battleships because of the protest. Tax money which we
might earmark for Cambodian Relief, as good as that might be, only means other
money out of the same treasury is used for what the Congress believes is
necessary for national defense, and if that is not enough, the government will
simply borrow what it needs. One who thinks that such a fund will change the
size of national defense has only a superficial method of salving his
conscience.
Third, Internal Revenue agents, with (against) whom I have worked, openly joke
at such protest tactics. Regardless of the agents’ own personal views on the
use of tax money, which all citizens agree leaves much to be desired, they as
public servants must go and collect the tax whether it is from an impoverished
taxpayer, a religious protestor, or a fraudulent evader. Thus all that is
accomplished is a reduction in efficiency and an increase in the cost of
collection in the tax system. The Revenue Service doesn’t make the laws;
Congress does. A much more valid approach is correspondence with those in
Congress responsible for the present law and who have the power to change it.
Certainly the revenue agents have no jurisdiction over setting up the national
budget.
Internal Revenue agents deserve our respect. They are, with some exceptions,
well trained and conscientious, doing a job necessary to insure compliance and
integrity in the tax system. (After all, Jesus selected one as one of his
disciples. While he wasn’t the star of the show, he certainly wasn’t the
villain either.)
It would be interesting to know what percentage of church people have ever
written to their congressman expressing their concern on militarism. The
percentage would probably increase if names and addresses of congressmen were
available on church bulletin boards with sample letters for those who want
some positive ways to express their concerns.
I cringe when reports come out in the paper of tax protestors who have been
convicted of tax evasion on religious grounds with a byline that they are
Mennonites, with the implied impression that this is a belief of such
churches. Mennonites do not believe that. Editors of newspapers and
periodicals should be corrected when it is implied. The vast majority of
Christians believe such a stance to be unscriptural teaching.
This prompted a series of letters to the editor in response:
Called Hotstetter’s commentary “a breath of fresh air” and said “the newer
viewpoint promoted so much presently is not the historical nor the
majority viewpoint of the Mennonite brotherhood.”
“I differ from his assessment that those in our churches who cannot in
Christian conscience pay war taxes are ‘simply being contrary.’ That seems
to me to be a judgment form the world rather than the Word. I believe
that, increasingly, those who have ears to hear will understand that,
while it may be contrary to the world, to resist payment of war taxes is
being faithful to the Word of God.”
The failure of the General Conference Mennonite Church to reach an agreement
with the Internal Revenue Service… should come as no surprise. Furthermore,
if the case goes to court the winner can be predicted with a considerable
degree of assurance. It will be Attorney Ball in collecting his fee. It is
to be hoped that our church does not emulate the unenviable position in
which that church now finds itself. It can hardly back down without
swallowing its pride and cannot push forward with any hope of success in the
untenable stance it is taking. The constituency should scream at using so
much funds on such a case.
The requirement of the service to withhold taxes and forward them to the
government is nothing new. It has been on the books for more than a
generation. If they had not signed the waiver on Social Security taxes, they
would have more of a leg to stand on. They can’t have it both ways.
Felt that even if Hostetter’s arguments were valid, “there is still the
conviction, scripturally based, that we must witness to Christ’s way of
peace. Our quiet support for the military as we pay our taxes each year is
not consistent with that witness.” Says Flickinger: “Christian war tax
resisters are basing their actions on Scripture, not on a desire to
attract persecution or publicity.”
The issue included an
editorial,
“As for taxes…”,
from Daniel Hertzler. There wasn’t much meat there. It talked around the
subject for the most part, though it did mention Hertzler’s own
dipping-his-toes-in: “For a time I resisted the telephone tax, but then I gave
up. Perhaps I was a little overly impressed by the threatening form letters
which began to come from the Internal Revenue Service. Also, tax refusal seemed
like a form of revolution. As an orderly Mennonite, revolution is not my
style.”
That prompted Art Landis to shoot back in the issue with
a letter to the editor
taking Hertzler to task for romanticizing earlier generations who “had no
compassion for the slave or the prisoner. I believe the state could have
constructed concentration camps and gas ovens next to their meetinghouses and
they would not have protested.”
Good statements can have a reverse and negative effect… The statement can
serve to immunize us and keep us from action. We have resolved our guilt by
preparing another statement. This statement calls for a radical change of
lifestyle. Guilt and inner conflict are not as easily laid aside as this
statement might indicate. Wrestling with the complex issues of peace does not
successfully reduce inner conflict. What would really happen if “the old self
that lives for self dies”? We call into judgment economic systems that keep
millions poor when we ourselves are very deeply rooted in that economic
system. We denounce wars, but no consensus can be reached regarding applying
the same biblical understanding to paying for the hardware of war as we have
for giving of our bodies for war.
