Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
religious groups and the religious perspective →
United Methodist Church →
John & Pat Schwiebert
, tax resisters John and Pat Schwiebert are living in “an intentional Christian servant community” and have taken a vow of poverty.
Rev. John Schwiebert’s pension goes directly into the community’s account.
But the IRS is still trying to recover the taxes the Schwiebert’s didn’t pay in (they instead wrote out checks for the amount they were resisting to the Board of Commissioners of Multnomah County, Oregon).
So this month, the IRS levied $1,641.21 from Schwiebert’s monthly pension payment.
The Schwieberts are asking their church, the United Methodist Church, to stop cooperating with this levy.
“It would be strange indeed,” says Rev. Schwiebert, “were the General Board of Pension and Health Benefits to offer nothing more than sympathetic verbal support to one of its own clergy, while actively collaborating with a government agency to penalize that clergy person and his family because they put their non-violent faith into action, based on the denomination’s social principles.”
If the General Board of Pensions and Health Benefits is unwilling to halt its payments to the Internal Revenue Service, the Schwieberts have said that they might voluntarily relinquish more than half of their monthly benefit from the General Board of Pension and health Benefits, for the rest of their lives, if necessary, to bring the benefit below the level that the IRS can legally levy.
Such an action would not be a new thing for the Schwiebert household.
Pat currently works full-time for a stipend of $350 a month, making it impossible for the IRS to collect thousands of dollars in federal taxes which she has redirected to non-profit social service agencies over the past two decades.
Also, for about fifteen years prior to his retirement, John voluntarily served as full time pastor of a United Methodist congregation at a compensation level that provided a less-than-taxable income.
“Civil disobedience can be a costly choice,” says Pat.
“But I can’t imagine the alternative, which would be to tell Jesus we can’t follow him because we care more about money, or because we have decided to obey the demands of a corrupt empire rather the than the clear commands of the Prince of Peace to love our enemies rather than kill them.”
But the Schwieberts clearly would prefer a decision by the General Board, to either engage in its own act of conscientious non-cooperation with the IRS, at least to ask the IRS to rescind the levy on the basis that it is inappropriate for the IRS to demand that a church body serve as its collection agent, especially when issues of religious belief are at stake.
According to the Schwieberts, “The church simply must do more than make statements about its opposition to war, and to such travesties as the current occupation of Iraq.
Our government is able to do such morally repugnant things only because Christians, who are a significant majority in this country, tend to quietly acquiesce to the principalities and powers of the world rather than to the clear call of Jesus Christ.”
As was reported here , the Schwieberts are asking their church’s General Board of Pension and Health Benefits to help them resist the levy.
The agency welcomes a presentation from the Schwieberts during its public forum, according to Colette Nies, communications director for the pension board.
However, the board’s position is that non-compliance with the federal levy could jeopardize the church’s other retirement plans.
“The general board certainly sympathizes with the Schwieberts and admires their personal convictions, but we also have an obligation to balance our sympathies with our fiduciary responsibility to over 44,000 pension plan participants,” Nies said.
[John] Schwiebert told United Methodist News Service that he and his wife have withheld the percentage of tax money they believe is intended for military purposes for about 30 years.
“It was during Vietnam when we realized that we were conscientious objectors,” he said.
Since he was past the draft age at that point, “our conclusion was that our conscientious objection had to take this form.”
At times, the Schwieberts’ savings accounts have been seized and salaries garnished by the IRS.
But more often, the couple deliberately has kept their income low enough to avoid taxes altogether.
When he retired in and started drawing a pension, their income increased.
For more than 20 years, the Schwieberts have lived “in community” with others in the house that serves as the base for the Metanoia Peace Community congregation and its ministries.
His pension benefit is deposited in a communal household account, along with Pat Schwiebert’s $400 monthly stipend as a full-time employee of Grief Watch, a mission of the congregation.
The current IRS levy is for the $7,500 that the government says the couple owes for .
The Schwieberts actually gave an equivalent amount to the Board of Commissioners of Multnomah County in Oregon, although they understood the gift was “an expression of conscience,” not a legal substitution for federal taxes.
“We’re willing to pay taxes; we’re just distressed with the military purposes for which the federal taxes are being used,” he said.
The couple did not file any tax returns for .
“We’ve sort of taken the attitude that we feel like we’re doing the right thing in not paying.”
Last December, Schwiebert received a letter from the pension board informing him of the levy, to begin at the first of the year.
