Miscellaneous tax resisters → individual war tax resisters → Sue Barnhart

The Eugene Weekly has published the first in what it promises to be a series of profiles of war tax resisters from Eugene, Oregon. This first profile is of and by Sue Barnhart.

I have been a war tax resister for thirty years. I was raised as a Christian and really took to heart the commandment, “Thou Shalt not Kill.” I never felt comfortable paying taxes for war, but I didn’t realize I had a choice. As soon as I met some war tax resisters and realized it could be done, I began doing it.…

It isn’t as scary as you might think because of the support we war tax resisters give to each other. Not paying war taxes sends a strong statement to the government that I’m against war. I wish more peace activists would do it. If more people took this action, we could put an end to war. As one of my favorite bumper sticker says, “If you work for peace, stop paying for war.”

Code Pink continues to register folks for its Don’t Buy Bush’s War campaign, including Rainforest Action Network founder Randy “Hurricane” Hayes and feminist icon Gloria Steinem.

Here are a few quotes from recent signers of the tax resistance pledge:

Brava to Code Pink for organizing a tax protest — as All-American as the Boston Tea Party!: Gloria Steinem
I gladly sign this pledge as time has run out for far too many and is running out for our very species. Such a time demands courage and strong action. Please join this action and help walk the path of living lightly on the planet and in tolerance with if not love for each other.: Randy Hayes
No taxes for war!: Dr. Cheryl Schimenti, Pioneer, California
My hard earned dollars (pennies!) will not go to kill my fellow human beings!: AnnaMaria Mauhs, Hamden, Connecticut
Read my lips, ‘No more taxes for this deceitfully contrived war.’: Judy McDonald, Frankfort, Kentucky
This is the best thing I ever heard since these war crimes started…: Ahmad Morrar, Fremont, California
This is the most powerful vote we can cast in this country.: Samantha Olden, Aptos, California
The only way we can vote for an end to war.: Sol Metz, Ann Arbor, Michigan
No taxes for corporations & their wars.: anonymous, Sunnyvale, California
No Money for Organized Crime, they need to work like everyone else.: Donny Smartmouth, Oly, Washington
This is an excellent plan and helps me to feel less frustrated by the political agenda of the US government at this time…: anonymous, Putney, Vermont
Deep in my heart, where I speak to god I know I can no longer contribute in any way to war.: Suzia Aufderheide
If Congress won’t cut off war funding, I will.: Jeff Kipilman, Portland, Oregon
I will be resisting my taxes this year and every year until our country does not engage in war. I have already signed onto the NWTRCC resist taxes list. thanks for your efforts together we all will make a difference.I have been a war tax resister for over 20 years. I am so excited that many more people may join us this year.: Susan Barnhart, Eugene, Oregon
For several months now I have been considering withholding my taxes. Now I can do it with many other people. Thank you.: Marilyn Cornwell, San Francisco, California
The revolution is happening all across the country and this year we are becoming unified. Remember, when you resist, you are not resisting alone.: Shizuno Wynkop, Olympia, Washington
I have also joined the 2008 War Tax Boycott through NWTRCC and will be withholding all of my federal income tax. It is time to have a conscientious objector status, or better yet, time to end war once and for all! Thank you Code Pink for making this a priority. You can count on me to do my part in this.: Sara Crawford, Eugene, Oregon
I do not want to be complicit in U.S. war crimes in Iraq or Afghanistan or Palestine or Lebanon or Pakistan or Iran and on and on…: Richard Brinton, Salinas, California

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.
A profile of war tax resister Anne Barron.

Today is the deadline for filing U.S. federal income tax returns — “Tax Day” — which is also a traditional day of action and publicity for American war tax resisters. Here is an overview of some from this year:

LancasterOnline covered local war tax resisters Barbara & Harold Penner, Linda & Titus Peachey, Berry & Sharon Friesen, and Janet & John Stoner.
NWTRCC’s Erica Weiland was interviewed on Peace Buzz (audio).
teleSUR reported on American war tax resisters: “No More Money for War: US Peace Activists Refuse to Pay Taxes”
The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund sent out its Spring Report. The fund distributed $9,988 to war tax resisters last year to reimburse them for any penalties and interest the IRS had managed to seize from them.
Paul Buckley spoke about the history of Quaker war tax resistance for QuakerSpeak:
Vice reports “This Is What Happens if You Don’t Pay Your Taxes,” using the experience of war tax resister Ruth Benn as an example.
War tax resister redmoonsong spoke on the Simple Living Works! podcast.
David Zarembka wrote for the American Friends Service Committee’s Acting in Faith blog on the theme “God and Caesar: On war tax resistance.”
NWTRCC’s Ed Hedemann spoke on the radio dispatch show.
Sue Barnhart explained her war tax resistance in the Eugene Register-Guard.