[A]t Bowling Green when a brother expressed
his concern over the assembly’s failure to deal with the question of obedience
as it relates to payment of taxes for war. Even though long discussion
followed, business proceeded very much as usual…
The question that comes to my mind is whether we indeed should make statements
such as these when we know well enough that the very structures of our
institutions would be shattered if we attempted to live out the text of the
statement.
Responding to Seattle Catholic Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen’s call for a tax
revolt against the nuclear arms race, Lutheran pacifists have urged
co-religionists to join the protest, redirecting the money to the poor. “We
shall act on Bishop Hunthausen’s encouragement to resist a percentage of our
federal income tax that is symbolic of allocations made to the military,” said
the New York-based Lutheran Peace Fellowship, an independent intra-Lutheran
group which works with the International Fellowship of Reconciliation.
“We will no longer offer our tax dollars for a nuclear military that affronts
the lordship of Jesus. Instead, we choose to redirect resisted tax dollars to
the poor of our country and of our world.”
Conscientious tax resisters who were hoping the courts would find a place for
them in the U.S.
Constitution were disappointed (Levi Miller reporting):
Amish employers and employees cannot invoke their religious beliefs to avoid
paying Social Security and federal unemployment taxes, the Supreme Court ruled
on .
The unanimous decision overturned a western Pennsylvania judge’s ruling that
forcing the Amish to pay such taxes violates their freedom of religion.
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger said, “The design of the [Social Security]
system requires support by mandatory contributions from covered employers and
employees.”
The controversy arose when the internal Revenue Service informed Edwin Lee, an
Old Order Amish carpenter from Lawrence County,
Pa., that he owed some
$27,000 in back taxes. Lee had not paid any Social Security taxes for himself
or his employees since . He also had not
withheld such taxes.
It was noted in the ruling that Congress has already provided for a tax
exemption that covers self-employed Amish, such as farmers. The Amish believe
that the church and the family should take care of the elderly and do not
withdraw the government funds at old age.
John A. Hostetler, a professor at Temple University and member of the Plains
Mennonite Church, commented on the ruling by saying that although “it is a
blow for religious liberty in general, in the long run it is better for the
Amish to pay it. If they were exempt, it would create jealousy.”
Hostetler said he did not know how many of these small shops would be
involved. “It will mean more paperwork for them,” he concluded.
A follow-up by Phil Shenk explained the consequences for war tax resisters:
The U.S. Supreme
Court indirectly referred to the issue of war tax resistance and the World
Peace Tax Fund in its
ruling, denying an Amish employer exemption from paying and collecting Social
Security taxes.
The unanimous decision, plus the arguments employed by the court, may also
have diminished the prospects for success in the General Conference Mennonite
Church’s case asking for an employer’s exemption from collecting
federal-military income taxes for the government.
In the Amish case, Amishman Edwin Lee had refused to withhold Social Security
taxes from his Amish employees’ paychecks and failed to pay the employer’s
share of their Social Security taxes, claiming that doing so would violate his
and his employees’ First Amendment rights to the free exercise of religion.
Lee said the Amish believe it is sinful not to provide for their elderly and
needy themselves and therefore are opposed to the national social security
system.
Unlike the celebrated case, in which the
Supreme Court granted the Amish an exemption from Wisconsin’s compulsory
school-attendance law based on their free exercise of religion rights, the
Supreme Court here held that the government’s interest should overrule the
religious rights of the individual because it would be difficult for the
Social Security system to accommodate the “myriad exceptions flowing from a
wide variety of religious beliefs.”
In ruling that Amishman Lee’s First Amendment religious rights must “yield to
the common good,” the Supreme Court raised the issue of conscientious
objectors’ refusal to pay taxes that go for what the court called “war-related
activities.” The court said it could not see any difference between Lee’s
refusal to pay Social Security taxes and the position of one who refuses to
pay war taxes.
“If, for example, a religious adherent believes war is a sin, and if a certain
percentage of the federal budget can be identified as devoted to war-related
activities, such individuals would have a similarly valid claim to be exempt
from paying that percentage of the income tax.”
The problem with this, the court said, is that “[t]he tax system could not
function if denominations were allowed to challenge the tax system because tax
payments were spent in a manner that violates their religious belief.”
In a very broad statement that implicitly referred to religious conscientious
objection to federal-military income taxes as well as Social Security taxes,
the court revealed its basic rule: “Because the broad public interest in
maintaining a sound tax system is of such a high order, religious belief in
conflict with the payment of taxes affords no basis for resisting the tax.”
