Tax resistance in the “Peace Churches” →
Quakers →
20th–21st century Quakers →
Perry E. Treadwell
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
There were a couple of heartfelt individual expressions of beginning war tax
resistance in the pages of the Friends Journal in
. (At this point, also, the mentions in
passing of war tax resistance and of “peace tax fund” advocacy had become so
frequent that I stopped taking note of them unless they were exceptional or
illustrative in some way.)
On , Perry E. Treadwell
resigned from his position at a medical research and training university,
stating that his “philosophy of life, of education, of human and environmental
responsibility, and of research” had grown to be “at odds” with the
university’s philosophies. He had a variety of complaints about the university
and his position in it, but among them (as he explained in the
issue of the
Friends Journal) was this:
I also resigned in protest that my labors in the form of income and other
taxes go “to the maintenance and promotion of war, military might, and
oppression of people both here and abroad by an irredeemably corrupt federal
and corporate power structure. These
U.S. priorities
are in direct conflict with my conscience; they are positions with which I am
philosophically and morally opposed and can not continue to support with the
product of my labor.”
I support with my taxes a federal government which in the past decade has
become corrupt, violent, oppressive and ineffective beyond belief, the
complete antithesis of the expectations of my upbringing. I cannot continue
to support by my present life style the military dictatorships in the
Philippines, Brazil, South Korea, Greece, and other countries; the torture
and tiger cages in Vietnam; the war called peace in Southeast Asia; the vast
military expense for electronic murder; the strip-mining and waste of my
America for corporate profit which protracts the withering affluence of
convenience-greedy consumers; the federal welfare for the wealthy at the
expense of the poor; and the relaxation of environmental health standards at
the expense of everyone.
The following notes appeared in the
issue:
Telephone Tax
“This year South Vietnam is receiving $2 billion in
U.S.
aid — 90% of their budget — and $1.5 billion more in direct American military
aid.” The quotation is from a letter sent to local papers by the clerk of
Community Friends Meeting in Cincinnati in order to state publicly the
meeting’s continued refusal to pay the telephone war tax.
Pay or Pay
In Media (PA)
Monthly Meeting it was reported that a notice had been received from
IRS to
the effect that unless the back telephone tax were paid, there would be a
levy against the meeting bank account. The meeting newsletter comments: “It
was felt that we should pay this back tax in spite of our position on war
taxes…”
An article by Lois S. Andress in the
issue urged Quakers to support the “World Peace Tax Fund Act” and explained
how this version of the “Peace Tax Fund” would operate. Excerpt:
[The Act] provides an alternative for taxpayers who are conscientiously
opposed to participation in war. The bill would establish a fund to receive
and distribute to qualified peace-related activities tax payments that now go
to military purposes. The remainder of the taxes would go to the general fund
of the U.S.
Treasury for non-military purposes.
The Friends Committee on National Legislation tried to exploit the concern
with taxpayer complicity for war in a full-page ad on the back page of the
issue:
The ad, in a form that resembled an income tax return form, invited readers to
estimate how much of the federal income taxes they had paid in
had gone to military spending.
It then quickly solicited a donation for the
FCNL’s
lobbying work, and made two suggestions for “alternatives” — either to “[u]rge
your Congressmen to support the World Peace Tax Fund Act” or “[t]hink up
alternatives of your own.” War tax resistance is not mentioned as an option.
On , Jack Cady mailed a letter to
the IRS
(excerpted in the issue of the
Journal):
For twenty, or perhaps twenty-two years, I have timely filed my tax return
and paid what the government said I owed. I did this all through the Korean
War, and God help me, I also did it through the Viet Nam War. In the past few
years I have felt worse and worse at tax time, but not because of the money.
Those who know me will attest that I give a lot, or even most of it, away.
The reason I felt bad is because it seemed an exact endorsement of the
actions of this nation’s government.
Now I have to refuse those actions. I have no idea what that means… it may be
that you will have to try to strip me of property, harass me from one year to
the next, or eventually put me in prison — for I will not pay this
tax… in the current state of
U.S. affairs it
may be that the only honorable place for
a man is prison.
The problem, as I understand it, is this: This nation, which once believed
itself a nation under God, has somehow come to the point where it advertises
that it has the capacity to kill everyone in the world seven times. The
proposed military budget is now the highest money budget in our history. This
in a so-called peaceful year. I can only understand that what the military is
saying is that it wants the capacity to kill everyone in the world eight
times. Either that, or there is another possibility. My study of history
shows me that it is usually dying governments that arm themselves to the
teeth… and large standing armies have traditionally gotten their training
abroad only to come back and use it on the home population.
I feel that the
U.S. is better
than that. In all of the great days of our history we have been concerned
with life and living, not preoccupied with avoiding or inflicting death. We
kill the best part of ourselves by arranging to kill others.
Part of the reason is that for the last six years I have been writing and
teaching about the origins of America. I have spoken in too many classes
about the Pilgrim spirit, the Puritan spirit and the dissenting Quaker
spirit. I have read George Fox, Jonathan Edwards, John Woolman, Rufus Jones,
Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Emerson and the myriad other voices of our history
who said that life was good and true and finally, honorable. I still believe
in the basic truth of America because of those people; and people like Anne
Hutchinson and William Bradford, Martin King and Clarence Darrow, Ephraim
McDowell and the thousands of others who have believed in a higher cause than
murder. You can surely understand, since I have been thinking and talking
about these folks, how I must believe that the American people are still not
so weak that they must invest in more and more weapons. I think you can
understand why I must refuse this tax as the truest gesture of love for my
country.
Finally, the issue included
this brief note:
Hanover (N.H.) Friends Meeting has decided to continue withholding its telephone tax for the present.
The equivalent of the monthly tax is placed in the War Tax Alternatives Fund.
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
American Quaker war tax resistance reemerged in the Friends Journal in , with some real live resisters telling their stories and sharing the processes by which they had developed their methods of resistance.
The issue had several mentions of war tax resistance.
Editor Vinton Deming’s lead editorial concerned his annual confrontation of the “agonizing question” of what to do at tax-filing time.
Excerpt:
an ad from the issue of Friends Journal
For many years I sought ways to protest.
I started by submitting a letter with my 1040 objecting to the large sums going to the Pentagon and the neglect of other needed programs. No one responded.
At other times I requested a refund so I might send a sum to a human service program not being adequately funded.
Nice idea, I thought, but IRS didn’t think so.
One year they told me the request was “frivolous,” and they tried to penalize me for asking.
My lawyer got them to drop the matter.
Then about 15 years ago I stopped filing a tax return altogether, choosing instead to write a letter to the president explaining why I was not willing as a Friend to pay for things like B-1 bombers, cruise missiles, or Star Wars.
The latter approach clearly got the attention of IRS officials.
Suddenly I was “playing in the big leagues.”
The government took me to court on two occasions and threatened to do the same to my present employer unless my back taxes, interest, and penalties were paid at once [see ♇ ].
Reluctantly, and after much soul searching, the Journal agreed to pay.
I released them to do so, being convinced we had resisted as long as we could and had explored all legal means.
