How you can resist funding the government →
the tax resistance movement →
birth of the modern American war tax resistance movement →
Gerhard Friesen
Mary Stone McDowell is a rare — perhaps unique — example of someone who took a war tax resistance stand during World War Ⅰ and was also part of the post World War Ⅱ revival of war tax resistance in America.
Miss Mary S. McDowell, Member of Society of Friends, to Face Trial.
Miss Mary S. McDowell, a teacher of Latin in the Manual Training High School,
was suspended from duty without pay
as a result of charges of
pacifism brought against her several weeks ago by the Board of
Superindendents.
The order suspending Miss McDowell, issued by
Dr. Gustave Straubenmuller,
acting Superintendent of Schools, was approved formally by the Board of
Education at its meeting. In the formal notice the cause for suspension is
given as “conduct unbecoming a teacher.”
Miss McDowell will be called before a special committee of the School Board
to show cause why she should not be dismissed from the service. No date has
been set for the trial.
Miss McDowell, who lives with her mother at
No. 20 Crooke avenue, Brooklyn,
is a member of the Society of Friends and declares that by reason of her
faith she conscientiously is opposed to war and all its activities. It is
alleged she repeatedly refused to sign loyalty pledges circulated among the
teachers and refused to take part in Red Cross work and Liberty Bond sales.
Miss McDowell has been a teacher in the public schools for thirteen years and, in the opinion of Dr. Straubenmuller, is “a very estimable woman and an excellent Latin teacher, with unfortunate views regarding the war.”
,
but 70 pacifists throughout the country, including a former school teacher in
Brooklyn, will refuse to pay Uncle Sam who, they say, is spending his money
preparing for a war.
The group has grown since
when about 40 pacifists, objecting to the “war preparations,” refused to pay
either all or a part of their taxes.
Mary McDowall of 555 Ocean
Ave., a Quaker who taught
Latin at Abraham Lincoln High School until her retirement five years ago, is
a member of the group, known as the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers.
“I’m Not Stingy”
Miss McDowall has withheld one-third of her total tax, claiming “at least
that proportion is used for war preparation.” The withheld amount, she points
out is donated to the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers).
“I don’t want the money I withhold,” she says. “I’m not stingy. I merely
won’t help in construction for war.
Miss McDowall’s Quaker principles caused her suspension from the faculty of
Manual Training High School in . She was
suspended for “disloyalty and insubordination,” having refused to take part
in the school’s patriotic aid program of World War Ⅰ.
She was cleared and reinstated in when it
was officially admitted that her Board of Education trial had been held “at a
time of great public excitement.”
Has Jaile[d] Confrere
The 70 “tax refusers,” in a statement issued at their headquarters, 2013
5th
Ave., Manhattan, announced
they “hail the courage of Katsuki James Otsuka,” who drew a three-month
Federal sentence and a $100 fine in Indianapolis earlier this month for
refusing to pay $4.50 in income taxes.
Otsuka also refused to pay the fine, choosing instead an additional sentence.
Among the organization’s Manhattan members is Sander Katz, 25, who served 19
months in jail for refusing to report for induction in World War Ⅱ and who
was sentenced to another year and a day for refusing to register under the
Draft Act.
Another Brooklyn Eagle article, from, I think,
around :
Mary S. McDowell, 74, retired public school teacher of 555 Ocean
Ave., wants it known that
again this year she is paying only two-thirds of her Federal income tax.
The reason, she advised during a call at the Brooklyn Eagle office, is that
she is opposed to war and refuses to finance the manufacture of war
materials.
“An estimated third of income tax collections goes for defense,” she said.
“So one-third of my tax payment, or what would be a third of it, I am giving
to a charity. I did it last year on my own initiative and this year I am
withholding one-third as a member of the ‘Peacemakers’.”
From its Manhattan office at 2013 5th
Ave. the Peacemakers issued a
press release in which it described itself as “a national pacifist movement”
and listed “27 men and 19 women in scattered parts of the United States” who
are not paying income taxes because they “refuse to finance war
preparations.” Miss McDowell is among those listed.
