When Ruth Benn of Brooklyn filed her federal income taxes , she left out an important element: the check.
“In good conscience I cannot pay this money to the US government,” Ms. Benn wrote in a letter to the IRS that accompanied a completed, but unpaid, 1040 form.
“I do not want my tax dollars to be used for killing and war.”
Jim Allen, a retired Army social worker now teaching at St. Louis University, knows he is breaking the law by withholding some of his income taxes.
But he and his wife, Jan, became fed up with the billions of dollars spent to fund the war in Iraq and decided to take a moral stand.
“I am not opposed to paying taxes, but I am when such a large percent is going to pay for war,” says Mr. Allen, who served in the Army for 20 years.
Becky Pierce of Boston says she evades the IRS by not filing at all.
Each April she fills out a 1040 form to determine how much she’ll donate to charity, then puts the income tax form in her filing cabinet.
Ms. Pierce says she is part of a long American tradition of tax resistance, reaching back to when revolutionaries tossed tea into Boston Harbor.
But to follow in the footsteps of American protesters such as Henry David Thoreau — who went to jail for withholding taxes during the Mexican-American War — Pierce says she must live on a Walden Pond level of thrift.
“You need to have control of your money,” she says.
“I’m a self-employed carpenter.
No one is reporting what I make.
That’s why I can go unnoticed.”
But Jim Stockwell of Micaville, N.C., refuses to take a vow of poverty for what he considers “a simple act of conscience.”
He laughs about how he never paid income taxes while working as a vitamin supplement salesman in Maine and a Home Depot employee in North Carolina.
“I made bundles and bundles of money and gave bundles away [to charity],” Mr. Stockwell says.
“I arranged my life my own way and the IRS never caught up with me.”
Like most Americans, Peter Smith and his wife, Ellyn Stecker, sit down each year to fill out a federal tax form.
Then they write a check to the U.S. Treasury for half the sum in the “amount you owe” box.
They are among thousands of Americans who refuse to pay part or all of their federal taxes as a protest against war and military spending.
“It takes two things to fight a war: people and money,” says Smith, 67, a retired math and computer science teacher.
“I can’t refuse anymore to go, but I certainly can refuse to send the money.”
Smith and Stecker donate their withheld tax money to charities, such as Oxfam America, which fights global poverty and hunger, and a local shelter for battered women.
Stecker, 60, a physician, wishes the government would spend tax dollars on those sorts of programs instead of war.
“You look at what your money is being spent for, and you say, ‘No, I will not give my money for that,’ ” she says.
But the IRS eventually gets its share.
The couple know the routine: By July, they get a letter from the IRS asking them to pay the rest of what they owe.
They respond with a note explaining their reasons for not paying the full amount.
Then there’s a final notice.
The IRS says in 30 days it will extract the money from paychecks, bank accounts or retirement funds.
And the agency does just that.
The couple figure that over the years, the IRS has collected about $75,000 in back taxes, penalties and interest from them.
, thanks to withholding and charitable giving, they owe nothing to the federal government.
Want your anti-war protest to get noticed? Don’t pay your taxes.
Susan Quinlan’s been doing it for , and she’s attracted plenty of attention from the Internal Revenue Service, which showed up at her front door demanding she pay a portion of her earnings or face imprisonment.
Quinlan refused to cooperate, the IRS slunk away and, , she’s dodging federal tax laws as gamely as ever.
Quinlan, a Berkeley resident, has retooled her life to keep negative consequences to a minimum.
She doesn’t own property or maintain much cash in bank accounts and she declines jobs that require she withhold money from her paycheck.
“My approach was, I don’t want to pay any taxes at all, which means adapting my lifestyle to make that possible,” Quinlan said.
As a full-time volunteer peace advocate, Quinlan falls beneath the tax line and need not pay a dime.
In the past, though, when she’s owed money, she’s had to navigate thorny legal territory to ensure her earnings steer clear of federal war coffers.
One problem facing many aspiring resisters is that taxes are typically taken out of paychecks automatically, thwarting the opportunity to resist.
