Some historical and global examples of tax resistance → United States → Vietnam War, ~1965–75 → Writers & Editors War Tax Protest, 1967 → Jack Newfield

Penn State University has shared on-line a letter from Ronald Gross to Irving Horowitz from inviting him to join the writers & editors war tax protest — giving us a behind-the-scenes look at how that protest’s impressive list of names was recruited, and at an early draft of the ad text.

Writers and Editors War Tax Protest
Attention: Gerald Walker
145 West 86th Street
Apt. 7D
New York, N.Y. 10024

Fellow Writers and Editors:

Join us in signing the enclosed statement proclaiming our refusal to let our tax dollars support the war in Vietnam. Tell us in writing that we may list your name with ours in ads and statements. Send us your check for $10.00 or more (payable to Writers and Editors War Tax Protest) to pay for advertising and other expenses. Ask other writers and editors to join. Mail copies of this letter and the enclosed statement, “We Won’t Pay” (which will comprise the substance of ads we plan to run), to your own list of colleagues. Extra copies available at $1.00 per hundred, plus 25¢ for mailing.

How we will go about tax refusal

  1. Should President Johnson’s surcharge be adopted by Congress, we will refuse payment. We will not add this extra war tax to our current tax when preparing our return and we will enclose a letter with our return explaining why.
  2. Many of us will also deduct from our tax the 23% which represents the amount currently being spent on Vietnam.

Possible consequences

It is a violation (up to one year in prison and/or up to $10,000 in fines) of Sec. 7203 of the Internal Revenue Code willfully to refuse to pay federal income taxes. However, of the 421 signers of a similar no-payment ad in , not one has been prosecuted and sentenced; of the estimated 1500 additional protest non-payers, none has been prosecuted since the war began. The IRS, so far, has chosen to exercise the power to collect unpaid tax money by placing a lien on refusers’ income or attaching their bank accounts or other assets, when these can be traced. In addition, a penalty of 6% interest is charged annually on the unpaid tax balance, a rate estimated to be less than the collection expense.

Join us.

Initial Signers of the Enclosed Statement

We Won’t Pay

Vietnam drags on. Casualties rise, $28 billion are wasted yearly, U.S. prestige and moral fabric rot away. No solution, political or military, is in view. The President’s prescription is more of the same — 45,000 new men (for a total of 525,000) and a proposed 10% income tax increase specifically for this undeclared, unconstitutional, unprofitable, and unjust war.

“The needs of this country’s riot-shaken cities are being neglected to pay the war bill,” The New York Times has editorialized. It is time for escalation by those who want peace in order to focus on our critical domestic dilemma. Peace marches have not worked; nor have pickets, protest ads, teach-ins, or pleas to the President’s conscience by public figures here and abroad. We are not consoled by reports of atrocities committed by the other side; we want to stop those committed by our side. So we must now go beyond mere expressions of dissent to strong, affirmative, and dramatic action by responsible citizens.

We, the undersigned writers and editors for publications and publishing houses large and small, have not had to give our lives in Vietnam — that has fallen on younger Americans. But we have lent our passive support in the form of our tax dollars. From now on, we are willing to lay our middle-class lives on the line in pledging:

  1. That none of us voluntarily will pay the proposed 10% income tax surcharge, or any war-designated tax increase.
  2. That many of us will also refuse to pay that part of our current income tax (23%) being used to finance the war.

Many of us, too, will give an equivalent sum to humanitarian organizations. Even so, this was not an easy decision to make. We have been law-abiding, tax-paying citizens all our lives, and we are now subjecting ourselves to possible legal penalties of up to one year in prison and/or up to $10,000 in fines for willful non-payment of taxes. But we believe our taxes should not be used to support a war that violates not only our own Constitution but the Charter of the United Nations.

By this act, we aim to awaken the Administration to the fact that a significant number of responsible citizens are so fundamentally opposed to this war that they are willing to go to this extreme. And we wish to show other Vietnam-haunted Americans that there is a simple, swift, effective way to vote no-confidence in the Administration’s policy. It can be done individually or in groups. It cannot wait until the 1968 presidential election. Your ballot is your next tax return, and other ads such as this placed in every newspaper in the land.