Friends rallied to support us with financial gifts to help pay the large debt.
In I made my last monthly payment to the Journal.
I continue to struggle with IRS on this matter, which dates back to my tax resistance of .
The government disagreed with our math for what we believed was actually owed in back taxes.
My lawyer is maneuvering to try to prevent IRS from seizing my Individual Retirement Account, an argument to be decided by a judge later this year.
In more recent tax years I have filed and paid, trying to claim as many exemptions as possible and to limit the government’s take.
I have lobbied for the Peace Tax Fund Bill and supported others who are resisting.
David Shen also wrote of his war tax resistance in that issue.
Excerpts:
For 12 years, I have withheld a portion of my income tax from IRS.
I refuse to give money to the military to kill people.
There is too much need around us.
For the last three years, I have given this portion to My Brothers’ House, a homeless shelter my Quaker meeting supports in the inner city of Philadelphia.
Each year at tax time, I sigh deeply.
I know IRS may punish me.
And I know I stand on the side of life.
For these 12 years, IRS and I have been corresponding politely.
They send me notices; I write back.
Since I received notices of intent to levy and since they have not levied, I assume I have been lost in their millions of files.
I was surprised, then, when my college employer received the levy on my salary.
My first talks with IRS, lawyers, and F/friends left me feeling depressed and helpless.
IRS would get what they thought was theirs.
Then God intervened.
Inadvertently, my lawyer angered me.
In my anger, I took a position of reducing my wages to a level IRS could not levy.
(By law IRS must leave me a wage to live on.)
I had not considered it before, since doing so would cost me $2,200 — more than the levy’s $1,200.
I think Shen is being too modest here in giving God the credit for a bold decision that came direct from Shen.
I approached the college dean, my superior.
“Reduce my wages,” I said, “so IRS cannot satisfy its levy.”
But the dean shocked me.
Her superior, the vice president, would not allow me to reduce my wages.
I had to quit or pay the levy.
That sounds very familiar.
When I first started resisting, I went in to the human resources department of my employer to ask if reducing my salary below the tax line was an option.
They told me it was out of the question.
My response was to resign and become an independent contractor.
Shen took a different tack:
After a conversation with one of my students, I decided to continue teaching and pay the levy.
I would, however, also continue learning about love and Truth.
Could I reach administrators, I wondered, if I used Gandhi’s principle of selfsuffering?
I would direct suffering to me, and not to the college, by teaching at reduced income rather than quitting and leaving the college with 80 angry students.
I met with the administrator who wrote my paycheck, the department chair, the dean again, and then the vice-president.
Three respected my position (the vicepresident didn’t reveal his stand).
The payroll administrator blurted out, “Isn’t there a legal way you can do this (pay income tax without paying the military)?”
When I met with the president of the college, six weeks had passed and the levy was almost fully paid.
He was busy.
He startled me by agreeing with my right to take my position, and he would seek how I could do so at the college.
Two weeks later, he informed me he could not find a legal way to accommodate me.
I, though, was thrilled.
In our two conversations, the president and I connected.
We talked about my tax situation for 20 minutes and unexpectedly talked about his and my family for 90 minutes.
He was late for one of his appointments.
As I waved goodbye, he asked, “Stop in for coffee again, will you?”
What did I learn?
I am poorer by $1,200, but I am richer in intangible ways.
I feel in the flow of God’s will for me and feel connected to people — F/friends who support me and opponents who respect me.
I am invigorated and happy
It must be comforting to feel that “God’s will” is responsible for all the difficult and fuzzy decisions you make.
Whether you zig or you zag, whether things turn out well or ill, God’s in charge and if you’re willing to give Him all the credit, He’ll be glad to take all the blame.
The same issue published part of an interview that Susan Van Haitsma conducted with Paula Rogge .
Excerpts:
What were the motivating factors in your decision to become a tax
resister?
Deciding to refuse to pay taxes for war was a slow, gradual process for
me… As I grew older and attended Illinois Yearly Meeting, I heard more about tax resistance.
I met two men who had served time in prison for refusing to pay war taxes or resisting cooperation with the Internal Revenue Service.
I saw them as very committed people with a lot of integrity, and I could see that the yearly meeting supported them.
So, at some level I felt that tax resistance was the logical extension of my pacifist views, and I knew there was a community of support for tax resistance among the Friends and the wider peace community as well.…
How did you go about your tax resistance?
That first year, I think I owed one dollar.
I refused to pay the dollar
and sent a letter to the IRS explaining my position.
The next year, I increased the number of withholding allowances on my W-4 form so that I owed the IRS at the end of the year instead of vice-versa.
I began by refusing to pay 40–50 percent of my federal tax money because at the time, that was the approximate percentage being used to fund current and past wars.
Then, over time, I realized that of the 50–60 percent I was paying, 40–50 percent was still being used for military purposes, so I stopped paying the whole kit and caboodle.
I stopped paying all taxes because I had no control whatsoever over how the money was being spent.
In the last several years I’ve also stopped paying social security taxes because the government borrows from those funds to help cover the deficit, indirectly financing the defense system.
So, it’s been a gradual process of taking my tax resistance further and further.
I’ve always filed, and the IRS and I have always agreed about how much I’ve owed (now over $60,000 including penalties and interest).
At this point, I don’t feel led to stop filing.
For myself, I feel better being open about it, but I realize many tax resisters don’t file, and I respect their reasons for going that route.
Have you redirected your tax money?
The first couple of years that I did tax resistance, I put the money
aside in a bank account, assuming it would be seized.
It wasn’t seized right away, however, and I’m afraid the money was spent without having been donated as it should have.
But I learned, and since then I’ve made sure the amount of money owed in taxes and social security is donated every year to charitable groups.
I’ve had a lot of fun giving this money away.
Sometimes when I have sent the contribution, I have included a note explaining that the donation represents refused war taxes, and I have received supportive notes in return.
It’s a very empowering feeling to know that my money is doing some good.
Have there been special ways in which you would say your life has been
affected positively by your practice of tax resistance?
When I finished my residency, I worked in a migrant clinic for two years
in the Rio Grande Valley in Harlingen, Texas: a very conservative community.
The second year I was there, I wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper explaining that I was a war tax resister and why.
The newspaper editor phoned me to make sure I really wanted the letter printed!
I said yes, and they did print it.
I was afraid of the response I might get from the community, but I felt it was important to be public about my stance.
After the letter was printed, the other doctors in Harlingen actually became much friendlier and began to take a certain interest in me.
I don’t think any of them agreed with the tax resistance, but they seemed to respect my position.
Several nurses and a nuclear medicine technician I hadn’t known before introduced themselves and expressed their support of my war tax resistance.
I didn’t get any negative reactions.
In , I began a medical family practice in Austin, Texas, along with another doctor.
The first year into the practice, the IRS sent notice that my wages would be garnisheed.
I asked that my salary be lowered to $100 per week, as that is the amount exempt from levy.
In order to supplement this reduced income, I began to work moonlighting jobs in various agencies: the city Health Department, Planned Parenthood, and the State Commission for the Blind, for example.
