How you can resist funding the government →
the tax resistance movement →
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Fall 2011 New England War Tax Resistance regional gathering
It was e.e. cummings, I used to love this when I was an early teenager about a conscientious objector [“i sing of Olaf glad and big”].
There was one line, “there is some shit I will not eat,” that reverberated in my social conscience since probably age 12.
There comes a point when there is something out there that we have to reject ultimately, and we have to throw ourselves on the wheel to stop it — even if the wheel devours us.
The boycott of taxes is so strong, so potentially powerful, that I guess I am urging other people to go forward without fear.
We are right.
War is wrong.
We are approaching the totalitarian state.
Take from them their finances, and we take their strength.
Eliminate the nexus between corporate wealth and industry and politics.
In this era there is so much to protest against, and tax is a very salient part of that.
A note about “frivolous filing” notices.
The IRS has gotten in the habit of responding to taxpayer protests with $5,000 frivolous filing penalties — even if the protests accompany a tax return that has been filled out correctly and legally.
What’s worse is that by the IRS’s rules, in order to appeal such a fine, you have to first pay it.
Peace activists have a resource of financial support when they accrue penalties for resisting taxes, participating in civil disobedience or in nonviolent direct action.
Through the PSC, the cost of a person’s or family’s penalty can be defrayed by almost 100%.
This is possible because a community of almost one hundred people have come together and committed to help each other with their fines.
A new edition of More Than a Paycheck,
NWTRCC’s newsletter, is now on-line, and features the following:
A war tax resistance manifesto by Larry Rosenwald, and responses from Claire Schaeffer-Duffy, Karl Meyer, and Bill Glassmire.
(I’ll have more on this in a future Picket Line entry… stay tuned.)
Buyer Beware, a poem on military spending by Marge Piercy
The IRS has gotten in the habit of sending out “frivolous filing” notices to anyone who writes them a letter explaining their reasons for tax resistance (or even in response to letters from non-resisters who are just paying under protest). These notices are accompanied by a $5,000 fine — a fine that, by law, must be paid before it can be appealed. The IRS is only authorized to assess such fines in response to a tax filing that is incomplete, inaccurate, and that involves some frivolous legal stance, so it is pretty clearly overstepping its bounds here: but because a resister must pay the fine in order to appeal it, and most war tax resisters are unwilling to do so, this puts them in a bind. One resister, Steve Leeds, got such a frivolous filing notice and then, instead of paying the fine and formally appealing it, he complained to his congressional representatives about the IRS’s abuse of the law. One of his representatives then contacted the IRS, which then caved — sending Leeds an apology.
If the IRS attaches a levy to your salary, it will leave you some portion of your salary to live on while it sucks away the rest. How does it determine how much to take? Is it based on your base salary, or on what’s left over in your check after deductions for 401(k) contributions, insurance premiums, commuter checks, or what have you? Turns out the answer is the latter, but only if those deductions were already in effect at the time the levy was received by the employer.
A book review of The Green Zone by Clare Hanrahan — this book looks at the environmental impact of the U.S. military, which is exempt from laws and treaties designed to protect the environment, and, according to the author, is “the largest single polluter of any single agency or organization in the world.”
War tax resistance ideas and actions, featuring a penny poll in Oregon, a protest in Washington D.C., and the upcoming New England gathering of war tax resisters.
NWTRCC News — a behind the scenes look into operations at NWTRCC headquarters.
Charles Carney reflects on his conversion to war tax resistance, partially motivated by the war tax resistance of Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen in .
I have been able to divert over $100,000 away from the Boeings and the Halliburtons of the world to the Oxfams and Amnesty Internationals and Physicians for Social Responsibility and Harvesters of the world.
It all started for me with that very liberating idea of unilateral disarmament.
What a freeing thing to be able to lay down my sword and shield.
What a freeing thing to tell the government, to tell the military-industrial complex, to tell Wall Street: “No you can’t have my money.
All my checks will be written out to the people.
All my checks will be written out to the 99 percent; no more checks written out to the 1 percent.”
Notes about the IRS policy on salary levies and on employers who are willing to work with resisters to help them resist such levies, on banks versus credit unions, and on the effectiveness of scary letters from the IRS.
Information about the upcoming International Conference of War Tax Resisters and Peace Tax Campaigns, on the European Court of Human Rights case for conscientious objection to military taxation being pursued by Roy Prockter, and on a new director for the American peace tax fund promoting group.
A report from the 26th annual New England Regional Gathering of War Tax Resisters.
Ed Hedemann’s proposal for “zombie war tax resistance,” in which he suggests that resisters prefill war-tax-refusing tax returns for several years in the future, and leave instructions for people to file them each year after your death.
“Why concede the ‘death’ part in that old saying about certainty?
Why give the government a break from having to deal with your resistance when you die?
What if there were a way to continue war tax resistance from the grave?”
An update on the case of imprisoned war tax resister Carlos Steward.
