Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
United States →
Vietnam War, ~1965–75 →
John Paul “Jack” Malinowski
Rallies outside the courthouse or prison are one way of supporting resisters who are looking at doing time for taking their stand (see The Picket Line for ), supporting their families while they’re being held captive is another (see The Picket Line for ), and accompanying resisters to and from prison and visiting them while inside is a third (see The Picket Line for ).
Another way to support tax resisters as they go up against the legal system is to attend their trials.
I remember that when I attended the NWTRCC national gathering in Boston in , one resister there mentioned that when he went to court to be sentenced, the courtroom was packed with supporters who quietly stood up behind him when he stood to hear the judge pass sentence, and he told us how important that show of support had been to him.
Today I’ll give some additional examples.
Rebecca Riots
In the government finally managed to get its hands on some prosecutable suspects involved in the Welsh “Rebecca Riots” (which largely involved dismantling offensive tollbooths).
The prisoners, under strong guard, were marched to a hearing before a set of magistrates.
“Vast crowds accompanied them, and in expectation of hearing the examination, rushed into the large hall, which in a few minutes was crammed.”
The magistrates responded by banning the public — and even the prisoners’ attorneys — from the room.
Council tax rebels
Council tax refusers in today’s Britain can often count on packing the courtroom with sympathizers if they are summoned.
In the case of retired vicar Alfred Ridley:
[H]is supporters, who had packed the courtroom, cried “Shame!” “It’s a disgrace!” and “Kangaroo court!” …
Mr Woollett [the magistrate] had to be escorted from the court complex by police after he was surrounded by booing protesters.
One supporter said: “People have come here from as far away as Sheffield, Blackpool and Cornwall to support Mr Ridley.”
When Sylvia Hardy, 73, was sentenced to jail time for refusing to pay her council tax, the courtroom erupted:
As Ms Hardy, from Barrack Road, Exeter, was led away the chairman of Devon Pensioners’ Action Forum, Albert Venison, shouted at the bench:
“You are on a completely different planet you people.”
There were other shouts of “pompous ass” and “shame” from other supporters of Ms Hardy who were packed into the small courtroom.
The British women’s suffrage movement
When Janet Legate Bunten was taken to court for refusing to pay a dog license tax, the number of supporters who rallied to her side alarmed the court.
One wrote:
The element of comedy was supplied… [in part] by the alarm created at the arrival of the W.S.P.U. dray and reinforcements.
The court was twenty minutes late in taking its seat, and it was freely rumoured that the reason of the delay was that more police were sent for to be in attendance before the proceedings began!
There certainly was an unusual number present for so insignificant a court.
A meeting was held outside the court, at which Miss [C. Nina] Boyle spoke.
The police not only allowed the demonstration, but were interested listeners.
When Winifred Patch was subjected to bankruptcy proceedings by the Inland Revenue Department, “[t]he officials were astonished to see women bringing in extra benches and overflowing into the solicitors’ seats and the Press pen.”
Patch refused to cooperate in any way with the court, and a second hearing was scheduled, at which “[t]he crowd of suffragist sympathisers was far larger than on the previous occasion” and included many of the more prominent members of the Women’s Tax Resistance League.
War tax resisters
When Vietnam War-era war tax resister Jack Malinowski was sentenced to three months of probation for his tax refusal, “[a] crowd of [approximately 175] supporters in the courtroom greeted the sentencing with a chorus of ‘Solidarity Forever’ and jubilant applause.”
What were American war tax resisters up to in , you ask?
Let’s investigate.
From the Niagara Falls Gazette:
Philadelphia (AP)
The Episcopal Diocese of Philadelphia has agreed to pay income taxes for one of its priests who refused to pay the levy as a protest of the war in Southeast Asia.
The Rev. David Gracie, urban missioner for Philadelphia, said he had withheld $545.25 — half of his Income tax — for 18 months as a protest against the war.
His current annual salary is $14,175.
In his appearance before the church council, he said, “I appeal to the council to join in a corporate act of resistance against this barbaric, immoral war.”
He told the council that if the bill were paid, “you will finish me as a tax resister.”
During a heated debate that preceded the decision, one council member, Arthur Slater, a Defense Department employe, said the group would be engaging in subversion if it backed Father Gracie.
Sister organizations formed plan to urge Columbia residents to resist the telephone war tax and to channel funds from the tax into a community project.
About 15 persons met at the Ecumenical Carter Center, 813 Maryland Ave., in an initial organizational meeting of the Columbia War Tax Resistance and the Columbia Community Life Fund.
The 10 per cent federal excise tax on phone service was enacted in “with the sole purpose of financing the war in Vietnam,” Dave Brey, an organizer of the local resistance group said.
He urged those gathered to subtract the tax from their phone bills, enclosing an explanatory note with a check for the remainder of their bill.
Tax boycotters might expect a call from the Internal Revenue Service, Brey said, and eventually the unpaid amount plus up to 6 per cent interest might be deducted from a bank account or salary check.
A second meeting of the War Tax Resistance will be held at at the Help Yourself Center.
Brey said the organization which will seek “wide community support” would be interested in knowing what the community wants to do with funds collected.
The organization is one of about 180 tax resistance centers nationwide.
Rochester, N.Y. (AP) — Handcuffs were used to lock the main entrance of the Internal Revenue Service office during an anti-war demonstration .
Police said about a dozen persons calling themselves the Rochester War Tax Resistance gathered in front of the downtown office at and distributed leaflets.
Handcuffs were clamped shut on the office door handles, blocking the entrance for about 30 minutes.
Police removed the ’cuffs with wire cutters and arrested one of the protestors.
Officers said Robert H. Staley, 21, of Rochester, was carried from the sidewalk and charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.
From the Delaware County, Pennsylvania, Daily Times:
Philadelphia (AP) — Vietnam war resister, John Paul Malinowski, has been sentenced to three months probation for refusing to pay federal income tax.
A crowd of supporters in the courtroom greeted the sentencing with a chorus of “Solidarity Forever” and jubilant applause.
Malinowski, 30, a former St. Joseph’s College theology instructor, was placed on three months probation for telling the college’s payroll department that he had 15 dependents.
The large number of exemptions cut his withholding to nothing.
He was convicted on , at a jury trial where he said his 15 dependents were fellow members of the War Tax Resistance Fund.
With about 175 of his supporters present , Malinowski told the court “I will not and have not paid (income tax) as long as this criminal conduct by our country continues.
I am filing a return and will file one today, and I’m paying taxes, but not to the Internal Revenue Service.
I am paying into the community of Philadelphia.”
Noting that he was in court on the income tax filing deadline day, Malinowski said, “It is also another day when the awesome might of the U.S. military machine is raining unprecedented amount of bombs on the people of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.”
Defense lawyer John Egnal asked U.S. District Judge Danel H. Huyett Ⅲ to defer sentencing until a class action suit challenging the constitutionality of the Southeast Asia war could be settled.
A three-judge federal panel, including Judge Huyett, is to hear that case, in which Malinowski is a plaintiff.
An IRS spokesman said the agency could now attach Maliowski’s salary or any of his bank accounts.
After the death of Ammon Hennacy in 1970, Karl Meyer took up the torch of promoting war tax resistance in the Catholic Worker.
Meyer’s approach was less exhortational and more practical: he pioneered the method of inflating deductions to prevent income tax withholding and wrote an influential early how-to guide on that method. (An embryonic version of what is now NWTRCC’s Practical War Tax Resistance pamphlet #1: “Controlling Federal Income Tax Withholding”.)
Below are some excerpts from the Catholic Worker from the period, starting with an essay by Karl Meyer from the edition:
New Resistance to War Taxes
By Karl Meyer
“Under penalties of perjury, I certify that I incurred no liability for Federal income tax for and that I anticipate that I will incur no liability for Federal income tax for .”
If you can sign that statement, you can stop the withholding of war taxes from your wages.
The statement is the Employee Certification for Form W-4E Withholding Exemption Certificate, which was first published in by the Internal Revenue Service as an alternative to the standard W-4 form.
If your employer doesn’t have it on hand, get it from the local IRS office.
Signing this statement alone provides complete exemption from prior withholding of Federal Income tax, without enumerating dependents or any other specific basis for the exemption.
Who is eligible to claim this exemption?
I say, “everybody.” It is morally impossible to incur a liability to support evil purposes and actions.
Since at least 70% of Federal taxes is spent for military or war-related purposes, and much of the balance for useless or harmful purposes, it is impossible to incur a liability to pay Federal income tax.
Who is eligible to claim exemption according to IRS?
On the back of the W-4E it says, “You may be entitled to claim exemption from withholding of Federal income tax if you incurred no liability for income tax for and you anticipate that you will incur no liability for income tax for .
For this purpose, you incur tax liability if your joint or separate return shows tax before allowance of any credit for income tax withheld.
If you claim this exemption, your employer will not withhold Federal Income tax for your wages.”
According to this definition, you would technically satisfy the requirements for exemption if you file a return for showing no tax due because of the immorality and illegality of U.S. military expenditures, even if IRS subsequently rejects your reasoning and assesses tax against you.
Likewise, if you file no return at all, your non-existent return can not show any tax due.
Now, it has always been a puzzle to me how a person who believes in conscience that taxes should not be paid could file a return showing taxes as a “balance due.”
That is self-contradictory.
If the tax is acknowledged to be due, it ought to be paid.
If it ought not to be paid, it shouldn’t be shown as “due.”
The IRS calls the income tax a “self-assessed tax.” When you file showing tax due, they are empowered to accept your assessment and proceed to collect immediately.
If you show no tax due, even if they disagree with you, they must first reassess the tax themselves and give you extensive opportunities for legal appeals, before they may proceed to collect on their claim.