The involuntary deduction takes more than half of the pension payment of about $3,000 a month, he said.
Schwiebert believes there are different legal interpretations over whether the IRS can levy a pension.
He also would like to see the Board of Pension and Health Benefits recognize statements in the denomination’s Social Principles that “reject war as an instrument of national foreign policy” and “assert the duty of churches to support those who suffer because of their stands of conscience represented by nonviolent beliefs or acts.”
“I feel like there is room for conscientious objectors to challenge the system,” he said.
“That’s what we would like to see the board do.”
The Board meets in Hollywood, Florida, to consider the Schwieberts’ proposal.
“We are real conscientious objectors to war,” John Schwiebert says.
The couple is too old to be drafted — if there was still a draft — and “noncooperation is the only way we can object.”
“We are prepared, in any way, to resolve conflict by any peaceful means,” [Pat] says.
“Living in community has taught us that conflict is inevitable and that there are ways to resolve that conflict peacefully.”
The Schwieberts live simply.
They do not own a house, living in a community of nine adults at the 18th Avenue Peace House in Northeast Portland, a ministry of Metanoia Peace Community United Methodist Church.
They have worked, not for full salaries, but for reduced stipends that are below taxable limits.
They do not have checking or savings accounts and are careful not to own property that may be seized by the government.
For many years they managed to live without earning enough money to owe federal taxes.
But that changed in , when John Schwiebert’s pension kicked in.
Their solution has been to calculate the amount they owed, according to the IRS 1040 form, and present that money to Multnomah County.
, they presented $3,500 to the Board of County Commissioners.
The IRS has continually tried to collect from Nippert and so far has failed.
“They would do all of these liens and notices, but they could never find anywhere to get any money,” he said, laughing.
Nippert said he typically owes between $500 and $1,000 a year.
“I always do sit down and fill out a tax form to see what I would owe,” he said.
“I’m always sure to donate at least that much to organizations that are doing good works for humanity.”
Nippert said he doesn’t oppose everything the federal government does.
He just can’t get around the war issue.
“I can’t fight in a war, and I can’t pay for anybody else to fight in a war.
And anything I give (the IRS), they’ll take a percentage of it to use for war.”
Nelson is a Quaker who stopped paying part of her federal income tax in , around the time she visited Vietnam with the American Friends Service Committee.
Every year, she carefully calculates how much of her tax bill will go to fund current wars (she doesn’t mind paying for veterans’ benefits) and deducts it from her tax check.
She includes a letter to the IRS explaining her reasoning.
And every year, the IRS collects the money anyway, by attaching a bank account or garnisheeing her wages.
She doesn’t fight it.
“This is a testimony, this is a witness,” Nelson said.
“I’m conscientiously opposed to war, but I have never tried to do anything underhanded or sneaky to keep them from collecting it if they have to do that.”
Back in January, I mentioned the case of John and Pat Schwiebert.
The Schwieberts are war tax resisters, now retired and living on John’s United Methodist Church pension.
The IRS levied this pension and has been demanding that the UMC send some of it to them instead of to the Schwieberts.
The Schwieberts responded by asking the UMC to stop cooperating with the IRS levies.
They cited the “Social Principles” of the UMC, which read in part: “We assert the duty of churches to support those who suffer because of their stands of conscience represented by nonviolent beliefs or acts.”
They asked the church to put some meat on those bones.
The pension agency of The United Methodist Church has sent a letter of protest to the Internal Revenue Service over the U.S. tax agency’s garnishment of a retired clergyman’s pension.
However, the Rev. John Schwiebert says he is disappointed that the only action taken by the United Methodist Board of Pension and Health Benefits is the letter.
The letter objects to the board’s role as “collection agent” while acknowledging “its obligation to obey the law.”
It was signed by Bishop Ben R. Chamness, chairman of the agency’s board of directors.
A check for the levy was enclosed with the letter, which stated: “We forward this amount under protest, however, feeling strongly that the levy forces us to be a collection agent for the IRS in a dispute between the federal government and a church member who is acting out of conscience and long-standing church teaching.”
Noting that The United Methodist Church officially supports conscientious objection to all war, including the payment of taxes for military purposes, the letter pointed out that the money owed by the Schwieberts “are amounts that they quite openly refused to pay because of religiously based conscientious objection to the primary purposes for which the money was to be used, namely U.S. military activity, including the war in Iraq.