Solutions include self-employment, contract work, or loading up on W-4 allowances that minimize per-paycheck deductions.
When April 15 rolls around, many resisters either submit a 1040 then refuse to pay their taxes or eschew filing altogether.
Quinlan opts for the latter.
She hadn’t filed a federal income tax return , when the IRS came after her wages from a job she held at a nonprofit Latina employment agency.
Rather than pay up, she quit, and would do it again, she said.
“I loved that job, but my commitment to not pay for war came first,” she said.
Does that mean she pockets the money and heads for the outlets?
Definitely not, she said.
Like many resisters, Quinlan redirects those tax dollars to local charities and community groups.
“I always calculated what taxes would be owed because I do feel it’s important that I contribute to the community,” she said.
“I just don’t want it to go to illegal, immoral, imperialistic wars.”
It has been heartwarming to read the comments left by some of those who have signed the pledge so far:
After my son’s second deployment when he related to me the horrors of the
occupation in Iraq, I vowed I would do whatever it took to end it.
As we urge our lawmakers to stop funding the war, we have to be willing to do the same.
It is time we stop funding with our tax dollars.
Tina Richards, founder, Grassroots America
The world and history will judge us by how vigorously we resist the
illegal and immoral war tactics of the Bush Administration.
My husband, friends and I have decided we can’t pay for war anymore.
Jodie Evans, Cofounder, Code Pink
I won’t pay my taxes if you won’t pay yours.
Nina Rothschild Utne,
Utne Reader
We should stop the war, whatever it takes.
If withholding our income taxes
is a way to do it, I am all for that.
Lee Newman, Retired Captain.
U.S. Air Corp, World War Ⅱ
We must stop supporting policies that use our tax dollars to bring
violence around the world.
Not one cent more.
Maricela Guzman, Iraq War Veteran U.S. Navy,
I am one of the majority of Americans who want the war to end and
will be happy to pay my taxes when democracy and the rule of law and the Constitution is restored to our once great nation.
Steve Savitch, Tuscon, Arizona
I increased my deductions to 10 .
I
am so glad for this movement to show me what to do next and for the safety in numbers.
I will no longer help kill people.
andee Scott, Pacific Grove, California
We must renew the American Revolutionary Spirit.
We must have a Velvet
Revolution to save America.
Theadora de Soyza, New Rochelle, New York
If our leaders won’t stop this travesty, then We, the People
must
anonymous, Oregon, Wisconsin
Stop feeding the bush war machine… if he thinks the war is so damn
important why aren’t his daughters on the front lines?
Gina Arcuri, Barneveld, New York
Time to act for justice and do the right thing.
I refuse to pay a war
tax!
Herb Gonzales, Jr., San Antonio, Texas
We must have the courage to take a stand.
If enough of us will take this
stand, I believe this government will listen.
Leo Anderson, Austin, Texas
I will not pay my taxes to support the war in Iraq.
Renata Ahmed,
Brooklyn, New York
As a matter of conscience I will not voluntarily pay my hard earned money
to a government whose daily order of business is waging war.
Michael Zargarov, Houston, Texas
When government is out-of-control, citizens must exert
control.
Den Mark Wichar, Vancouver, Washington
I refused to pay for an illegal war.
It is unconscionable and disgusting
that U.S. Congress continues to fund President Bush’s war-crimes.
anonymous, Ewa Beach, Hawaii
I am so impressed and proud of your actions.
Blessed be.
Vicki
Noble, Freedom, California
I may not have much to withhold, but it’s all worth it!
It’s time to stop
this crap…
Daniel Bryan, Granc Blanc, Michigan
Hell nay, I won’t pay!
Avi Peterson, San Francisco, California
United we stand; divided we fall.
Kristine Abney, Salt Spring
Island, British Columbia
Taxation without representation.
Let’s fight this together and start
restoring democracy.
Shawn DeFrance, Dallas, Texas
Throw the tea into the harbor.
70% of the American people oppose this war.