Therefore, it is foolish and self-defeating to show tax as due, if you sincerely believe that it ought not to be paid.
There are several ways to assert your claim that no tax is due:
you may claim extra exemptions on line 11, on the ground of obligations to all mankind as brothers and members of one family;
you may claim an adjustment of your income on line 17, based on your principled opposition to militarism;
you may itemize a deduction on line 16 of Schedule A, claiming deduction of your whole taxable income on similar grounds.
Perhaps the soundest approach is to file no return at all. (The main disadvantage of this, besides its being illegal, is that IRS agents sometimes file distorted returns in your name, claiming excessive amounts of tax.) I didn’t file for ten years, but IRS agents have filed seven returns in my name showing more than $2000 in tax and penalties due.
On , I filed a return for in a personal interview with E.P. Trainor, the District Director at the Chicago office of IRS.
On the 1040 Form I filled in my name and address.
Under SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER, I wrote “Peace;” under OCCUPATION, I wrote “Love;” across the face of the return I wrote in bold letters, “WE WONT PAY—STOP THE WAR—STOP THE DRAFT—STOP MILITARISM,” for FIRST NAMES OF DEPENDENT CHILDREN, I wrote “All Men Are Brothers;” under OTHER DEPENDENTS, I claimed “A Vietnamese child killed at Song My, an American soldier killed In Vietnam;” and I filled in a total of three and a half billion exemptions for the whole population of Earth; under BALANCE DUE, PAY IN FULL WITH RETURN, I put “$0.00;” then I signed with my name and the date.
Mr. Trainor and his henchmen haven’t figured that year out yet, but they can’t say I didn’t file.
Before you follow my advice and my example, I wish to speak a word of caution: Everything here is my interpretation.
Don’t expect the IRS, U.S. Attorneys, Federal Juries, or Courts of Appeal to buy a word of it.
In the and issues of the Catholic Worker, I published landmark articles on how to claim sufficient exemptions on the W-4 Form to prevent the withholding of war taxes.
Many people all over the country tried out these ideas effectively, but several last their jobs for persisting, and three were tried and convicted in Federal courts for claiming illegal exemptions.
If you can’t stand heat, stay out of the kitchen.
If you can’t do time, don’t commit crime.
If you have a concern of conscience about paying war taxes, but feel unready to face the possible consequences of the methods of resistance outlined above, the present tax rate provisions give ample opportunity to stop paying war taxes, without violating any provisions of the tax laws, if you are willing to live in reasonable simplicity and voluntary poverty in the spirit of the Catholic Worker movement.
Under the present law an individual may earn up to $1700 a year without any obligation to file a return or pay Federal income tax.
A married person with three dependent children could earn up to $4300 a year without having any tax withheld or due.
Form W-4E was actually introduced by IRS so that such persons, earning less than the minimum yearly taxable incomes by working for only a few months out of the year, would not have taxes withheld and would not have to apply for refunds months after they earned the money.
You can find the complete tables of tax withholding rates and other information in Circular E, Employer’s Tax Guide, available for the asking at your local IRS office.
I do believe that we should all strive to live in a simpler way.
If we work part time for wages and live on less than taxable incomes, we will have extra time to grow, create and do more things for ourselves, or to offer our work as a gift to people in need of it.
Even if we work full time for taxable wages, but successfully resist collection of the taxes, we should still live simply in order to share our surplus money with others who are in need.
I have done this all my adult life and intend to go on with it.
One hundred and eighty years ago, our brother rebel Tom Paine wrote:
…were an estimation to be made of the charges of Aristocracy to a Nation, it will be found nearly equal to that of supporting the poor.
The Duke of Richmond alone (and there are cases similar to his) takes away as much for himself as would maintain two thousand poor and aged persons.
Is it then any wonder that under such a system of Government, taxes and rates have multiplied to their present extent?
In stating these matters, I speak an open and disengaged language dictated by no passion but that of humanity.
To me who have not only refused offers because I thought them improper, but have declined rewards I might with reputation have accepted, it is no wonder that meanness and imposition appear disgustful.
Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
(The Rights of Man, Modern Library edition, page 241)
If we do not live by these principles, how are we different from the warfare state we condemn?
The budget and accounting methods of the Federal administration are confusing.
They have recently been modified to deliberately de-emphasize the role of military expenditures as a proportion of the Federal budget, enabling Nixon to claim that they count for less than 50%.
This has been done by counting all separately raised and earmarked revenues, such as Social Security revenues and payments, as part of one budgetary total.
Then the large Social Security payments can be thrown in the pot and counted at part of domestic expenditures for health and welfare.
Rejecting this ruse, it is possible without detailed analysis to estimate that between 70% and 80% of all Federal income and excise tax revenues is spent for military programs and purposes that are intimately related to the cost of past and present military activities.
Acceding to individual judgment this estimate might include veterans benefits, space research and technology, various “international affairs” programs, certain “Justice Department” activities, a percentage of the general administrative expenditures, and the interest and principal payments on the national debt, incurred primarily as a cost of World War Ⅱ and the Cold War.
Awareness of these facts, plus the explanation of new methods of resistance, contributed to a tremendous growth in the movement of war tax resistance in .
In late a national coordinating center called War Tax Resistance was established in New York.
Its periodical bulletin, Tax Talk, lists 181 local centers of contact people all over the country.
Simple nonpayment of the federal excise tax itemised on telephone bills is the easiest and most common form of principled tax resistance.
War Tax Resistance estimates that more than 100,000 people are now participating in this action. IRS agents expend great effort in collecting very small amounts of this tax, and they are hopelessly behind in their efforts to collect.
I have paid no excise tax on telephone service and IRS has succeeded in collecting only $8.00 so far.
War Tax Resistance has a basic leaflet on phone tax resistance.
War Tax Resistance estimates that 15,000 people participate in some form of income tax nonpayment, as a principled protest against militarism.
We speak of those who consciously and explicitly relate to the war tax resistance movement, because we know that millions of our countrymen, from the highest to the lowliest, participate in tax resistance or evasion, largely because of unarticulated opposition to the basic policies of government.
They will be our allies if their protest can become articulate and organized.
The most promising development in was the significant number of people who began to successfully resist payment of all or most of the income tax amounts that would be claimed under Federal law and regulations.
Until the number of such total tax resisters was small and almost exclusively limited to self-employed persons or others who derived most of their income from sources not subject to withholding tax.
In articles for the Catholic Worker ( and ) I explained how to beat the withholding tax by claiming enough exemptions on the W-4 Form that no tax could be withheld from one’s wages.
Widely reprinted and circulated in leaflet form, these articles offered an effective tax resistance method to almost any wage earner who had the courage to try it and risk the possibility of prosecution or harassment sometime in the future.
In his last letter to me before his death, Ammon Hennacy, a pioneer influence in our war tax resistance movement, glumly predicted that from fear of going to jail, there wouldn’t be more than a handful in the country that would take up my idea.
But Ammon was wrong in this case.
I know that many have taken it up, and they are growing in numbers, because I keep hearing from them, particularly those in the Chicago area.
Thousands of dollars have been held back from the military machine and donated to alternative uses that meet the real needs of people.
This movement will continue to grow from roots that are deep in the American tradition.
The ideas of Thoreau’s Essay on Civil Disobedience, fruit of his brief imprisonment for war tax resistance, are well-known today.
But a century before Thoreau our forefathers made their stand for independence in resistance to unjust taxes.
Both the American Revolution and the French Revolution were organized around the issue of resistance to taxation.
Tom Paine understood this well because he was active in both.
In he published in England a powerful polemical tract on The Rights of Man to stir the people of England to a similar revolt.
His most persistent theme of grievance is the criminal burden of war taxes imposed on the people by power hungry men in government.
He vividly describes the genesis of the French Revolution, including the refusal of the Parliament of Paris, in , to register the edicts of the King and Government seeking to enforce new taxes:
While the Parliament were sitting in debate on this subject, the Ministry ordered a regiment of soldiers to surround the House and form a blockade.
The members sent out for beds and provisions, and lived as in a besieged citadel; and as this had no effect, the commanding officer was ordered to enter the Parliament House and seize them, which he did, and some of the principal members were shut up in different prisons…
But the spirit of the Nation was not to be overcome, and it was so sensible of the strong ground it had taken, that of withholding taxes, that it contented itself with keeping up a sort of quiet resistance, which effectively overthrew all the plans at that time formed against it.
(Rights of Man, Modern Library edition, page 149)
On this strong ground let us also take our stand for a quiet battle, more effective against wrong, more productive for good purposes than any other I can think of.
Yours for a gentle revolution
Karl Meyer
Permission is granted to anyone interested to reproduce this article in whole or in part.
If it is reproduced in part, please indicate editing and deletions.
List of sources for information and communication:
War Tax Resistance
839 Lafayette Street
New York. N.Y. 10012
Phone (212) 477‒2970
Send $1 and ask for
WTR Handbook
Hang Up On War telephone tax refusal leaflet.
reprint of Karl Meyer’s Fund For Mankind article from CW
or send more to help with their crucial work of coordinating the communication and work of the movement.
The Peacemaker
10208 Sylvan Avenue
Cincinnati, Ohio 45241
A valuable periodical for all who are interested in draft resistance, tax resistance, and radical life styles.
Send $4 for a subscription, plus their Handbook on Nonpayment Of War Taxes, which includes many informative case histories.
I further recommend that all tax resisters contribute a substantial percentage of the money not paid to the Peacemakers Sharing Fund at the same address.
The Fund is a valuable channel of mutual aid for war resisters and their families, when they suffer from imprisonment or financial hardship as a result of their stand.
