Miscellaneous tax resisters → individual war tax resisters → David Schenck

The issue of NWTRCC’s newsletter, More Than a Paycheck, is out. It includes:

  • The reports from the 12th International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns from Ruth Benn and Ed Hedemann that I linked to .
  • Clare Hanrahan’s review of We Won’t Pay: A Tax Resistance Reader:

    “both daunting and encouraging and well worth the considerable reading time… captures in one indexed volume many individual acts and campaigns of conscientious objection to war and of revenue refusal to tyrannical governments… sincere voices and challenging arguments.”

  • Elizabeth Boardman’s review of American Quaker War Tax Resistance:

    “167 intelligent and intense writings on the challenging question of whether people of conscience should pay for war… People struggling with this moral issue today will be guided by the writings in this book and may find some wonderful language to use in their own statements of conscience… a straightforward and compelling book.”

  • Some notes on frivolous filing warnings, new tax laws, and IRS enforcement techniques.
  • Notes about tax resisters Bob Williams, Mike Palecek, and David Schenck, about the trial of two Los Alamos National Laboratory protesters, and about the upcoming New England Regional Gathering of War Tax Resisters and Supporters.
  • A story about long-time resister Thomas Wilson. The state of Massachusetts suspended his dental license 21 years ago when he stopped cooperating with state tax laws because the state, in turn, was acting as a collection agency for the IRS. Wilson kept practicing dentistry without a license, and was able to keep doing so until this year when he was forced to shut down after a competing dentist ratted him out to the state board of registration.

    At 75 Tom is philosophical about closing the door on his professional life and has no regrets about his choices. “In this present economy we’re getting a payback for what the government has been doing and what I haven’t been paying for and resisting all this time. People ask if war tax resistance changes anything. I can’t say that, but it’s helped me put up with what we have to put up with in this country.”