“I am a Quaker,” said Miss McDowell, the only Brooklynite on the Peacemakers’
list. “I have always been opposed to war. Not paying income tax is a
practical Way of expressing opposition to war.
“I was opposed to the first World War. I was teaching at Manual Training High
School then. Because of my expressed opposition I was fired. It wasn’t until
that I was reinstated as a
teacher.”
She was at Abraham Lincoln when she retired in
.
The Peacemakers’ list of tax rebels includes the names of the
Rev. A.J. Muste of 21
Audubon Ave., Manhattan,
described as secretary of the organization, and the
Rev. Ernest R. Bromley of
Wilmington, Ohio, named as chairman of the Tax Refusal Committee.
“One omission from the list,” the release explains, “is the name of Katsuki
James Otsuka, an earlham college student of Richmond,
Ind. He was released on
after serving nearly five months in the Federal Correctional Institution,
Ashland, Ky., for his
refusal to pay $4.50 income taxes. He was released even though he continued
to refuse to pay. His name does not appear because his imprisonment prevented
his earning a taxable income for .”
The Eagle covered her protest again in
:
Kansas Tax Conchies
Topeka,
Kan.,
(U.P.) — Kansas Internal Revenue officials
had two “conscientious objectors” on their hands today when Edith Aldis and
the Rev. Gerhard Friesen
defied Federal income tax laws on grounds that “too much of the money goes
for military armament.” Both have signed a statement issued by the tax
refusal committee of Peacemakers, a pacifist movement with headquarters in
New York.
A retired Brooklyn Latin teacher was one of 41 “Tax Refusers” across the
nation who deducted from their Federal returns — due
— percentages they said
would be used for present and future wars.
Mary S. McDowell of 555 Ocean
Ave., a Quaker who started
teaching in borough schools in and was
suspended from the school system for pacifist activities, in a letter to the local internal
revenue office said she was sending $237 — 60 percent of her return — to the
American Friends Service Committee, a charity, to keep herself from being
“involved in war preparations.”
The 76-year-old woman wrote: “All war is contrary to the essential principle
of Christianity and to the basic faith of democracy.” She inclosed a pamphlet
entitled “A Democratic Program for a Durable Peace” which she recently had
published.
, she said, she
deducted only 45 percent from her tax return. The increase this year, she
explained, was prompted not by inflation but by mounting Government spending
for rearmament.
Government Takes Lien
The income tax office , in a move to
collect the unpaid balance of her return, placed a lien on the elderly
ex-teacher’s pension.
A native of New Jersey, Miss McDowell attended Swarthmore College and taught
in Manual Training and Abraham Lincoln High Schools. She retired in
.
Her letter, in part, said: “I realize that I cannot entirely free myself from
being involved in war preparations; but I believe it is important to bear my
testimony in action as far as I can.
“Now that we are so largely devoting our men and our resources to war
preparations and taking part in an armament race, it seems clearer than ever
that our course may be leading toward world war and inconceivable slaughter
and destruction to our own country as well as the world.
“Accordingly, it would seem that not only religious pacifists, but all
intelligent true patriots should do everything in their power to halt
rearmament and vastly increase constructive activities looking toward
worldwide human welfare and durable peace.”
A 77-year-old former Latin teacher has taken a stand in which many of her
neighbors would like to join her ,
although for more personal reasons. Mary McDowell of 555 Ocean
Ave. has refused to pay her
income tax.
Member of the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers — a group of individuals
scattered over the nation who withhold that part of their tax which they
believe will be used for armaments — Miss McDowell held back 70 percent.
Each year the tally grows. In , the elderly
teacher said, she deducted only 60 percent from her return.
it was 45 percent. It is her
custom to contribute the deducted amounts to the American Friends Service
Committee.
The Quaker lady has been fighting a war against war nearly all her life. She
started teaching in Brooklyn in but was
suspended from the school system because of her pacifist activities during World War Ⅰ.
Her defiance of the tax collector, Miss McDowell calls “the new patriotism.”
The popular idea, she said, holds up the soldier as a model of patriotism
but, against this, she matches her own method of “trying to prevent a
disaster to one’s country.”
Each year the U.S.