Karl Meyer
1209 West Farwell Street
Chicago, Illinois 60628
Phone (312) 764‒3620
Call me or write to me for personal counseling and encouragement.
If you write, send two six cent stamps for my reply and any leaflets I may send you.
Dorothy Day visited war tax resister Art Harvey and brought back this story ( issue):
I visited Art Harvey of South Ackworth, New Hampshire who has a mall order book shop handling a great number of books by and about Gandhi.
Art and Ammon Hennacy served six-month-terms in Sandstone Prison in Minnesota for trespassing on a missile base some years ago.
He carries on a practical application of Karl Meyer’s tax refusal (see article in this issue) by having teams of workers in orchards where they prune trees, harvest apples and later blueberries and work seven months of the work and live in a style which frees them from the payment of taxes for war.
Perhaps about a hundred are engaged in this way of life, which results usually in some settling in communities of the moshavim variety, each having some small acreage and a house built by themselves Considering the New England climate, no small achievement!
It certainly means an emphasis on the ascetic, on sacrifice.
The Karl Meyer article she mentioned follows:
War Tax Resistance
by Karl Meyer
On , charges were filed in federal district court in Chicago against Bill Himmelbauer, Mike Fowler and myself.
In separate cases, we are accused of falsely claiming exemptions from federal tax, to which we were not legally entitled.
Mike Fowler, a student at the University of Chicago, is charged on two counts of filing false W-4 forms with his employer.
The maximum penalty for each count is one year in jail.
Bill Himmelbauer is charged on one count.
He and Sue Himmelbauer joined with us in late in starting the Chicago Area Alternative Fund for tax resistance money, and then moved to Pittsburgh where they became ringleaders in War Tax Resistance activities.
I am charged on five counts for W-4s executed in .
Through eleven years of “one man revolution” I had successfully resisted payment of almost all federal income taxes claimed from me, mainly by claiming enough exemptions on W-4 Withholding Exemption Certificates that no tax was withheld from my wages.
The tax man did nothing beyond ineffectual attempts to collect.
Then suddenly in the one man revolution exploded into a growing movement of effective war tax resistance by the withholding exemption method.
Suddenly the tax man got worried.
Suddenly he started prosecuting withholding tax resisters around the country: , Jim Shea, Alexandria.
Virginia; , Sally Buckley and Dennis Richter, Minneapolis, Minnesota; , Paul Malinowski, and Donald Callahan, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; , James Smith, Springfield, Missouri; and now, three more in Chicago.
On , IRS Intelligence Agents Sam Miele and Alan Leksander visited me at home.
They confronted me with copies of five W-4 forms for , and two articles from the Catholic Worker for and , “A Fund For Mankind Through Effective Tax Resistance” and “Clarification On Tax Withholding.”
These are the articles which launched the wave of withholding tax resistance action in .
I acknowledged authorship of the five W-4s and the two CW articles.
On , I received a letter from the Chief of the Intelligence Division of IRS:
“The current investigation by the Intelligence Division is nearing completion… consideration is being given to recommending that criminal proceedings be instituted against you…”
I was invited to a hearing with Group Supervisor Ralph A. Weber.
At the hearing I presented a statement of my position and various other relevant literature and documents to Internal Revenue Service.
Statement to Internal Revenue Service, Intelligence Division Hearing:
My name is Karl Meyer.
My immediate family includes my wife Jean and three children, William, 7 years old, Kristin, 3 years old, and Eric, 2 months old.
In South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos there are many families like ours.
I gladly accept a responsibility toward them, like that which I bear toward my own children.
These other families, these other children are the ones who were machine-gunned in a trench at My Lai, and are being killed in many other ways every day that the war continues In Indo-China.
There are also the soldiers of both sides, Americans and Aslans, who are also the victims of the war, who are dying by the thousands as it continues.
Upwards of 80% of all federal income tax revenues are devoted to purposes intimately related to American wars and military activities, past and present.
In the name of my family, of the families of Indo-China, of the soldiers of both sides and all other victims of International militarism, I claim a complete exemption from all federal taxes that finance military activities.
Yes, I have claimed ten or more exemptions on several W-4 exemption certificates. I have claimed exemption from tax for myself and my family, for several others who have lived in our household and received their primary financial support from me, and for these others, the families of Indo-China, and all the victims of war.
In a peaceful and nonviolent society the job of collecting assessments for social purposes might be a useful occupation.
But the man who collects taxes for the United States government today makes himself a direct accomplice in some of the most horrible crimes of our age.
You have already told me that you are considering compounding these crimes by beginning a criminal prosecution against me.
I and my family have already made some sacrifices in the struggle against war, but they have been as nothing compared to the suffering of our brothers and sisters who are in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
We ask you today to recognize just one basic human right, our right not to participate in acts of war against them.
Even if you refuse to recognize that right, we will still refuse to pay federal taxes that continue the war in Indo-China and the militarization of our society.
This is all that I have to say.
Karl Meyer
After I received the letter from IRS, I went in to talk with my supervisor in the huge hospital bureaucracy in which I was employed.
I expected her to be unsympathetic, and even hostile to me as a source of trouble for her.
After thirty years of working her way toward the top of the bureaucracy, it had seemed to me she lived and breathed the system and its rules, though I respected her even so for the great strength of her character.
But now when I told her directly of my long struggle against the war and of the imminent threat of criminal prosecution, she smiled at me from deep within, and expressed her own strong opposition to the war and her respect and support for me.
“Mr. Meyer” she said, taut with emotion, “I am black.
From all of my experience I know that when you fight the system in this ‘democratic’ country they are going to make you pay for it.”
Then she told me something of her own struggle.
After a long talk she asked me, "Wasn’t there a girl here in Chicago who took that same stand (war tax resistance) several years ago?”
Yes, there certainly was.
Eleven years later, another black woman in Chicago still remembered the courageous witness of Eroseanna Robinson, the very person whose example set my feet on the path of determined tax resistance, back in 1960 — Eroseanna Robinson who refused to pay taxes, who defied the order of Judge Robson to give information about her income in spite of a one year sentence for criminal contempt, who fasted one hundred and eight days and won her own release from federal prison by the strength of her resistance.
Now, on , the charges against Fowler, Himmelbauer and Meyer were announced.
That night we picketed and leafleted at the Main Post Office where special postmen were on duty to receive last minute returns from thousands of more tractable Chicagoans.
We haven’t yet received official notice or summons, but from the records filed in court David Finke has found that the three cases are assigned to three separate Judges for trial.
I am to be summoned for an initial hearing in the court of Judge Joseph Sam Perry.
I plan a simple and direct defense. I plan to represent myself without an attorney.
I will ask for a jury trial at the earliest possible date.
I will not base my defense on legalities.
I will simply seek to convince the jury, judge, prosecutor and everyone else that I have done what is right and in accord with inalienable rights of personal judgment, and that I should not be declared guilty or penalized for my actions.
If I am convicted and sentenced to prison, we have been thinking that Jean will apply for public aid for the financial support of our family.
We feel that if the State insists on tearing from the family its source of support, the State should bear the cost of providing other means.
We prefer to see the resources of the movement devoted to the needs of poor people in this country and abroad who have no other recourse.
This is just one of the reasons why I do not desire a costly legal defense or primary financial support from the movement, though we welcome the personal support of our friends.
The form of encouragement and support that we will value most highly will be if our friends in the movement take our troubles and our resolve as an example, to stop paying war taxes and to devote the greatest possible part of their income to sharing with the victims of international war and of the war of rich against poor.
This is why we of the Chicago Area Alternative Fund have saved nothing for our own protection, but have already given away all of our war tax resistance money to meet the immediate needs of others.
If you want to read the articles that launched the present movement of withholding tax resistance by explaining the method, and incidentally brought upon us our small tribulations, you may send two eight cent stamps to:
War Tax Resistance
339 Lafayette Street
New York, New York 10012
and ask for their reprint, “A Fund For Mankind Through Effective War Tax Resistance.”
To get in touch with us about the trial, write to:
Karl Meyer
1209 West Farwell
Chicago, Illinois 60626
Phone 764‒3620
The issue reported on how the court ruled in Karl Meyer’s case:
Karl Meyer Sentenced to Two Years, $1,000
By David Finke
On in the court of federal district Judge Joseph Sam Perry, Karl Meyer appeared in his own behalf to answer a 5-count “criminal information” charging that he falsely and fraudulently filed W-4 income tax withholding exemption certificates.
Having successfully negotiated with the U.S. Attorney, Karl got the government to drop three of the five counts (which he had said he could prove the accuracy of).
He then entered a plea of “nolo contendere,” which the judge accepted as a finding of “guilty,” on the other two counts.
A two-week presentence investigation was then ordered. while Karl remained free without bond.
, Karl returned to court with about 25 friends, supporters, and fellow tax resisters, and personally accompanied by his 7-year-old son William.
Before imposing sentence, Judge Perry with great decorum and civility said he would hear from both the government and the defendant, whose absolute right to represent himself without attorney would be respected.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kocoras then launched into a most amazing and accurate summary of Karl’s career of leadership in the movement of War Tax Resistance:
Not only has Karl not filed a tax return , he has encouraged others to join with him in resisting federal taxes!
And he has explained publicly exactly what he is doing and how other people can do the same.
Kocoras read extensively from articles that Karl had written for Catholic Worker, including those memorable (but to Kocoras damning) phrases, “If you can’t do time, don’t commit crime,” and “If you can’t stand the heat, don’t put your hand in the fire.”
The prosecutor hit the issue squarely on the head, then, when he said:
“What is at stake here is the integrity of the income tax law.”
The government is obviously worried about the possibility of widespread, undetected, mass-based tax resistance if Karl’s ideas should catch on and not be deterred.