“Their recent action is consistent with numerous other conscientious acts of civil disobedience or non-cooperation they have undertaken throughout and for which they have both incurred penalties, including the seizure of personal savings and property,” the letter continued.
“In some years, they have forfeited more than double the amount of the income tax owed because they ‘redirected’ the amounted owed to nonprofit agencies, only to have the IRS seize the same amount plus penalties.”
Because the denomination’s Social Principles support conscientious objection, the levy “has, in essence, coerced the General Board into violating one of the church’s deeply held principles of faith,” the letter declared.
“It has put the General Board in a position of punishing Rev. Schwiebert’s conscience, as opposed to supporting it, as the church so clearly teaches.”
It’s in the United States — the deadline for filing our personal federal income tax returns.
In a few minutes, I’m going to head across the bay to meet up with Berkeley’s notorious squadron of Code Pink protesters at the Marine Corps recruiting center.
From there, the crew will march to the main Oakland post office to remind the last-minute filers what they’re paying for.
War tax resisters nationwide are having deductions taken from their fifteen minutes of fame , as the news media take advantage of the Tax Day angle to swing the lens their way.
Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now show is broadcasting from Portland, Oregon , and it features war tax resisters Pat & John Schwiebert, Portland locals who have been resisting taxes for .
(You can hear the show on-line — the Schwiebert segment starts at about 12:49.)
LoHud.com out of New York takes a look at war tax resisters there, including Ethan & Rima Vesely-Flad, Chad Murdock, Frederick Dettmer, Rosa Packard, Daniel Taylor Jenkins, and Hugh & Sirkka Barbour.
Tax resistance is the most direct way U.S. citizens can avoid being complicit in this war and other illegal activities and actions by government employees and agencies.
If all of us who have written our Congresspersons or taken to the streets also refuse to financially back the war and other illegal activities and actions of the government, the decision-makers in Washington have a much harder time ignoring our resistance.
in the United States, and all across the country people were scrambling to get to the post office in time to have their tax returns postmarked by the deadline.
There to meet them were tax resisters:
The Ryder Report has video of the protest in Keene, New Hampshire, including feedback from passers-by.
In Brattleboro, Vermont, war tax resisters including Bob Bady and Daniel Sicken redirected their taxes to local charities:
Kevin Flaherty, a postal employee who ducked out in the afternoon for a smoke break, said it was encouraging to see the war tax resisters give away their money.
“It’s great,” he said, pointing out that it was Kevin Flaherty the citizen — not Kevin Flaherty the postal worker — who was supporting the group.
“Sometimes when people are paying their taxes, I joke that somebody has to pay for the Iraq War.
Maybe this will make them pay attention.”
Tax resisters in New York City handed out War Resisters League budget pie charts at the midtown post office.
Joshua Klein of Nashua, New Hampshire filed his tax returns , but decided to include a protest letter instead of a check.
“Klein would not reveal how much he owed but said he’s donating the money to America’s Second Harvest, the largest domestic hunger-relief organization in the country, and the American Civil Liberties Union, although he’s not affiliated with either group.”
In Los Alamos, New Mexico, two protesters were arrested for trespassing during a vigil at the Los Alamos National Laboratories.
The protesters said they were there “to prayerfully encourage the nonviolent, safe, clean disarmament of weapons of mass destruction, along with the clean-up of LANL… [and] to visibly celebrate the war-tax boycott organized by the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.”
War tax resisters in Bangor, Maine, including Larry Dansinger, protested at the post office and gave away redirected taxes.
One of the grants was a scholarship to a student who, because he has refused to register with the selective service system (for the military draft), will be ineligible to apply for college financial aid.
The Home News Tribune of New Jersey has a video report of the war tax protest at the post office there.
In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, peace activists held a “penny poll” in which they asked passers-by how they would prioritize the nation’s budget.
Meanwhile, constitutionalist tax protesters handed out documentaries and documentation about their theories.
In Berkeley, California, Code Pink was out with their “Don’t Buy Bush’s War” banner.
Free Speech Radio News covered national protests over war taxes, government spending priorities, and the Capitol Hill press conference.
Along with the news coverage, bloggers commemorated with more personal commentary:
At The Begging Bowl, Jake writes about his tax resistance: “The money I would have paid the government has gone to the Chicago Anti-Hunger Foundation.
When votes no longer matter we vote with our dollars.
I vote for the works of mercy and feeding the hungry.
And if it means the IRS is gonna come knocking on my door for $119, I will offer them some food too.