Government refuses to be persuaded and places a lien on her teacher’s
pension. Each year Miss McDowell tries, in the same way, to express her
belief that “war or threats of war cannot bring security.”
The Tax Refusers, she said, “strive not only to avoid assisting in
preparations for war, but also to point out constructive courses of action,
that will bring durable peace through human welfare, disarmament and solution
of world problems.”
Miss McDowell believes the great day of permanent peace “will come like
Spring,” suddenly but only as a result of slow preparation and a multitude of
just such efforts as her own small token resistance to the tax collector.
, McDowell was at it again, and
the Eagle was there:
Mary McDowell, 78, retired high school teacher of 555 Ocean
Ave.,
figured out her
Federal income tax.
It came to $300.
She promptly sent a check for $90 as her tax to the Internal Revenue Bureau.
“I’m paying only 30 percent of my tax,” she said
.” I refuse to pay the 70 percent
which goes for war purposes.”
She calls her tax defiance “the new patriotism.”
Miss McDowell is a member of the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers — a
group of individuals scattered over the nation who each year withhold part of
their tax which they believe will go for armaments.
she has withheld part of
her tax.
Each year the Government refuses to go along with her and it places a lien on
her teacher’s pension.
She is a Quaker and has been fighting against war all her life.
“War is contrary to Christian principles and is contrary to democratic
ideals,” she contends.
’s Picket Line
was all about Mary McDowell, but it also briefly mentioned three people
involved in the early years of the modern American war tax resistance movement
whom I hadn’t heard of before: Sander Katz, Edith Aldis, and Gerhard Friesen.
You’d think a name like “Sander Katz” would make for easy Googling, but in fact there is a “Sandor Katz” who is well-known today for, for instance, his fine do-it-yourself guide Wild Fermentation.
Google tends to want to assume you’re just misspelling his name if you try to hunt for “Sander Katz.”
Katz is listed as the editor of a collection of Freud’s essays “on war, sex,
and neurosis” with an introduction by
Paul Goodman.
He is also listed as one of two editors of Complex: The
Magazine of Psychoanalysis and Society (and he’d occasionally
contribute articles as well, for example: “Comparative Sexual Behavior: Is
orgasm for the human female normal?”). He was also on the editorial committee
of a magazine called Alternative that published
and was associated
with the “Non-Profit Association of Libertarians” and the “Committee for
Non-Violent Revolution.” Other members of that committee included war tax
resisters David Dellinger, Ralph DiGia, and Roy Kepler.
In , the syndicated columnist
Robert Ruark spent
several column inches denigrating Katz, who had just been sentenced to a one-year prison term for refusing to register for the
military draft (and then Ruark put out
another column’s worth when Katz was released eight months later).
“I know something about this particular rugged individualist,” Ruark wrote,
“who served 19 months in jail during the last war for refusal to report for
induction. His name is Sander Katz, and he is one of the long-hairs who stroll
the [Greenwich] Village streets, lost in reverie and a turtle-neck sweater.”
Katz was imprisoned because he said he opposed the draft on “social, political,
and philosophical grounds” and the law at that time only recognized
conscientious objection for religious reasons.
, Katz, along with several dozen
others, burned his draft card during a “Break With Conscription Committee”
demonstration in New York City. , Katz was arrested, along with several others, for picketing
at a draft registration center.
I found a few more newspaper articles about Edith Aldis, all based on the same
template. The Long Island Star-Journal of
for instance, which also
mentions Gerhard Friesen:
Topeka,
Kan.
(UP) — Kansas
Internal Revenue officials had two “conscientious objectors” on their hands
today when Miss Edith Aldis and the
Rev. Gerhard Friesen defied
federal income tax laws on grounds that “too much of the money goes for
military armament.”
Both have signed a statement issued by the Tax Refusal Committee of
Peacemakers, a pacifist movement with headquarters in New York.
Miss Aldis said she paid 10 per cent of her taxes, the amount estimated for
use for non-military spending. Friesen said he would pay only direct taxes on
the “principal of the thing,” because other levies are “a part of the plan to
destroy our country.”
I found a few more things about Friesen as well.
