Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
religious groups and the religious perspective →
British Nonconformists →
Early 20th Century resistance to publicly-funded sectarian schools →
Peg Morton
A bunch happened while I was away and I’m only just getting caught up.
Here’s the highlight reel:
The IRS has been pursuing war tax resister Cindy Sheehan for months, and not long ago they hauled her into court to try to get a judge to order her to cough up financial information they could use against her. She fought back, with help from NWTRCC and its legal advisor. The IRS has apparently thrown in the towel! Sheehan posted to her blog a letter she got from the agency in which it informs her that they have withdrawn their summons.
Some notes on the taxable income baseline, how to adjust your withholding as a new employee, and the latest news on the telephone excise tax resistance front.
A “Pull the Pork” protester outside of the Washington, D.C. headquarters of military contractor Lockheed Martin
A coalition of groups have organized a “Pull the Pork (from the Pentagon)” national day of action to try to point out that the sacred cow of Pentagon spending is really a pricey pig in a poke.
Levante profiles ecological and antimilitarist activist Francesc García Barberà, who was involved in the Spanish struggle for the recognition of conscientious objection to military service, and in its war tax resistance movement. Excerpts (my translation):
As a conscientious objector, García Barberà performed alternative service in the Barrio del Cristo, where he became involved in the Workers’ Catholic Action Brotherhood, to which he remains linked, as with the objector movement.
“The objection is in all of life; it’s not only not doing military service, but it’s rethinking the role of the Army and of military spending.
The movement did not end when objection was legalized nor when conscription was abolished,” he notes.
Today he is associated with pacifist groups, never fails each year to make a symbolic assault on the NATO base in Bétera, and practices tax resistance, like a handful of Alaquàsers of his generation.
“We omit the percentage that we estimate is dedicated to military spending (between 7% and 12%) and redirect it to Caritas or some NGO,” he explains, which on some occasions has meant conflict with the Treasury Department.
“Armies defend borders when what ought to be defended is a dignified life for people.
And even if they are dressed up as humanitarian actions, they serve large vested interests.
In a war the strongest wins, not the most just,” he says.
It is .
The insane bloodlust of the United States has led it to embark on the shameful and catastrophic Iraq War.
Surely there is no time like the present for American Quakers to recall their proud tradition of war tax resistance and refuse to fund the madness.
Let’s see if we can find any signs of this the Friends Journal.
an ad from the issue of Friends Journal that can still be found in almost the same form in issues of the Journal today
A profile of Tom and Anne Moore in the issue quoted Tom as saying: “We have done things not for money but just because we thought they were important and useful.
We’re war tax resisters, for which we’ve had strong support from Quakers, as well as many of our friends and colleagues throughout the years.”
Notes in that issue also mentioned that the Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting had endorsed the latest Peace Tax Fund bill, as had the Green Party.
A later issue added the endorsement of the Illinois Yearly Meeting.
In each case, as was too frequently the case, the endorsement was in lieu of endorsing war tax resistance, not supplemental to it.
An article about the “Philadelphia Yearly Meeting women’s gathering” noted in passing that among the “urgent concerns about our world and culture[ w]e identified a web of violence, including payment for war through taxes.”
As the invasion of Iraq grew imminent, in the issue appeared the following desperate op-ed by Kent R. Larrabee:
A social movement that could abolish war
Our Peace Testimony stands out as central to our faith.
Simply stated, we commit ourselves to not participating in the taking of human life.
It seems impossible for Quakers and other peacemakers to uphold this commitment.
Nearly 50 percent of the money we give to the government through income taxes goes for the military: killing, destruction of homes, schools, businesses, and other sources of income.
We don’t follow what we believe.
How can we do that?
There is an answer.
In the early days of Quakerism, William Penn, a prominent Quaker whose father held a high military position, went to George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, and explained how impossible it was for him to give up wearing his sword.
When he asked, “What shall I do?”
George Fox answered, “Wear thy sword as long as thou canst.”