And if they ask for a check, I’ll go with them to jail.
That’s another work of mercy, visit the imprisoned.
If we took the works of mercy as seriously as we took our 1040s and economic stimulus package, the Kingdom of God would be at hand.”
J.D. Tuccille, at Disloyal Opposition, gives a thumbs up for tax resisters — “whatever their reasons, I think it’s worth saluting folks who go out of the way to avoiding feeding the beast.”
Kerrie, at State & Local Politics, reacts to news coverage of the Schwieberts: “It takes a whole lot of nerve to do what his couple is doing.
But I wonder if Bush would take notice and stop the war if more people took this route to protest the war?
I know that we have to do something because things are getting worse not better.”
Will Shetterly, at It’s All One Thing, discusses tax resistance, and includes some inspirational quotes from tax resisters.
Rev. Ellen W. Lankhorst of Milton, New Hampshire, announced her decision to resist taxes in the local paper.
“In fear and trembling I have decided to make this illegal gesture in the hope that many more people will do likewise.
When a lot of people dare to resist the use of their tax dollars, things will change.”
Tax resisters frequently face the criticism of being freeloaders who enjoy the benefits of organized society without cooperating in the taxes necessary to fund them.
This rhetorical attack paints the tax resisters as self-interested, anti-social tax evaders.
One way resisters have countered this attack is by staging flamboyant giveaways of their resisted taxes — both to make it clear that the resister does not have only selfish motives for resisting, and to demonstrate that the money is being spent for the benefit of society (and to a greater extent than if the money had been filtered through the government first).
Redirection is also a way of forging or strengthening ties with the recipient groups, and of making them aware of tax resistance as an option.
Today I will briefly describe some of the many examples of tax resisters and tax resistance campaigns that have used this technique, and the many variations they have come up with.
Julia “Butterfly” Hill in redirected more than $150,000 of federal taxes that she owed that year, and made a point of saying “I ‘redirect’ my taxes rather than ‘resisting’ my taxes”:
I actually take the money that the IRS says goes to them and I give it to the places where our taxes should be going.
And in my letter to the IRS I said: “I’m not refusing to pay my taxes.
I’m actually paying them but I’m paying them where they belong because you refuse to do so.”
They are not directing our money where it should be going, they are being horrific stewards of that money.
Antor Odu Ndep, executive director of Common Ground Health Clinic, accepts redirected taxes during a War Tax Boycott granting ceremony.
NWTRCC
organized what it called the “War Tax Boycott” in .
It encouraged people to resist as a group, and as part of their resistance, to redirect any refused taxes to one of two groups: one that concentrated on providing health assistance in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and the other that provides assistance for Iraq War refugees.
The campaign kept track of how much money had been redirected over the course of the boycott, and then held a press conference at which oversized checks adding up to about $325,000 were given to spokespeople for these campaigns.
The People’s Life Fund, associated with the group Northern California War Tax Resistance, accepts redirected taxes from resisters.
If the IRS successfully seizes money from the resisters, the resisters can reclaim their donations to the Fund.
Otherwise, the money remains there and earns interest and dividends.
Every year the group pools these returns on investment and gives them away to local charitable organizations in a granting ceremony.
Usually the grants are small — $500 or $1000 — but they give them to a dozen or more groups, which makes their granting ceremonies a good way for local charities to network with each other and for news of war tax resistance to spread in the local activist community.
This same model, or one similar to it, is followed by a number of regional redirection funds associated with war tax resistance groups.
A family in Vermont figured out a way to get extra mileage out of their redirection: “They refused to pay 50% of their tax liability and redirected it to Plan International’s Childreach program.
Childreach has a fund drive for a project to help children in Nepal and Ghana, and has received a challenge grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
This means that the $211.69 that the WTR family has redirected will result in a $423.38 matching contribution from the U.S. government!”
In , several hundred Spanish war tax resisters redirected over €85,000 to the group “La’Onf,” which was organizing and educating about nonviolent conflict resolution techniques in Iraq.
The Mennonite Central Committee has established a “turning toward peace” fund especially designed for people who want to redirect their tax dollars from the government to more constructive projects — for example, education for children in Afghanistan.
War tax resisters Paul and Addie Snyder made a point of saying “we believe in paying taxes” as they explained in that they wouldn’t be paying those taxes to the federal government, but instead would be giving the money directly to rural poverty projects nearby.
In several hundred American Quaker war tax resisters paid their tax dollars to a Catholic soup kitchen in Philadelphia.