I had to find new moonlighting jobs every two years or so because that was about the length of time it usually took the IRS to catch up and begin attaching wages again.
Something good happened as a result of this.
I’ve had to explain to all potential employers that at some point the IRS would begin to levy my wages and when that happened, I would no longer be able to work for them.
When I explained this to the Texas Commission for the Blind during my interview, for example, they were quite taken aback, and I thought I probably wouldn’t get the job.
But, a few weeks later, they did hire me!
The woman who hired me said she understood why I was doing tax resistance and that she agreed with my convictions.
I came to feel a real sense of support and community there.
In , the
IRS
seized your automobile.
Could you describe what happened?
Well, some time before the car was seized, an
IRS
agent, accompanied by a law officer, came to our clinic to pay me a visit.
I could tell they were nervous and even a bit hostile.
But as we sat and talked, and I explained why I simply could not pay for war, I could see them both soften a little.
Toward the end of the interview, the officer began asking questions about our practice and commented that it was unusual for us to be located in such a poor neighborhood.
As they were leaving, I complemented the officer on his cowboy boots — he had on some kind of exotic boots — and I think he was tickled pink that I had noticed them.
He told me where he had gotten them.
It was kind of a humorous exchange and I felt very good about that.
We had related as people.
I figured that since my wages had become uncollectible and I had no bank account, eventually my car would be seized.
But even so, the morning it happened, it came as a bit of a shock.
My IRS agent came to the bouse and, poor woman, she was just shivering in her shoes, she looked so nervous.
She placed a sticker on the car and then asked if she could use my phone to call the tow truck!
I decided that they were going to tow it one way or another, so I invited her in to use the phone.
I had a sick patient in the emergency room at the time, so I took a taxi to the hospital right away.
Having a patient to worry about took my mind off the car long enough to ease my worry about the situation.
Then friends came forward and loaned me their cars without my having to ask.
A month following the seizure, the car was auctioned.
About 20–30 Quakers and other friends came and protested the auction, asking potential buyers not to bid on the car.
At least one potential buyer was convinced to refrain from bidding, but a used car dealer did, in the end, buy the car.
A week following the auction, a doctor I had once worked with phoned and said that he wanted to buy the car back from the car dealer and donate it anonymously to our practice.
That was such a wonderful surprise.
I was very moved because I respected him very much as a doctor.
I talked the offer over with friends.
Though I didn’t want the money going, even indirectly, to the IRS, I did want this doctor to have an opportunity to support the whole cause of war tax resistance, and this was his way of contributing.
I decided to accept the car.
It came back with new tires, looking much cleaner than it had before it was seized!
A friend of the doctor had also done a tune-up on it — and it was great.
I think the best part of this story is that when I tell it, people chuckle.
You see, it’s such a good example of how limited the power of the IRS is in the face of creative resistance.
It’s also an example of how our needs are often met in unexpected ways when we take a stand for peace.
I think these three experiences in particular — the return of my car, receiving the job at the Commission for the Blind, and the reaction to the letter in Harlingen paper — were all occasions when I felt that speaking out for truth actually opened doors and tore down barriers between other people and me.
When I was willing to take a stand for what I felt was right, I discovered a community of support I hadn’t realized existed.
Perry Treadwell also wrote about his war tax resistance in that issue.
Excerpts:
Today I received another one of those white envelopes from the Internal Revenue Service — the ones that tell me I failed to pay $35 in or $106 in and now I owe a lot more in penalties and interest.
I file them away with the other ones from .
But this time their arrival reminded me of an anniversary of sorts.
It has been .
I refused to pay for people to kill other people.
I resigned my tenured university position [see ♇ ] and drastically simplified my lifestyle so the fruits of my labors would not be used for war.
I still get that little twist in the stomach when those IRS letters come.
Sometimes the IRS actually raids a bank account or Individual Retirement Account.
However, I know that Friends are there should I ever need their support in not cooperating with a government whose only answer to conflict is violence.
I have been able to simplify my life to a point where I am below the taxable level.
Friends’ support has helped.
The richness of my life is proportional to my friendships.
That is what I have learned in , and that is what I pass on to others.
The issue had an obituary notice for Jane Palmer which noted that she “chose to live in accordance with the Quaker peace testimony and purposefully limited her income to avoid paying taxes that supported war efforts,” and one for Mildred Teusler Ringwalt which mentioned “her refusal to pay the portion of her income taxes she believed supported such [war] efforts.”
One of the events at the Friends General Conference Gathering in — the “Henry J. Cadbury Event, sponsored by Friends Journal” — was “an original production in story and song about the war tax witness of Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner from Colrain, Massachusetts.
The stage performance won a favorable review from those who crowded the auditorium (despite the heat and lack of air conditioning!).
A video of the show was made and will be available at a later date.”
At the Illinois Yearly Meeting in (according to a Journal article ), “Sebrina Tingley explained not just the nuts and bolts of war tax resistance but also the spiritual call to do so” and “Bill Ramsey (American Friends Service Committee) told of his personal experiences involving war tax resistance.”
The lead editorial of the issue was all about the Peace Tax Fund Bill and an effort to get 10,000 people to write letters to Congress supporting it.
“The Peace Tax Fund Bill,” according to one supporter’s letter, “when it becomes law, will give us our religious liberty.
We’ll be able to pay our taxes in good conscience since we’ll be allowed to pay for peaceful projects rather than for war.”
Two letters-to-the-editor in the issue reacted to that project: one, by Marge Schier, thanking the Journal for aiding the cause — “We’re even more sure now that we can do it!”
— and the other, by Elizabeth Campuzano, giving the gist of the letter she had sent: “I told them that I voluntarily live below the federal poverty limit in order to avoid paying income taxes for war.
I told them that if this bill passes, I will raise my income in order to pay for education, road and bridge repairs, anti-monopoly enforcement, etc.” She added: “I think this is one of the greatest things FJ has ever done!”
International news
“a Spanish war resistance sticker: peace (paz) and bread (pan), not bombs”
A report about the previous year’s Canadian Yearly Meeting in the issue mentioned that “[t]he ad hoc committee on war tax concerns has found a method which potentially will allow Canadian Yearly Meeting to redirect the military portion of employees’ income tax remittances to the federal government’s Debt Service and Reduction Fund.
This is not an entirely satisfactory solution, but perhaps a first step.”
’s Canadian Yearly Meeting (according to a story in the issue) “reached joyful unity in a decision as an employer to stop remitting to Revenue Canada the military portion of taxes for those employees who request it.”
This decision follows several years of study, prayerful consideration, and the attempt during for use of legal means of expressing our conscientious objection to paying for the military.
The remittance will instead be paid into Conscience Canada, with consideration given to establishing in the future a specific trust fund.
The Fifth International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns was held in Spain in and was covered in the Journal in a report by Steve Gulick.
Excerpt:
About 70 activists from all over Europe and a number of other parts of the world gathered in Hondarribia, Spain, , to charge our batteries, to compare conditions in our various countries, to get to know each other, and to carry on business.