The prosecutor closed his remarks by observing that federal taxes support all programs of government including the operation of Judge Perry’s court.
Karl was then asked to present his statement to the court, the Judge being very cordial again.
With brevity and simplicity, Karl pointed out that federal taxes (unlike the city and state taxes which he pays) are “overwhelmingly devoted to warfare,” and that during the course of his life between sixty and seventy per cent have gone to pay for military ventures.
In conscience, Karl said, he cannot and must not cooperate with the financing of killing.
As he began to explain how his resistance had always been done openly and publicly, the Judge dramatically changed his tone and manner.
In rapid sequence he interrupted Karl to say that being open is no excuse — “You can openly and publicly rob a bank!” — “this defendant is showing no penitence, this is obviously not a case for probation, and there is no point in wasting anymore time.”
Karl was immediately sentenced to the maximum penalty on both counts (one year, $500), with the sentences to run consecutively, although he might consider making the sentences concurrent if Karl showed a “change of heart.”
The Judge was about to call the next case when an older man, Solomon Goldman, appeared at Karl’s side from the audience, shook his hand, and loudly declared, “Karl Meyer, my grandchildren will thank you.
You are a man of peace.” Judge Perry was astounded; exclaimed to Mr. Goldman “You’re not an attorney!” and ordered him removed from the building.
Then a bit of confusion set in.
The Judge was ordering the marshal also to remove Karl, but the marshal was still involved with Mr. Goldman.
Karl was asking if he could give his briefcase to his friends, was told it could be gotten from the lockup.
Bill Himmelbauer (another convicted W-4 tax resister) was by this time at Karl’s side getting the briefcase, various people were waving two-fingered peace signs to Karl and saying “Goodbye!” as he walked out, and the Judge (whose courtroom was still understaffed) was on his feet shouting “No demonstrations!
There will be no demonstrations in here!
I’ll have you all in jail for contempt.
Clear the courtroom!” as we slowly filed out.
I’ve been informed that Karl will be sent to Sandstone, Minnesota, federal prison, after about two weeks in Cook County Jail in Chicago.
Several friends have seen him already, and report that he’s the same old Karl:
He has put his hand in the fire, and he can stand the heat as well as anyone.
(See Letter Column for Karl’s letter.
The story of his action bears repeating. ―Editor’s comment.)
Karl Meyer’s letter follows:
From Prison
Cook County Jail Chicago, Illinois
Dear Dorothy and C.W. family,
I received a letter from Kathy Bredine telling me of your call, and I was very pleased to receive your message.
Here I am permitted to write and receive mall from anyone, but I will probably be here only a few more days, before “shipment” to a federal “Facility.” There I will have a restricted mailing list; how many names I will not know until I get there; but I have been planning to put you on the list, near the top.
The letters will be for all of you, from A Prisoner.
I hope that you will not be cut from the list for being a single woman and not a relative, even though more than twice my age.
Rules are rules (though I am not sure that that is one of them), and the crime of which I stand convicted is that I claimed a familiar relationship of brotherly responsibility for the very lives of a people not in my own line of genetic descent, at least for several generations, and not even born on the same continent between the St. Lawrence River and the Rio Grande.
I was a little stunned to receive the maximum penalty for that crime, one year on each of two counts, to be served consecutively, plus $1000 in fines, though it is my prudential practice to go into court prepared and expecting to get the maximum.
Nevertheless, I keep forgetting that when these judges see a sheet of convictions as long as mine (however humane the motivations that lie behind it) going back for fourteen years, they can’t seem to see beyond that sheet, and they have a reflexive reaction to go for the maximum.
Of course it is appropriate that I should be the first person to start serving time for claiming exemptions from war taxes on the W-4 Form, since, being a child of Dorothy Day and Ammon Hennacy, it is not my way to conduct guided tours to the jailhouse door and not go in myself.
A number of statements were torn from the context of my writings by the U.S. Attorney to be quoted against me, and he particularly dwelt on that prison aphorism. “If you can’t do the time, don’t commit the crime,” which I have often repeated.
In the light of that reality, I might have done differently myself if I had known the severity of the penalty that would come down on me.
For a person without a family of small children, two years is nothing to speak of; but for people having the care of small children such as my own, William—aged 7, Kristin—aged 4, and Eric—aged 5 months, it is a serious thing for them to be fatherless for such periods of time, I think; that is why we must emphasize that there are practical ways, fully within the range of any ordinary working person, to withdraw financial support from the murder of Vietnamese families without going outside U.S. law and without taking the risks of imprisonment that I hare unfortunately taken.
Now, after a year and a half of widespread experience, we can gauge the response of the federal government to the withholding exemption method of war tax resistance.
Nine people have been prosecuted to date, and a sentencing pattern of one year on each count seems to be emerging.
The withholding exemption method of war tax resistance remains very important and useful for persons who measure the personal risk and decide that it is proper for them to take it.
But, particularly for those of us with families, it will be useful to develop ideas on how we can be true to our deepest convictions about our responsibilities to mankind, without coming into such open confrontation with the laws of the U.S.
Many people have talked with me about working toward conscientious objector provisions under the federal tax laws that would allow war objectors to earmark their social tax assessments for exclusively peaceful purposes.
As to practical effect, such provisions already exist under the tax laws of the U.S.
We need only the generosity and honesty in our ideas to take advantage of them.
For instance, under the present tax laws, a family of five could retain income of $4350 for personal use without having to pay any income tax.
In addition they would be entitled to an itemised deduction from taxable income for up to 50% of their gross income if donated to broad categories of recognized charitable and socially positive purposes.
Thus a family of five could easily have an income of at least $8700, give half of it for peaceful purposes, and legally owe no federal tax on the balance.
This is a general figure that does not take account of many deductions and exemptions that might increase that figure.
Many people feel that it is not possible for a family of five to live decently on $4350 a year in the United States.
Our own family experience, in urban Chicago, one of the higher priced areas of the country, indicates that it is quite reasonable and possible to set a family budget at that level.
The factor which has required us to use a higher income has been our contributions to the support of several other people outside our immediate family, at St. Stephen’s House of Hospitality, whom we could not legally claim as dependents for exemption from taxation.
Over the past three years our personal household has lived on a budget averaging about as follows: rent, including heat—$135 a month; food, clothing and household items—$135; hospitalization insurance—$16; Social Security deductions—$30; public transportation—$23; gas—$3; electricity—$8; phone—$8.
That totals $385 a month, very close to the minimum we are talking about; but we are far from having explored all potentials for less expensive living; our rent is higher than necessary because we live in a desirable location in northern Chicago, one block from the lakefront, and our food budget could be cut somewhat by different and more careful buying methods that we have not taken the time to explore; we could cut our electric bill in half and do without a phone, if necessary.
Yet, I can not describe our life as one of sacrifice or hardship.
Thus I believe that if we are honest about our commitment to a peaceful coexistence with other people and other societies, we must and can learn to live in a way of voluntary simplicity that is compatible with equality among people.
And it isn’t even illegal.
Yours, with a large part of my love.
Karl Meyer — a Prisoner for Peace
P.S. The Bldg. Dept has been after us about the house on Mohawk St., which now stands alone amid vacant lots on all sides where other houses were torn down.
I have found places for two of the three men who remained of our household there; Lemont had to go back to the TB Sanitarium; Roy, who was with us , I have gotten on public aid and found him a decent place in a residential hotel; Richard has been with us but he is able to look after himself.
The building will soon be condemned and torn down.
Frank Marfla, of our Alternative Fund group, will visit the men and look after them while I am in jail.
The National Catholic News Service carried this dispatch on :
Episcopal Diocese Pays Protesting Priest’s Tax Bill
By NC News Service, Philadelphia (NC) —
The Episcopal diocese of Philadelphia has decided to pay $545 in income taxes withheld by one of its priests as a protest against the Vietnam War.
After the Rev. David Gracie, an urban missioner here, had refused for 10 months to pay half of his income tax assessment, the Internal Revenue Service went to his employer asking the Episcopal diocese to turn over $545 of the priest’s salary.
Refusing to do so would have made the diocese liable for possible criminal charges for non-payment of the taxes.
Father Gracie appealed to the Episcopal council “to join in a corporate act of resistance against this barbaric, immoral war.”
Paying the bill, he said, “will finish me as a tax resister.”
Voting to pay the tax bill, the council also set up a committee to study the theological implications of conscientious tax resistance and tax exemption.
Tom Cornell reviewed the book Ain’t Gonna Pay for War No More (Robert Calvert, The War Tax Resistance, ) in the issue of Catholic Worker:
Ain’t Gonna Pay No More
This book represents a tremendous contribution to the movement against war and for a more decent society, in itself and in the War Tax Resistance campaign from which it emerges.
Probably the most significant development in The Movement during the past two years has been the growth of organised tax resistance along with its alternate funds.
Tax resistance has long been recognised as a pillar of anti-war activity, at least in theory.
After long incubation since the beginning of the Cold War in , tax resistance is taking its place in the minds of many pacifist activists alongside such stances as conscientious objection and draft resistance.
Ain’t Gonna Pay is an unusual movement publication.
It is pocket size, has a soft cover, is handsomely but modestly produced.
The type is legible and generously spaced.
It is crammed with useful information in a digestible form, and it is sprightly and wryly humorous.
To Bob Calvert is due not only credit for this most useful book, but also for the cohesion and outreach the national tax resistance has attained.
A most extraordinary man, you may read more about him in his own disarming paragraphs “About the Author,” in the comments about him by Bradford Lyttle on the back cover, and in David Dellinger’s Preface.
Karl Meyer
Much of the impetus for the tax resistance movement has come from the writings of Karl Meyer.