The Women’s Tax Resistance League largely suspended its campaign during World War Ⅰ, but one woman, writing as “A Persistent Tax Resister” wrote a letter to the editor of a suffragist paper suggesting that women “should contribute the sum she owes to the Government to a National Fund of her own choosing, and should send her donation as ‘Taxes withheld from the Government by a voteless woman.’ ” Charlotte Despard, for example, “said she had offered to give voluntarily the amount demanded of her by Revenue authorities to any war charity, but her offer had not been accepted.”
A war tax resistance group in Iowa used the proceeds from their redirection fund to create a scholarship for college students who would be ineligible for government financial aid because of refusal to register for the draft.
Another, in Pennsylvania, made an interest-free loan to a defense committee that was supporting a group of draft resisters who were on trial.
In , 70 war tax resisters went to the phone company offices in Boston to pay their bills minus the federal excise tax.
They then collected this refused tax ($142 worth) by passing an army helmet around, and donated it to the United Farm Workers to help them set up a clinic in California.
Also , the Cornell branch of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam did a similar phone company office protest and collection of redirected phone taxes, donating the money to a local Early Childhood Development program.
In , war tax resister Irving Hogan stood outside the Federal Building in San Francisco and redirected his federal income tax dollars one at a time — by handing them out to passers by.
“I want this money to be used for the delight, not the destruction, of men,” he said.
“Here: go buy yourself a beer.”
John and Pat Schwiebert did something similar: “One year they converted their war tax debt into five-dollar bills, which they gave to individuals waiting in line at the city unemployment office.
They included a letter with each donation telling why they were doing this, and they notified media beforehand.
Their actions garnered them an interview on NPR, and they received letters and cards from around the world.”
In a group of war tax resisters in New York redirected their war taxes as nickels that they handed out to people waiting at the bus stops on lines where fare hikes were being proposed, saying “this is where our tax dollars should be going.”
And here’s something kind of similar that doesn’t fit into any of my other categories, so I’ll toss it in here:
When the IRS seized back taxes from war tax resister Mary Regan’s retirement account in , she threw a fundraising party to try to raise an equivalent amount of money — not to reimburse her, but to give away to charities like “the Boston Women’s Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Friends Service Committee, a homeless shelter for youth, and the peace movement in Israel.”
reports from the People’s Justice and Peace Convention in Cleveland, from the Seattle Anarchist Bookfair, and from a Mennonite District Conference, among others
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?
Last month the statute of limitations erased another year of my taxes.
For the tax year, my 1040 form showed that I owed $1,203 in federal taxes.
I didn’t pay, of course, and the IRS has been nagging me about that ever since.
But now it’s too late for them, as ten years have expired as they failed to collect.
I celebrated by sending a check for $1,203 to our local food bank program.
(Coincidentally, on the same day I sent the check, I got my $1,200 stimulus check from the U.S. Treasury.
I’m not sure how to interpret that, cosmically-like, except that it seemed to rhyme like poetry.)
Governments spend a lot of time and energy—and enlist a host of political scientists and pundits and other such clergy—to try to convince their subjects that paying taxes is not only mandatory, but that it’s honorable, dignified, and even charitable, while failure to pay taxes is underhanded, shady, and selfish.
Governments and other critics of tax resistance are quick to deploy this already-available propaganda lexicon in their counterattacks. They criticize tax resisters as freeloaders who enjoy the benefits of organized society without cooperating in the taxes necessary to fund them—as self-interested, anti-social tax evaders.
One way resisters have countered this attack is by staging giveaways of their resisted taxes. This makes it clear that the resisters do not have merely selfish motives for resisting, and also demonstrates that the money is being spent for the benefit of society (to a greater extent than if the money had been filtered through the government first).
This sort of tax redirection also can forge or strengthen ties between the resisters and the recipients, and can make more people aware of tax resistance as an option.
War tax resisters
This tactic is put to particularly good use by the contemporary war tax resistance movement. Here are some examples:
When Julia “Butterfly” Hill refused to pay more than $150,000 in taxes to the U.S. government in , she made a point of saying “I ‘redirect’ my taxes rather than ‘resisting’ my taxes”:
I actually take the money that the IRS says goes to them and I give it to the places where our taxes should be going. And in my letter to the IRS I said: “I’m not refusing to pay my taxes. I’m actually paying them but I’m paying them where they belong because you refuse to do so.” They are not directing our money where it should be going, they are being horrific stewards of that money.
NWTRCC organized what it called the “War Tax Boycott” in . It encouraged war tax resisters across the country to coordinate by redirecting their refused taxes to either of two groups: one that provided healthcare in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and one that helped Iraq War refugees. The campaign kept track of how much money had been redirected over the course of the boycott, and then held a press conference to give oversized checks adding up to about $325,000 to spokespeople for these campaigns.
The People’s Life Fund is associated with the group Northern California War Tax Resistance, and holds redirected taxes from resisters. If the IRS successfully seizes money from a resister, that resister can reclaim his or her deposits to the Fund. Otherwise, the money remains there and earns interest and dividends. Every year the group pools these returns on investment and gives them away to local charitable organizations in a granting ceremony. Usually these grants are modest—$500 or $1,000 each—but they give them to a dozen or more groups, which makes their granting ceremonies a good way for local charities to network with each other and helps the word about war tax resistance spread in the local activist community. This same model, or one similar to it, is followed by a number of regional redirection funds associated with war tax resistance groups in the United States.
A war tax resistance group in Iowa used the proceeds from its redirection fund to create a scholarship for college students who had been banned from applying for government financial aid because of their refusal to register for the draft. Another, in Pennsylvania, made an interest-free loan to a legal defense group that was supporting a group of draft resisters who were on trial. These actions helped to forge or sustain ties between the war tax resistance movement and anti-conscription activists and gave war tax resistance a higher profile in the larger anti-war movement.
One family figured out a way to get extra mileage out of their redirection: In they redirected their refused federal taxes to a charitable program called “Childreach.” That year, the U.S. Agency for International Development, a federal government agency, had promised to match private donations to Childreach two-to-one from its budget, so the family’s $211.69 in redirected taxes had the effect of pulling an additional $423.38 from the U.S. government for a good cause.
war tax resister Bill Ramsey redirects $1,000 to charity in a granting ceremony
In , war tax resister Irving Hogan stood outside the Federal Building in San Francisco and redirected his federal income tax dollars one at a time by handing them out to passers by. “I want this money to be used for the delight, not the destruction, of men,” he said. “Here: go buy yourself a beer.”
John and Pat Schwiebert did something similar: They redirected their taxes by handing out five-dollar bills to people standing in line at the unemployment office. Along with the bills, they handed out letters in which they explained their redirection action. To amplify the public relations impact, they notified the media of their plans ahead of time. “Their actions garnered them an interview on NPR,” according to one report, “and they received letters and cards from around the world.”
In a group of war tax resisters in New York redirected their war taxes as nickels that they handed out to people waiting at the bus stops on lines where fare hikes were being proposed, saying “this is where our tax dollars should be going.”
Arthur Evans felt that if redirecting your war taxes to charity was a good idea, redirecting twice your war taxes to charity must be twice as good. In he wrote to the IRS to tell them “I am sending double the amount I am not paying for war to Quaker House at the United Nations for transmission to the United Nations Organization for its technical assistance program.”
In the early 1970s, farmers who were resisting the expansion of a military base onto their land in Larzac, France, found common cause with war tax resisters. Thousands of war tax resisters there redirected their war taxes to help fund the Larzac struggle.
And here’s something kind of similar that doesn’t fit into any of my other categories, so I’ll toss it in here: When the IRS seized back taxes from war tax resister Mary Regan’s retirement account in , she threw a fund-raising party to try to raise an equivalent amount of money—but not in order to reimburse her, but to give away to charities like “the Boston Women’s Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Friends Service Committee, a homeless shelter for youth, and the peace movement in Israel.”
British women’s suffrage movement
The Women’s Tax Resistance League largely suspended its campaign during World War Ⅰ, but one woman, signing her letter “A Persistent Tax Resister” wrote to the editor of a suffragist paper to suggest that women should redirect their taxes from the government to a privately-run war relief charity “and should send her donation as ‘Taxes withheld from the Government by a voteless woman.’ ” Suffrage activist Charlotte Despard reported that “she had offered to give voluntarily the amount demanded of her by Revenue authorities to any war charity, but her offer had not been accepted.”
Social Security foe
In , Howard Pennington, unwilling to pay an $81 social security tax “for waste by socialistic dreamers,” instead sent that money directly to George Robinett. Robinett was a 72-year-old retiree whose social security had been abruptly cut off for three months, costing him $210, because during one month he had earned 62 cents above the $50 maximum monthly earnings for a social security recipient.