There are not enough prisons to hold the millions in this country who, according to Gallup and other recent polls, strongly oppose this ugly war. Time now to end our tacit acceptance of what is being done in Vietnam in our name.

Writers and Editors War Tax Protest

Additional Signers of the Enclosed Statement

  1. Joseph M. Fox
  2. Isabel W. Fox
  3. Andre Schiffrin
  4. Dianne Harris
  5. Janet Schulman
  6. Anne Reit
  7. Hunter Thompson
  8. Erika Munk
  9. Saul Gottlieb
  10. Kelly Morris
  11. John Speicher
  12. Caroline Trager
  13. Eric Lasher
  14. John Hopper
  15. Merle Miller
  16. Howard Zinn
  17. Charles Lam Markham
  18. Hal Scharlatt
  19. Elizabeth Bartelme
  20. John McDermott
  21. Sally Belfrage
  22. John Simon
  23. Selma Shapiro
  24. Ralph Ginzburg
  25. Elinor Langer
  26. Richard Kostelanetz
  27. Thomas R. Brooks
  28. John J. Simon
  29. Walter Arnold
  30. Richard Marek
  31. Tod Gitlin
  32. Frances Fox Piven
  33. Ned O’Gorman
  34. Berenice Hoffman
  35. Bennett Sims
  36. Carl Morse
  37. Jackson MacLow
  38. Dwight Macdonald
  39. Noam Chomsky
  40. James Leo Herlihy
  41. Paul Jacobs
  42. Iris Lezak MacLow
  43. Aaron Asher
  44. Peter Kemeny
  45. David Segal
  46. Thomas D. Barry
  47. Alan Rinzler
  48. Robert Markel

Much of the text of the above declaration didn’t make it in to the final advertisement (I’m guessing it was cut down to make room for the many names of signers, but maybe there was more to it than that). Horowitz himself did not make the list.

, David Welsh of Ramparts sent Horowitz a follow-up letter:

Dear Mr. Horowitz:

I am enclosing a copy of the statement signed, so far, by 220 writers and editors who pledge to refuse payment of the proposed 10 per cent income tax surcharge or any tax increase earmarked for the Vietnam War. At this writing, seven New York Times writers and editors have signed. We plan to run a full-page advertisement in the Times in , giving the quote from Thoreau, the pledge and the list of names. The placing of the ad will coincide with Congressional debate on the tax surcharge. By that time we hope to have 500 persons pledged to refuse payment.

If you would be interested in signing the statement, please fill in the blank and mail it in as soon as possible. And please tell your writer and editor friends about it and urge them to do the same. As Thoreau said, “If a thousand men 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.” During his incarceration for refusal to pay his war tax, Thoreau was paid a visit by Emerson, who asked, “What are you doing in here?” To which Thoreau replied, “What are you doing out there?”

I feel strongly that the collective involvement of writers and editors in the nation’s politics should not stop with the War Tax Protest. Many of our colleagues share this view, and are preparing this fall to organize local chapters of what can become a national writers and journalists association. An organized and articulate “intelligentsia” can be a political force in America as it is in France. And it must become a political force if the increasingly oppressive policies of the present United States government — in Vietnam, in Southern Africa, in Latin America, and here at home — are to be permanently reversed. Not to organize, not to amplify our voices so that an ill-informed America may hear alternatives, is to accede, in effect, to the policies of the present government. For more information, please write me immediately at 377 Green Street, San Francisco, California 94133.

Included with this letter is a somewhat different version of the proposed ad:

How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer that he can­not without disgrace be associated with it. … In other words, when … a whole country is overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army… There are thousands who are in opinion opposed … the war … who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing… They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret… What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn… If a thousand men 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.

— Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, commenting upon American involvement in the Mexican War.

We the undersigned writers and editors, believing that American involvement in Vietnam is morally wrong, pledge:

  1. None of us voluntarily will pay the proposed 10% income tax surcharge or any war-designated tax increase.
  2. Many of us will not pay that 23% of our current income tax which is being used to finance the war in Vietnam.