I even saw one mention of his war tax resistance (too brief to quote, alas) that said that he had begun resisting in !
Her father, she said, “was ahead of his time” in advocating war tax
resistance and speaking out at Mennonite conferences against profiteering
from the war economy. “His conscience would not let him support the military.”
She said her father would have approved the
action by the General Conference Mennonite Church to honor employee Cornelia
Lehn’s request to not have her income taxes withheld from her paychecks.
The Friesens practiced war tax resistance by living simply, giving generously,
and usually not earning enough to owe taxes.
Although as a youth she was embarrassed by her father’s outspokenness to
audiences unreceptive to his message, Martha embraced her parents’
convictions about Christian discipleship and peacemaking and taught them to
her children. She files tax returns but usually has a zero taxable income due
to living simply and giving 50 percent of her income to charity. She has also
advocated for the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund legislation.
Bethlehem,
Pa.
(AP) — In an action primarily protesting
U.S. military
policies, the General Conference Mennonites has became [sic.]
the first mainstream Christian church to refuse to withhold federal taxes
from employees’ paychecks.
Delegates to the church’s international convention
voted 1,128 to 457 to authorize
church officials to violate federal law by refusing to withhold federal taxes.
A denomination spokesman said the church has tried for four years to secure
legislative, administrative, and judicial approval for its employees to refuse
to pay their taxes as a protest against the use of the money for military
hardware.
A group of Quakers — the American Friends Service Committee — also has
refused to withhold taxes, according to Margaret Bacon, a spokeswoman for the
Philadelphia-based group. The AFSC provides world-wide relief and works for social change.
But Dean M. Kelley, director for religious and civil liberty of the National
Council of Churches, said none of the council’s 31 member denominations had
previously refused to forward employees’ taxes to the federal government.
The 66,000-member General Conference Mennonite Church and the 93,000-member
Mennonite Church are holding their international meetings this week at Lehigh
University. The conferences are the first time the two churches have ever met
together.
Larry Cornies, news director for the General Conference Mennonites, said the
church has been considering the issue of tax withholdings for five years.
The catalyst came in , when Cornelia Lehn,
then director of children’s education for the church, asked the church to not
withhold taxes from her paycheck, Cornies said. She has since retired to
British Colombia.
, the church has decided a
U.S. Supreme Court
test case would be unsuccessful and a tax withholding bill could not get
through Congress, he said.
Cornies said a bill to let taxpayers earmark their taxes for a World Peace Tax
Fund, to be used only for peaceful purposes, “doesn’t look like it’s got much
of a chance.”
The National Council’s Kelley said the only denominations considering refusal
to let taxes be withheld are the “peace churches” — the Mennonites, the Church
of the Brethren, and the Quakers.
“Most of the mainline denominations are not pacifist,” he said.
The Mennonites decided not to approach the Supreme Court after the justices
ruled against an Amish employer from New Wilmington,
Pa., who had refused to
withhold Social Security taxes from Amish employees.
“Then it gratuitously added something to the effect that ‘if we let this take
place, people would be able to insist that they were entitled to withhold
paying of taxes on expenditures they object to, such as war and armaments,’ ”
Kelley said.
The (Lexington, North
Carolina) Dispatch carried this shorter and slightly
different version of the report:
Bethlehem,
Pa.
(AP) — To
protest funding of
U.S. military
activity, the General Conference Mennonites have voted to refuse to withhold
federal taxes from employees’ paychecks.
Dean M. Kelley, director for religious and civil liberty of the National
Council of Churches, said the
66,000-member General Conference Mennonites are the only denomination
belonging to the council ever to have taken such action.
A Quaker group, the American Friends Service Committee, also refuses to
withhold employees’ federal taxes.
A spokesman for the pacifist General Conference Mennonites said the church
has tried for four years to secure legislative, administrative, and judicial
approval for its employees to refuse to pay their taxes as a protest against
use of the money for military hardware.
Delegates to the church’s international convention
voted 1,128 to 457 to authorize
church officials to violate federal law by stopping the withholding of federal
taxes.