Karl has recently been released from Sandstone federal prison where he served 10 months for one of his experiments with tax resistance.
An important new development he has spurred has been the alternate fund.
Basic reasoning behind both tax resistance and the fund is well stated by Karl himself in his CW article. It is well to repeat portions of it:
If we pool all of the tax money that we did not pay in locally administered funds, we can create a model for a future in which men can regain direct control of their common institutions and effectively deny their consent to governmental programs they believe evil.
In each community or region we can set up a common fund. Each contributor will have one vote, as in a cooperative.
The members will meet from time to time to set priorities and guidelines for administering it according to their guidelines.
Assuming that the federal income tax contributions of most people in the movement probably exceed their voluntary political, organizational and charitable contributions, we would expect that the tax alternative funds could become one of the most substantial sources of money for the projects and purposes in which we most strongly believe.
But beyond that we could hope that our experience in mutual aid through these cooperative funds would bear fruit in the development of ashrams and communities for closer economic and social cooperation, for it is when our constructive action and our resistance to evil become for real that we see the need and value of mutual aid and begin to create cooperative alternatives within the competitive society on which we live.
If we ignore or neglect the great potential of tax resistance joined to constructive action, we must be deaf to history and blind to experience.
Do we not know that tax resistance has been one of the greatest sources and strategies of revolutionary movements throughout history?
Has not history shown that taxation is a process requiring the general consent and cooperation of the populace?
Has it not been shown that when numbers of people reject a government by withdrawing their consent from the elaborate bureaucratic process of taxation, that government is in deep trouble?
Did not the French Revolution begin with tax resistance?
Was not tax resistance the slogan and rallying cry of the American Revolution:
“Taxation without representation is tyranny I”?…
Did not Thoreau fashion the cornerstone of American resistance theory out of his own experiences as a tax resister?
Was not Gandhi’s largest and most significant campaign of civil disobedience, the Salt March, based on the strategy of tax resistance?
Can we not see what the IRS knows full well: that even where the public gives general consent to the process of taxation it is always and everywhere a grudging and tentative consent, a resentful and querulous consent, a fragile consent that must always be nursed and safeguarded by positive relations?
There exists among the public at large a great reservoir of grievance, a vast subliminal potential for tax resistance and evasion that only needs to be aroused by news of widespread tax resistance.
Let us learn from the experience of the draft resistance movement and the telephone tax refusal campaign.
A few years ago, many people regarded draft refusal as a personal witness of the solitary conscience.
Today it has taken on the dimension of a social movement.
It is, however, restricted by the narrow age and sex range of those who are subject to conscription, and even more restricted by the narrowness of the draft as a single focus of action.
When we combine real war tax resistance with the tremendous constructive potential of a Fund for Humanity, we will have raised a banner to which all honest and courageous men of conscience can repair.
Penalties
People are always anxious to know the penalties for various forms of tax resistance.
There is a chapter of questions and answers taken from the column by Payno Warbucks in Tax Talk, organ of the WTR ($2 a year subscription).
It is practical and accurate.
Stories of individuals who have dealt with IRS’ and the courts’ attempts to make them pay are told succinctly.
Long-time readers will recall the stories of Wally and Juanita Nelson, Rev. Maurice McCracken, Walter Gormly and Eroseanna Robinson.
Some recent efforts to collect taxes-due through confiscation of property and sale at public auctions are related with hardly suppressed glee.
Here is the story of Bob Marcus:
On , the IRS auctioned the car of Bob Marcus at the National Guard Armory in Boulder, Colorado for $1.25 in phone tax money.
People from the Institute/Mountain West, a branch of the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence and Denver War Tax Resistance decided to make good use of the opportunity.
They sent out a leaflet to the 3500 people in the Institute’s mailing list, telling them what had happened and asking that they contribute to a fund to buy Bob’s car back at the auction.
It was explained that all money bid for the car above the unpaid tax and fees is refunded to the tax (non)payer.
The excess money would be put into the war tax resistance alternative fund.
The auction was promoted as a “joint IRS/Institute for the Study of Nonviolence fund-raiser for war tax resistance.”
About thirty people showed up at the auction, held in a stiff wind outside the armory.
“We passed around cookies in the shape of the resistance omega, tossed balloons of all colors into the air, and held signs which read ‘I ain’t gonna pay for war no more’ and ‘celebrate life — don’t pay war tax.’ ”
Beneath a skull and crossbones “Jolly Roger” kite that went wild in the wind, two revenuers read the IRS ground rules.
They told Bob that he could still redeem the car.
He stepped foreword and said, “But can I redeem my soul?”
The car was sold for $277.00.
It took about twenty minutes to complete the transaction because much of the money was in twenty dollar bills.
After the IRS got its blood money, and the Institute expenses had been paid, the war tax resistance alternative fund had netted $203.35.
Bob donated the car to the community.
He decided that he preferred bicycling to polluting the air.
In addition, all the media covered the story extensively and pretty sympathetically.
It can be stated that the IRS bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of publicity for the idea of war tax resistance.
“A final benefit is that we showed the people of the community that tax resisters will stick together and help each other out.”
How’s that for a bit of nonviolent jujitsu? (pp. 89–90.)
The book ends with a listing of the eighty-nine local War Tax Resistance centers around the country (as of press date ).
There are now almost one hundred more, as well as twenty-three alternate or “Life Funds.”
These centers offer tax-resistance counseling, supply current literature, buttons and bumper stickers, coordinate speakers, produce demonstrations, and administer Life Funds.
I suggest you buy at least five copies of this book to give to friends who might then help you to organise a war resistance center in your locale.
You will get all the help you need from Bob Calvert
The National Catholic Reporter covered Karl Meyer’s war tax resistance in its issue:
An act of “political significance”
Resister urges withholding of taxes
By Jerry De Muth
Special to the National Catholic Reporter — Chicago —
“Tax resistance is now like draft resistance was in ,” Catholic Worker Karl Meyer told 1,000 persons who gathered to greet him on his parole from prison where he had been serving a two-year sentence for falsifying his federal income tax deductions.
“When I tore up my draft card in , it was an act of personal witness,” the 34-year-old Meyer explained.
“Today it has become an act of political significance because so many do it.
“In , eight of us refused to pay the telephone excise tax.
Now at least 100,000 do not pay that ten per cent tax.”
The tax was levied for the expressed purpose of raising funds for the war in Indochina.
Today, Meyer sees the number of income tax resisters as numbering at least 10,000 and perhaps as many as 20,000.
And, he hopes that soon this act of personal witness will also become an act of political significance.
In an interview after his talk, Meyer said, “I like concrete results.
If you don’t send $500 to Washington, you can spend that $500 as you wish on something positive.
That’s concrete, but there’s no other concrete result unless tax resistance becomes organized and grows.
“The first step,” Meyer said, “is nonpayment of the ten per cent telephone tax.
Then there is nonpayment of any balance due or nonpayment of $50, $100 or a significant amount of the income tax.
If many do this it does have political significance.”
The affair for Meyer included a $5-a-plate dinner, with the proceeds going to the Chicago Peace Council, Peoples Coalition for Peace and Justice and the Catholic Worker movement.
Referring to the people who promoted the dinner, he said:
“They should have decided not to send $500 in tax money to Washington and instead sent it to the Peace Council.
But instead they send $500 to Washington and send $5 to the Peace Council, and then they wonder why Washington is strong and the Peace Council is weak.”
Meyer: Tax resistance is like draft resistance was in 1967
Meyer was first exposed to pacifism by his mother, who taught him about Gandhi, and his father, William H. Meyer, a former U.S. representative from Vermont who was a conscientious objector during World War Ⅱ.
, the elder Meyer proposed the abolition of both Selective Service and the manufacture of nuclear weapons.
In , young Meyer became involved in active resistance, joined the Catholic Worker and converted to Catholicism.
Also a believer in such “educational” acts as peace marches, he has participated in many such actions, including a ten-month, 6,000-mile San Francisco to Moscow march in .
Meyer’s frequent protests against the war have resulted in numerous arrests.
In , he was expelled from South Vietnam for antiwar activities and, he says, similar efforts resulted in his being beaten up by delegates to the Lions International convention in Chicago in .
Meyer began his protest against the use of tax money for the military in by having his income tax underwithheld.
In , he progressed to all-out resistance through the influence of a Chicago tax resister, Eroseanna Robinson, an Olympic high jump champion.
So that no income tax would be withheld from her pay, Miss Robinson would change jobs every time her income from a job totaled more than $600.
At the end of the year she did not report any of her income.
She was arrested and while detained in Cook county jail in Chicago began to fast while Meyer and others picketed outside.
Sentenced to a year in prison, she continued to fast.
After 108 days the Bureau of Prisons, Meyer said, asked the judge to release her and the judge complied.
“I said to myself then that I was not going to pay taxes any more,” Meyer said.
“I began by leafletting the IRS IRS offices.”
At the time Meyer was supporting a House of Hospitality in Chicago and legally claimed as exemptions the persons who were living there.
As a result, no taxes were withheld.
“But as I phased out the house,” he added, “I no longer legally had a sufficient number of exemptions.
But in I claimed 12 anyway, and in I claimed 10.”
Meyer was legally entitled to four — for himself; his wife, Jean; a son, William, now eight, and a daughter, Kristin, now four.
(They since have had a third child, Eric, now one year old.)
It was for those extra exemptions that Meyer received a maximum two-year sentence plus a $1,000 fine last .
He was released from the federal prison at Sandstone, Minn. — where Joe Mulligan and Ed Hoffmans of the Chicago 15 are also imprisoned — on and will remain on parole until .
Meyer has frequently changed jobs to avoid a lien on his wages.
Once, the government got $46.60 before he quit one job.
