How you can resist funding the government → the tax resistance movement → conferences & gatherings → Spring 2014 NWTRCC national in San Diego

There’s a new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter out. Contents include:

• V. Schneider’s take on the ramifications of the Affordable Care Act for war tax resisters. I’ve shared some of my experiences with the Act’s provisions as a low-income, return-filing resister here at The Picket Line. Ms. Schneider writes about the challenges of the Act from the perspective of a resister who does not file returns, and therefore has no clear way of proving that she qualifies for the Act’s insurance subsidies. Schneider has some helpful recommendations for non-filling resisters who cannot afford non-subsidised insurance.
• Some notes on the new federal standard deduction and personal exemption amounts for the upcoming tax year, on the new IRS program that allows you to download some of the files the agency keeps on you, on a new website that keeps track of the legal aspects of alternative currencies, and on the troubles of the increasingly overwhelmed and under-budgeted IRS.
• Jason Rawn’s review of 99 Tactics of Successful Tax Resistance Campaigns, which begins: “As you may have just been thinking, three bags of cobras, homespun cloth, home-brewed beer, and transvestite Welshmen are all things that relate directly to tax resistance…”
• Some war tax resistance news, including a report of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day war tax resistance display at a recent anti nuclear weapons protest, a mention of some recent honors given to war tax resisters Robin Harper and Joanne Sheehan, and a brief note on the conviction and jailing of Quaker war tax resister Joseph Olejak.
  • You can find more about the Olejak case in this recent article from the Times-Union. Olejak is spending several consecutive weekends in prison, and has agreed (in a plea bargain) to partially and incrementally pay the $242,684 the IRS says he owes since he stopped paying in 1994.
• Some news about NWTRCC itself:
  • The group is looking for people who want to serve on its Administrative Committee.
  • The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund — which helps to reimburse any penalties and interest seized from a war tax resister by the government — is now under new management.
  • The next NWTRCC national gathering is scheduled for May 2–4 and will be held in San Diego, California.
• Robin Harper reflects on the development of “redirection” as a war tax resistance tactic: “I think it is fair to say that the essence and origins of the very widespread practice today of WTRs conscientiously redirecting their refused taxes into channels of constructive activism, community building, and addressing human needs, can be traced to [his own case in] 1958.”

The April issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter is out, with content that includes:

• a preview of the “Tax Day” actions planned this year
• notes on how war tax resisters are reacting to IRS policies
• Joseph Olejak, who was recently convicted of criminal charges for his war tax resistance, tells his story.
• prospects for convincing Amnesty International to take on the case of American conscientious objectors to military spending, an interesting note about John & Pat Schwiebert’s resistance, and brief reports from two recent workshops on war tax resistance
• a summary of some recently-released on-line resources
• announcements about the May national gathering in San Diego, November’s in Indiana, and about the newly-reorganized War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund
• the story of Jack Herbert’s painstaking (but successful) effort to get his “frivolous filing” penalty overturned

Last weekend was the Spring 2014 NWTRCC National Gathering in San Diego, California.

There was a focus at this gathering on exploring the connections between war tax resistance and other struggles in the peace-and-justice milieu: the back-room antidemocratic negotiations for the TransPacific Partnership, the criminalization of immigration, the war on drugs, the militarization of schools, and so forth. We heard from several local activists who are concentrating on various of these facets.

We also discussed our own experiences as war tax resisters and various challenges we were encountering. One woman talked of being targeted by an unusually zealous IRS agent who succeeded in attaching 50% of her social security (it is more typical for the IRS to seize 15% from recipients who have tax debts).

There was concern that some obscure language slipped into a recent farm bill might have eliminated the statute of limitations that has prevented the IRS from going after the tax debt of many war tax resisters when it has remained uncollected for ten years (the bill’s language is difficult to interpret, but in any case we haven’t seen evidence of any IRS policy change in this regard yet).

We talked about the new challenges associated with Obamacare. For example, those resisters who have been refusing to file tax returns as part of their resistance are thereby locked out of the insurance premium subsidy program and find it harder to participate in the insurance marketplace. Also, those resisters who are married filing separately as a way of partially shielding their non-resisting spouses from the consequences of their resistance, are also finding that this locks out both spouses from the program.

One resister spoke of the difficulties he was having in finding an accountant or tax advisor who was capable of understanding the particular concerns and goals of a tax resisting client.

Peter Smith gave us an update on the newly-revitalized War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund, which just completed its first appeal, which achieved a 79% reimbursement of penalties and interest for three resisters in one month. The new policy of the Fund puts a one-month deadline on appeal responses, but carries over any unreimbursed amount to the following appeal, so resisters who apply to the fund for reimbursement of penalties and interest can expect to eventually have the full amount reimbursed.

We also talked about a number of NWTRCC-internal projects: a report from our strategy and message retooling subcommittees, a look at a new crowdfunding project that the fundraising team will be pursuing shortly, and a new initiative to make sure our group is better-represented at conferences and gatherings of allied organizations and movements.

A new edition of NWTRCC’s newsletter has just come out, with content including:

• a look back at this year’s “tax day” actions
• concerns about the statute of limitations for tax debt and about IRS audits
• updates on the Peace Tax Fund (including an amusing note about an American Legion chapter that felt duty-bound to oppose it)
• some international news including a municipal pension munitions divestment campaign in Britain and the Comprehensive Disobedience movement in Spain
• a report back from the NWTRCC national gathering in San Diego
• Robert Randall’s personal look at the ramifications of the Affordable Care Act for war tax resisters