Larry Cornies, news director for the General Conference Mennonites, said the
church began considering the issue in , when
Cornelia Lehn, then director of children’s education for the church, asked
that taxes not be withheld from her paycheck. Ms. Lehn has since retired to
Canada.
Gene Harris, spokesman for the Internal Revenue Service in Philadelphia, said
of the Mennonite’s vote: “It’s a violation of the law. If they actually do
that, they could be prosecuted in court. It’s happened before and the
IRS has
won the case. But they would have to be audited first.”
According to the Toledo Blade, it was
, not , when
the Conference began mulling over war tax resistance. Here is an article from
their edition:
Bluffton,
O. — The General
Conference Mennonite Church, holding its 41st
triennial conference here, passed a resolution
calling for “serious study
of civil disobedience and war tax resistance during the next 18 months.” The
vote was 1,178½ yes to 453½ no.
The conference Monday rejected a proposed amendment to the resolution that
would have allowed the denomination as an employer to refuse to withhold the
so-called “war portion” of an employee’s income tax, if the employee
requested it, during the 18-month study period.
The denomination employs about 50 persons at its Newton,
Kan., headquarters, Lois
Barrett, spokesman, said.
The resolution was drafted because one employee at the headquarters, Cornelia
Lehn, had requested that the
war-tax portion of her taxes not be withheld from her salary, making it
possible for her to “follow her conscience in this matter.”
The “war portion” refers to the percentage used by the Government for military
purposes, according to the resolution.
This is the forty-sixth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it
was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today
we find ourselves in our own decade.
Her father [Gerhard Friesen], she said, “was ahead of his time” in advocating
war tax resistance and speaking out at Mennonite conferences against
profiteering from the war economy. “His conscience would not let him support
the military.”
She said her father would have approved the
action by the General Conference Mennonite Church to honor employee Cornelia
Lehn’s request to not have her income taxes withheld from her paychecks.
The Friesens practiced war tax resistance by living simply, giving generously
and usually not earning enough to owe income taxes.
Although as a youth she was embarrassed by her father’s outspokenness to
audiences unreceptive to his message, Martha embraced her parents’ convictions
about Christian discipleship and peacemaking and taught them to her children.
She files tax returns but usually has a zero taxable income due to living
simply and giving 50 percent of her income to charity. She has also advocated
for the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund legislation.
Daniel Riehl, in a letter to the editor printed in the
edition, invited readers to visit a
website where they could learn how much they were contributing to war by
entering their taxable income:
If one adds up the taxable income of every Mennonite in the land, how much is
the Mennonite church contributing to destroying other countries for the
benefit of our corporations? Is this really what we want to do with our
wealth, the wealth of “Die Stille im Lande,” the
capital of Anabaptists, the sweat of the brow of the meek and the nonviolent
peacemakers?
[M]y mind and heart increasingly made connections with the inherent
contradiction of praying for peace and paying for war via “war taxes.” How
could I, a follower of the Prince of Peace, justify paying for militarism and
the building of weapons with my tax dollars? Indeed, these weapons might be
used to harm or even kill my friends in the Middle East and people in other
places. Increasingly my conscience was bolstered by biblical convictions.
I struggled with others who were also trying to find clarity on this issue.
Later I worked in a Mennonite church in Pennsylvania where my role included
teaching the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7)
to ecumenical women’s groups and to young people.
Thus, while living in the state of the Quaker William Penn and delving deeper
into the Scriptures as well as the
Anabaptist witness, the path became clearer. For me the way to go was to live
below the war-taxable level.
After considerable discernment, the church’s education committee proposed to
the church leadership that I would continue in my position but would be paid
as a person in Mennonite Voluntary Service so as to keep my salary under the
taxable level. There was some resistance by the church leadership to my
becoming a voluntary service worker. Even though there was strong verbal
affirmation for our Anabaptist peace position, it was not acceptable to church
leadership for me to take this stance and commit to living more simply while
still holding the same position.
My resignation meant that I had six months before my two-year contract was up.
I continued wrestling with the question, How can we Mennonites continue being
the quiet in the land when the world is full of violence?
