The Brattleboro Reformer reports on a group of tax resisters — including Daniel Sicken, Ellen Kaye, Bob Bady and Erik Schickendanz — who decided to write their checks to charity instead of to the U.S. Treasury :
In all, $5,000 was given to charities, including to the Windham County Reads program, to a group starting a community garden on Upper Dummerston Road and to the Citizens Awareness Network, a local activist group. ¶ Morningside Shelter received almost $800 from the tax resistors.
“We are opening a new building for homeless pregnant women and those who have just given birth,” said David Mattocks, the executive director of the shelter. “This is a significant contribution to that project.”
Daniel Sicken, an East Dummerston resident and a member of Tax Resisters of Conscience, said, though he pays local and state taxes, he hasn’t paid federal taxes in . He said giving the money instead to charity is much more appropriate.…
“But it’s hard to be a resistor,” said Sicken. “It has a lot of rewards, but also a lot of difficulties.” Sicken said though he has never been prosecuted for his failure to pay federal taxes, he and other resisters have had to learn to live with very little money or within the barter economy — trading goods and services for other goods and services.…
“Not paying taxes has liberated me from consumer society which has improved the quality of my life,” said Ellen Kaye, a 43-year-old Brattleboro resident who said she stopped paying federal taxes after a trip to Nicaragua in .
Kaye said she saw how her tax dollars were being used to kill innocent people and she was disgusted. She said when it came time to file her taxes that year, she became physically ill, thinking about where her money was going.
Her husband, Bob Bady, 53, of Brattleboro, said the last time he paid federal taxes was during the Vietnam war. He said though he was 18 at the time, he refused to serve in the military.
“And if I’m not willing to fight, why would I pay for someone else to fight for me?” asked Bady.