That constitutes taxation without representation.
It is time to throw the tea into the harbor.
Coincidentally, that is exactly what I have been saying.
Let’s have a tea party.
Bobi Meola, Berkeley, California
We are retired and don’t pay any tax.
I fully support your courageous
efforts to end this bloody occupation.
Chris Caldwell, Anaheim, California
Yes and though dangerous, I pledge to join in not paying the 7%
taxes!
Nat Vance, Muskogee, Oklahoma
I will not pay my taxes if we bomb Iraq.
I will not pay my taxes if we
bomb Afghanistan.
I will not pay my taxes if we bomb Nicaragua.
I will not pay my taxes if we bomb Vietnam.
I will not pay my taxes if we bomb Laos.
I will not pay my taxes if we bomb Cambodia.
Therefore, I don’t pay my taxes.
Dani Visalli, Winthrop, Washington
Spend my tax dollars on the good of the nation, not
war.
Jennifer Chacon, Portland, Oregon
Together we can bleed the war machine dry by using this non-violent civil
disobedience.
anonymous, Modesto, California
Already had planned to put all of my taxes for
in escrow.
Refusing to pay 7% is a good start, but is it really impacting enough?
As Michael Venturi suggests, they will only borrow from the resources for our poor to kill their poor.
The war will continue, and the 7% will be stolen from the ‘lock-box.’
Alan Scouten, Charlottesville, Virginia
Thank you for organizing this.… It is time to act.
CodePink consistently
does excellent work.
anonymous, Olympia, Washington
‘A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military
defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.’
— Martin Luther King Jr.
Thomas Fatone, Brooklyn, New York
Bravo.
I have been advocating for just this to happen for several
years.
Duncan Dow, South San Francisco, California
Cherish the people, defund the military machine.
Doug Mackenzie,
Los Gatos, California
This is a great idea.
Next a national strike!
Claire Chang, Gill,
Massachusetts
I already signed onto NWTRCC’s War Tax Boycott, refused to file for and have quit my full-time job to live below the taxable
threshold.
If Congress won’t defund the war, the last bulwark of democracy, The People, must.
NTodd Pritsky, Cambridge, Vermont
This is a bandwagon that most Republicans should hop onto since they abhor
paying taxes.
Alert everyone you know about this cause there is larger safety in larger numbers.
Laura Martin, Clarkson, Georgia
Let’s protest with our dollars this time.
Maria Kanaan, Chicago,
Illinois
Thank you all!
If Congress wimps out by giving Bush more $$, than we must
not provide it.
Enough!
I refuse to pay for murder.
Friend Burton, St.
Louis, Missouri
Time to defund the war.
Larry Harper, Sebastopol, California
I consider myself in good company — like all the ‘traitors’ who fought off
British control and taxation without representation, who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Friend Johnson, Cedar Falls, Iowa
Let’s put our money where our mouths are — since Congress doesn’t have the
courage to stop funding war — the people will.
Susan Eleuterio, Highland, Indiana
Things have to change with this disastrous war and administration, and
women will be the ones to do it.
Joni Goodale, Orlando, Florida
In a governmental system based on money and corporate profits, the most
effective form of protest comes from withholding payment of taxes.
Daniel Woodham, Greensboro, North Carolina
Thank You!
It is about time… I am so ready to join those who are ready to
live their convictions.
Tighe Barry, Santa Monica, California
With 50% of the federal budget being used for military purposes, I cannot
in good conscience pay for war while praying for peace.
Lincoln Rice, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
I will refuse to pay taxes for war even if fewer than 100,000 people
pledge because I cannot in conscience pay for these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Peter Smith, South Bend, Indiana
It’s about time citizens used their green to bring peace.
Heli
Taylor, Los Angeles, California
Not one more dollar!
Deidra Lynch, Orlando, Florida
And this is just from those who have signed up by the beginning of !
This issue had come up at our last meeting in Eugene because the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund had asked us to formally endorse this legislation.