The court did recognize that Congress has passed a constitutionally sound law
that exempts Amish who are self-employed from paying Social Security taxes.
But it held that taxes imposed on employers “must be uniformly applicable to
all, except as Congress provides explicitly otherwise.” Because Congress has
not exempted Amish employers or their employees from Social Security taxes,
the court refused to honor their religious rights over the interests of the
nation as a whole.
Before Congress, in the proposed World Peace Tax Fund legislation, is explicit
language that would “exempt” conscientious objectors from paying war taxes and
instead divert their taxes to peaceful governmental activities. If passed,
this might provide the authority the court has implied it needs before it will
honor the rights of war tax objectors.
A Mennonite lawyer, John Yoder, is working as one of several assistants to
Chief Justice Burger, the author of the opinion striking down Amishman Lee’s
free exercise of religion rights. Burger’s Mennonite aide is originally from
Hesston, Kan.
The decision was so gratuitously dismissive of conscientious tax refusal that
the General Conference Mennonite Church decided to
halt its legal action,
on :
In the light of a negative judgment rendered by the
U.S. Supreme Court
against an Amish employer on ,
the General Conference’s judicial action committee has recommended to the
denomination’s General Board that a planned suit against the
IRS on
the issue of tax withholding “be put on indefinite hold.” The committee’s
decision came at the end of a
conference call with William Ball, who has been preparing the case
on behalf of the church group over the past year. During the telephone
meeting, Ball indicated that, considering the Supreme Court ruling in the case
IRS vs. Lee,
the General Conference would almost certainly lose its case.
In a cover story in the issue
Donald B. Kraybill proposed some ideas on
what to do about the threat of nuclear war.
Idea #10 was “Refuse to pay some of your federal income taxes as a witness to
your faith. If you’re scared, try a small amount like $7.77. If that’s too
scary, at least send a letter describing the difficulty of praying for peace
and paying for war. Those who pay taxes without sending such a letter are
quietly condoning and supporting the nuclear arms buildup.”
Raymond Hunthausen’s war tax resistance, which had been alluded to earlier, was
covered in a brief note:
Seattle Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen announced that he will withhold half
of his income tax to protest “our nation’s
continuing involvement in the race for nuclear arms supremacy.”
“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,” the archbishop told
300 peace activists attending a meeting at Notre Dame University.
In the issue, Ivan H.
Stoltzfus felt compelled to write in to explain
“Why I pay taxes.”
The standard set of bible verses were deployed to explain that worldly goods
are at the disposal of worldly governments; Rome’s government was no better
than ours, so Paul’s advice in Romans 13 still holds; besides, it’s impossible
to determine what percentage of your taxes are objectionable, so you might as
well pay the whole thing. Still, Stoltzfus wrote, if there were a Peace Tax
Fund law, he’d go along with it.
A senate of priests in Iowa has voted to support a Catholic lay minister who
refuses to pay his federal income taxes as a protest against the nuclear arms
race.
The resolution approved by the representative group of priests in the Dubuque
Catholic archdiocese says they commend Tom Cordaro and
St. Thomas Aquinas parish at
Ames for their courageous stand relative to the payment of taxes for military
and nuclear armaments.
Mr. Cordaro, 27, has held back most of his income taxes
because he believes it would be a
sin to contribute money for nuclear weapons. The parish council at
St. Thomas Aquinas has refused
to honor an order by the Internal Revenue Service to turn over Mr. Cordaro’s
wages to satisfy the $828 tax debt.
Dan E. Hoellwarth made another attempt to defang Romans 13 in the
issue. According to him, the
description of government in that chapter should be seen as prescriptive, not
descriptive, and is meant to restrict which sorts of governments Christians owe
allegiance to: “what if the leaders are not acting in accordance with Scripture?”
“Obviously we should pay taxes… However…”
The Catholic war tax resisters were back again in the
issue:
The Catholic peace advocate Daniel Berrigan says he will take the church’s
anti-nuclear arms movement seriously “when we have a few bishops in jail.[”]
Berrigan, who is appealing a 3–10 year prison sentence for breaking into a
Pennsylvania nuclear plant, spoke to some 200 students and faculty members at
Fordham University.
The Jesuit priest said this “unparalleled threat to our survival” has made
civil disobedience — such as demonstrations and withholding federal income
taxes — a necessary component of the anti-nuclear movement.