It was inspiring to meet, get to know, and work with war tax resisters and peace campaigners from all over Europe and from the United States, Canada, Peru, Iraq, and Palestine.
The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee raised money to make it possible for the Palestinian, Elias Rishmawi from Beit Sahour, West Bank, to attend.
The Iraqi and the Peruvian attenders are currently living in Europe.
One problem with the gathering — similar to the War Resisters International gathering that I attended in — was the difficulty of getting a diverse attendance.
Folks from India were unable to attend, for example, in part because of the distance.
I attended as a delegate from the War Tax Concerns Support Committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.
Other attenders from the United States were David Bassett and Marian Franz (National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund), Susan Quinlan and Larry Rosenwald (National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee), Cynthia Johnson (Women Strike for Peace), and Gerri Michalska (Pax Christi) — which gave some of us from the U.S. movement the opportunity to get to know each other.
The conference issued a number of public documents — the most important being the bylaw of a new non-governmental organization which will have consultative powers with both the UN and the European parliament: Conscience and Peace Tax International.
The role/goal of the organization will be to espouse the cause of those who take stands of conscience in relation to military expenditures — and also military service and issues of conscience and civil and human rights more generally.
A report back from the Germany Yearly Meeting mentioned war tax resistance matter-of-factly:
In our commitments to projects such as “alternatives to violence,” civilian peace service, war tax refusal, and in our decision to give financial support to the setting up of a Quaker Center in Moscow, Russia, we express that we not only ask ourselves “how do we see God?” but also “how do we do God?”…
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
The few mentions of war tax resistance in the Friends
Journal in were mostly looks at
war tax resisters from Quaker history, though there was some mention of
Daniel Jenkins’s ongoing attempt to get the courts to discover a Constitutional
right to conscientious objection to military taxation.
The issue contained a
letter-to-the-editor from Perry Treadwell in which he chided Friends for
letting their peace testimony slacken. Excerpts:
I received another of those
IRS
letters that I have been getting off and on for the past 35 years. They tell
me to pay back taxes, penalties, and interest. It still gives me that slight
kick in the stomach. I sent back another letter informing them again that as
a member of the Religious Society of Friends my belief dictates that I cannot
pay for killing.…
Where is the passion of the
Friends to witness our Peace Testimony?
Recently a member of Atlanta
(Ga.) Meeting defended his
paying income taxes by using the same argument that Stan Becker proposes in
his Viewpoint in the October issue, "How Can We Work More for Peace Than for
War?" [see ♇
]: using money and/or
time commitment for peace purposes. How many cluster bombs have been bought
with their tax money? Each day I weep seeing the list in the
New York Times of those killed in Iraq,
particularly the 18–20-year-olds. I cannot describe the impact the deaths of
hundreds of thousands of Iraqis we have slaughtered has on me.
What if 500 Friends withheld $10–$100 from their
tax returns? What if more did so
? Throw sand in the wheels of the
IRS.
Put our money where our collective mouths are when it comes to Peace Tax Fund
legislation. That might get Congressional attention.
What are we afraid of? War tax refusal is not to be feared. In fact, it has
opened up for me whole new opportunities for service and ministry.
The issue included Daniel Jenkins’s article “The Liberation of Nathan Swift,” which concerned the arrest of a Quaker in for his refusal to pay a militia exemption tax, and his subsequent release from jail when New York Governor William Seward intervened.
Seward later, in an address to the legislature, endorsed an amendment to the state Constitution that would release conscientious objectors from the militia exemption tax (Jenkins finds indications that a subsequent Constitutional Convention did in fact change the Constitution in this way).
Jenkins saw this story as inspiration for the movement advocating a Peace Tax Fund law, saying it showed that with persistent witness and lobbying, it is possible to get a government to make concessions to conscientious objectors to military taxes.
The author’s note mentioned that Jenkins had “taken a military tax objection case into the federal courts with the support of a clearness committee, financial assistance from Purchase Quarterly Meeting, and an amicus brief submitted by New York Yearly Meeting,” and that the article was a revised and expanded version of “an oral report presented by the Conscientious Objection to Military Taxation Sub-Committee of the Peace Concerns Committee at a yearly meeting session held in .”
A later update on Jenkins’s legal case noted that his appeal had been turned down by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals:
Jenkins… bore witness to the leading of his conscience that paying taxes for
war is wrong by withholding his payment of federal income tax and setting it
aside in escrow until the government agreed to use it only for nonmilitary
purposes. For this he had been penalized not only with the tax and ordinary
penalties and interest, but also with a $5,000 fine for bringing forth what
the government contended was a “frivolous” case. Lawyer Fred Dettmer, clerk
for the Witness Coordinating Committee of New York Yearly Meeting…, argued
the appeal.
Relying
on the First and Ninth Amendments to the
U.S. Constitution,
he argued that Jenkins wanted to pay his taxes but the government must
accommodate his conscientious insistence that his money not pay for military
expenditures. On , prior to
the argument of appeal, more than 30 Friends had gathered in the cafeteria of
the Federal Court House in Manhattan for a special meeting of worship. In
rejecting the appeal, Judge Jose A. Cabranes wrote that such religious
objections to military activity have previously been rejected and that
Jenkins’ appeal was no different, though it was “presented in unusual garb.”
The Witness Coordinating Committee is conferring on next steps, including
possibly appealing to the
U.S. Supreme Court.
(An update in the issue noted
that Jenkins was denied cert on his appeal to the Supreme Court on
. It said that Jenkins was
preparing an appeal to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.)
Jenkins’s article was mentioned in the issue’s introductory editorial, where
editor Susan Corson-Finnerty wrote that “[t]he willingness of Quakers in that
period to risk the loss of their property and their freedom and to go to jail,
as Nathan Swift did, for the sake of their belief in nonviolence and their
faithfulness to that leading was remarkable.”
A historical overview of Carolina Quakers in the
issue noted:
Carolina Quakers as a rule stuck hard by the Peace Testimony; their refusal
to bear arms was honored to some degree, at least during more peaceful times.
As tensions rose between colonists and the Crown over exploitation of
resources and taxes, Quakers and other peace church people in the
Carolinas — Mennonites, Brethren, and Moravians — suffered
disproportionately. For instance, in they
were assessed a threefold amount for requisition of supplies for the army.
The Advice issued by Western Quarterly Meeting was to refuse compliance, and
many did so; many property seizures ensued. Others suffered also, as many
agents of the Colonial government were corrupt and were pocketing much of
their collections; seized property was often sold for small sums to friends
and relatives of these agents.
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
After noting several years of dwindling coverage of war tax resistance in the Friends Journal, it was a pleasant surprise to see that the magazine devoted its issue to the topic.
Robert Dockhorn wrote the opening editorial.
Excerpt:
Historically, many Friends have refused to participate in armed forces, and occasionally Friends, in an organized way, have refused to pay taxes to finance military activity.
But mostly, especially in recent years, only a few individuals, acting on the basis of individual conscience, have refused to pay taxes that are “mixed” — i.e. where one cannot determine which monies are funding which functions of government.