We were unable to reach consensus on the endorsement at that meeting and didn’t allot enough time to really discuss the matter in detail, so we planned to readdress the issue and devote more time to discussion this time around.
One of the arguments in favor of us endorsing the bill was that in the NWTRCC “Statement of Purpose” is a section that many people interpreted as a built-in endorsement of the bill.
That section reads:
NWTRCC’s goal is to maintain and build a national movement of conscientious objectors to military taxes by supporting, coordinating and publicizing the WTR actions of groups and individuals.
These actions include: war tax resistance, protest, and refusal; the redirection of military taxes to meet human needs; support of the US Peace Tax Fund Bill; and adjustment of lifestyle to avoid tax liability.
I’ve heard many perspectives about whether this section endorses the bill or merely indicates that support for it is one of many war tax resistance related activities that our affiliate groups engage in.
But in any case, the “US Peace Tax Fund Bill” doesn’t exist as an active piece of legislation anymore.
The currently-proposed legislation is substantially different in content and has a new name.
So this time around, in addition to debating the endorsement question, we were also trying to come up with a satisfactory way to remove or replace the anachronistic language from our statement of purpose.
On , we had a panel presentation on the bill followed by an open discussion.
Bethany Criss, the executive director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, presented the case for why we should endorse.
Ray Gingerich and I each gave statements opposing the endorsement.
Ruth Benn shared some of her insights from being exposed to the variety of international peace tax fund campaigns (some of which are promoting legislation that differs in important ways from the U.S. bill) and also recounted some of the history of the close working relationship of NWTRCC and NCPTF.
After these brief remarks from the panel, other attendees addressed the issue.
The following summary is based on notes I was taking at the time, so is only as good as my attention and note-taking were — caveat emptor:
Bethany Criss started out by noting the similarity between legalized conscientious objection to military service and conscientious objection to military taxation.
She also tried to assuage concerns that the “Religious Freedom” part of the bill’s title meant that the provisions of the bill would not be available to non-religious objectors.
She said that she felt confident that Congress would not raid the peace tax fund to pay for military expenses because the RFPTFA would represent a contract between us and Congress and that we could hold them accountable if they were to violate it.
She acknowledged that the bill was imperfect and would not accomplish as much as many people would like, but hoped that we would see it as an initial step in an incremental process.
I went next.
Here’s more-or-less the argument I gave against endorsement:
War Tax Resisters and Peace Tax Fund advocates agree that the belligerent militarism of the United States is a grave problem, that individuals must act to oppose it, and that our tax dollars are an important way in which we can move from complicity to opposition.
Because of this, we’re natural allies and have much in common.
The RFPTFA currently being pushed by the NCPTF has some significant problems. So much so that although our groups have much in common in our outlook and our interests, I think it would be a mistake for NWTRCC to endorse the RFPTFA.
Indeed, the problems with the bill are so significant that if the bill ever looked as though it might pass, we would be wiser to actively oppose the bill than to endorse it.
The main problems with the bill are two: 1) it’s no good, and 2) it’s bad.
That is, not only would it not deliver any meaningful benefits, but it would have harmful effects that would be damaging to the war tax resistance movement and dangerous to individual war tax resisters.
The reason why I say the bill is no good is this.
If the bill passes, it would give Congress more taxpayer money to spend and would allow Congress to spend as much money as it likes on war and armaments.
Every dollar paid into the “Peace Tax Fund” would increase taxpayer spending on the military.
This sounds like exactly the opposite of what the NCPTF intends, which may be true.
But sometimes good intentions lead to counterproductive laws and policies.
If you read the NCPTF literature, you’ll see that they admit that the bill would increase government revenue without decreasing how much Congress could spend on war:
So Congress would have more taxpayer money than before and could spend as much as it wants on war.
Why on earth would we want this?
Well, we’re supposed to want this because at least our money wouldn’t be spent on war.
But this is just an illusion.
The basic problem has to do with displacement.
If you pay into the Peace Tax Fund and Congress can only spend “your” money on something nice like the National Park Service, Congress can just take some other money that it had been planning to spend on the Park Service and divert it to the Pentagon.