It is the only income tax he has paid in the past 11 years, he says.
He has also avoided paying all but $8 of the federal excise tax on phone service.
“My jobs were determined by my radical pattern of life,” he explained.
“I was in jail a lot.
I was not thinking of building a career, which was good because, as soon as you stop living as the poor live and stop working as the poor work, you stop caring about their needs.”
A simple lifestyle is a very important part of tax resistance for the Meyers.
“There are essential principles more important than tax resistance,” Meyer emphasized.
“They are the idea of voluntary poverty and simplicity of life which we have done through our House of Hospitality, sharing our income with others.
“The other major principle is the refusal to do harm to others, especially to claim control of our own productivity and not pay for the killing of others.
We can claim control of our lives through tax resistance.”
Meyer said there is only one reason why more persons, even if they strongly oppose the war, do not refuse to pay part or all of their income taxes — “They’re afraid.”
“But the first time it’s done, there’s certainly no risk,” he said confidently.
Partly for this reason he backs mass tax resistance as a national antiwar action.
“The question,” he said, “is how do you tell people about their own strengths.
They mistakenly think that Karl Meyer is stronger then they.”
Meyer, who frequently delves into history with a preference for the writings of Thomas Paine, fondly points out that the American Revolution, the French Revolution and Gandhi’s movement for Indian independence all had their roots in tax resistance.
The step of tax resistance, he feels, is important for those who have unsuccessfully urged their senators to vote against military appropriations.
“When the time comes for us to vote against appropriations — and that day comes April 15 — do we vote against appropriations?” he asked.
“The courage we ask of our representatives should not be greater than the courage we ask of ourselves.”
Meyer: “voluntary poverty and simplicity of life”
As for the Meyers’ future, Meyer said that they will not pay the $2,000 in taxes owed for , will not pay the telephone tax and will not pay his $1,000 fine.
“But in order that we may be allowed to remain together and not be separated by imprisonment,” he added, “we will limit our income to an amount that will not be taxable, to about $4,800.
It’s easy to live on this.
In fact, I think we can live on $4,000 by the simplification of our life.
We will then be in a position to share the surplus with others not so fortunate as us.”
Meyer was working at a hospital when he was arrested a year ago and now is employed by “an association,” working with the mentally retarded.
“We will continue to do productive work for the good of society,” he vowed.
“We will continue to oppose this war and all other wars and all militarism by the testimony of our lives and the witness of our actions.”
From the The Catholic Advocate:
Promotes “Tax Resistance” to War
A 27-year-old priest refuses to pay the “war share” of his federal income tax.
Rev. Thomas McKenna, assistant pastor at St. Luke’s, St. Paul, Minn., in a letter to more than 100 priests inviting them to discuss possible tax resistance, said: “No matter how we vote, no matter what we say, no matter how many statements, marches and demonstrations we endorse, we still support the war (and the weekly death toll) with a large portion of every dollar we pay in federal income and telephone excise taxes.”
A follow-up on this from the National Catholic Reporter, :
17 clergy to withhold tax
Special to the National Catholic Reporter — St. Paul, Minn. —
Seventeen Twin Cities’ area priests, ministers and seminarians have announced that they will refuse to pay a portion of their federal income tax to protest the Vietnam war.
Among the group are five priests of the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese.
“We cannot before God support or finance this unjustifiable killing of fellow human beings whether American or Southeast Asian,” said Father Thomas McKenna, a leader of the group, in a statement read at the federal building here. “Therefore, we feel that we must in conscience refuse to pay that portion of our federal income tax that goes to support this inhuman, ungodly war.”
Father McKenna, an assistant pastor at St. Luke’s Catholic church in St. Paul, said that 25 priests of the archdiocese had indicated to him that they might join in the tax resistance.
The 20 who did not join, he said, are still considering other forms of protest, such as withholding the federal telephone tax.
The tax resisters’ statement came at the conclusion of a peaceful demonstration by more than 200 clergy, seminarians and laymen who marched from St. Paul’s Dayton Avenue Presbyterian church to the St. Paul cathedral and then to the federal building.
The march was organized by the Ecumenical Witness for Peace.
A skeptical reporter for the Pittsburgh Catholic penned this for its edition:
Most pay little attention
Peace marchers get mixed reaction
By William McClinton
A procession of 25 people, even when escorting a black coffin and led by a man with a cross, doesn’t make much of a ripple in the hurrying crowds in downtown Pittsburgh at lunch time.
So it was with the 25 clergy and laity — mostly Catholic — who marched some 10 blocks to the Federal Bldg. to protest the escalation of the Vietnam war and the use of their tax money to finance the war.
Their sidewalk procession drew attention in some less busy areas, but in the main blocks was separated and absorbed by the crowd.
Nevertheless, the war headlines at every newsstand illustrated the relevancy of their concern, and the news media was present, almost as numerous as the marchers.
The 25 were members or friends of the recently opened Thomas Merton Peace and Justice Center, an interfaith but predominately Catholic effort on the South Side.
Larry Kessler, director of the Center, said the cross was to illustrate the religious motivation of the protesters who cannot “in conscience” support “this atrocity we call the Indochina war.”
Asked if the escalation wasn’t the result of North Vietnam’s attack, several responded in essence:
“What do you expect? We’ve had plenty of time to get out. We shouldn’t be there in the first place.”
The demonstrators chose the front of the Diocese of Pittsburgh Bldg. to form, unknown to diocesan officials.
As they filed through town they passed out handbills signed by 45 persons, including 12 diocesan priests and three nuns, announcing the undersigned were withholding part of their federal tax payment or the 10 per cent phone excise tax to protest the war.
The handbills urged others to “conscientiously object” the same way.
Many people took the bills and read them impassively.
The procession stopped at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral on Sixth St. for a brief prayer service and again at the Methodist Bldg. on Smithfield at Seventh where the closest thing to an incident occurred.
The ground floor of the building houses a bank branch, and Fr. Donald Fisher had hardly begun paraphrasing a psalm through a portable mike when the building manager rushed out and announced that “You can’t do that here.”
It was private property, the manager said tensely and when the demonstrators tried to discuss it, he hurried off to call the police.
By the time he returned, however, the demonstration had moved on.
At the Federal Bldg. on Liberty Ave. where several more demonstrators were waiting, the group set the wooden coffin down in the outdoor plaza, and after Kessler read from one of Fr. Daniel Berrigan’s writings, they tossed into the coffin some old phone bills and income tax forms as a symbolic gesture.
Several dozen persons who gathered to watch included four or five young men preparing to enlist at Armed Forces offices inside the building.
“It’s a shame.” said Robert DeRose Jr., 18, from Gallitzin in Cambria County, a sturdy, dark-haired youth who said — looking at his watch — he was to be sworn into the Navy “in 10 minutes.”
“All they’re doing is letting Communism spread around the world,” he said heatedly.
“Yet they’ll be the first to scream when Communism comes in.”
There was a humorous moment when five of the priests went inside to pay their self-reduced income tax and — even as any hapless taxpayer — were unwittingly directed by a solicitous Internal Revenue guide to the wrong line.
“I don’t take any money here,” the official told them after they had worked their way up to his desk and Fr. Donald McIlvane had introduced everyone all around and explained their purpose. “You have to give it to the cashier.”
The cashier proved to be an attractive redhead at the other end of the room who listened politely to the priests’ explanations, smiled and said, “Thank you,” as she accepted each payment.
The procession’s religious aura commanded respect — the prayers, the obvious concern for peaceful protest, the appeal to Christian principles, as the marchers see those principles.
But the intensity of the division this war has generated was reflected by the reaction of a stumpy, graying man on one streetcorner.
“They’re a bunch of Communists,” he told a companion contemptuously.
“They wouldn’t do that in Russia.”
“Not in East Germany either,” his friend replied in a strong foreign accent.
The National Catholic News Service carried this dispatch on :
Tax Problems Dog Catholic Worker Movement
By NC News Service New York (NC) —
“My little case is to explain to the court that performing the corporal works of mercy is indeed charitable even under the standards imposed by our government, and I refuse to apply for tax exemption.”
With those words Dorothy Day, the 74-year-old founder of the Catholic Worker movement, has summarized what she expects to say when she appears in a federal court in Lewisburg, Pa.
Miss Day will have to explain why the Catholic Worker movement has not paid $296,359 in fines, penalties and back income taxes to the Internal Revenue Service for the past six years.
A confirmed pacifist, Miss Day has opposed the theory of a just war, a theory that has been foremost in her decision not to apply for federal tax exemption.
“Our refusal to apply for exemption status in our practice of the works of mercy is part of our protest against war and the present social ‘order’ which brings on wars today,” she said.
“One of the most costly protests against war in the way of long enduring personal sacrifice is to refuse to pay income taxes for war,” she wrote recently in the Catholic Worker newspaper.
She argues that the Catholic Worker organization has never paid salaries.
Its volunteer workers are given room, board, clothing and free instruction in the Catholic Worker movement.
“So we do not need to pay federal income taxes,” she contends.
“I’m sure that many will think me a fool indeed, almost criminally negligent for not taking more care to safeguard, not just the bank account, but the welfare of all the lame, halt, and blind — deserving or undeserving poor — who come to us.”
Miss Day told NC News Service she considers the tax investigations a “harassment by the federal government” because the Catholic Worker movement is against all war.
The Catholic Worker is not incorporated as a religious organization and therefore is not exempt from paying federal income taxes.
She said the Catholic Worker does not incorporate because it is a principal of the movement to avoid all ties with the state.
She says the Catholic Worker did not set up a defense committee to campaign for Catholic funds.
“I can only trust that this crisis will pass,” she said.