He said he was encouraged by the fact that the American church hierarchy no
longer engages in “cold-war” rhetoric, and that the peace movement has made
some strides. But he added that the church, like the rest of the anti-nuclear
movement, has only “moved the diameter of a dime” toward serious opposition to
the arms race.
A Methodist pastor and wife in Portland, Oregon, withheld $1500 from their
U.S. income taxes.
They turned $1,000 of the money into $5 bills and gave them to persons they
found in line at the state of Oregon employment service.
According to the United Methodist John and Pat Schwiebert “clipped [a note] to
each $5 bill explaining that the couple was withholding a portion of their tax
‘because we cannot in good conscience do nothing while income we have earned
is used by our government to plan and carry out the killing of human beings…’ ”
After nearly a year in Laos, we feel a bit of fire brewing in our bones.
Surely, we think, the church can offer an alternative and a “no” to the
militarism and violence that is increasingly manifested around the world.
Surely we have a responsibility to end such suffering. Yet, as we turn to our
church papers (which we read avidly even though they arrive 4 to 5 months
late) we find that much of the discussion on peacemaking, including war-tax
resistance, seems to focus on the interpretation of certain biblical passages.
While it is important that these passages shape our thoughts and direct our
lives, it seems that too much time is spent fine-tuning favorite arguments in
comfortable, safe settings, far removed from the cries of those who suffer. We
wonder, for example, how well our arguments would stand up if the bombing
which occurred in many areas of Laos had instead destroyed our own communities
in Kansas, Ohio, or Manitoba.
The oil lamps burned late into the night when we visited the village. The day
before a Lao woman, the mother of 11 children, was killed when her hoe struck
a small anti-personnel bomblet that had buried itself under a root in her
garden. The bomblet, one of hundreds which still litter the soil, had been
dropped 10 to 15 years ago… Looking at the depression left in the soil by the
explosion, the hoe fragment, and the saddened eyes of the 10-year-old
daughter, we wondered who would own this family’s grief… who would answer for
this woman’s death?
The answer, we fear, is no one. Indeed the United States has created a
military system which can kill in such a way that no one need feel guilty.
Certainly no one in America, army general or taxpayer, will be accused of
plotting the death of this peasant woman. No international court will bring
bomb manufacturing companies to trial. Even to know which pilot dropped that
particular bomblet some ten years ago would be impossible. Thus we have
created death without a murderer.
Are we really so clever? Have we finally outwitted God, who would come and
ask, “Where is Abel, your brother?” Indeed, if God should come and ask, would
he not find us all guilty?
Of course, we as historic peace churches have often tried to separate
ourselves from our nation’s militaristic policies, to be a people with a
different identity. To some extent we have succeeded. The very fact that
Mennonite Central Committee is allowed to be in Laos is in large measure due
to the fact that we, as Mennonites, did not fight as
U.S. soldiers in
Indochina.
Nevertheless, how clean are we? Are our self-perceptions of innocence
realistic? Or have we been lured into a giant game of guilt evasion whose
players include Pentagon officials and common folk alike? While we ourselves
have not worn a soldier’s uniform, have not our taxes and our silence helped
to build weapons systems and to pay the salaries of those who fight? Though we
have espoused love and peace, could any of us stand before that peasant
woman’s family and state with assurance that we did not contribute to the
making of the weapon that killed her?
Thus, the presence of the shattered family in Muong Kham or the “cave
dwellers” in Sam Neua is disquieting to our spirits — the links between our
tax money and their suffering are too strong to ignore. The option of war tax
resistance then seems not like a matter for debate, but the next logical step
for all Christians who would work for peace in the world.
Perhaps many of you will disagree with us that withholding taxes is a faithful
part of peacemaking. May we plead however that before final judgments are
made, you listen to the voices of those hurt by our violence? Standing close
to them, we need to respond with compassion. What will we say? What will we
do?
A letter to the editor
from Robin Lowery followed: “They [the Peacheys] seem to base their conclusion
on the experience of those they dialogued with rather than on what God our
Father says to us through the Bible,” Lowery wrote. “It is a dangerous thing to
base our faith on experience and feelings.” We shouldn’t expect governments to
live up to Christian principles. Our worldly life is only temporary; we are
guests here and live under worldly rules temporarily. “War is a horrible thing,
but even more terrible is the judgment waiting for those who would oppose God
and what he has put in place.”
A
letter to the editor
from the Peacheys complained that their original article had been severely
edited:
As edited by Gospel Herald, our article seemed to
imply that all true peacemakers will engage in war-tax resistance. Certainly
we were urging Christians to seriously consider making some type of witness
with their tax return. Our original article acknowledged, however, that this
could take many forms. Some people may choose to live with an income below the
taxable level while others may wish to enclose a letter of concern with their
tax return. Some may withhold a symbolic amount while others withhold all of
their taxes.
Yet, none of these actions can be the whole of peacemaking. Rather, as we
stressed in our original submission, peacemaking is a total way of life which
embraces our troublesome next-door neighbor as well as those whom our country
defines as “enemy.” Further, as we seek to prevent suffering caused by North
American militarism, we must also turn to those in our communities who have
been cut off from help by our nation’s preoccupation with defense “needs.”
Finally, all of our actions must spring from our Christian faith. We cannot
work for peace out of guilt or a desire for personal innocence. Instead, what
we do, we do joyfully as a positive witness to life, to wholeness, and to our
faith in God who loves all people, irrespective of human barriers.
And Titus Peachey also wrote a follow-up article. Here is
an excerpt
that touches on war tax resistance:
The U.S.
asks neither for our consent or direct physical participation to send
weapons around the world such as the cluster bombs which were dropped in
Laos. It requires only our dollars and our silence. Can we continue to
give our government what it needs to make wars, and then serve the victims
of its violence with a clear conscience? Can we still claim to be
nonresistant if that violence was committed in defense of our way of life
in another part of the world?
Some of us felt that the shovels provided to Lao farmers in Xieng
Khouang should be purchased with money which Mennonites withheld from
their taxes, thereby making the connection between our nation’s militarism
and the victims of war. While some of the shovels were indeed purchased
with the Taxes for Peace Fund, many people cited legal, theological, and
practical problems with taking such an action.
From our vantage point in Laos, we admittedly worry more about the
theological, human, and practical problems of inaction. Can we
find common ground for a strong, unified, Mennonite peace witness which
deals more directly with our nation’s defense budget, arms sales, and
military aid?
MCC
has spent over $10,000 to purchase and ship about 1,200 shovels to Laos, and
$4,000 of that amount was allocated from
MCC’s
“Taxes for Peace” fund. This “Taxes for Peace” fund was established in
to receive contributions from church members
who had voluntarily withheld portions of their taxes as a symbolic protest
against the government’s excessive spending for military purposes.
“Since people withheld this money so that it could be used for peace instead
of war, we feel it especially appropriate that these dollars be used to help
clear the land of Laos of bomblets made and dropped by Americans,” explains
John Stoner, executive secretary of
MCC
U.S. Peace Section.
What is the meaning of conscientious objection to war in Canada today, and how
does this relate to the support of Canadian military industries and armed
forces activities? That is the focus of a task force on tax support of
Canadian military activities. A short document spelling out proposed goals and
research tasks of this group was mailed to each of the conferences earlier
this year asking for more guidance or support, perhaps after discussion at
their annual meetings. The initial work of this task force is being
coordinated by the Peace and Social Concerns office of
MCC
(Canada).
War tax resisters continued to have tough luck in
U.S. courts, as
this showed:
A Rhode Island couple who have refused to pay their federal income taxes
as a way of demonstrating their
opposition to military spending have lost their fight with the
U.S. Internal
Revenue Service. The United States Tax Court in Washington has not only
ordered Kevin and Linda Regan to pay $4,138 in back taxes and $206 in interest
for , but it has also slapped
the couple with a $500 fine for having “wasted” the government’s time and
money on “frivolous” actions. Although the decision was reached
, the
IRS
office here only announced it .
Keith Johnson, an
IRS
public affairs officer, said the agency was publicizing the Tax Court decision
because the Regans had been the subject of a long
Providence Journal-Bulletin story
in which the couple attempted to
justify their nonpayment of taxes on religious and moral grounds. In the
interview, the Regans argued that the arms race contradicted the Christian
belief against the taking of human life. “What we were presented with were
taxpayers who were saying they could withhold tax payments on moral grounds,”
Mr. Johnson said. “This is an argument that neither the
IRS,
nor the courts, accept.”
Finally, a
letter to the editor
from Weldon Nisly emphasized the parallel between conscientious objection to
the draft and conscientious objection to military taxation:
May we all have the faith and courage to stand with these young men of
conscience facing draft registration. It is indeed a difficult moment and
decision they and their families face. But it is not just they who face the
demands of the powers in our country and time. We all face a parallel decision
in a direct way with the demand for tax money to finance the Pentagon’s
headlong plunge toward death and destruction of all God’s creation and
creatures. The painful question of faith we ail face is will we contribute to
and cooperate with that demand of the powers or will we choose to place our
trust in God alone?