So Congress spends just like it always has, with a little more taxpayer money than it would have had otherwise, but the people who pay into the Peace Tax Fund falsely believe that they aren’t responsible for the results of that increased spending.
It would be as though I were to pour a cup of sand into a mug full of hot coffee and then claim that I wasn’t responsible for the spillover since my sand sank to the bottom of the mug and it was only someone else’s coffee that spilled over the top.
So that’s why the RFPTFA isn’t any good.
Now here’s why it’s bad.
First: it constructs an illusion through which people can be induced to pay for war and militarism while believing that they are not.
The war tax resistance movement should be working hard to tear down illusions like this, not build up new ones.
Second: it would divide the war tax resistance movement between those people who maintain their testimony against paying for war and those who take advantage of the false moral cover of the RFPTFA.
This would also give the IRS fewer targets to pursue, and make the remaining war tax resisters more likely to be targeted by enforcement actions.
If the war tax resistance movement ever does become a powerful force for social change, you can bet that the government will consider passing such a bill — not as a concession to our movement but as a divide-and-conquer technique against it.
Third: it would give a persuasive rhetorical tool to people who oppose war tax resisters.
They would say that war tax resisters should just pay into the Peace Tax Fund like good, law-abiding, conscientious people.
Imagine what the IRS would say to resisters: “We gave you the ‘Peace Tax Fund’ you wanted — now you’ve got no more excuses not to pay up.”
Those three things are harmful effects the bill would have if it ever became law.
I don’t think this is likely, but there’s a fourth reason not to endorse the bill that doesn’t depend on whether or not it is successful in becoming law: advocacy of such a bill sends the message that the war tax resistance movement is naïve and that our conscientious scruples are superficial.
It tells people that war tax resisters:
are not particularly conscientious at all, but can be easily bought-off by symbolic concessions and simple sleight-of-hand
are conscientious enough to check a box on a form, but not conscientious enough to follow through on the ramifications of our actions
are willing enough to fund war if you can give us a way to deny that we’re doing it
would rather have a certificate from the government recognizing our officially certified conscientiousness than to actually be conscientious
These flaws have been pointed out before, and frequently PTF promoters have responded with an argument along these lines: Sure the RFPTFA won’t reduce military spending and it has at best an ambiguous effect on taxpayer complicity, but it has strong symbolic power: it’s a way to get conscientious objection to military taxation officially recognized, to get a foot in the door, to be able to take a census of conscientious objectors every April 15th, to propagandize for peace with every 1040 booklet, and so forth.
These benefits are not very convincing to me, for a number of reasons, but even if you were to acknowledge them — are they sufficient to justify putting any more energy into a 38-year-old campaign that has gone nowhere at all, currently in support of a piece of legislation that, even as watered down as it is, hasn’t had as much as a committee hearing in over a decade?
I feel strongly about this, and I have not pulled my punches.
Some of you may think I’m being uncharitable and unfair.
I’ll end on this note: I think the advocates of the RFPTFA have their hearts in the right place.
They are temperamentally our allies and I hope they continue to think of themselves that way.
I think that to the extent that we agree, we should continue to work closely and warmly together, and to the extent that we disagree we can agree to disagree.
After me, Ray Gingerich spoke, giving what I interpreted as a Thoreauvian argument against the peace tax fund idea: we shouldn’t wait to act conscientiously until the government gives us its permission to do so.
In addition, he feels from his work in trying to reintroduce war tax resistance into the Mennonite churches that the peace tax fund is an obstacle to this — it creates an excuse that people use: they say they’ll resist taxes but only when there’s a peace tax fund that allows them to do it legally.
After these prepared remarks from the panel, and Ruth’s discussion which I mentioned above, we heard from the other attendees.
Before Eugene, I thought of myself as a real outlier in my skepticism about the peace tax fund bill.
Most of what I heard about the bill in war tax resistance circles was positive, and the way people spoke about it made it seem like NWTRCC enthusiasm for the peace tax fund was a foregone conclusion if not a tautological one.