“I am sure that some way will be found either to avert the disaster, or for us to continue to care for our old, sick, helpless, hungry and homeless if it happens,” she said.
The National Catholic Reporter reported that the “peace tax fund” idea had captured Catholic attention as well:
Applying papal suggestions
From tax dollars to peace fund
By Phil Haslanger
Special to the National Catholic Reporter, Madison, Wis.—
Trying to apply papal suggestions to political realities is not the easiest job in the world.
Take, for example, Pope Paul’s suggestion in his encyclical Populorum Progressio that a world fund be established “to be made up of part of the money spent on arms, to relieve the most destitute of this world.”
For Dr. Daniel J. Guilfoil, a 39-year-old philosophy professor at Edgewood college here, that suggestion provided the key to his dream of having part of his tax money be deferred from military expenses to help the poor.
With the introduction of a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives which would enable citizens to avoid paying war taxes on grounds of conscience (N.C.R., ), Guilfoil saw his dream moving closer to reality.
Although Guilfoil had worked for about two years to have his congressman, Rep. Robert Kastenmeier (D-Wis.), introduce such a bill, the push which finally got the bill introduced came from a citizens group in Ann Arbor, Mich. under the leadership of Dr. David Bassett, a physician.
Neither Guilfoil nor the Ann Arbor group had any knowledge about each other — a fact Guilfoil interprets as both a weakness in the tactical effort and a sign that the bill embodies an idea whose time has come.
The path Guilfoil followed which led him to work for such legislation was not dissimilar from that followed by other liberal Catholics in the wake of Vatican Ⅱ.
As enthusiasm for the declarations of the council yielded to frustration over the pace of change, Guilfoil, his wife, Barbara (“She’s probably more activist than I am”) and their nine children became a part of Madison’s John ⅩⅩⅢ experimental community.
With the community, they worked on civil rights and open housing legislation and, in Guilfoil’s words, “moved into the peace movement, if you will, as a connected issue.”
Working with the social action committee of Madison Area Community of Churches to establish a draft counseling center, Guilfoil became sensitive to the witness offered by conscientious objectors and he began to think that “the principle of alternative service should be extended to all people,” not just to draftable young men.
At the same time, he was aware of the growing tax resistance movement to protest the war and he was considering the implications of Populorum Progressio.
The various threads were woven together by Guilfoil and other members of John ⅩⅩⅢ into a petition, signatures were gathered and a resolution was adopted by the social action committee of the diocesan priests’ senate urging “legislation to create an alternate fund to administer to the needs of people.”
From there, more signatures were collected and on , Guilfoil talked with Kastenmeier about the possibility of having legislation to that effect introduced.
The congressman responded favorably and suggested the petitions and information be sent to his administrative assistant.
Kastenmeier’s office considered the proposal, but decided that the time was not yet ripe for such a bill.
Some time later the idea of just such a bill was stirring in Ann Arbor.
By fall the World Peace Tax Fund steering committee had been established.
According to Arthur Mack, the committee’s corresponding secretary, a second committee was established in Washington to lobby towards such legislation.
Rep. Ronald Dellums (D-Cal.) liked the idea and put his office to work on rounding up cosponsors.
In , he and the other nine congressmen introduced the “bill and saw it referred to the House Ways and Means committee.
, Guilfoil prodded the faculty of Edgewood college to “go on record as supporting the right of all citizens to the privilege of the status of ‘conscientious objector.’ ”
, he convinced the social action commission of Blessed Sacrament parish in Madison to unanimously adopt a resolution asking the parish council to educate the parish “on the theology of alternate service.”
Resolutions written by Guilfoil supporting the passage of the World Peace Tax Fund act the bill pending in the House were adopted by both the Second District caucus of the Democratic party (Madison) and, most significantly of all, by the State Democratic party as a part of its platform.
Guilfoil sees his efforts on the local level as part of the push to draw national attention to the bill.
He said he hopes the National Conference of Catholic Bishops will consider supporting the legislation, and he would like to see other national groups support the bill.
As for the realistic chances of getting the bill out of committee and passed into law, Guilfoil admits, “I’m not optimistic.
But if you told me two years ago it would even be a bill now. I wouldn’t have believed you.”
He sees lobbying combined with education as the lever to getting the bill moving.
“There’s enough sentiment today that taxes are being directed foolishly,” he says.
“It’s a matter of getting people aware that straight people can think about these things.”
For Catholic groups, he added, the concepts of the bill “must be tied to the pacifist and just war traditions of the church — the doctrine of the church is surely important.”
As for Guilfoil himself, he is not waiting for the government to pass legislation which will make that papal suggestion a political reality.
He has joined with others in the state to form a Wisconsin Peace Fund.
The specifics of the group haven’t been worked out yet, but basically, members will put a part of their tax money into the fund and the group will disperse it to local causes.
What Guilfoil and the people in Ann Arbor hope is that someday that peace fund will be on a national or even international level.
The World Peace Tax Fund act has helped sustain that hope.
The issue of National Catholic Reporter reported on a national war tax resistance conference and included a sidebar on “How tax resisters resist taxes.” From the opening paragraphs, it appears that a political endorsement was on the agenda, suggesting that the conference was much more mainstream-liberal then than it is now (I doubt such an endorsement would be seriously considered by a NWTRCC conference these days):
War tax resisters
Can’t quite “endorse” McGovern
Jim Castelli, Associate Editor
Kansas City, Mo. —
The second National War Tax Resistance Conference, attended by about 40 persons from around the country, gave what amounted to a qualified endorsement to the presidential candidacy of Senator George McGovern.
The tax resisters approved a statement praising McGovern for his promises to end the war, cut military spending, restudy the entire tax system and support a guaranteed annual income.
The statement also said the political climate in the country would substantially improve with McGovern as president and that he would end “repressive” actions by the government.
But the tax resisters also said they saw a negative side to McGovern, saying he “completely believes in maintaining United States power in the world” and that providing more arms for Israel, as McGovern has said he would do, is not the way to end the crisis in the Middle East.
Despite such criticisms, the statement said that most of the participants would probably vote for McGovern.
Discussion indicated that those at the conference not voting for McGovern would either vote for Dr. Benjamin Spock, the People’s Party candidate, or not vote at all.
One participant suggested that applying pressure on McGovern from the left would let voters see him as a moderate, and therefore more acceptable.
Another noted that because War Tax Resistance has strong anarchistic tendencies, a statement in support of McGovern might induce some anarchists to vote in this election.
The conference was held at St. Mark’s church, an unusual church in that it is staffed by Protestant and Catholic clergy.
The participants, for the most part, wore sandals, well-worn jeans and long hair but weren’t all young.
They came from both coasts and such cities as Denver, Chicago and Ann Arbor, Mich.
Also coming out of the conference was an agreement to draw up a statement on what the focus of the war tax resistance movement should be when the war ends.
It was agreed tax resisters should continue to oppose the domination of the federal budget by the military and the centralization of power in the hands of governmental and corporate structures.
This opposition, the participants said, should include presenting alternatives, such as a nonviolent peace-keeping force and a blueprint for converting to an economy based on peace — for example, an analysis of how to shift the emphasis at Boeing Aircraft to building mass transportation facilities.
The conference expressed opposition to key segments of the World Peace Fund Tax Act, a measure introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Congressman Ron Dellums (D-Calif.) and nine other legislators.
The bill would allow taxpayers who qualified for conscientious objector status under Selective Service standards to divert the percentage of their taxes slated for the military to a “world peace tax board,” which would study peaceful alternatives to international conflict.
The major objections to the bill were the screening process to obtain the conscientious objector status and the fact that the alternative funds would still be controlled at the national level, preventing tax money from being used in the community from which it was paid.
No specific action was taken at the conference on the bill, but Robert Calvert, coordinator of War Tax Resistance, said he expects a new national working committee to try to rework the bill in .
Calvert, in an interview, said the number of Americans withholding taxes because of the war is growing.
He estimated that between 100,000 and 200,000 are either refusing to page the 10 per cent federal telephone excise tax, which is used for the war, or refusing to pay all or part of their income tax.
At present, he said, there are 192 war tax resistance centers in the U.S.
He added that each regional office of the Internal Revenue Service now has a person or department dealing with taxpayers protesting the war.
“We’d love to get our hands on the IRS list,” he said.
“They have many more names of resisters than we have because many people resist on their own without working with a local center.”
The two main purposes of the conference were organizational: the creation of a working committee, and the question of whether or not to move the national office from New York to Kansas City.
The proposal to move the office was approved, partly because of expected lower operating costs, but mostly because War Tax Resistance wants to be closer to “middle America.”
The move is expected to be made by the end of the year.
The working committee, now being assembled, will consist of representatives of national regions and the seven state area around Kansas City.
The committee is to meet every two months beginning in .
How tax resisters resist taxes
Special to the National Catholic Reporter, Kansas City, Mo.—
How do you resist paying taxes as a protest against the war, and what happens when you do?
Interviews conducted at the second annual National War Tax Resistance Conference and materials put out by the movement provide these answers:
There are a variety of ways to resist taxes:
Withholding the federal telephone excise tax, withholding all or part of the federal income tax, not filing a tax return at all, paying taxes under protest and keeping one’s earnings below a taxable level.
All have a different set of consequences.
The most common form of resistance is withholding the telephone tax, says Robert Calvert, coordinator of the War Tax Resistance organization.
The telephone tax, which helps finance the war, currently is 10 per cent.
To withhold it, resisters simply deduct the tax when they pay their phone bills, explaining that it is a protest against the war, not against the phone company.
Members of War Tax Resistance say that telephone companies have told resisters that their service will not be interrupted, and that they regard the protest as a matter between the individual and the government.
