Some historical and global examples of tax resistance → United States → Vietnam War, ~1965–75 → Helen Merrell Lynd

From the St. Petersburg Times, 10 April 1966:

360 Refuse To Pay Tax On Income

New York (UPI) — At least 360 persons, including a Nobel Prize winner, a leading folk-singer, and a controversial Yale professor, have refused to pay all or part of their federal income taxes for 1965 in protest to “illegal use” of U.S. forces in such areas as Viet Nam and the Dominican Republic.

A statement issued by the group said some of the protestors will leave their tax money in banks where it can be seized by the Internal Revenue Service. Others, it said, will contribute the money to charities.

The Federal Revenue Code provides for jail sentences of up to one year and fines as high as $10,000 for conviction of willful refusal to pay federal income taxes.

Among the protestors who signed the statement were Prof. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, nobel prize-winning bio-chemist; folk singer Joan Baez; Prof. Staughton Lynd of Yale, who made an unauthorized trip to Viet Nam last December; veteran pacifist the Rev. A.J. Muste; Helen Merrell Lynd; co-author of “Middletown;[”] poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti; publisher Lyle Stuart; Prof. William Davidon of Haverford College; Prof. Carroll C. Pratt of Rider College; editor Dorothy Day of The Catholic Worker, and Prof. John M. Vickers of the University of Illinois.

A version of the same story in The Milwaukee Journal has some minor wording changes, lists CARE and UNICEF as two of the charities some of the resisters are redirecting their taxes to, notes that “Almost every state in the union is represented in the group,” and adds a couple of paragraphs about Wisconsin resisters:

Dr. Carl M. Kline, a Wausau psychiatrist who formerly practiced in Milwaukee, was one of the signers. He said: “I am just going to refuse to pay a part of it, and I will leave that money in my bank account. I realize you can’t beat this thing, but it is a matter of expressing my feelings. I am a Quaker, and I am against war altogether, but I feel particularly that our action in Vietnam is wrong, and this is my way of protesting. I wish I could do more.”

Another Wisconsin signer was Kenneth Knudson, of Madison. Knudson picketed the Madison internal revenue office in 1964 and 1965 to protest use of federal funds for military purposes.

That article also adds this detail:

Miss Baez earlier had refused to pay 60% of her 1964 federal income tax to protest government expenditures for armament. The internal revenue service collected more than $34,000 from her after attaching a lien to her income and property.

The time has come, and that time was 14 April 1966.

350 Balk at Taxes in a War Protest

Ad in Capital Paper Urges Others to Bar Payment

Washington, April 14 — Some 350 persons who disapprove of the war in Vietnam announced today that they would not voluntarily pay their Federal income taxes, due tomorrow. They urged others to join them in this protest.

The Internal Revenue Service immediately made clear that it would take whatever steps were necessary to collect the taxes.

The group announced its plans this morning in an advertisement in The Washington Post.

“We will refuse to pay our Federal income taxes voluntarily,” the advertisement said. “Some of us will leave the money we owe the Government in our bank accounts, where the Internal Revenue Service may seize it if they wish. Some will contribute the money to CARE, UNICEF or similar organizations. Some of us will continue to pay that percentage of our taxes which is not used for military purposes.”

Joan Baez, Lynd, Muste

The first signature on the advertisement was that of Joan Baez, the folk singer. Others who signed it were Staughton Lynd, the Yale professor who traveled to North Vietnam last year in violation of State Department regulations, and the Rev. A.J. Muste, the pacifist leader.

The advertisement contained a coupon soliciting contributions for the protest. The ad said that further information could be obtained from Mr. Muste at Room 1003, 5 Beekman Street, New York City.

Those who placed the advertisement — which bore the heading “The Time Has Come” — said that those who sponsored it “recognize the gravity of this step. However, we prefer to risk violating the Internal Revenue Code, rather than to participate, by voluntarily paying our taxes, in the serious crimes against humanity being committed by our Government.”

The advertisement mentioned not only the war in Vietnam “against hungry, scantily armed Vietnamese guerrillas and civilians” but also “the spectacle of the United States invasion of the Dominican Republic,” an event the sponsors said “will go down in history alongside Russia’s criminal intervention in Hungary.”

Cohen Is Determined

The determination of Internal Revenue to collect the taxes the Government is owed was expressed in a formal statement by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Sheldon S. Cohen.

He said Internal Revenue would take “appropriate action” to collect the taxes “in fairness to the many millions of taxpayers who do fulfill their obligations.”

The Government has been upheld in court on all occasions when individuals have refused to pay taxes because of disapproval with the uses to which their money was being put, revenue officials said.

Ad Prepared Here

The headquarters of the Committee for Nonviolent Action, 5 Beekman Street, said yesterday that it had prepared the advertisement carried in the Washington newspaper after receiving 350 responses to invitations it had sent out soliciting participation in “an act of civil disobedience.”

A spokesman for the committee said that Mr. Muste, the chairman, was out of town and would return in about a week. The spokesman said that although monetary contributions in response to the advertisement had not yet begun to come in, the committee was prepared to mail literature explaining its program to those who responded to the advertisement.

The spokesman said that the tax protest had been intended to represent “a more radical and meaningful protest against the Vietnam War.”

The committee announced that members would appear at 2:15 P.M. today in front of the Internal Revenue Service office, 120 Church Street, to distribute leaflets concerning the tax protest.

It also said that a rally and picketing would be staged from 11 A.M. to 3:30 P.M., in front of the Federal Building in San Francisco under the sponsorship of the War Resisters League. The league also has offices at 5 Beekman Street.

With press coverage like this, including even the address to write to for more information, Muste hardly needed to pay for ad space in the Times (assuming they would have printed the ad — many papers rejected ads like this).

Some other names I recognize from the ad are Noam Chomsky, Dorothy Day, Dave Dellinger, Barbara Deming, Diane di Prima, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Milton Mayer, David McReynolds, Grace Paley, Eroseanna Robinson, Ira Sandperl, Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Ralph Templin, Marion Bromley, Horace Champney, Ralph Dull, Walter Gormly, Richard Groff, Irwin Hogenauer, Roy Kepler, Ken Knudson, Bradford Lyttle, Karl Meyer, Ed Rosenthal, Maris Cakars, Gordon Christiansen, William Davidon, Johan Eliot, Carroll Pratt, Helen Merrell Lynd, E. Russell Stabler, Lyle Stuart, John M. Vickers, and Eric Weinberger.

The text of the ad (without the signatures and “coupon”) is as follows:

The Time Has Come

The spectacle of the United States — with its jet bombers, helicopters, fragmentation and napalm bombs and disabling gas — carrying on an endless war against the hungry, scantily armed Vietnamese guerrillas and civilians… this spectacle will go down in history alongside the unforgivable atrocities of Italy in Ethiopia.

The spectacle of the United States invasion of the Dominican Republic — again pitting our terrifying weaponry mainly against civilians armed with rifles… this spectacle will go down in history alongside Russia’s criminal intervention in Hungary.

But the spectacle of the indifference of so many Americans to the crimes being committed in their names, by their brothers, and with their tax money… this spectacle reminds us more and more of the indifference of the majority of the German people to the killing of six million Jews.

The United States government has not reacted constructively to legitimate criticism, protests and appeals:

• by world leaders including the Pope, U Thant and President De Gaulle —
• by United States leaders including Senators Morse, Gruening, Church, Fulbright, Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy and Stephen Young —
• by hundreds of thousands of citizens including 2,500 clergymen and countless professors who placed protest advertisements in leading newspapers —
• by innumerable students, many tens of thousands of whom have taken their protest to Washington on several occasions —
• by celebrated individuals such as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Robert Lowell, Arthur Miller and Dr. Benjamin Spock —
• and by leading newspapers, including the New York Times.

We believe that the ordinary channels of protest have been exhausted and that the time has come for Americans of conscience to take more radical action in the hope of averting nuclear war.

Therefore, the undersigned hereby declare that at least as long as U.S. Forces are clearly being used in violation of the U.S. Constitution, International Law and the United Nations Charter…

We will refuse to pay our federal income taxes voluntarily

Some of us will leave the money we owe the government in our bank accounts, where the Internal Revenue Service may seize it if they wish. Others will contribute the money to CARE, UNICEF or similar organizations. Some of us will continue to pay that percentage of our taxes which is not used for military purposes.

We recognize the gravity of this step. However, we prefer to risk violating the Internal Revenue Code, rather than to participate, by voluntarily paying our taxes, in the serious crimes against humanity being committed by our Government.

Alan Emory, the long-time Washington D.C. correspondent for the Watertown Times, penned a dismissive article about war tax resisters for that paper’s 19 April 1968 edition.

With its quotes and paraphrases of unnamed “officials” and its furious hand waving, it reads to me as a desperate attempt by the government to throw water on a spreading brush fire by means of a cooperative and sympathetic reporter. (Emory’s parents were both in government, and, as a Washington reporter, Emory was about as antagonistic to politicians as a sportscaster is to athletes.)

Protests for Publicity?

Fewer Americans Using War As Excuse for Dodging Taxes

Washington — Fewer Americans are using the Vietnam war as an excuse for not paying all or part of their income taxes this year, according to the Internal Revenue service.

And most of them appear to be making the protest for publicity purposes, officials believe.

Instead, the protesters appear to be more active in using the war as a reason for not paying telephone excise taxes.

In both cases, however, the numbers are relatively insignificant.

Out of 70,000,000 income taxpayers, the IRS says only 275 declined to pay up in full because of Vietnam in 1965 and only 520 in 1966. So far, the 1967 count shows 93.

As for the telephone tax refusals, “about 4,800” out of 50,000,000 users took this line last year, according to Internal Revenue Commissioner Sheldon Cohen.

The American Telephone & Telegraph company put the figure at 700 in the final three months of 1966 and 1,800 during the first three months last year. The early 1967 figure included 86 residents of Pennsylvania — out of 3,000,000 telephone subscribers — and 25 in New Jersey out of 2,200,000.

IRS officials say the Vietnam protest first showed up as a tax factor in 1965. Individuals ran to newspapers and issued press releases, they said, and filed their returns with a note or letter citing the war protest.

Some groups held protest meetings in front of IRS offices and passed out flyers.

The tax collectors’ problems, however, turned out to be surprisingly small. When, after sending out the normal number of letters to the taxpayer, the IRS sent an agent to his home, he was usually greeted with “We were expecting you,” and the taxpayer then told the agent the bank in which his funds were deposited.

The government either filed a lien or, in some cases, went to the bank with the taxpayer and obtained the money right there.

The IRS found out that many of the protesting taxpayers had not received enough income to require any taxes. Others had enough withheld to cover what they owed. Some had salaries attached.

One taxpayer has consistently shrugged off IRS communications, including those showing he had refunds due.

Cohen says the war protest cases are being handled “under special procedures and we are pursuing them through to collection.”

“If any taxes are due we will collect them down to the last dollar,” he says.

Only 1,500 to 2,000 go to jail for not paying taxes in a single year, though, and very few of them belong in the war protest lists. One official said that 25 per cent of the protest petition signers are “students and hippies.”

When the phone tax problem showed up in August, 1967, the phone companies agreed to make out lists for the IRS of those who would not pay the tax. Ironically, the paper work involved in making the collection is usually more costly than the money owed.

No jailings have resulted from this situation yet.

The most famous protester on taxes and the war is folk singer Joan Baez, who has been seeking a $36,528 refund on her 1965 tax payment of $60,948. Although Miss Baez regularly withholds part of her tax because of Vietnam, the IRS goes right ahead and attaches income, property and bank accounts to pay any tax left unpaid. Last week she said she will withhold her entire tax this year.

The singer paid $6,000 in penalties and interest for 1963 and 1964. Government officials consider that a fee for what they call “front-page advertising.” Her taxable income in 1964 was $110,000.

The first mass tax protest involving Vietnam came with the publication of a notice signed by 350-odd names, mostly writers and educators, led by Rev. A.J. Muste, a well-known pacifist leader who had not paid any income taxes since 1948 — well before Vietnam.

Other signers included pianist Anton Kuerti and former Yale Prof. Staughton Lynd, Merrel Lynd, co-author of “Middletown,” and biochemist Albert Szent-Gyorgi. In April, 1967, another protest list was printed in newspapers, and this year a third, with 448 sign…

Here, alas, the reproduction of the article available on-line gives out, and if Emory’s article was syndicated elsewhere in full, I haven’t been able to find it in any of the on-line archives (an abbreviated version was picked up by The Milwaukee Journal).