Following this was a sign-up sheet, asking signers to agree with the statement “I believe American involvement in the war in Vietnam is morally wrong,” and giving three further options:

  • “As a writer/editor, I wish to add my name to the Writers and Editors War Tax Protest. I dissociate myself from my government’s actions in Vietnam and I am willing to use my next tax return to vote no-confidence in the present Administration. I enclose a check (payable to Writers and Editors War Tax Protest) for $10.00 or more to help pay for running this statement as a newspaper advertisement and for other expenses.”
  • “I am in sympathy with what you are doing. Enclosed is my check for $____.”
  • “I would like more information. Please send me your fact-sheet on tax refusal.”

A number of additional signers had been added to the list by this time:

(Spock was listed out-of-order and in a different typeface in the original.)

Get Yourself a Peace. Seventy cents of every 1969 tax dollar went to pay for the costs of America’s past wars and the War in Vietnam. You spend $400 yearly on the Vietnam War. Where was your peace, and how can you go about getting it? Tax resistance is what some people have decided to do for peace. They have kept the 10% Federal Tax on telephone bills. All of this tax is allocated to War costs. Customers who have refused to pay, and submitted a written explanation to the telephone company, have not had their service discontinued. Telephone officials simply forward these messages to Internal Revenue. Others have declined to pay the 10% surtax, all of which was levied in 1968 to pay war costs. And a few people have withheld the percentage of their tax that supports the Defense Establishment. These funds, placed in an escrow account, generate income used to promote and support human resource projects. The time has come for you to get a peace. A form of tax resistance could get you a big one. For more detailed information, contact: Boston War Tax Resistance…

from the edition of Cycle

The edition of Cycle, a student paper from Fitchburg (Massachusetts) State College, gives us a good peek into the rhetoric and tactics of the war tax resistance movement at that time:

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bill 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.

Henry David Thoreau

A Call to War Tax Resistance

In , the United States government spend $103 billion to pay for present and past wars and to be prepared in case of future wars. This was 66% of the entire federal budget of $156 billion. One hundred and three billion dollars exceeds the gross national product of all but six nations.

Of this $103,198,100,000, $29 billion was spent on the Vietnam war, to continue a conflict whose brutality, immorality, and illegality have sickened most Americans and the vast majority of the people of the world. Already, this war has brought death to more than 42,000 Americans and more than two million Vietnamese. It is a spur to the arms race and continually threatens world peace.

Almost $20 billion will be invested this fiscal year in making more frightful our nuclear missile and bomber arsenal, weapons already so destructive that they can deliver ten tons of explosive power for every person on the globe.

$330 million will be spent on chemical and biological weapons that are polluting the environment and endangering the people in the United States and other countries without even being used; simply by being improperly stored.

$7.5 billion will go toward research on new and yet more fearful weapons.

$1.2 billion has been authorized for the Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) system in .

$500 million to $1 billion is the estimated budget of the CIA.

Vast sums will be paid to the corporations and research institutes that design and build the weapons. In , the following companies, a handful of the biggest among thousands engaged in war production and research, enjoyed these military contracts:

General Dynamics$2.2 billion
Lockheed Aircraft$1.8 billion
General Electric$1.4 billion
United Aircraft$1.3 billion
McDonnell-Douglas$1.1 billion
AT&T$777 million

The following amounts were spent in for projects that seem to have little to do with primary human needs:

For moon and other space exploration $3.4 billion.

For farm subsidies to wealthy landowners $3.1 billion.

In comparison to the enormous expenditures for acts and instruments of military violence, luxury space programs, and subsidies to the wealthy, and at a time when city governments are crying for more funds, the United States government spent these sums on improving the health, education, and general welfare of the people within this country.

Slum rebuilding $1.9 billion.

Other poverty programs $7.2 billion.

Health programs $1.8 billion.

Educational programs and subsidies $3.7 billion.

Direct, nonmilitary foreign aid to underdeveloped countries totaled about $1.6 billion.

The U.S. appropriation to the United Nations was $109 million, about the cost of one Polaris submarine.

In , the total of all non-military expenditure was approximately 34% of the military expenses.