These individual Friends have sometimes received endorsement from their meetings, and on occasion, meetings (including yearly meetings) have gone so far as to encourage individual Friends generally to think seriously about tax resistance.
In this issue of Friends Journal, we offer several
articles that address this subject. At the center of them is a moral dilemma:
how can those of us who are clear that our government is pursuing an immoral,
militarist course live with our consciences in the knowledge that we are
funding this activity? What is required of us? What are our
real choices? What is our most effective response? And, at
another level: are we required only to be faithful to our
consciences, and to leave the consequences in God’s hands?
For — my wife, Roma, and I refused to pay the military portion of our federal income tax, as calculated by Friends Committee on National Legislation.
We donated the refused amounts to various causes that we felt were appropriate.
During these years I was employed by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.
Eventually, the IRS came to my employer and sought to levy my wages for the owed amounts.
Much searching resulted, and the yearly meeting, while declining to turn over the funds, placed them in a separate account and did not hide them.
Eventually, they were attached.
And in , Roma and I prayerfully considered our course, sensed that we were no longer led to this resistance, and settled with the IRS, paying a substantial amount of interest and penalties.
We followed a leading, and the leading changed for us.
In the entire process, we were supported and nurtured by my monthly and yearly meeting (I am a Friend, Roma is not) — but it was our leading, supported by meetings, not the meetings’ leading.
And that is part of the question in these articles. It is not just about what
individuals can do, and should do. It is also about what all
Friends can and should do — together. How are Friends led today?
The first war tax resistance article in the issue came from Nadine Hoover, who told the story of Dan Jenkins’s attempt to get the courts to recognize conscientious objection to military taxation as a right of individual conscience that American citizens had before the enactment of the U.S. Constitution and that they had deliberately not relinquished by means of that document (see ♇ ).
The courts weren’t buying it, and in fact found the argument so far-fetched
that they upheld a $5,000 fine against Jenkins for using legally-frivolous
arguments. Hoover thought the arguments were good enough to be worth
repeating in the Journal, however.
She noted that “nearly three dozen Quakers and other supporters” joined Jenkins when he was arguing his appeal, and she argued:
To pay war taxes or to purchase from or invest in corporate structures that profit on war or use military might in order to secure wealth, in violation of our religious conviction, plants a dis-ease among us.
Friends’ witness is letting our lives speak — not that we will be protected but that we are willing to make ourselves vulnerable — knowing our faith will sustain us, set us free, and give us joy.
I have experienced this joy when I live in accord with my conscience and faith, regardless of the apparent, temporal consequences.
She invited “Friends who will stand before the courts and proclaim our faith… [or] write their statements of conscience and share them with others… [or] make the commitment to represent and/or support any Friend who is called to this witness” to write a war tax resistance committee of the New York Yearly meeting.
She hoped that if enough Quakers began to resist, they might make a change in the country the way the women’s suffrage movement did.
The change Hoover was hoping this would bring about was that the government
would legally acknowledge conscientious objection to military spending by
passing the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund bill, or something along those
lines:
Quakers, Mennonites, Shakers, and others have maintained this testimony throughout U.S. history.
Still many people today, of a wide variety of faiths, do not pay taxes for military purposes because this action violates their essential religious beliefs and moral convictions of conscience.
Passage of this bill by Congress would facilitate the payment of all taxes owed by these principled people.
Perish the thought.
Hoover shared a minute from the New York Yearly Meeting, dated
:
The Living Spirit works in the world to give life, joy, peace and prosperity through love, integrity and compassionate justice among people.
We are united in this Power.
We acknowledge that paying for war violates our religious conviction.
We will seek ways to witness to this religious conviction in each of our communities.
Then she listed off some possible “ways to witness”:
encourage your congregation to write and deliver a statement of
conscientious objection to paying for war
write a statement of conscience to include with your tax return and to
send to various other people
redirect some or all of your taxes “to an escrow account to be held in
trust for the
U.S.
government”
file more lawsuits using Jenkins’s 9th
Amendment argument
live on a below-the-tax-line income
divest from “corporations that profit from war” and invest and spend more
responsibly
“Pursue local ordinances that deny corporations recognition as persons,
and that deny recognition of corporate charters as contracts”
It was a long, rambling, repetitive, sometimes vague and random-seeming (what did corporate charters have to do with any of this?) argument.
It represents one weird extreme of the Peace Tax Fund idea, which had come to be seen by some supporters as an end in itself, rather than a means to a more important end.
Why do we resist paying war taxes?
Because that might help us get the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund bill passed!
The following article, edited by Karen A. Reixach, tried to account for how
enthusiasm for conscientious objection to military taxation had taken hold in
the New York Yearly Meeting in recent years. It began by identifying a
“movement of conscience” in much the same way that voluntaryists describe
ideal noncoercive politics, with a quote from
Jim
Corbett:
Nonviolent civil initiative by covenant communities is… the way human beings preserve and develop society based on consent, in which the rule of law, as distinguished from the rule of commanders, is necessarily grounded… Civil initiative must be societal rather than organizational, nonviolent rather than injurious, truthful rather than deceitful, catholic rather than sectarian, dialogical rather than dogmatic, substantive rather than symbolic, volunteer-based rather than professionalized, and based on community powers rather than government powers.
The article hoped to describe how when individuals articulate and share their conscientious yearnings, by means of a “statement of conscience,” they can find like-minded souls to form a “movement of conscience” that can work together to “act on our collective beliefs of conscience,” using the recent activity in the New York Yearly Meeting as an example.
She described some of the minutes and reports from the Meeting that had touched
on peace and justice issues in recent years, and on the Meeting’s support for
Dan Jenkins in his court cases. Then:
In the yearly meeting’s Committee on Conscientious Objection to Paying for War sponsored a series of conferences in support of this growing movement of conscience.
The first conference was held at Purchase Meeting the weekend following the oral argument of Jenkins in the Second Circuit in .
The court hearing and the conference were attended by about 35 Friends and others from the metropolitan area and the northeast region.
Out of that conference arose two strands of action: exploring the possibility of group legal action, and expanding the movement of conscience [PDF illegible] step of writing a statement of conscience.
The second conference, in at
Rochester Meeting, featured a public forum on the failure of violence that
included Robert Holmes, professor of Philosophy at University of Rochester;
Derek Brett, of Conscience and Peace Tax International; and Frederick
Dettmer, the attorney representing Daniel Jenkins. During the following day
and a half, Friends continued to consider action steps individually and in
concert with others.
The third conference was held at Flushing Meeting in … It focused on international venues for raising freedom of conscience issues as they apply to paying taxes for war.
A fourth conference , is being planned; and as momentum builds, we envision more every few months, inviting ever-widening circles of participants.
I don’t see many details there about what, if any “action steps” the conferees decided on.