Lots of tax resistance news sliding by my browser in recent days as the federal income tax filing deadline approaches in the U.S.:

A syndicated feature about American tax resisters — featuring Rod Nippert, Jay Sordean, Ruth Benn, Peter Smith, Cindy Sheehan, Ann Barron, and Joseph Olejak — appeared in newsweeklies around the country this week, including the Colorado Springs Independent, Salt Lake City Weekly, Athens, Georgia Flagpole, and Baltimore City Paper
The author of that piece, Mary Finn, was interviewed on Democracy in Crisis.
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.”
There are lots of war tax resistance-related actions going on around the country in the tax-filing season this year.
The Alaska Dispatch looks back at the Alaska photo [that] did for the IRS what that passenger video did for United Airlines. (In this case, IRS agents who broke the windows of a car to drag out the passengers so they could seize it in 1979. This was photographed, and the outrage led to IRS policy changes on using violence during collection.)
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:
- Daniel Sicken, and
- Sue Barnhart

Some tabs that have slid across my browser in recent days:

International Tax Resistance

International direct action against traffic-ticket-generating robots continues, with such machines being destroyed or disabled in Italy, France, and Germany; France and Italy; France and England (plus news that the new president of Brazil plans to discontinue use of the machines); and France and Saudi Arabia.
Here’s some more information (in Spanish) about the two war tax resisters from Spain who had their fines overturned in court, including what looks to be some excerpts from the ruling (see ♇ 7 May 2019 for an English translation of a newspaper article on the case).
You may remember that Indian Prime Minister Modi abruptly removed high-denomination bank notes from the ranks of legal tender in late 2016. This was meant to strike a knockout-blow at the underground economy by forcing people to use more legible, traceable economic transactions than anonymous cash. It doesn’t seem to have worked. Despite the significant short-term inconvenience and blow to the economy, the amount of cash currency in circulation quickly recovered to its previous levels and is now back on-trend to where it was before the experiment. You may have heard calls to eliminate the U.S. $100 bill, for similar motives. This experience may discourage such an effort.
Farmers in Kurdistan who have refused to pay a “war tax” to what remains of the Islamic State (Daesh/ISIS) have suffered reprisals, such as having their fields burned down for their refusal.
Ugandan legislator and entertainer Bobi Wine (Robert Kyagulanyi) has been arrested on charges relating to an anti-tax street protest he helped to organize last year.

War Tax Resistance in the U.S.

The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee held a national conference in Washington, D.C. this month. Here’s a write-up by one of the attendees. Unfortunately they got tangled up in ongoing actions by leftist activists who were trying to occupy the Venezualan embassy there on behalf of the brutal, disastrous Maduro regime. It has been a disappointing thing to see groups like NWTRCC, CodePink, Veterans for Peace, and United for Peace and Justice carrying water for the cruel Maduro tyranny as though that were the only way to oppose disingenuous U.S. machinations there. It puts a shameful stain on what’s left of the U.S. peace movement every time a group like this uses a phrase like “the legitimate democratic Maduro government of Venezuela”.
Lincoln Rice and Sue Barnhart recently talked about war tax resistance on the Spirit in Action radio show, as did Ann Barron and Larry Bassett in a follow-up.
The Greenfield Reporter profiles war tax resister Thomas Wilson, who died last year.