In Eugene I was pleasantly surprised to see that a few other people shared my misgivings about the bill, though I still felt like we were the minority.
In Harrisonburg last Saturday, though, it was clear that the tide had shifted dramatically.
Even with the executive director of the NCPTF there to pitch the bill, most people had little praise for it, and even the ones who were peace tax fund supporters in the abstract expressed that we probably shouldn’t endorse this version.
Gary Erb noted that most of those present probably wouldn’t qualify as conscientious objectors under the bill’s restrictive language, and so wouldn’t be able to legally avail themselves of the RFPTFA even if they cared to.
He also felt the bill would have a divide-and-conquer effect against the WTR movement, and recommended against endorsement.
Geov Parrish felt that the RFPTFA hadn’t a chance of becoming law, so it should be best seen as an educational vehicle.
That being the case, it was a poor idea to have watered it down so much in an attempt to make it palatable enough to pass through Congress.
Also, he noted that he feels excluded from the RFPTFA and its promotional materials because he is not a Christian.
Joffre Stewart said that as an anarchist resister, begging the state for exemptions and favors isn’t his style.
He thinks that conscientious objection to military service was mostly enacted for the state’s benefit, not for the benefit of the COs, and he thinks the same would be true of legalized conscientious objection to military taxation.
From this, he draws the conclusion that the reason we don’t have legal conscientious objection to military taxation is that war tax resisters have not yet become sufficiently inconvenient to the government.
Daniel Woodham thought that though the RFPTFA wasn’t perfect, it might make for a good first step, and once it was enacted we could work to amend it or correct its faults over time.
Bethany Criss said that in her view the “laundry list” of items in the section (§3b) of the bill that defines spending that falls under the “military purpose” category shouldn’t be seen as excluding other spending from that category, but only as examples of spending that fall under that category.
In her view, once the bill passes, a next step will be to ensure that the “military purpose” definition is interpreted inclusively so that it covers all the stuff we’re worried about.
Greg Reagle gave us some perspective on the reasoning behind watering down the bill to permit Congress to spend the money in the RFPTF on anything in the budget other than things in the military purpose category (previous incarnations of the bill had specified more precisely where that money would go).
He said that potential supporters in Congress had balked at having their spending decisions micromanaged by legislation, and so the changes had been made to mollify them.
Erica Weiland wanted to emphasize the positive working relationship between NWTRCC and NCPTF, though she too was opposed to endorsing the bill.
As an anarchist she doesn’t much favor trying to solve problems via legislation, but as an activist she tries to inspire well-intentioned people to be more active in ways that seem most appropriate to them, so she wants to encourage PTF promoters to keep doing their thing.
Robert Randall said he was impressed at the high plane on which the discussion was taking place.
He thought that the results of passing the RFPTFA might not be all that important, but that there might be some benefits to be had from the campaign to pass the bill anyway.
Pam Allee felt that the bill would help to emphasize that “we are the government” and so we can take control of the budget and change spending priorities so as to emphasize things like education, seat belt law enforcement, and other liberal priorities.
She was concerned that the RFPTFA seemed to lack grassroots support.
Larry Bassett paused to wonder whether it was really appropriate to the mission of a group like NWTRCC to be endorsing legislation or the individual projects of the affiliate groups.
Jim Stockwell felt that there might be a contradiction in that for many WTRs, the fact that tax resistance is illegal civil disobedience is an essential part of their WTR, and so legal conscientious objection would not be helpful to them.
He hoped our two groups would continue to work together.
Hiro (whose last name I didn’t catch, and whose first name I may be misspelling) encouraged us to patiently work at incremental approaches and not reject RFPTFA just because it wasn’t everything we wanted.
That said, she also worried that the government would spend the “peace” tax fund on things based on its warped definition of peacemaking work.
She envisioned Blackwater contractors doing their institution-building mopping-up exercises in Iraq (where she is from) and calling it “peacemaking” activities deserving of RFPTFA funding.