Jens Braun is quoted in the article as suggesting some possible next steps:
to develop a better theoretical understanding of pacifism and the failure
of violence, so as to share this vision more convincingly
to “explore, develop, and improve the many ways Friends can work towards
not paying for war” —
get the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund bill passed
try new court challenges along the lines of Dan Jenkins’s
develop and use workshops and other outreach material
to join with counterparts in other countries, for instance at international
conferences
The Yearly Meeting then issued this Minute:
To Conscientious Objectors to Paying for War Everywhere,
New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends invites you to
join us in acknowledging that paying for war violates our conviction in the
Power of the Living Spirit to give life, joy, peace and prosperity through
love, integrity and compassionate justice among people.
We call on all conscientious objectors to paying for war to state in writing 1) your belief against paying for war and the preparations for war, 2) major influences in forming your belief, 3) how it is demonstrated by the way you live, and 4) a request that our government recognize and accommodate our convictions.
We ask anyone who prepares such a statement to send it to
NYYM
Committee on Conscientious Objection to Paying for War… We ask Friends to
send your statement to your monthly, quarterly and yearly meetings to record
in the minutes having received your testimony.
The thing that unnerves me is that it’s possible to read the whole article without seeing a single reference to one of these newly enthused New York Yearly Meetingers actually refusing to pay their taxes (except for Jenkins himself, who put his taxes in escrow with a promise to pay them into a government “Peace Tax Fund” once one was established).
There’s lots of talk about writing statements of conscience and holding gatherings and planning legal strategies and contacting legislators and all that, but where is the actual not-paying-for-war part?
Of “the many ways Friends can work towards not paying for war,” you’d think some of them might involve not paying for war.
Hopefully this just went without saying, but I worry.
A sidebar from David R. Bassett and Karen Reixach concerned the status of the
Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund bill, and where one could look on-line to
find information about it. Another, by John Little Randall, described his
work with the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund and with Conscience and
Peace Tax International.
The following article, by Jens and Spee Braun, wrote about war tax resistance as part of (and contributing to) a larger project of living a life of integrity, and how not-straightforward it all is.
It’s a good overview of what a typical modern American war tax resister is in for:
Are you frustrated thar the war goes on and on?
Has your conscience brought up with you the subject of not paying for war?
Be careful; your conscience can make you do things (albeit for a good cause) that can turn your life upside down!
You don’t really want to think of refusing to pay part of your taxes to the
government, do you? For starters, no matter how you calculate the percentage
to refuse, there will always be some frustrating other formula that makes
just as much sense. You can use the FCNL percentage of the budget
going towards war, but the War Resisters League has another calculation and
number. You can refuse to pay a token amount, or you can simply not pay the
estimated 50 percent or so of the tax burden that goes to war-making, past
war debts, the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons work, and all that
spying we do. How to decide?
And then, to top it off, you have to figure what to do with the money not going to the government!
Give it to charity?
Put it in an escrow account?
Use it for peaceful and life-affirming purposes at home or overseas?
Of course this problem can be avoided by living under the taxable-income level — if you don’t mind life without all the great stuff we have nowadays.
After you make these decisions of how to go about not paying for war, have
fun telling your employer that you don’t want any funds withheld from your
paycheck and not to send any money directly to the government for you!
If you get really serious, you can take the government to court, try to change the laws, or try to change the lawmakers.
So many options!
And that is not all. Deciding to be a conscientious objector to paying for
war and setting up the mechanisms by which you put action into your
intentions is the easy part. Once you do that, you know your conscience will
have taken a few strides into your being. And with that foothold (not to
mention the knowledge and understanding you have been given for having taken
those steps), your conscience will begin to demand all manner of other
deviations from a normal daily way of living!
Here is where life gets really dicey.
The problem is integrity.
As your conscience integrates one part of your life with your belief structure (and who says they need to be integrated — people have believed one thing and done another for as long as there have been people!), the process can turn into a domino effect with all sorts of other areas likewise wanting to be integrated.
It becomes a terrible sacrifice.
And don’t believe those who say it is actually liberating! It is like putting
your house in order: once you start organizing the mess, you keep finding
other things to clean up that you didn’t even know were out of place. Take
finances. It turns out that we could all pay less in taxes,
i.e., buy fewer bombs, if we took all the deductions coming to
us. What? Well, for example, if you keep track of all that travel to Quaker
committee meetings and write down the mileage in a little book to document
the expenditure, it may be deductible.
Businesses deduct driving and lunches (and even golf games), but Quakers seldom do.
That is so because we Quakers generally are not hagglers; we want to pay our full share of taxes to support our government as it builds roads, keeps up national parks, and pays politicians’ salaries.
We just don’t like that uncomfortable part that goes to war.
In the house-in-order analogy we want to share our cake, but not have part of it be eaten by our neighbor the landmine manufacturer.
You might think about something as useful and simple as your credit cards.
Who really wants to question those little pieces of plastic that make renting
cars or buying great books over the Internet so easy? Even (especially) if
you pay off your bill in full every month, there can’t be anything wrong, you
think, in using a system that would collapse if everyone were responsible,
saved their money before making purchases, paid off debts promptly, and
weren’t willing to pay usurious interest charges. In particular, don’t think
about how, if you do pay off your bill each month, the credit company
tolerates your borrowing money free of charge only because others don’t pay
up and you might not in the future. See? If you get started, who knows what
trouble you will make for yourself Now you have to think about going inside
to pay cash and talking to the gas station attendant rather than swiping the
plastic card out at the pump!
Can we retain integrity in our relationship to money?
Forget it!
You know very well that money is not important enough to spend precious time keeping track of, even if some folks call it a representation of our life force.
Better to spend time on that street corner protesting the lousy war.
And heaven forbid the government would audit our finances, since we have been occupied with the real spiritual tasks of speaking truth to power in public places.
They say money talks, but not like we can!
We’ve been told that early Friends opened their financial books to their
meeting communities. We can’t do that anymore — it’s hard enough to talk
about sex, but to talk about our money? Who can trust others that far — well,
except if the others are insurance companies, brokerage firms, or retirement
planners? We sure can’t trust our spiritual community to have the power and
scale of resources to support us in need or relieve the fears of what would
happen to us without money!
Yes, money is scary, so don’t bother pondering the irony of why fear of getting out from under its control ends up being even scarier then being part of a war-based society where you can believe whatever you want, as long as you pay up.
It’s not worth it — and besides, a messy house is so much more comfortable!
The next article was by Elizabeth Boardman.
She laid out the problem this way:
Among Friends, there is not much debate about whether war taxes are problematic.
Depending upon the federal budget for the year and how you count the line items, about half of our income tax dollars will be used for the outrageous costs of war.
Thousands of our personally earned dollars will be used to enrich the military-industrial complex, to make killers of young men and women,. and to cause death and destruction in the world.
Letting our own money be used this way is not consistent with good stewardship, with right sharing, with Quaker testimonies, or with Christian teachings.
The question of whether and how we can resist is much more complex. Standing
up to Goliath is possible only for the most confident David.
She mentioned a different set of anxieties than the Brauns had covered in their piece: worries that tax resistance or protest might trigger an audit (and then worries that such an audit might uncover math mistakes, or worse, “convenient” errors)… worries that the accountant who helps her with her tax forms will disapprove of her stand and maybe drop her as a client… difficulty reconciling willingly racking up IRS penalties & interest with her otherwise frugal and practical economic practices… difficulty finding the time to research and plan her tax resistance strategy… reluctance to break the law (or to be known as a law-breaker).