U.S. Taxpayer Morale

A number of items that have been in the news lately concern how the U.S. tax system has become increasingly corrupt and imbalanced in favor of wealthy tax evaders. Stories like this tend to damage what’s known in tax wonk circles as “taxpayer morale” — the willingness of citizens to pay their taxes without evasion or the necessity of harsh arm-twisting and draconian oversight. For example:

Income tax audits of the Americans with the highest reported incomes have fallen dramatically. Just in the last year alone the rate fell by half.
Income taxes on corporations represent the lowest percentage of federal revenue since at least 1960, with the burden increasingly resting instead on individuals.
The New York Times pointed out that in California, local governments and corporations have rigged the sales tax system in such a way that a portion of the sales tax people pay is gifted to the same companies who collect it. In other words, the sales tax becomes a “bonus profit” to those companies, collected from consumers and enforced by law.
Millions of former U.S. tax filers appear to have dropped out — not filing returns in the last filing season. One theory is that the tax reform legislation that came into effect last year caused some people to owe where they hadn’t before, or to owe more, and that they decided not to file as a result. Three million people who received refunds in 2018 didn’t file at all in 2019.
Trump’s tariffs are on target to reverse the benefits of recent income tax cuts for low- and middle-income taxpayers by raising the prices of consumer goods.
There’s been another report put out about the “tax gap” (the difference between what’s owed and what’s collected) in the U.S. However it still uses largely stale numbers, updating them largely based on estimates and trends rather than evidence.

Today is International Conscientious Objection Day, honoring those who refuse to participate in their governments’ war-making institutions. It comes a couple of days before this year’s delayed income tax-filing deadline in the United States, and so conscientious objectors to military taxation are appropriately in the news:

The Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters of Vermont are gathering to talk shop.

“I want to live my values, which includes nonviolence,” said Lindsey Britt of Brattleboro. “Paying for destruction at home and abroad doesn’t fit into that, so I live more simply and refuse to pay a portion of my taxes.”
War tax resister Sue Barnhart has a letter-to-the-editor in the Eugene Weekly. Excerpt:

I have been a war tax resister since the 1970s since I do not want my money supporting murder. The money I resist to the military I give to local groups that actually help people and the environment. Now I am also a war tax resister because I don’t want my money supporting the biggest contributor to the burning of our planet: the U.S. military.
War tax resisters Lincoln Rice and Robin Brookes are hosting a discussion group at the upcoming World Beyond War #NoWar2021 conference on on June 4^th: “War Tax Resistance: Tax resistance to paying for the military began hundreds of years ago and continues to this day. Let’s talk about the practicality and efficacy of refusing to pay for war.”

In other news:

People in Myanmar are standing up to the military junta there by refusing to pay taxes and government-monopoly utility bills.

“I’ve decided I won’t pay any tax to the dictators, and that includes electricity. If police and soldiers ask me, I’ll just tell them I don’t have any money. I don’t care if they cut off the power to my house,” the resident of Yangon’s North Dagon Township told Frontier. “Most people in my ward who I’ve spoken to say they’re not going to pay either.”

The Civil Disobedience Movement in Myanmar apparently has a lot of support from within the Ministry of Electricity and Energy, which may make things easier on resisters.

Ko Aung Thu, who lives in the Shwe Lin Ban area of the highly industrialised township, said he had received a bill for January but had no intention of paying.
“They killed people right here, in this township,” he said, referring to the security forces’ massacre of more than 50 people on March 14. “Why should I pay money to a bunch of murderers? I won’t pay any taxes. If we pay taxes, we’re just supporting murderers.”

A hotel owner in nearby Bagan said he wouldn’t pay either and he expected many others would also refuse.
“I just heard today about how the state lottery isn’t able to run because so few people bought tickets. I think most people won’t pay their electricity bills, either,” he said. “We won’t support the dictator… the income from electricity charges is huge and they won’t be able to survive without that money.”
In this year’s Lambeth Readers and Writers Festival, author Simon Hannah hosted an online talk called “Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay: The Fight to Stop the Poll Tax.”
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren is spearheading a Democratic Party effort to expand and further empower the IRS. “I have proposed nearly doubling the funding for the IRS but also making a chunk of their funding mandatory and targeted toward high-income individuals and corporations.”
But right now, one of the things that’s disempowering the agency is… poorly-maintained office equipment.

During site visits to two processing centers, management estimated that 42 percent of 164 devices used by the submission processing functions are unusable and others are broken but still functioning. “IRS employees stated that the only reason they could not use many of these devices is because they are out of ink or because the waste cartridge container is full,” it said.
The report added: “The lack of working printers and copiers affects many different areas of the IRS but has an especially significant effect on the return and income verification services functions” where employees must make copies of tax returns to fulfill requests for tax documents from taxpayers and other institutions. At one center, though, only three of the 10 devices were working.
The human war on traffic ticket robot cameras continues, with the robots taking casualties in Guadeloupe and France and in Italy in recent weeks.