The edition carried
a
brief article about the Everence Sharing Fund, which distributed nearly a
million dollars in financial assistance to thousands of needy families
. It noted that the fund grew
out of the Everence Federal Credit Union, from which, “[b]ecause of the
organization’s unique tax status, money that would be paid in federal taxes is
instead distributed through mutual aid programs like the Sharing Fund.”
Mennonite World Conference asked a question of Mennonite Church
U.S.A.
(the U.S. branch of
the successor of the merged Mennonite Church and the Mennonite General
Conference): “How are we doing as a peace church?”
In the edition, André Gingerich
Stoner (“director of holistic witness for Mennonite Church
U.S.A.”)
wrote up an answer (“after taking counsel from area conference leaders and
testing [his] response with a wider circle of pastors, teachers, denominational
leaders, and practitioners and others”). Here’s the part that touched on
taxpaying:
For some of our congregations and members, “peace” is still primarily a matter
of not going to war. In a time when there is no draft, engagement in peace
witness wanes.
Our tax monies are conscripted, and each year our church members pay for
cruise missiles, smart bombs, and unmanned drones — with barely the slightest
tinge of conscience, let alone a whimper of protest.
April 15 is tax day in the United States. But while most people pay their
taxes by that date, a group of us at Community Mennonite Church in
Harrisonburg, Va., take a
different route. Concerned with the high percentage of our federal tax money
that goes to the military while we pray for peace, we witness to our Christian
faith through how we deal with this dilemma. This often includes redirecting a
portion of our military taxes to life-giving causes.
We are not against paying taxes. In fact, some of us would willingly pay
higher taxes if they supported education, health, infrastructure, sustainable
and clean energy sources, bike paths, or efforts to learn nonviolent ways to
address complex domestic and international conflicts. That’s why we prefer a
term other than “tax resistance” to describe what we do.
And we don’t think we have necessarily figured out the best way to exercise
our constitutional freedom to live by our conscience when it comes to taxes.
We’re ordinary people on a journey. We offer here a summary of what we do in
the hope that it will encourage others who take similar actions to share their
experiences in their congregations and communities. We also hope it will
inspire more people to consider this type of witness.
Nathan and Elaine Zook Barge
Nathan and Elaine Zook Barge, restorative justice specialist and STAR
(Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience) director.
How long have you engaged in an act witness through your taxes?
Over 30 years
Why do you do it?
Living and working in a Catholic and Mennonite community in Colorado
Springs, Colo., in
, we became aware of the
dissonance between saying we were conscientious objectors to war while
paying for war. Our commitment deepened during the 14 years we worked in
El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala with Mennonite Central Committee
(MCC).
Many friends or their family members had been killed or wounded by
U.S. weapons,
and many people suffered hunger, homelessness and illness because money
was used for weapons rather than for food, health and education.
Ironically, it was on tax day, , that we experienced too closely the fear and trauma of war.
Along with the Salvadorans on the bus, we prayed for safety as guns from
10 U.S.
helicopters strafed the area around us. That day, we became tax resisters
for life.
How do you do it?
It’s a journey, finding the way that works for our stage of life. Early
on, we withheld 50 percent of our taxable income and redirected it to
MCC.
Then for many years, we lived below the taxable level, first as a couple
and then as a family of four. The past number of years, we have withheld
a symbolic 10 cents for every $1 billion in the
U.S. military
budget and redirected that money for life-giving efforts rather than war.
We also reduce our taxable income through charitable donations and
deductions.
David Jost
David Jost, ESL Instructor
How long have you lived under the taxable level?
One year
How do you do it?
By making a small reduction in my pay-check to ensure that I owe no federal income tax.
Why do you do it?
Because I want to avoid financially supporting the
U.S. military
any way I can, and I believe that church institutions (such as Eastern
Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, to which I contribute by reducing
my paycheck) are better stewards of my money than the government.
Ray and Wilma Gingerich
Ray and Wilma Gingerich, retired peace and justice professor and retired hospice nurse
How long have you redirected a portion of your taxes?
Why do you do it?
We are Mennonites (inheritors of a nonviolent way of life); we are
followers of Jesus, who taught us to practice love toward our enemies.
This is the explanation we give to the
IRS.