In the face of things like this, Boardman recommends that prospective war tax
resisters start small: maybe with phone tax resistance, or some sort of
symbolic protest like withholding $10.40 from your taxes or supporting the
Peace Tax Fund.
She also recommended that people who resist quietly, by slipping below the taxable income line, start making some noise about what they’re doing — otherwise “we accomplish nothing but a sense of personal righteousness.”
Following this were an excerpt from John Woolman’s journals
(see Excerpts from the Journal of John
Woolman) and from the letter Woolman and twenty other Quakers sent
to their fellow-Friends in to explain why
they could not pay taxes being raised for war expenses
(see ♇ ).
The next article in the set was by Steve Leeds.
He described becoming a war tax resister in and then drifting away in discouragement after the IRS garnished his salary for the taxes, penalties, and interest.
Then:
Fifteen years later, through renewed spiritual commitment and membership in a Friends meeting, I was led to take action with other Quakers on war tax resistance.
It began among a few of us, and that’s all it takes.
, my meeting began cohosting
war tax resistance gatherings with Northern California War Tax Resistance. We
urged Friends in our meeting to engage in symbolic war tax
resistance — refusing federal phone taxes, paying under protest, withholding
symbolic amounts, or living below the tax line — and letting our legislators
know about it. We found that a number of households in the meeting partook in
some form of war tax resistance, symbolic or otherwise.
Philosophically, it’s a slam dunk.
No more war.
Not with my dollars.
Logistically, though, it’s easy to become fixated on the mechanics and legal
aspects of war tax resistance. There’s a lot to learn and consider. My
journey, through discernment, prayer, and the support of others, led me to
focus on complex social and financial issues. Mostly, I have been confronting
my fear of the
IRS and
the insecurity of not knowing where this will lead.
For I have held back $1,040 from the IRS (symbolic of the IRS 1040 form).
Living with multiple feelings — fear, joy, and liberation — makes life whole.
My faith as a Quaker, striving to be nonviolent and to oppose all wars, has led me down this path.
I am sustained by the knowledge that many Quakers throughout history have resisted paying taxes for war.
When I think that we as a faith community need to do more, I know that the we starts with me.
So!
Quite a bit of material and many perspectives there — and a great deal of contrast in approaches between the pursuit of legal accommodation from the New York Quakers and the cautious but deliberate war tax resistance of the California Quakers (Boardman and Leeds were both from the San Francisco Meeting).
It had been years since the Journal devoted that much attention to the topic, and they haven’t done so since.
The series of articles prompted a lot of discussion in the
letters-to-the-editor column of subsequent issues — some of it quite hostile
to war tax resistance.
Dennis P. Roberts noted that the Bible is full of stories of war, and that
it “establishes beyond any doubt that the performance of an army in the
field is directly correlative to the quality of the faith and spirit of
the society or nation that put it there” and that because “the heart,
faith, honor, and spirit of a nation” is best represented by “the fighting
soldier, the fighting sailor, the fighting marine, the fighting airman,”
he finds that “this nonpayment of war taxes can indeed be carried to
frivolous extremes.”
Lucinda Antrim thought that war tax resistance “contradicts the Testimony
of Community… We are, here in the
U.S., members
of the community of the United States.… I find myself agreeing, somewhat
to my surprise, with the judge’s imposition of a ‘frivolous” fine on Dan
Jenkins.” (Naomi Paz Greenberg responded that she could not understand how
this vague and unarticulated “Testimony of Community somehow nullifies our
historic Peace Testimony”.)
Perry Treadwell responded that he did not recognize the
U.S. government
as his “community.” “Thirty-six years ago I was led to refuse to pay war
taxes… I currently send the small amount that I calculate this warrior
nation wants to agencies that support the families of wounded military
personnel. I have followed Thoreau’s warning:
‘What I have to do is to see, at any
rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.’”
David Zarembka wrote in to correct “the impression that the
IRS
is as omniscient as God, all seeing, all knowing, never making a mistake
in getting the last farthing out of the helpless tax resister. Nothing
could be further from the truth.” He recounted some
IRS
blunders in his own case, and said, “I have always made sure that the cost
of the
IRS
getting funds from me exceeded any penalties and interest that they might
charge. In my 37 years of war tax resistance I am certain that I (and all
the other active war tax resisters I know as a group) have withheld much
more funds for government war-making and given them to peace organizations
than the
IRS
has ever collected, including penalties and interest. I don’t think that
this excuse should be used by Quakers as a group as a cop-out for refusing
to pay for our wars. In fact, if all Quakers in the United States were war
tax resisters, the
IRS
couldn’t even cope with our collective resistance.”
George Levinger, who said he’d been a phone tax resister in the Vietnam
War era, had soured on war tax resistance, considering it ultimately
counterproductive largely because the government succeeded in seizing the
taxes from him with penalties and interest. He suggested channeling the
resources you might otherwise use in war tax resistance “to contribute to
various sorts of peace-promoting organizations” instead.
Ruth Hyde Paine wrote in to promote the “penny poll” idea.
Gary Shuler wrote in to sing jingo bells: “As a retired military man, I
take exception to anyone who wants to use the privileges of this country
and not help to foot the cost. Many of my forefathers and yours died for
this freedom and you don’t want to pay taxes to keep it? Move! Cuba is
nice!” (Isn’t it cute that in someone
was still using the idea of tyranny in Cuba as a contrast to the
U.S. rather
than an example of it?)
For Pamela Haines, the challenge presented by war taxes seemed largely to
be a challenge to come up with good excuses not to resist them. Excerpts:
I don’t think the problem is just lack of courage, at least I hope not!
Part of the difficulty, I believe, is the extent to which we are embedded and enmeshed in a deeply violent world.
It’s not just the portion of my tax dollars that goes to deadly warfare.
It’s my computer, the disposal of which poisons poor people in Africa and Asia.
It’s my everyday purchases from invisible corporations that destroy lives and habitats far from mine.
It’s my energy consumption that threatens the very viability of future generations.
If war tax resistance seems too hard for most of us, what do we do if
that’s just the tip of the iceberg? Some Friends are not deterred by the
seemingly impossible and set out to disentangle themselves from the
whole mess — living below taxable level, with only the bare necessity of
purchases and a minimal carbon footprint. This may be a true calling for
some, and certainly a courageous one, but I know it’s not mine. To me
the focused goal of living a life free from complicity with
institutional violence would involve participating in another sin, that
of separation from my neighbors.
Is it better not to do a right thing, if by doing a right thing you would
be being inconsistent in not doing all possible right things?
In the issue, Jamie K. Donaldson explained why she gave up on trying to change the United States and left it rather than continue to be part of its war machine.
She’d contemplated tax resistance at one point, but decided it wasn’t for her.
Here’s how she describes that decision:
I was haunted by the quote attributed to former Secretary of State Alexander Haig: “Let them march all they want as long as they pay their taxes.” Suddenly the television shots of millions of people in the streets protesting the start of war lost their inspiration for me, and I wallowed in our powerlessness to prevent it.
