Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
United States →
Vietnam War, ~1965–75 →
Writers & Editors War Tax Protest, 1967 →
Robert Scheer
Truth be told, part of my harsh reaction to the Iraq Moratorium that I posted here on was probably from envy at how their call to vague and lukewarm action has attracted some 2,000 signers, support from dozens of organizations, and endorsements from various celebs, while the War Tax Boycott is still trying to build up a head of steam, without much in the way of organizational or big-name support.
There was a time, though, when influential people were eager to sign on to a war tax boycott.
On , the New York Times reported:
WRITERS PROTEST VIETNAM WAR TAX
133 Will Refuse to Pay if Surcharge Is Approved
By MORRIS KAPLAN
A number of writers and editors have joined in opposing tax payments to support the war in Vietnam by pledging to withhold payment of President Johnson’s proposed 10 per cent income tax surcharge if Congress approves it.
Many of them have also promised to deduct 23 per cent from their tax bills as an estimate of the percentage used to fight the war.
A statement in support of this dissent has been signed by 133 writers.
Each dissenter has sent $10 or more to the Writers and Editors War Tax Protest, a group headed by Gerald Waker of Manhattan. Mr. Walker, assistant articles editor of The New York Times Sunday Magazine, said the money would be used for expenses and to pay for a newspaper advertisement planned for .
The proposal for a 10 per cent surcharge on corporate and individual taxes is now before the House Ways and Means Committee and is expected to be reported out next month.
The President has said it would relieve a budget deficit of possibly $28-billion.
More Support Sought
Mr. Walker expressed hope that the protest would win the support of from 300 to 500 writers and editors.
Among those who have pledged support are Eric Bentley, drama critic who is Brander Matthew Professor of Dramatic Literature at Columbia University, and Ralph Ginzburg, the New York publisher who is still appealing a Federal Government pornography conviction.
Others include Fred J. Cook, author and magazine writer; Betty Friedan, author of “The Feminine Mystique”; Dwight Macdonald, New Yorker Magazine critic, and Merle Miller, Thomas Pynchon and Harvey Swados, novelists.
A letter accompanying the protest statement points out the possible consequences of willfully refusing to pay Federal income taxes.
Violators of the law could receive up to one year in prison and up to $10,000 in fines.
Others Not Prosecuted
Mr. Walker said, however, that of the 421 signers of a similar no-payment ad last year in a Washington newspaper, not one had been prosecuted and sentenced.
Of an estimated total of 1,500 additional protest nonpayers, he added, none has been prosecuted since the war in Vietnam began.
The Internal Revenue Service has chosen, so far, to collect unpaid taxes by placing a lien on the incomes of those who refuse to pay, or by attaching their bank accounts or other assets.
In addition, a 6 per cent interest penalty is charged each year on the unpaid tax balance.
The group’s appeal for support included a quotation from Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience,” written in and protesting American involvement in the Mexican War.
The writer said, in part:
That’s a weird note to end the piece on.
The Thoreau quote is strangely ellipsized to make it sound like he thought that somehow the United States had been overrun and conquered by Mexico or something, or that civil disobedience was appropriate only when you’ve been invaded by a foreign army and subjected to military law.
Here’s the full quote, which makes its relevance (to the Vietnam War then, to the Iraq War now) more clear:
But enough nitpicking.
This appeal brought in 133 writers and editors. , the list had swelled to 448 (it would go even higher than the 500 that Gerald Walker originally hoped for), and included such names as Nelson Algren, James Baldwin, Noam Chomsky, Philip K. Dick, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Goodman, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Tillie Olsen, Grace Paley, Robert Scheer, Susan Sontag, Terry Southern, Benjamin Spock, Gloria Steinem, William Styron, Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut, and Howard Zinn.
As far as I can tell, the IRS didn’t take legal action against anyone who signed on to this list (though it probably sent threatening letters or engaged in administrative sanctions like levies and liens).
Nixon won the presidential election in , and among his campaign promises had been to end Johnson’s 10% surtax and somehow salvage “peace with honor” in Vietnam.
A couple of years later, the surtax breathed its last.
It took a few more years to get U.S. troops out of Vietnam.
Writers and Editors War Tax Protest
Attention: Gerald Walker
145 West 86th Street
Apt. 7D
New York, N.Y. 10024
Fellow Writers and Editors:
Join us in signing the enclosed statement proclaiming our refusal to let our
tax dollars support the war in Vietnam. Tell us in writing that we may list
your name with ours in ads and statements. Send us your check for $10.00 or
more (payable to Writers and Editors War Tax Protest) to pay for advertising
and other expenses. Ask other writers and editors to join. Mail copies of
this letter and the enclosed statement, “We Won’t Pay” (which will comprise
the substance of ads we plan to run), to your own list of colleagues. Extra
copies available at $1.00 per hundred, plus 25¢ for mailing.
How we will go about tax refusal
Should President Johnson’s surcharge be adopted by Congress, we will
refuse payment. We will not add this extra war tax to our current tax
when preparing our return and we will enclose a letter with our return
explaining why.
Many of us will also deduct from our tax the 23% which represents the
amount currently being spent on Vietnam.
Possible consequences
It is a violation (up to one year in prison and/or up to $10,000 in fines) of
Sec. 7203 of the Internal
Revenue Code willfully to refuse to pay federal income taxes. However, of the
421 signers of a similar no-payment ad in ,
not one has been prosecuted and sentenced; of the estimated 1500 additional
protest non-payers, none has been prosecuted since the war began. The
IRS, so
far, has chosen to exercise the power to collect unpaid tax money by placing
a lien on refusers’ income or attaching their bank accounts or other assets,
when these can be traced. In addition, a penalty of 6% interest is charged
annually on the unpaid tax balance, a rate estimated to be less than the
collection expense.