But our primary reason to resist the payment of military taxes is to
witness to our church, to our Mennonite brothers and sisters. We are
simply seeking to live lives consistent to the faith we profess. If we,
the church, all those who profess Jesus as Lord of our lives, lived more
like Jesus, faithfully refusing to pay for war, our country would not go
to war. (That is a political fact.) How can we pray for peace while
paying for war? On a more personal level, we taught our children (our own
sons) not to join the military. Our two youngest sons are nonregistrants.
How inconsistent then it would be for us as parents to pay others to
prepare for war and to practice violence on our behalf!
How do you do it?
We withhold payment of the military portion of our federal income tax
(approximately 47 percent) and send that amount to life-giving
organizations (e.g., our local
congregation’s compassion fund, Christian Peacemaker Teams and the
National War Tax Resisters Coordinating Committee). A letter of
explanation is sent to the director of
IRS
and included with our annual
IRS
report. Most importantly, copies of our letter to the
IRS
are sent to key Mennonite Church
USA
leaders and heads of organizations. With these letters, a handwritten
note is included — an encouragement to promote the witness against the
payment of military taxes.
Sue Klassen and John Zimmerman
Sue Klassen and Johann Zimmermann, public health nurse and structural engineer
How long have you redirected a portion of your taxes?
We have always kept our earnings low, not only for a lifestyle choice but
to pay as little tax for military as possible. About eight years ago,
when we came back from overseas with
MCC
and had taxable earnings, we started deducting taxes directly for
military reasons.
Why do you do it?
We do it in order to inform our elected officials of our stand for peace.
We send a statement to the local paper each year, and it has brought us
into conversation with many different people from many walks of life
about pacifist beliefs and peace initiatives.
How do you do it?
During the year, we underestimate our tax payments. Then when we have
to pay what is due at the end of the year, we withhold a symbolic amount
of 10 cents for every $1 billion that is annually spent on military
funding, which adds up to approximately $80.
Jennifer and Kent Sensenig
Jennifer and Kent Davis Sensenig, lead pastor at Community Mennonite Church and EMU adjunct professor
How long have you redirected a portion of your taxes or minimized what you
owe?
About 15 years
Why do you do it?
It is a small witness for peace, a part of our life of discipleship to
Jesus Christ and a way of expressing that we seek a more just, peaceable
and sustainable
U.S. public
policy. Kent’s parents lived in Vietnam for a decade during the
U.S. military
intervention into that civil war and saw firsthand the destructive
consequences
U.S. foreign
policy can have.
How do you do it?
For some of the early years of our marriage we withheld a symbolic
portion of our taxes (less than $100), which provided a reason to send
letters to our Congressional representatives, the President, and the
IRS,
expressing our faith-based resistance to
U.S. budgetary
priorities vis-a-vis discretionary federal spending.
We’re not always consistent. Some years we have withheld the entire
percentage of federal taxes for military expenditures, and some years we
have withheld a symbolic portion. Some years we have filed under protest
and written letters. For the last five years, we have managed to not owe
any federal taxes (beyond Social Security) by maxing out a variety of
legal tax-break options, such as charitable giving,
IRA
investments and mortgage-interest deductions. One of us also only has
part-time paid employment, which keeps taxable income lower.
Dorothy Jean Weaver
Dorothy Jean Weaver, seminary professor of New Testament
How long have you engaged in an act of witness through your taxes?
Thirty years or so
How do you do it?
I got this idea years ago from an
MCC
info sheet. I split my tax monies and write two checks: 55 percent to the
U.S. Treasury
and 45 percent to the
U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services. I mail both checks to the
IRS
along with a letter, copied to my legislators, explaining why I am doing
this. I also send a symbolic sum of $45 to
MCC
for their “taxes for peace” fund.
Why do you do it?
In the letter I say that as a follower of Jesus Christ I cannot in
conscience pay the portion of my federal taxes that goes to military
purposes. I note that I have no intention to avoid paying the money I owe
to the federal government. I simply wish to designate that these funds go
to a cause that is life-giving, not death-dealing. And I submit these
checks as an expression of my freedom of religion, protected by the
constitution, the freedom not to have to take an action that is
contradictory to my Christian beliefs.