It is that simple.
Something inside of us may well be saying, “Pay your income tax as long as you can.”
It may not be very long if the Spirit is speaking to you and the message doesn’t go away.
My experience has been a challenging one.
I learned gradually about the power of nonviolent direct action and love as exhibited by Jesus, St. Francis of Assisi, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and A.J. Muste.
In World War Ⅱ, I was taken from my job helping people in the slums to survive and put into prison for not cooperating with the military stand of our government.
Following the war, I was drawn into social welfare programs with the federal government and had to pay large amounts of income tax.
Gradually, it dawned on me that a large percentage of my tax money was going into the military budget.
First it was about 35 percent, but it kept climbing to nearly 50 percent.
I had worked to the top of the federal payroll and was getting a good salary.
I finally woke up!
I was blatantly contradicting all my belief in the power of love in human relations and the power of nonviolent direct action.
At the height of my career, I knew that if I was to have faith in the power of the teachings and the example of Jesus and other spiritual leaders, I would have to resign from my job, give up my retirement security, and find a way to live below the income tax level where one does not have to pay the tax.
I resigned my position in .
I have been living below the tax line ever since, though tempted by good job offers.
It hasn’t been easy by some standards, and I had a lot to learn about how to live simply, buying used clothing, doubling up in housing, and driving a 15-year-old car.
The result?
I felt a great relief.
I was no longer, indirectly, taking human lives.
My three children went to college and succeeded on their own.
I had the freedom to be more creative and effective in my social reform projects.
No salary needed.
At 84 years, I feel it is useless to spend a lot of energy worrying about how long I am going to live.
I just want to be doing what I love and feel led to do.
We have spent trillions preparing for possible or extended wars.
Many millions have been killed by war and organized violence.
Now, the very survival of our planet is at stake.
There is another way.
If 15 percent of our adult population openly took such a stand for peace and refused to pay income tax for the military, the masses could become convinced — and our planet could be radically changed.
Let us wait in deep silence until God speaks to us.
Then we will know what is right and we will be miraculously supported.
Peg Morton, in an article in the issue in which she explained her civil disobedience action against the School of the Americas, and why she would not be paying any fine assessed against her:
I am a war tax resister, not willing voluntarily to pay a fine to a government so deep in military slaughter and buildup.
I would be quite willing to donate the fine to a worthy, life-giving cause, such as Afghan relief.
I would be unwilling to promise not to cross the line again.
I am committed, in the best way I know how, to follow the leadings of the Spirit.
An obituary notice for Viola Evelyn Purvis in the issue said that “[h]er form of war tax protest was to live so simply she would not have to pay taxes.”
An Earlham School of Religion supplement dated that is included in the set of PDFs I’ve been reviewing profiles Wallace Collett as an exemplary donor to the School, and mentions that “[h]e also served as national clerk of the American Friends Service Committee, and has spoken widely about tax resistance as peace witness.”
Marilyn Roper penned a letter-to-the-editor about the war tax resistance of her and her husband Harrison that appeared in the issue.
Excerpts:
The main reason we left the Philadelphia area was to live in a less expensive part of the world, because we were quitting our jobs (Harry was a tenured associate professor at West Chester University, and I worked at the University Museum of University of Pennsylvania) so as not to have to pay for war and preparations for war.
The sale of our home in Haverford (part of the Quaker community around Haverford Meeting) and purchase of our very inexpensive home in the small town of Houlton allowed us to put the difference into federally tax-free municipal bonds.
Over time, we have been able to add to our holdings of municipal bonds.
Although the interest is very modest, the principal is secure as inheritance for our descendants.
For most of our years in Maine we have never had to pay a cent of income tax to the federal government, while at the same time we were helping to finance numerous life-enhancing state, city, and county projects such as schools, higher education, and better sewer systems. This year we had to pay $15 to the IRS, but with $3 apiece going to support presidential elections, that amount was reduced to $9. Because we did not have to write a big check to the IRS for April 15, we were able to contribute to Oxfam America, UNICEF, and other groups for relief in Iraq.