Vietnam drags on. Casualties rise, $28 billion are wasted yearly,
U.S. prestige and
moral fabric rot away. No solution, political or military, is in view. The
President’s prescription is more of the same — 45,000 new men (for a total of
525,000) and a proposed 10% income tax increase specifically for this
undeclared, unconstitutional, unprofitable, and unjust war.
“The needs of this country’s riot-shaken cities are being neglected to pay
the war bill,” The New York Times has
editorialized. It is time for escalation by those who want peace in
order to focus on our critical domestic dilemma. Peace marches have not
worked; nor have pickets, protest ads, teach-ins, or pleas to the President’s
conscience by public figures here and abroad. We are not consoled by reports
of atrocities committed by the other side; we want to stop those committed by
our side. So we must now go beyond mere expressions of dissent to strong,
affirmative, and dramatic action by responsible citizens.
We, the undersigned writers and editors for publications and publishing
houses large and small, have not had to give our lives in Vietnam — that has
fallen on younger Americans. But we have lent our passive support in the form
of our tax dollars. From now on, we are willing to lay our middle-class lives
on the line in pledging:
That none of us voluntarily will pay the proposed 10% income tax
surcharge, or any war-designated tax increase.
That many of us will also refuse to pay that part of our current income
tax (23%) being used to finance the war.
Many of us, too, will give an equivalent sum to humanitarian organizations.
Even so, this was not an easy decision to make. We have been law-abiding,
tax-paying citizens all our lives, and we are now subjecting ourselves to
possible legal penalties of up to one year in prison and/or up to $10,000 in
fines for willful non-payment of taxes. But we believe our taxes should not
be used to support a war that violates not only our own Constitution but the
Charter of the United Nations.
By this act, we aim to awaken the Administration to the fact that a
significant number of responsible citizens are so fundamentally opposed to
this war that they are willing to go to this extreme. And we wish to show
other Vietnam-haunted Americans that there is a simple, swift, effective way
to vote no-confidence in the Administration’s policy. It can be done
individually or in groups. It cannot wait until the 1968 presidential
election. Your ballot is your next tax return, and other ads such as this
placed in every newspaper in the land.
There are not enough prisons to hold the millions in this country who,
according to Gallup and other recent polls, strongly oppose this ugly war.
Time now to end our tacit acceptance of what is being done in Vietnam in our
name.
Much of the text of the above declaration didn’t make it in to the final
advertisement (I’m guessing it was cut down to make room for the many names
of signers, but maybe there was more to it than that). Horowitz himself did
not make the list.
I am enclosing a copy of the statement signed, so far, by 220 writers and
editors who pledge to refuse payment of the proposed 10 per cent income tax
surcharge or any tax increase earmarked for the Vietnam War. At this writing,
seven New York Times writers and editors have signed. We plan to run a
full-page advertisement in the Times in
, giving the quote from
Thoreau, the pledge and the list of names. The placing of the ad will
coincide with Congressional debate on the tax surcharge. By that time we hope
to have 500 persons pledged to refuse payment.
If you would be interested in signing the statement, please fill in the blank
and mail it in as soon as possible. And please tell your writer and editor
friends about it and urge them to do the same. As Thoreau said, “If a
thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a
violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State
to commit violence and shed innocent blood.” During his incarceration for
refusal to pay his war tax, Thoreau was paid a visit by Emerson, who asked,
“What are you doing in here?” To which Thoreau replied, “What are you
doing out there?”
I feel strongly that the collective involvement of writers and editors in the
nation’s politics should not stop with the War Tax Protest. Many of our
colleagues share this view, and are preparing this fall to organize local
chapters of what can become a national writers and journalists association.
An organized and articulate “intelligentsia” can be a political force in
America as it is in France. And it must become a political force if
the increasingly oppressive policies of the present United States government — in Vietnam, in Southern Africa, in Latin America, and here at home — are to
be permanently reversed. Not to organize, not to amplify our voices so that
an ill-informed America may hear alternatives, is to accede, in effect, to
the policies of the present government. For more information, please write me
immediately at 377 Green Street, San Francisco, California 94133.
Included with this letter is a somewhat different version of the proposed ad:
— Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience,
commenting upon American involvement in the Mexican War.
We the undersigned writers and editors, believing that American involvement
in Vietnam is morally wrong, pledge:
None of us voluntarily will pay the proposed 10% income tax surcharge or
any war-designated tax increase.
Many of us will not pay that 23% of our current income tax which is
being used to finance the war in Vietnam.
Following this was a sign-up sheet, asking signers to agree with the statement
“I believe American involvement in the war in Vietnam is morally wrong,” and giving three further options:
“As a writer/editor, I wish to add my name to the Writers and Editors War Tax Protest. I dissociate myself from my government’s actions in Vietnam and I am willing to use my next tax return to vote no-confidence in the present Administration. I enclose a check (payable to Writers and Editors War Tax Protest) for $10.00 or more to help pay for running this statement as a newspaper advertisement and for other expenses.”
“I am in sympathy with what you are doing. Enclosed is my check for $____.”
“I would like more information. Please send me your fact-sheet on tax refusal.”
A number of additional signers had been added to the list by this time:
