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the tax resistance movement →
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Spring 2003 NWTRCC national in Santa Rosa, California
the
National War Tax Resistance
Coordinating Committee conference started in Santa Rosa. I’d never been to
one of these before and didn’t know much about the group or what to expect.
There are about 40 or 50 of us, from all over the country, split about evenly
male/female, aged from the late 20s to the 70s or thereabouts.
Almost everyone is from the white granola left. Which is to say, this is the
kind of group where standing in a circle, holding hands, and singing something
by Peter Paul and Mary is an earnest and unironic display, and where to divide
up into four smaller groups the immediate suggestion is “fire signs in this
corner, earth signs over there,
etc.”
As tax resisters, they run the gamut from folks who haven’t paid taxes for
years to folks who are getting their feet wet by refusing to pay the federal
excise tax pennies on their monthly phone bill. Some folks, like me, are doing
the income reduction / voluntary simplicity technique. Others are working in
the underground economy, doing jobs for cash or keeping their monetary
transactions offshore. Some others file tax returns but don’t include any
payment, and wait for the
IRS to
work its way through the long bureaucratic process of seizing money from their
bank accounts. One fellow had joined with a bunch of other people nationwide
in a constitutional challenge to the tax law until the lawyer who was running
the scheme got stomped down by the government recently. He’s trying to figure
out his next step.
And so everyone’s got a story to tell. We’re all fishing basically the same
stream, but some of us are using flies and some are using bait and we’ve all
got our own favorite spots and our own techniques. Now we’re talking fish.
The Patriot Act was big on the agenda of the
conference . Steve Bingham of the
National Lawyers Guild summed things up by saying in his introduction to the
topic: “We have historically had a relatively high level of personal liberty
in this country. This is no longer the case.”
What does that mean to activist groups, particularly those that, like
NWTRCC,
advocate civil disobedience? Well, it’s disturbingly easy to find yourself
lumped into the legal category of “domestic terrorist organizations.” Once
there, you’re fair game for a lot of government persecution that used to be
considered a gross violation of inalienable rights.
So basically, any activist group runs the risk of being successful enough to
actually be an obstacle to the government, and as Bingham said: “The minute
your organization begins to be effective, they do have the tools and the power
to do what it takes to stop you.”
But the news wasn’t all ominous and frightening. A lot of what went on at the
conference was people telling their stories — how and when they became a tax
resister, how they’ve chosen to do their tax resistance, and what sort of
things have happened along the way.
Some folks have been at this for twenty or thirty years. And the varieties of
tax resistance are many, including:
Moral and Practical Support — This can include
signing petitions in favor of tax resisters, contributing to their legal
defense, helping to pay their fines and interest penalties if the
IRS
comes after them, attending in protest if their property is auctioned off,
and that sort of thing.
Peace Tax Fund Activism — Some people are
trying to get a law passed that would create the equivalent to
“conscientious objection” for taxpayers. Whereas conscientious objectors to
the draft are drafted into positions that do not directly participate in
killing, conscientious objectors to war taxes would pay their taxes into a
special budget that is not used for war. I have my doubts, but some people
are convinced that this is where it’s at.
Pay Under Protest — This can range from simply
attaching a letter to your 1040 explaining why you
wish you weren’t paying taxes, to sending in a check the size and shape of a
coffin lid, to paying your taxes in pennies.
Phone Tax Resistance — Some people refuse to
pay the federal excise tax on their phone bill. This was a “temporary” tax
that started in to help finance the
Spanish-American war, and, as so many temporary taxes do, became an immortal
vampire. The advantage of resisting this tax, which is done simply by
reducing the check you send to the phone company by a small fraction (and
maybe including a letter of explanation), is that it’s easy to do and almost
nobody’s ever gotten any grief from the
IRS
for it. The disadvantage is that it’s really just a tiny little symbolic act — like sticking out your tongue at the firing squad. Some phone companies,
notably Working Assets Long Distance, accommodate
tax resisters with their own process; for others it takes some work to
convince them that you’re not just shorting them on their bill.
Symbolic Resistance — This includes things
like sending the
IRS
blank forms, or forms marked with zeroes, or torn up forms, or forms with
officially unrecognized deductions, or hyperbolic claims of five billion
dependents, or withholding $10.40 or $17.76 from the amount due — that sort
of thing. The
IRS
has a new tool against these protesters — a $500 fine for filing a
“frivolous” form.
The “frivolous” form fine also applies to just about everybody who tries
the Constitutional Argument approach. This
includes arguments that the first amendment freedom of religion clause
prohibits the government from forcing people to fund government projects
that are contrary to their religious beliefs, that the fifth amendment
protections against self-incrimination prohibit the
IRS
from demanding that people reveal the details of their financial lives, that
the United States as a signatory to the United Nations and a prosecutor of
the Nuremberg Principles is bound to respect people who cannot pay for
violations of these principles, or that the constitutional amendment that
gave us the income tax in the first place wasn’t ratified correctly. I like
to call this the Bullwinkle (“that trick never works”) Method. But there was
a fellow at the conference who’d been doing this for a few years.
The Make-’em-take-it Method — Some people
refuse to hand over their taxes voluntarily, but don’t try to hide their
assets (or to avoid having any to hide). After a while, the
IRS
gets around to seizing their bank accounts, garnishing their wages, or
auctioning off their property.
Resisting the War Budget Only — Some people
refuse to pay just that portion of their income tax that corresponds to the
percentage of the federal budget dedicated to paying for wars (past, present
and future). The War Resisters League estimates that 47% of your income tax
pays for war.
The Hide-the-Assets Method — There are all
sorts of sneaky ways to make money and own stuff without the
IRS
being able to get their hands on it. Offshore tax havens and clever trusts
aren’t just for the rich. And some people find a way to work for cash only
and never report their income. Other folks just try to make sure that
there’s nothing for the
IRS to
seize when they show up — by hiding their savings, having their assets held
by other people or by trusts and other legal entities,
etc.
The Too-Poor-to-Tax Method — (That’s me.) A
lot of people are going this route. This also has the advantage of lowering
the excise taxes you pay (since, with less money, you’re spending less on
gasoline, booze, ammunition, luxury cars, vaccines and stuff). Furthermore,
it harmonizes with some people’s desire to have a smaller planetary
“footprint.” One person at the conference said that according to her
calculations, if everyone on earth used up resources at the rate that a
fairly conscientious American like she did, we’d need three-and-a-half
planets to provide for us all.
Some people who hold back taxes donate the money instead to charity; others
set the money aside in an account to be used later if the
IRS
comes after them. Still others don’t want to have any fund that the
IRS
might have the opportunity to seize, and also don’t see any reason to change
the amount of money they donate to charity based on what their
1040 would say.
People have different goals in mind when they start on their tax resistance
also, and this affects which techniques they decide on. Some are doing tax
resistance as a protest, and so it is important that the government (and
perhaps the press and the general public) know that they’re resisting. Some
others are hoping eventually to make tax resistance a mass movement that
forces concessions from the government. Others are less interested in the
protest aspect of it, or the possibility of changing the government’s actions
by defunding it, and more interested simply in not being complicit in the
government’s behavior.
At one point in the conference, someone suggested another possible technique:
Far fewer low-income folk take the
Earned
Income Tax Credit than are eligible for it. Tax resisters could
successfully take a lot of money out of the government’s budget simply by
counseling people on how to take this credit.
The IRS
intends to make it more onerous
to successfully apply for this credit ,
so such counseling is that much more important.
Over all I was very encouraged by the conference. It was a very friendly group
of people with a positive outlook and a lot of experience to draw on.