In other words, we have the opportunity to carry out our own foreign and domestic aid program in lieu of paying federal taxes.
We happily pay the state and local taxes that support our wonderful local school system and other worthy projects.
All the while, we have continued to be peace activists and sleep better at night.
For those who are troubled by Jesus’ words, “Render to Caesar…” (Mark 12: 13–17), please consider if you reread this passage the fact that there were several kinds of legal tender in Jesus’ day: Roman and Jewish coinage.
Why did Jesus ask that the Pharisees show him a coin instead of reaching into his own pocket?
Perhaps the whole point of this exercise was to find out what type of coinage the Pharisees were using.
He did find out, when they produced a coin with Caesar’s image as God on it rather than Jewish coinage.
This demonstrated to observers that these Pharisees had already “sold out” to Caesar.
So, he stated: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” i.e., the hypocritical Pharisees themselves.
Perhaps that is why all were amazed as Jesus turned the tables on them.
This year many people are feeling especially troubled about praying for peace, and paying for war.
Yet, many do not seem to be aware that in the U.S., income from most municipal bonds is free of federal taxes.
Harry and I wrote a handout flyer for consciousness-raising activities on April 15 about taxes and war.
Over 30 percent of federal tax money goes for war, or preparations for war.
We laud those who live under the taxable level.
Municipal bonds offer another option for those concerned about how their federal tax dollars are spent.
It is not too soon for those who have jobs to start putting any spare cash into tax-free municipal bonds so that down the road they will be able to support life-enhancing rather than life-destroying activities financially.
It is very legal.
I unfortunately released the book during a lull in the magazine’s interest in the topic of war tax resistance (which may correspond to a similar lull in the Society of Friends generally), and it looked for a long while as though they weren’t going to consider the book worthy of mention at all, so I’m pleased to know their readers will learn about it after all.
In other war tax resistance news:
War tax resisters Susan Cundiff and Peg Morton were on Jefferson Public Radio in Oregon to explain how and why people refuse to pay taxes for war.
You can hear a recording at this link.
Erica Weiland notes that while there may not be an ongoing military draft conscripting soldiers in the U.S., if you are a U.S. taxpayer, you have already been drafted.
I no longer pay federal taxes, but I do file. I set up a trust, and put
everything in my children’s names, so I own nothing. But the government
does take money out of my social security, and I donate a sum equivalent
to my federal taxes to charity.
So, I try to put a third of my “tax money” into repairing the damages of
war — I’ve been helping a woman go to school in Afghanistan, and I gave a
thousand dollars for her to pay for tuition this year. I do things like
that, and help this cancer clinic in Iraq. And a third goes to peace
centers in this country. It costs me money, but it’s worth it for my
conscience.
War tax resisters who hope to get some legal blessing for their stand have
traditionally appealed either to the legislature (by lobbying for something
like a “peace tax fund” bill), or to the courts (by trying to get
conscientious objection to military taxation recognized as a protected
right). But Leigh Osofsky, an Associate Professor of Law at the University
of Miami, reminds us that the executive branch, too, has discretion in how it enforces the tax law — refusing to enforce some parts of it and enforcing other parts of it in selective or spotty ways.
Other Links of Interest
Colin Donoghue’s meditation on “The Root Injustice, & A Real Way Forward to a Sustainable Society” tries to unravel the tangle that happens when people try to promote progressive ends by means of an inherently inegalitarian, coercive, privilege-entrenching institution like government.
some notes on practical issues of interest to war tax resisters including the possibility of reducing taxes through charitable giving, how to react to letters from the IRS, and the use of no-interest community investment loans to keep assets secure from collection
I’ve also seen some new interest in the tactic of tax resistance popping up here and there on-line.
Twitter is full of people threatening to stop paying taxes with 140-character bravado over everything from police impunity to Obama’s immigration policy tweaks.
