Miscellaneous tax resisters → individual war tax resisters → Peter Haney

Some short bits from here-and-there around the web:

  • The Get Rich Slowly blog recently highlighted Don Schrader, a low-income / simple-living war tax resister and Albuquerque-area local legend. At last count, there were 56 comments from people evaluating Schrader’s eccentric and dedicated lifestyle and the principles behind them.
  • The Colorado Springs Independent covers the war on war tax, and includes quotes from Peter Haney and Esther Kisamore.
  • The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which factchecks the IRS, has again had to go to court to compel the agency to release figures about its audit process.
  • Expatriate satyagrahi tax resister Jeff Knaebel delivered a speech at the Gandhi Sixtieth Memorial in Pune . The text of the speech has been reprinted at LewRockwell.com. Excerpt:

    Complete non-violence today would mean acquiescence in systematic destruction of the whole earth, and thus all of humanity with it. Some situations demand that we defend our land, our right to livelihood, and our lives with violent defensive action.

    Direct Action Today, I feel, however, is best expressed in self-restraint, in the quiet refusal to buy corporate products, in boycott, in self-reliance and in tax refusal, in refusal to report for combat in aggressive war, in refusal to accept corporate and government media propaganda as truth.

  • On NWTRCC’s mailing list, Larry Rosenwald discusses how an emphasis on voluntary simplicity may leave some war tax resisters feeling left out. Excerpt:

    I know what “simplified” means in these contexts, and I’m highly aware of being a war tax resister who doesn’t try to live such a life, at least in some senses of “simplified,” and I’m wondering, Where exactly… is there room for me, a war tax resister , “sustainable for the long haul,” and with every expectation of continuing to do war tax resistance as long as I live? “Simplicity” isn’t… being presented as something to deliberate over; it’s presented as something to “embrace.”

Colorado Springs war tax resisters are in the news again, this time in The Gazette. Excerpts:

For , retired social worker and lifelong peace activist Esther Kisamore has received threatening phone calls and letters from the Internal Revenue Service because she refuses to pay federal income taxes and federal excise taxes on her telephone bills.

Lawyer Bill Durland and his wife, Genie, have appeared in tax court numerous times since and had their Social Security checks garnished by the IRS.

Psychologist Donna Johnson had two houses seized and eventually returned.

The Colorado Springs residents were aware of such possible consequences when they deliberately snubbed tax time — not to have extra money in their pockets and not because they don’t believe the government should tax citizens.

They don’t want their taxes used to fund military spending and war efforts.

“It is an individual act of moral conscience,” [Peter] Haney said. “In Colorado Springs close to 50 percent of our primary employment comes from military bases and defense contractors, so we’re so reliant on the federal dole, yet many of us have a frontier mentality to be independent and self-reliant.”

Before Johnson reduced her income to below the taxable rate, she paid half of what she owed in federal income taxes. Her first house was seized by the IRS for nonpayment of the phone excise tax, about $7. She eventually got the house and another one back, and the $200,000 she owed in taxes and liens on her property were released after a statute of limitations ran out.

“You just stand up and say ‘I’m not willing to pay even though you threaten me,’ ” Johnson said.