Anna and Ben Wyse and family
Anna and Ben Wyse, public health nurse and owner of Wyse Cycles, with their children Martha, Desmond, and Sam.
How long have you been living below the taxable income level?
Since we got married, 13 years ago — with the exception of one year when we accidentally made a little too much money.
Why do you do it?
Living below the taxable income level is at some level an act rooted
in helping us sleep at night.
One component of American militarism has to do with protecting our
consumptive lifestyles. The uneven distribution of wealth and uneven
consumption of resources are one factor that drives conflict both in some
localized conflicts and some international conflicts. As Americans, we
cannot help but participate in and benefit from the violent structures
that underpin our economy and society. By living under the taxable level,
we at least are attempting to reckon with the dissonance we experience
between what we believe and the broken world in which we all live.
We often feel like this is sort of a token act that will never really
make a difference. We also know there are still numerous ways that we are
complicit in the machinery of violence that our society relies on.
Despite all that, this is one of the important choices we have made about
how to express faithfulness and a longing for a different kind of
world.
How do you do it?
By bringing home one income. When Anna had a job, Ben did a lot of
volunteer work, and when he worked for folks he asked them to donate to
various nonprofits in lieu of payment for services. Now Anna is a
full-time stay-at-home parent, and we live on Ben’s income. We have to be
careful with our budget, but we still live a far more abundant lifestyle
than many of our neighbors in Harrisonburg and many of our global
neighbors.
Rick and Carolyn Yoder
Rick and Carolyn Yoder, retired business and economics professor/semiretired international health systems consultant and psychotherapist
How long have you redirected a portion of your taxes?
Since we were married 38 years ago
Why do you do it?
Our work has taken us to many countries where we have seen both the
positive and negative effects of our tax dollars. Carolyn’s work in
psychosocial trauma healing often involves dealing with the fallout of
violent conflict. We believe it’s a moral issue that nearly half our
taxes go to military spending and that we spend more than the next
highest 15 countries combined on the military while cutting domestic
spending on programs such as health care, education, and the social
safety net. Redirecting a portion of our taxes to life-giving causes
helps reduce the gap between our stated values on peace and nonviolence
and our actions.
The research on bystanders says that silence in the face of harm or
wrongdoing emboldens harmdoers, leading them to assume others support and
agree with them. Doing something, even something small, puts them on
alert that someone has noticed and doesn’t agree. We’re not under the
illusion that our letters and voice will change things, but it does
change us. And knowing what we know, how can we be silent
bystanders?
How do you do it?
We first take steps to ensure that we owe the
IRS
on April 15, rather than having a refund due us. Then we redirect a
symbolic amount, a couple hundred dollars, from our federal income tax
payments to the National Peace Tax Fund and
MCC.
We enclose a letter with our tax returns, stating what we are doing and
why, with copies to the
U.S. President,
our legislators and our congregation. We also enclose a copy of the formal
action taken by Community Mennonite Church to offer its support morally,
financially and otherwise to its members.
A question many people have for those of us who redirect our taxes to
life-giving causes is about the consequences from the
IRS. Sue
and John’s experience is typical: “We receive quarterly letters from the
IRS each
year, informing us that we owe them money. We respond to them with a letter
restating our reasons. If in a given year we have prepaid too much tax, the
money that we have withheld gets subtracted from our return. We do not really
mind that this happens, because we find that we have already achieved the goal
of bringing attention to our stance on military spending and war.”
Rick and Carolyn have had a lien placed on their bank account for the amount
owed plus interest and a small penalty. They have also had the
IRS get
the amount due by electronically taking their state tax refund. Ray and Wilma
have been audited numerous times, likely due to the high amount of deductions
they have for contributions.
H.A. Penner applauded
that article in a letter, putting in a word for the “$10.40 For Peace” project
along the way. In
a
later letter () he added:
Now, in the interest of peace, must we demand an arms embargo against all
armed actors in Iraq and Syria, including the United States?
Paying for war is a form of participation in war…
But here alas, he decided to plug the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund instead
of full-throated war tax resistance.