Tim Godshall tried to give us some perspective, noting that WTRs are one of the best arguments for the PTF (that is, the existence of WTRs demonstrates that many citizens have a strong conscientious objection that their government needs to accommodate), and also that although the RFPTFA might not have any effect on the military budget, the same could be said of WTRs. He believes that the RFPTFA is one part of a larger campaign to pressure the government to change its spending priorities.
Peter Smith disagreed with the suggestion that if the RFPTFA were to pass it would divide the WTR movement.
He agreed that we should not endorse the legislation, but hoped we would continue to support the PTF campaigners.
Ray Gingerich responded to a comment from Joffre Stewart by insisting that he was not an anarchist and indeed believed that a strong, active government (for example, one capable of implementing single-payer universal health care) was not incompatible with pacifism.
He plugged nonviolent conflict resolution strategies of the The Unconquerable World / A Force More Powerful school.
He also suggested that Marian Franz (the long-time National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund executive director) had been used by people and institutions who wanted to delay their confrontation with taxpayer complicity by putting it off until some distant future in which conscientious objection to military taxation was a legalized option.
Joffre Stewart noted that the U.S. government had no qualms about raiding the Social Security “trust fund” to pay for its military spending, and that it had stacked its “U.S. Institute of Peace” with CIA folk committed to the government’s violent foreign policy.
He therefore sees no reason to trust the government to administer a “peace tax fund.”
Bethany Criss told us that not only is she committed to seeing the RFPTFA enacted into law, but that she is also a war tax resister and has been since .
She said that although there is an associated “Peace Tax Foundation” with an educational mission, there should be no doubt that the Campaign’s goal is to get the legislation passed into law.
She thinks that the bill will be beneficial to war tax resisters and the war tax resistance movement by making WTR more visible.
She says that if the bill were enacted, it would not take away the opportunity to resist or say no; that resisters could continue to resist as before if they wished.
The goal is to bring more people in to a war tax resistance mindset.
She notes that part of the reason the bill was watered down is that their campaign doesn’t yet have enough supporters to bring enough pressure to bear on the legislators; this is another reason why she’d like our support.
Finally, Bill Ramsey felt that we might be better off not concentrating on the (unlikely) endorsement and instead trying to work on ways the two groups can work better together.
was an open-ended discussion without any decisions to be made on either the endorsement or the statement of purpose wording; on , our “business meeting,” we addressed those decisions.
A number of people who could not come to the meeting sent along their opinions about the RFPTFA, and printouts of these were made available to attendees of the business meeting before we took up the issue.
These were on the whole much more positive about the Act and more in favor of endorsement than the attendees had been, with one person recommending endorsement, another recommending “NWTRCC continuing its endorsement” of the bill (though we had a hard time determining which if any version of the bill our group had originally endorsed), and another conveying the results of a discussion about the issue held by Sonoma County Taxes for Peace which led to that group deciding to strongly support NWTRCC endorsing the bill.
Predictably, we did not reach consensus at the business meeting on to endorse the RFPTFA.
I counted about a half-dozen people in favor of endorsement, maybe half again as many against it.
Unfortunately, although a non-endorsement was pretty clearly the inevitable conclusion, it took a while to get there, and we weren’t able to devote as much time as we needed to the stickier question of the Statement of Purpose and its anachronistic reference to the “US Peace Tax Fund Bill.”
The upshot of that discussion was that there were two replacement phrases with a large amount of support:
“…support of peace tax fund legislation…”
“…support of legislation that would legalize conscientious objection to military taxation…”
While there was broad support for both, neither was able to rally a consensus around it.
My proposal to simply scrap the old anachronistic wording for now and perhaps come up with a replacement at a later date also failed to attract consensus support — with many people feeling that by rejecting the endorsement and also eliminating mention of the PTF from our Statement of Purpose it would look too much like we’d conducted a wholesale purge of PTF sympathy from the group.
