Miscellaneous tax resisters → individual war tax resisters → Glen Milner

War tax resisters want a better world, opines Glen Milner in today’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

We may not be perfect in our efforts for a better world. We must be aware, however, of what we are doing and the consequences of our allegiance to a sick and dying system.

Martha Baskin has written a piece on tax resisters for The NewStandard — Anti-War Activists Promote “Tax Resistance” As Direct Protest. Some excerpts:

Glen Milner, an electrician and father of three in Seattle, Washington, files his taxes every year. His approach, however, is unusual. On the top of his 1040 form he writes in large print: “Some taxes withheld in protest of funds appropriated for illegal military purposes.”

“What I’m doing,” says Milner, “is telling the IRS right up front that somewhere in the form I’m withholding funds.” He doesn’t tell the agency where the missing funds are, but Milner has filed his taxes in this manner since 1985. A conscientious objector during the Vietnam War and an active proponent of US nuclear disarmament, Milner says he is putting his money “where his mouth is.” He cannot resist militarization and war and pay for it at the same time, he says.…

In 1994, [Eddie] Tews… began practicing war tax resistance by refusing to pay the IRS hundreds of dollars annually. Every year, he says, the IRS demands payment by sending him a couple of letters, which he discards. In subsequent years Tews has avoided paying federal taxes altogether by practicing what he calls “W-4 resistance” or adding more exemptions than he’s legally entitled to.

Nevertheless, Tews says the IRS has never audited him. “If I consent to pay more taxes, then more bombs are dropped, more pollution is made and more lives are destroyed; and if I have to suffer some infinitesimal level of consequences as a result of my actions compared to the consequences suffered by other people as a result of [me] consenting to pay my taxes, well to me that’s — it’s not even worth talking about,” he said.…

“The one thing that the US government wants from most average, ordinary people in regards to this war is our money,” says Kathy Kelley, one of the founders of Voices in the Wilderness. “From most of us, they don’t want our lives — we certainly think of those who are being enlisted — but the reality of what the government wants is people to pay for this war and not to ask a lot of questions about it.”

Kelley has been a war tax resister for most of her working life. She says she began by lowering her salary below the taxable income when she taught religion at a Jesuit school in Chicago. When she moved to one of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods on the north side at the height of the arms race between the former Soviet Union and the US, Kelley says she could not talk religion and then turn around and pay for a weapons build-up that could destroy the planet.

“The contradiction was just too much,” she recalled. “I certainly couldn’t take money that my neighbors desperately needed for food, for housing, for a drop-in center, for an alternative school — for so many needs in this impoverished area. I couldn’t say well I don’t have funds because I’m going to put it into buying more weapons.”

She added, “I’m through with buying materials to kill people. Once you make that decision — if you really believe it — you can make it for a lifetime and then it’s possible to withhold all federal income tax.”

Some tax resistance links from hither and yon:

• The Greenfield Recorder features an article about anti-war activist Randy Kehler. Excerpt:

  At age 77, the soft-spoken Kehler is still inspiring nonviolent anti-war activism. Locally, he and his wife of 45 years, Betsy Corner, are possibly most remembered for their stand against the Internal Revenue Service, as “war tax-resisters” whose rural Colrain home was seized for non-payment of taxes in 1991 and sold by the IRS for $5,400.

• The Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action’s newsletter includes an interview with war tax resister Kathy Kelly and an article about war tax resistance by Lincoln Rice and Glen Milner.
• Richard M. Schickel, a former IRS Revenue Officer, has put out a new book: Why The IRS Doesn’t Work Anymore: An Insider’s Guide to the Agency. It airs the dirty laundry at the IRS that the agency tries to distract you from with their rah-rah glossy reports.
• Bloomberg Businessweek has an article about IRS “customer” service and how awful it is.

  Its customer service workforce has shrunk more than 40% since 2010, according to the most recent data, and the agency is struggling to fill vacancies amid a labor shortage — handcuffed by a federal pay scale that starts college graduates at little more than fast-food wages.

  It’s so bad, that tax professionals can’t even reach the agency on the special back-channel line designed just for them. One person’s hopeless bureaucratic dysfunction is another person’s opportunity: A company has launched a $100/month service “that makes robocalls to the agency’s special practitioner line… waits on hold, and then, when it makes a connection, puts the client through to an IRS agent.”
• The human war on traffic ticket camera robots continues. In France and Italy, fire and spray paint took out several cameras, while Santa Claus converted another one into a pose-with-Santa photo booth. Spray paint was also the weapon of choice in several attacks in France and Germany in recent weeks.