That’s nothing to get too excited about, except that I haven’t seen so many people hit on tax resistance as a possible activist response to political issues all at once before.
Tax resister Gary Flomenhoft posted a couple of meditations recently at ClubOrlov:
“The only action that can possibly stop the empire in its tracks is cutting off its food supply — the tax money on which it lives.
We have to starve the beast through divestment, capital expatriation, tax resistance, tax refusal and tax revolt.
Former Secretary of State Alexander Haig told us this flat out in the 1980s when, being confronted with huge protests over U.S. Central American policy, he said: ‘Let them protest all they want as long as they pay their taxes.’
Truer words were never uttered by a U.S. official.
Is there any evidence to contradict his statement?
Has any other measure had any impact on the war machine?
The honest answer is no.
Millions of people around the world protested before the invasion of Iraq.
These protests were ignored.
No amount of protest or other efforts can stop it, because it doesn’t cut off the empire’s food supply of money and fear.
Only by cutting off its funds by not paying taxes can we stop the empire.”
The Boston Review takes a closer look at the Boston Tea Party, and how American perspectives on who did it and what it meant have changed over time.
James Ferguson looks at the new ability of the government to revoke passports from people with tax debts in the light of the long-standing international legal norm concerning freedom to travel.
Bucking recent downward trends, the IRS actually picked up a budget increase from a hostile Congress.
The increase restores part of what was cut from the agency budget last year and reportedly earmarks it for taxpayer service, fraud detection, and cybersecurity.
Along with the money came a set of new restrictions on the agency and its employees, most of which seem to be in the category of “appearing to put the screws to the IRS for the benefit of any constituents in the Tea Party who may be watching.”
With Congressional hostility and budget-slashing added to the mix, the jobs of IRS workers are even more miserable than usual lately.
It doesn’t help recruitment when your facilities are infested with bedbugs.
The bed bugs were so bad at her new job with the Covington IRS office that some people covered their seats with plastic bags, Kelly Anderson said.
After two days, she quit.
“It’s important to have a second income in our home, but it’s not worth the risk of bringing those home.
So, I will not be returning back.”
And that’s not the only kind of bug the IRS is plagued with.
A computer glitch caused the agency to emit tens of millions of dollars in refunds that its software had identified as likely to be fraudulent and that should have been held up.
Another IRS office closed abruptly recently, posting a sign in its window reading “This office is closed due to local weather conditions.”
This on a sunny day in California’s central valley, leaving frustrated taxpayers, who had driven in from as far as three hours away, fuming.
A new issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter is out, with content including:
Jason Rawn shows how war tax resistance can fit into a campaign of climate-oriented divestment.
Sue Barnhart memorializes the recently passed war tax resister Peg Morton.
International news concerning peace tax fund promoters in London, a global campaign on military spending congress in Berlin, and war tax resisters doing direct action at a barracks in Bilbao.
The Meeting urges all of its members to find direct expression of their
opposition to this escalation of violence — including war-tax resistance,
public demonstration and public civil disobedience, [and so forth]…
I missed my chance to be a conscientious objector when my number didn’t come
up in the last year of the draft. It was .
During high school I got the opportunity to think through whether I could kill
other people in a war. I couldn’t see how I could possibly allow myself to be
trained to shoot or bayonet another human being.
Well. It’s and my wife
Kathy and I’ve been well trained in killing. Not the kind of face-to-face
killing that kept me awake in my high school years. Like a bomber pilot, we
never see our victims unless they show up on the news. Maybe we can’t even be
directly implicated. We don’t look dangerous, but we are accomplices.
Over the years we’ve been trained to look the other way as our federal taxes
paid for others to kill, or threaten to kill, in our places. From Vietnam to
Afghanistan and beyond, we’ve had a hand in financing the deaths of millions
of human beings. With the nuclear weapons and delivery systems we’ve helped
pay for, billions of others are threatened.