So when it came down to it, the Statement of Purpose ended up the same way it began in this area: it continues to pledge our support for supporters of the long-gone “US Peace Tax Fund Bill.”
This is a little ridiculous, but seems mostly harmless.
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).
NWTRCC’s social media consultant Erica Weiland shows us how to spread the word about tax resistance using social media tools
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.
IRS head John Koskinen spoke at the National Press Club about how hiring freezes, low morale, and funding cuts have made it difficult for the agency to attract younger workers.
Excerpts:
Koskinen said that over half of IRS staffers are over 50, and that roughly two in five employees will be eligible for retirement by .
On the flip side, the agency only has around 1,900 staffers under 30, which amounts to roughly 3 percent of the workforce.
“Essentially, the IRS is facing its own version of the baby bust,” Koskinen said.
Many people think if you refuse to pay taxes you’ll end up behind bars, but this is actually very rare.
Of the tens of thousands of people who have resisted war taxes over the past 75 years, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, or NWTRCC, knows of only 30 who have done time.
Although [Peter] Smith has refused to pay for over 40 years, he said he’s never faced jail or criminal charges because of it.
“The IRS would just as soon collect the money and sock you with fines and interest,” he said.
That’s where the Penalty Fund comes in.
It fully reimburses resisters for penalties and interest, thereby taking the sting out of IRS reprisals.
The IRS often fails to collect penalties, interest, or anything at all from determined resisters.
Some resisters live lives of voluntary simplicity and have nothing for the IRS to seize (or owe no income tax in the first place).
Others hide their assets.
And sometimes the IRS drops the ball and lets the statute of limitations expire without attempting to collect.
An informal poll at a national gathering of resisters in found that the IRS had taken only about a quarter of the hundreds of thousands of dollars those resisters had refused to pay over the years.
Lots of tax resistance news sliding by my browser in recent days as the federal
income tax filing deadline approaches in the
U.S.:
The Independent also ran a second article — The new tax resistance? — about a Baltimore woman named Kesh, who has stopped paying her taxes:
This year she isn’t paying because she began thinking more about where her
tax money goes and she feels like she can’t keep paying the government. “It’s
not going to anything that I can see personally that is going to benefit me,”
Kesh, who asked that only her first name be used, says. “But me paying it is
definitely going to hit me. Not having that money that needs to go towards
other things that I have to pay — that affects me immediately. That’s a loss
for me.”
The inauguration of President Donald Trump only worsened her feeling about
the situation. First, because she has her doubts about whether Trump has
bothered to pay his fair share of taxes, and second, because his
administration seems to be waging a war against people like her. “I’m all the
groups that are hated. I’ve decided to come to earth in this body and be
black, be a woman, gay, so you know, I get hit on every side of it,” she
says. “I was a teenaged mother, I’m a single mom — I’m all the things [Trump
and Republicans] hate.”
Living in Baltimore, where Freddie Gray died in police custody in April 2015
and where just last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions tried to hamper
police reform, taxes funding the police are an issue for her as well. (Police
are primarily funded through local and state governments, but Kesh isn’t
paying state taxes either.)
“I know that my tax money is going to the police and I can walk down the
street and get shot,” she says. “I can get shot by my own money and get
killed by my own money and there’s no one that’s gonna do shit about it. So
basically I’m giving you money to kill me and people that look like me.”
Unlike long-time tax resisters, Kesh is new to this. She doesn’t know where
it will lead her yet — hence her decision not to use her name. The Internal
Revenue Service may target her, but not paying feels right.
“I’m basically saying, ‘Fuck you.’ ” she says. “I’m keeping my money.”
The Satyagraha Foundation for Nonviolence Studies is continuing its series on tax resistance with A Call for Tax Resistance — “a joint appeal from leading nonviolent activists and organizations, urging US taxpayers to nonviolently express their opposition to the policies of the Trump administration by refusing to pay a symbolic amount of their US federal income tax, and instead donate that amount to a deserving charity or institution.”
War tax resisters’ letters-to-the-editor and op-eds are starting to appear, too, including ones from:
