The Hartford Courant profiles war tax resisters Anna Aschenbach and Joanne Sheehan, who have been resisting taxes since the Vietnam War.
“It didn’t make any sense to me to be working for peace and paying for war,” says Sheehan. Along with her partner, who’s also a tax resister, Sheehan raised two kids with a family income of about $24,000. Now that their children are grown, and can no longer be claimed as deductions, each earns less than about $8,000 a year in order to keep from paying taxes. They’ve lived in collectives and communes much of the time, sharing living expenses with other resisters. They practice “radical simplicity” by going “back to basics” — doing things like hanging clothes instead of using a dryer, not going to restaurants or buying pre-packaged foods.
“People think that they can’t live on less. I encourage people to think of how much — even when you think you don’t have much — you’re still the upper class of the world,” says Sheehan…