Haig’s cynical remark exemplified my inner struggle as well as a wrenching
and age-old moral dilemma for all Friends. Some bear it as a cross, enabling
them to continue the Lamb’s War on behalf of love, truth, and justice. Could
I, too? Alas, the contradiction of working for peace while paying for war, of
being complicit by mere participation in the
U.S. “system,”
became untenable and intolerable. I explored war tax resistance, but rejected
it because I hold the assets of my incapacitated mother and could not allow
the government to garnish money for her care to recuperate my taxes withheld.
An obituary notice for Stephanie Kennedy in the issue mentioned her work on war tax resistance.
An obituary notice for Charles Richard Johnson in the issue called him “a dedicated war tax resister.”
an ad from the Friends Journal in
pitches the Monteverde community in Costa
Rica, which was founded by American Quaker taxpatriates, as an ethical
investing opportunity and also a potentially attractive tax-break junket
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
There was a bit of an anti-war tax resistance backlash in the Friends Journal in .
In the issue, Peter Phillips came out against war tax resistance in a two-page article.
Here is a summary of his argument:
Friends’ advice against paying war taxes is sometimes incoherent.
The New York Yearly Meeting suggests that friends “examine… voluntary payment of war taxes” but taxes by definition aren’t voluntary.
The practice of some Quakers of refusing to pay but allowing the government to seize the amount by levy makes such war tax resistance “insignificant.”
What do people mean by “war taxes”?
If it’s the percentage of the revenue that goes to the Pentagon, even some of that money isn’t spent for war (for instance the Army Corps of Engineers work to rebuild hurricane-damaged New Orleans).
What about “reparations to Iraqis whose property is damaged” or “the Air Force’s remarkable mediation program that resolves employment and procurement disputes without litigation” — or, in the other direction, what about the Interstate Highway system, which was initially designed as a defense measure: is money raised for that, too, “war taxes”?
Is everyone on their own to decide what taxes are war taxes, or is there an authoritative answer, or is it okay to withhold symbolic amounts — what is the justification for withholding Elizabeth Boardman’s $10.40, an arbitrary amount that has nothing to do with war spending?
Withholding of taxes is not a good way of withholding funds from the war machine for the simple reason that the government won’t decide how to respond to a shortage of funds by respecting the reasons why the tax resister withheld them.
It is every bit as likely (perhaps more likely) to cut spending elsewhere.
“Should Head Start, research on solar energy, unemployment benefits, and support for healthcare all be underfunded in the exercise of our righteousness?
A consequence of my not joining the armed forces in was that someone else did who would not otherwise have had to.
People were hurt because I was not there to help.
This too is a consequence of conscientious objection.
Are those who advocate withholding part of their taxes prepared as well to live with the consequences of their actions?”
There is a Quaker ethic of trying to adapt to communal consensus that is expressed in many of its teachings, and the ethos of participating as equals in trying to probe a dilemma and adopt a communal consensus is one of the things Quakers have contributed to the American polis — war tax resistance turns its back on this with its ethos of individualism and rejection of the decisions of the community.
You will not be surprised to learn that Phillips’s article led to some exchanges in the letters-to-the-editor column in later issues.
Here is a summary of some of the back-and-forth:
Dennis P. Roberts thought the article was “the finest work on war taxes I have yet seen in the pages of your journal” and then told a half-remembered story about a terrible massacre in colonial Pennsylvania that could have been prevented but for the pacifism of the “strong Quaker elements within the settlement.”
— “I cannot say or recall with certainty whether this story is fact or fiction.
What does it matter?
Either way, an important lesson is drive home eloquently and powerfully: military preparations sometimes must be made.”
Robin Harper responded with some suggested guidelines for Quaker war tax resistance that he thought might meet some of Phillips’s criticisms (see ♇ for an excerpt from this letter).
David R. Bassett felt that Phillips had been too dismissive of war tax resistance in general after concentrating his criticism on a few specific arguments and methods he found to be weak or ineffective.
What about resisters who keep their income below the tax line?
Or people like Bassett who work in the judicial and legislative arenas to try to get something like conscientious objection to military taxation legalized?
Or folks who try to make sure their investments and purchases are clear of involvement in war?
Perry Treadwell compared Phillips’s “rationalizations” to “Friends’ historical resistance to confronting their complicity in enslavement,” and thought that just as a few Friends had to break from the pack and lead Quakers to an abolitionist stand, it will take Quakers speaking out against paying for war to make their “spiritual testimony” come to life.
Daniel Jenkins called Phillips’s argument “smooth and lawyerly” and “crafted… to lead to a foregone conclusion.”
He felt that Phillips gave short shrift to occasions when “conscience may sometimes transcend the constraints of conventionality and pressures of conformity.”
Naomi Paz Greenberg considered Phillips’s argument that by not serving or not paying taxes you are merely foisting the responsibility off on someone else to be flawed:
The moral consequence [of Phillips’s decision not to serve in the military] is not that other people were made to serve in his stead, as Phillips suggests.
The moral consequence of his not serving in war is simply that he did not violate his conscience by serving.
Others could have and did make their own choices, consulting conscience or not.
The moral consequences of not paying taxes for war are similarly direct.
She even suggested a more radical outlook toward taxes that I have rarely seen in Quaker circles:
Our taxes are compulsory, and in some sense they are the least desirable way to provide a constructive economic foundation for a compassionate society.
They presuppose that there is no Friendly nor Christian nor Jewish nor Hindu nor Muslim nor conscientious nor atheistic nor socialist love for one another and so we must be forced.
Paying taxes separates us from those with whom we might otherwise be in community, and with whom we might shake hands, share food, share laughter and tears.
Paying taxes for war separates us from many of them irrevocably.
Some Friends testify that we expect better of ourselves than that, because we know experimentally that God expects better of us.
Greenberg also felt that there was a big difference between the Quaker ethos of consensus and conformity when “recognizing the sense of the meeting” and trying to figure out how to confront “legislation written by lobbyists and summarized by Congressional interns in a process that has been compared to the making of sausage.”
An obituary notice for Kent Larrabee in the issue noted that “[f]or much of his life, Kent purposely lived below the poverty line in order to identify with the poor and to avoid payment of income taxes for war.”
In the issue, Arthur Waskow offered a reading of the “Render unto Caesar…” koan that puts it into a context of thousands of years of Rabbinical debate about the passage in Genesis that reads: “God created humankind in God’s own Image.”
He thought that Jesus had been intending to refer to this debate, and not intending to give any advice about taxes.
An obituary notice for Lillian Willoughby in the issue mentioned that “Lillian felt called to refuse to pay war taxes, and the IRS seized her car in .”
An obituary notice for Arthur Evans in the issue said that “[f]or 20 years, Arthur withheld the portion from his federal income tax that he believed went to war and weapons, and in , he was jailed for 90 days for refusing to turn over income records to the Internal Revenue Service.”
And an obituary notice for Merrill Hallowell Barnebey in the identified him as “a war tax resister.”