Well, we didn’t have a choice did we?
We didn’t think we had a choice. If we didn’t pay our taxes we’d go to jail.
That simple, right? The idea of resistance never even occurred to either of us
until . Since that
time Kathy and I have wrestled with the idea of conscientious objection to the
draft in high school. The two ideas are closely related.
Our family’s bodies and minds are useless to the military at this point. Our
tax dollars are valuable. They are being drafted and have been drafted since
we started working and making a living wage. In today’s high-tech military,
warm bodies are of secondary importance. Cold cash is key.
Military spending makes up between 40 to 50% of the federal budget, depending
on whose statistics one uses.* In order to resist
conscription of my family’s share of this money, I submitted a new W-4 to my
employer and adjusted dependent allowances to reduce my withholding. Now only
about half as much is removed. At the end of the year we will correctly fill
out and file our federal income tax return as usual, but we will only pay 50
to 60% of the balance due. The remainder, the military portion, we will
redirect to worthy causes. With our tax forms we’ll enclose a letter that will
explain the reasons for our action.
What will happen to my family and me? Lord knows, but if past events are good
predictors of the future, then this is the likely scenario. First, the
IRS will
send us letters. These will go from brusque to threatening. There might be a
personal visit. At some point, maybe in a few months, maybe in a few years,
they will come after the money. This they will easily find in our family bank
accounts or by garnishing my pay. They will take interest and penalties beyond
our unpaid balance. They will almost certainly not put Kathy or me in jail (as
I said, the Federal Government has little use for our bodies, and no one is
known to have been jailed for war tax resistance in the
U.S.A.
for over a decade, though there are thousands of resisters).
So what’s the point? If they’re going to take the money anyway, why go through
all of this?
The point is that we have a choice about whether to look the other way while
my money is used for murder. In our way of thinking, we have an obligation to
object when we see evil, to avoid participating in it willingly or tacitly,
and to try to do what we can to stop it. The military will likely get our tax
money, but we will not have handed it to them. They will have to take it.
We don’t look so dangerous. But maybe we are. Instead of being a threat to
world peace, we’ve taken a step toward being a threat to world war.
* Good sources for this information are the
American Friends Service Committee, War Resisters League, and the Center for
Defense Information.
That issue also reprinted an article from the San Francisco
Chronicle about Elizabeth Boardman’s trip to Baghdad shortly before
the war. That article mentioned in passing her war tax resistance.
The issue included an article
by Vickie Aldrich on “A History of War Tax Resistance in the United States.”
Another note in that issue mentioned that her Meeting, the Las Cruses, New
Mexico, Monthly Meeting had adopted a minute “in support of war tax
resisters.”
Another article in that issue included the following minute, approved by the
Intermountain Yearly Meeting:
Our religious convictions lead us to take a stand against war. There are many
ways to do this, one of which is war tax resistance. We support those in our
Yearly Meeting who feel called to war tax resistance.
The issue featured a query from Peg
Morton of the Eugene Friends Meeting:
“Are We Ready to Refuse to Pay for War and Accept the Consequences?”
She asked Quakers to remember their history of war tax refusal, and invited
them to take part in the “War Tax Boycott” that
NWTRCC
had organized that year.
![American Quaker War Tax Resistance (Second Edition) [Edited by David M. Gross. Picket Line Press, 2011. 574 pages. $25/paperback; $7.99/eBook] Gross has made a serious business of investigating and writing about not only the history of war tax resistance, but also tactics that can be used today. In American Quaker War Tax Resistance, Gross uses historical documents to trace the development of war tax resistance among Quakers, and how it was viewed by their contemporaries outside the Society of Friends. He includes writing by famous Friends such as William Penn and John Woolman, as well as individuals less known such as Moses Brown. In a subsequent book, 99 Tactics of Successful Tax Resistance, Gross lays out past campaigns to help war tax resisters of our own time choose from tactics that have already been used.](fjreview.png)
