From the edition of In These Times:
Pocketbook Pacifists
Some people use income tax time to send an anti-military message to the government.
by Marcia Yudkin
“Some people think tax resistance is an extreme thing to do,” muses Steven Broil, “but you have to be as extreme and active as the people you’re opposing. Money talks.” An increasing number of people are using April 15th as an opportunity to talk back. According to a recent General Accounting Office report, tax resistance rose sharply in , with a 400 percent increase in the Northeast. Accurate estimates of the number of war tax resisters are difficult to arrive at. The IRS has a category called “illegal protesters,” in which it placed 6,694 individuals in 1978 and 15,285 in 1980. According to the War Resisters League, those figures are a gross underestimate. There might be as many as 200,000 people resisting taxes from any principled position, including at least several thousand specifically protesting military spending. IRS figures would also not include individuals using wholly legal means to resist war taxes. And both the War Resisters League and the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign report a groundswell of interest since President Reagan took office.
Steven Broil, who stocks shelves in a store in Amherst, Mass., last year found himself for the first time owing the government money at tax time. He happened to hear an announcement on the radio of a number to call about war tax resistance, and after a conference with veteran tax resisters Wally and Juanita Nelsen [sic] of nearby Deerfield, he decided not to pay the $255 he owed. He filed and enclosed a statement of his decision of conscience instead of a check.
Broil might seem an unlikely recruit to the ranks of tax resisters. Both his parents were officers in the military, and only a long string of coincidences prevented his own enlistment in the Air Force. Recently, however, he has developed what he calls “pacifist leanings.”
“I was raised a Roman Catholic,” he explains, “and we weren’t exactly encouraged to read the Bible for ourselves. But when I began to read the Bible I found that it’s pretty much black and white in the Gospels not to kill and to love your enemy. From believing that it’s wrong to kill under any circumstances, the next logical step is that I shouldn’t participate in killing in any way. Working so that my taxes go toward killing is intolerable.”
He has also come to feel strongly about El Salvador. “A lot of people say they’re against U.S. aid going to El Salvador, but they don’t make the connection that money is taken out of their paycheck every week and sent to El Salvador.”
Comparative risk.
Breaking the law was not an easy thing for Broil to bring himself to do. Last year, a series of “Dear Taxpayer” letters ended with threats to garnish his wages or seize bank accounts, although neither happened. This year, his giving false information on his W-4 withholding form and deciding not to file a tax return at all make him liable to a year’s imprisonment and a substantial fine. Although he points out that Wally and Juanita Nelsen have been resisting for 30 years and Juanita was only jailed once for an hour, he knows that the government could create difficulties for him.
Erin Freed of the Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters points out that it usually costs the government more money to pursue tax resisters than it will collect, a good reason not to bother. On the other hand, the tax system relies on voluntary compliance, and the IRS must crack down on “avoidance schemes” that appear to be popular. Hence there is great variance in the government’s response to war tax resisters. One PVWTR member had the $600 in his checking account seized without notice during his second year of war tax resistance, while another member received his first phone call from the IRS nine years after he began to resist. Since court trials of war tax resisters are expensive and may generate publicity favorable to the cause, they are few and far between. seven pacifist refusers were criminally prosecuted, none, and in there were two criminal convictions.
“In our little world,” Broil says, “if my wife and I lost our savings or if I lost my job, that would really put a dent in our lives, but if you put yourself in a village of El Salvador where they can take you out and shoot you — or put yourself in a European’s place hearing about Haig’s nuclear war and knowing that the war would be in your backyard — our risks are minimal.”
The roughly $2,000 that he owes the IRS has been contributed instead to an alternative fund administered by the Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters, a local group of about a dozen longtime members, “We feel we can do a better job with our money than the government can,” explains Broil. “We put the money toward life-affirming purposes.” Part of the money in the fund is reserved for legal fees a member might need, but most of it is loaned to local groups who don’t have access to mainstream funding.
Like many tax resisters, Broil keeps no bank accounts. Instead he gives extra money to friends on interest-free loans. “You can’t have a house or a car in your name because the IRS could seize it,” he says, “and it’s much easier to keep the money away from the government in the first place if you can be self-employed.”
Alan Eccleston, an architect and builder who also lives in Amherst, is a war tax resister in the ideal position of being able to withhold the quarterly payments required of a self-employed person. But he has a very different philosophy of resistance. He makes partial quarterly payments and doesn’t much mind that for the last seven years, the IRS has usually ended up with his full income tax assessment, plus interest and penalties on the amount held back. “Some war tax resisters put a maximum of energy into preventing collection by the IRS,” he says. “I put my energy into following my conscience and conveying my beliefs to others.” A Quaker, Eccleston opposes war in any form. “The only people who have the opportunity to be conscientious objectors against war in this country are 17-year-old males,” he points out, referring to draft registration. “But I believe that the First and Ninth Amendments to the Constitution protect my right to refuse war taxes.”
So that people like himself can satisfy both their consciences and the law, he supports the passage of the World Peace Tax Fund bill, first introduced in the Senate in by Senator Mark Hatfield and now with 333 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives. The bill would provide taxpayers with the opportunity to identify themselves on their 1040 form as conscientious objectors to war taxes. The portion of their income tax that would otherwise go to the military would instead be deposited with the World Peace Tax Fund and be available only for peaceful purposes.
Eccleston rejects the criticism of some other war tax resisters that after 40 percent or so of their taxes was handed over to the World Peace Tax Fund, the same percentage of the remainder would still go to the military. “It’s a good idea because the general fund would receive less money,” he argues, “billions less if even 4 percent of the population chose to be COs. Their $4 billion a year in the World Peace Tax Fund would clearly support alternatives to war that presently get no funding. It would spread the ethical decision to more people. Every year every taxpayer would have to think about whether or not he or she wanted to support the military.”
Another project he supports is the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign, coordinated by four activists in Bellport, N.Y. Signers of the resolution they circulate pledge to withhold at least the military portion of their income taxes when notified that 100,000 people have signed the resolution. CMTC also administers an escrow account to hold refused taxes. Yet Eccleston urges people not to wait for the safety of numbers. The important thing to him is taking personal responsibility and going on record against preparations for nuclear war.
Eccleston is accordingly less enthusiastic about the strategy of some war tax resisters to avoid contributing to the military by reducing their income to a nontaxable level. “The point is not to be self-sacrificing, but to witness for peace. The real issue is peace, not tax resistance.”