Throughout the United States, young people by the hundreds of thousands are rebelling in disgust and anger against this squandering of resources on war, and neglect of the day-to-day practical needs of the people. They are not alone in seeing only massive social disruption and probably nuclear war as eventual consequences. They are risking their freedom, careers, and often their lives to protest and resist what they see to be wrong.

In the face of this shameful and alarming situation and in solidarity with the youth resisting it, we, as participants in War Tax Resistance, are resolved to confront our own complicity in war, waste, and callousness. We resolve to end to the extent we can our cooperation in a federal tax program geared to death more than life. The least measure of our resistance will be not to pay voluntarily $5 of federal taxes due.

We are prepared to bear the consequences of our actions, be these criticism and unpopularity, financial penalties, confiscation of our bank accounts and property, and, perhaps, imprisonment. These seem to us small inconveniences beside the agony of those killed or bereft by war, and the numb hopelessness of those crippled by poverty.

We invite all Americans to join us in some form of tax refusal. War tax resistance is not always easy, particularly for those whose taxes are withheld from their wages, but for most there is some variety of tax refusal that they can conscientiously adopt. It may be by not paying part or all of a balance “owed,” or by not paying federal telephone tax. War Tax Resistance has prepared literature and is setting up counseling services designed to help each individual find the best way of tax refusal and resistance for him. A list of Methods of War Tax Resistance follows this statement of purpose.

We also are developing a war tax resistance promotional program that will include advertisements, demonstrations, meetings, a bulletin, and other literature distribution. If you become a war tax resister, we hope you will allow yourself to be publicly identified with the movement and permit your name to be used on tax resistance literature.

War Tax Resistance will do more than concentrate on the weeks just before April 15. We are planning a year round educational and resistance program. If you agree with conscientious tax resistance as a means for opposing war, we hope you will communicate with us now. The included coupon is for your convenience.

Methods of Refusal

Refuse to pay at least $5 of your tax
The first goal of War Tax Resistance is to convince as many people as possible to refuse at least $5 of some tax owed the government. Nearly everyone can do this by refusing their federal telephone tax or part of their income tax. If hundreds of thousands refuse to pay $5, they will establish mass tax refusal. Besides having the burden of collecting the unpaid amounts, the government will be faced with the political fact of massive noncooperation with its warmaking policies.
Better yet, refuse to pay all the taxes you can
Even if some of your taxes are withheld, you can refuse to pay the balance and other taxes. These might include: taxes on additional income, the 10% surtax, and the telephone tax.
You can refuse to pay that percentage of your tax that goes for war
Two thirds or more of the federal budget pays for wars past, present, and future. To protest against war, a person can refuse that percentage of his tax. He can base his refusal on the percentage of the total national budget used for war, on the cost of the war in Vietnam, or on other calculations. Some people pay part of their tax and contribute the rest as a peace tax. Some give to the UN, or a relief agency, or some other organization engaged in peaceful, constructive work.
You can refuse to pay the 10% surtax
This surtax was imposed in to help pay for the war in Vietnam. Refusing to pay it is a direct protest against the war.
You can refuse to pay the federal telephone tax
The federal telephone tax was revived in to help pay for the war. Thousands are already not paying it. In all cases known to us but one, the telephone companies have continued service and referred the tax collection to IRS.

To Reduce or Eliminate the Withholding of Your Taxes You Can

Claim additional dependents

If you claim a sufficient number of dependents on your W-4 form you can reduce the amount of taxes withheld from your salary to zero. The law reads that a dependent has to live in your household and be supported by you. The fact is that many people, particularly draft age young men and the Vietnamese, depend on you. So long as you declare at the end of the year that by the government’s standards you owe so much and are refusing to pay it, the moral point is made

The law reads that it is illegal — fraudulent — to state on a tax form that someone claimed as a dependent falls within that category, as defined by the IRS, when he does not. But no fraud appears to be involved if the people claimed as dependents are identified as being outside the IRS categories. The issue has not been tested in the courts.

Make your employer an ally
Although the law reads that it is illegal not to withhold taxes from an employee’s wages, your employer may be sympathetic to your protest and be willing to assist — and make a protest of his own — by not withholding from your salary. It is always valuable to raise the question.
Organize an employment agency
Have your agency hire you and then have your present employer hire the agency to supply him with you. Naturally, an agency that you control will not withhold taxes from its employees. Getting organized is complicated, but if you and a few friends get together you can work out the problem. Write us for information.

Also You Can

Demand a refund
There are four ways to do this:
  1. You may request a refund right on the 1040 form and stand a good chance of receiving it. Ask for a tax credit on Part Ⅴ of the form.
  2. You may file form 843 for a refund.
  3. If the above demands are refused, go to the Income Tax Board of Appeals. If the Board turns you down, sue.
  4. You can also sue the government to refund all your taxes on the grounds that the taxes have been used for illegal and immoral purposes.
Protest by letter or in person
Any protest to IRS or other government officials will help express opposition to the war and to militarism. If you are unable to refuse taxes, protest them as vigorously as you can.

Maximize the Impact

Talk about your tax refusal with friends, neighbors, co-workers. This sort of direct contact changes many minds. Distribute tax refusal literature.

Inform the newspapers and other mass media in your neighborhood that you are resisting war taxes and why. Start a war tax resistance group in your community.

Organize or join demonstrations at your local IRS office.

Inform yourself thoroughly and become a tax refusal counselor. Let your community know through ads, leaflets, etc. that a counseling service is available.

Keep the War Tax Resistance Clearinghouse informed by writing or phoning about your activities. Communication is the lifeblood of any movement.

We invite war tax resisters to send War Tax Resistance the first $5 or more refused the federal government. This money will be used to publicize and expand the war tax resistance movement.

Until now, the government has not imprisoned anyone for conscientious tax refusal. A few have been given short sentences for refusing to reveal information about their incomes. In general, the IRS has been content to take money from tax refusers’ bank accounts, garnishee part of their wages, or, on rare occasions, seize and auction property.

Sponsors of War Tax Resistance

  • Winslow Ames
  • Joan Baez
  • Norma Becker
  • James Bristol
  • Prof. Noam Chomsky
  • Prof. Frank Collins
  • Tom Cornell
  • Prof. William Davidon
  • Dorothy Day
  • Dave Dellinger
  • Barbara Deming
  • Ralph DiGia
  • Prof. Douglas Dowd
  • Prof. Margaret Eberbach
  • Ruth Gage-Colby
  • Allen Ginsberg
  • Bob Haskell
  • James Leo Herlihy
  • Faye Knopp
  • Kennett Love
  • David McReynolds
  • Stewart and Charlotte Meacham
  • Rev. and Mrs. Arthur G. Melville
  • Karl Meyer
  • Jack Newfield
  • Grace Paley
  • Igal Roodenko
  • Rev. Finley Schaef
  • Dr. Benjamin Spock
  • Marj and Bob Swann
  • Arthur Waskow
  • George and Lillian Willoughby
  • Irma Zigas

Working Committee (in formation)

  • Norma Becker
  • Maris Cakars
  • Frank Collins
  • John Darr
  • Jerry Dickinson
  • Ralph DiGia
  • Bob Haskell
  • Neil Haworth
  • Peter Kiger
  • Kennett Love
  • Bradford Lyttle
  • Mark Morris
  • Christopher Pollock
  • Melinda Reed
  • Kay Van Deurs
  • Eric Weinberger
War Tax Resistance, 339 Lafayette Street, New York, N.Y. 10012, Phone (212) 228-0450. ☐ I would like to join War Tax Resistance. ☐ I am not ready to join W.T.R., but please place me on your mailing list. ☐ Please send me more information about the following methods of war tax resistance: (blank) ☐ Pleas send me (blank) additional copies of A Call to War Tax Resistance (6 for 25¢; 30 for $1). ☐ I am already resisting war taxes (on a separate sheet please list the taxes you have not paid, since which year, the consequences to date, and any other pertinent information). ☐ You may use my name in publicizing W.T.R. ☐ I am interested in becoming a W.T.R. counselor; please send me more information. Enclosed is $(blank) to support the work of W.T.R. Please send copies of this Call to the attached list of people. Name (blank), Address (blank), Telephone (blank)