They point out, however, that phone companies do provide the Internal Revenue Service with the names of resisters.
The experience of resisters is that, after several written demands for payment, IRS can usually secure payment by attaching the resister’s bank account, taking the amount of the unpaid tax, plus up to six per cent interest.
Technically, a person who resists the telephone tax is liable to a year’s imprisonment and a $10,000 fine, but so far the government has been satisfied with collection, resisters say.
In Calvert’s opinion, the government might still decide to arrest telephone tax resisters.
But, he adds, it has been the history of movements such as tax resistance that they are strengthened by governmental crackdowns.
Resisting income taxes is more difficult because taxes are withheld from most people’s wages during the year.
Thus, resisters who owe money at the end of the year can refuse to pay it or, through the use of such tactics as claiming more dependents than they actually have, file for a refund.
Income tax resistance is viewed more seriously by the government; resisters have been jailed, but penalties are greater for falsification of income tax returns or failure to file than for refusal to pay.
(Any tax returns indicating resistance should be accompanied by a letter explaining the nature of the protest.)
So far, however, either because their returns have been accepted by IRS computers, or because appeals proceedings can take years, most resisters have still not had to pay taxes.
Tax resisters advise against keeping withheld tax money, however.
The organization instead advises putting the money into alternate funds which may be used to assist tax resisters who are challenged by the government.
The government can seize personal property such as cars and houses for public auction to bring in the owed taxes.
(Whatever money is brought in over and above the taxes and auction fees is returned to the resister.)
These auctions have become occasions for peace demonstrations.
An auction for a car that had been seized from a Kansas man for tax resistance heard bids of Vietnamese tears, coffins, and napalmed babies.
Also, a resister can often arrange to have friends or a resistance center make the actual purchase at the auction.
The use of withholding allowances as a means of tax resistance was devised by John Egnal, a lawyer from Philadelphia representing resister Jack Malinowski.
Malinowski was charged with supplying “false information” on his tax status; he had claimed 14 dependents (the number of other people in the Philadelphia tax resistance center), an amount which negated his tax for the year.
He was found guilty, but has not as yet been sentenced.
The problem with past methods of tax resistance is that they are all technically illegal because they hinge on a yes or no answer to questions regarding certain parts of the internal revenue code.
The use of withholding allowances, however, seems to avoid this situation.
An employee fills out IRS form W-4 to indicate to his employer the number of deductions he will claim for the coming year; form W-4E indicates that no tax liability has been incurred for the year, usually because of income below the taxable level.
People who expect to have a large number of itemized deductions can enter a number of withholding allowances — converted from dollar figures by a chart on the back of the W-4 form — which will reduce tax payments; this way, higher taxes are not paid and then refunded at the end of the year.
Egnal holds that “the withholding allowance claim would be applicable to any tax resister who believed that, as a result of the illegal and immoral conduct of the U.S. government, some or all of the federal taxes claimed could not lawfully be collected.
“If one held such a belief… it would be necessary to improvise some basis for preparing one’s income tax returns, since IRS has not, as yet, seen fit to follow the law of this country, which includes not only the Internal Revenue code, but also numerous principles of international law to which the U.S. has subscribed.”
This improvisation, according to Egnal, would be a “war crimes deduction” for which a withholding allowance could be entered.
Egnal, claims that if the government were to prosecute such a resister, “the only false statement they could point to would be ‘I am entitled to a war crimes deduction because…’
Such a statement reflects a legal conclusion which has never been ruled upon by any court, and which… enjoys the support of many noted scholars.”
Even if the courts eventually rule that such deductions are illegal, Egnal points out that past rulings would not allow prosecution because the fact that the legal question was in doubt erases the possibility of “willfully” breaking the law.
A similar situation exists with form W-4E, which states “Under penalties of perjury, I certify that I incurred no liability for federal income tax for and that I anticipate that I will incur no liability for federal income tax for .”
A resister could, according to Egnal, use the “war crimes deduction” to justify the claim that he was not liable for any taxes.
(A follow-up brief in the issue read: “There was some discussion at the annual conference of War Tax Resistance that if McGovern lost the election, his followers would make a prime target for the tax resistance movement.
He lost, and the war is still going on; if it drags on until income tax time, it will be interesting to see if there is an increase in tax resistance.”
Another, in the issue read: “The war tax resistance movement has found a new home in Mid-America — Kansas City.
The organization moved from New York to save money and to be physically closer to ‘middle Americans.’
Nearby Independence, Mo. is the national headquarters of the paramilitary Minutemen, but tax resistance members don’t expect any hassles.
One resister joked, ‘Maybe we can learn something from them about grassroots organization.’
The new address will be 912 E. 31st St., Kansas City, Mo.”)
The same issue included this opinion piece:
War taxes and conscience
“It is the issue of coresponsibility and complicity that will become salient”
By Roderick Hindery
Even if United States military forces in Indochina should be reduced to a residual element or less before or after the election, the war will remain an issue crucial for the conscience and morale of those who led it and those who were coresponsible.
It is particularly the issue of coresponsibility or complicity that will become salient.
The fact that the Indochina war was explicitly rejected by millions who simultaneously supported it by taxes and other forms of cooperation may make the judgment of Nuremberg the question of the present era:
“that a person acted pursuant to the order of his government or a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”
One of the more constructive expressions of an emerging consciousness of coresponsibility for military action is the World Peace Tax Fund Act (N.C.R. ).
Although the bill may never escape committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, as one attempt to legislate an alternative to economic participation in war for those conscientiously opposed, it is enormously important.
The rationale attached to the bill argues that since compulsory significant participation in war against one’s religious conscience is opposed to the original spirit of the First Amendment, the law should allow a realistic alternative such as contributions to qualified peace-related activities — for example, research toward non-military solutions of conflict.
The compatibility of alternate contributions with responsible citizenship is defended by reference to Christian tradition, the traditions of the United States, judicial interpretations and legal precedents.
In a survey of some of the bill’s ramifications, the authors assure their readers that tried and proven standards for determining authentic conscientious objector status can also be applied to military tax objectors.
As for other possible abuses, it is alleged that the Peace Tax Fund’s passage would not open the floodgates to earmarking tax dollars because opposition to war involves a right of conscience that is uniquely fundamental.
In a concluding section entitled “Effectiveness,” the Peace Tax Fund proposal realistically admits that the military budget would not decrease unless Congress were persuaded by the fund’s growth to reduce the priority of military spending.
Tax exemption is primarily a means to that end.
In noting that the bill would “force” taxpayers to decide whether they can support military spending, the authors underline the thesis with which we began — the importance of an emerging consciousness about coresponsibility for war through military spending.
The Peace Tax Fund, of course, is not the only path of dissent being explored.
An increasing body of tax resisters (192 listed groups in the United States) have experimented with alternatives ranging from individual protests to communal resistance and harassment of the Internal Revenue Service.
Taxes are withheld totally or in amounts proportionate to military spending by the government.
Equivalent sums are donated to social and charitable causes.
However, if the citizen takes steps to insure that military taxes are not confiscated from his salary or property, he is liable to legal sanction.
While refusal to work for taxable wages and emigration are further options, emigration alone may offer the only route toward a “pure non-cooperation.”
When economic systems can support war by deficit spending and by the transfer of non-military funds to military budgets, even participation in a future World Peace Tax Fund would not neutralize the fact that living within a military economy is itself a kind of cooperation in war.
The option most commonly followed is to justify support of military spending as a means of buying time and freedom to work toward a less militaristic administration.
None of these options to economic military support necessarily presuppose a totally pacifistic position.
In principle they also apply to citizens concerned with the justice of supporting particular wars, revolutions, counterrevolutions, or exorbitantly massive forms of national defense.
In each of these instances it is maintained that money becomes power and weaponry which kills against one’s conscience.
What was always true is becoming increasingly obvious.
Conscientious objection is a problem not only for draftees but for all taxpayers and their dependents.
The fact that the problem is not yet widely recognized is partly grounded in a profound dilemma never resolved in the history of theoretical ethics and only tenuously confronted by national constitutions and international law.
The dilemma can be expressed in two questions:
1) Is there not a basic and inalienable human right/duty not to kill against one’s conscience?
2) If this right/duty is inalienable, how can the right/duty of national defense override it?
Within the legal dimension the dilemma is not yet totally resolved.
The Russian Constitution, for instance, legislates that the duty of defense supersedes freedom of conscience.
The United States Constitution refers to no such priority, only to a religious freedom which implicitly presupposes a prior freedom of conscience in matters so basic as killing.
No subsequent legislation has inverted that valuation, and judicial decisions consistently interpret the Constitution in favor of the primacy of conscience (at least in reference to opposition to war in general).
This priority of conscience was explicitly confirmed by the principles of Nuremberg, which were approved by the United States and promulgated as international law by the United Nations in .
In principle the United States accepts international law as an authority which obliges its own citizens.
In the United States the priority of conscience still needs clearer and more explicit legislation.
The unconstitutionality of compulsory war tax may be argued from the perspective of the written Constitution (intentions or actual practice of the framers or citizens who first ratified it) or from the viewpoint of the living constitution (manifested in judicial decisions or people’s referendums).
From either or both of these methodological perspectives the priority of conscience may be argued more cogently than it has in the past.
In other words, whatever may be said for or against other freedoms of conscience, the liberty not to kill, when killing is judged immoral, is unique.
It is so basic to the freedom of conscience which the Constitution presupposes, that there is need of an explicit amendment or other legislation to guide courts in deciding all cases involved.
A bill like the World Peace Tax Fund, while not as irreversible or desirable as a constitutional amendment, is needed to help explicate what is already implicit at the legal level.
Within the ambit of theoretical ethics which operate autonomously outside or within various world religions, the priority of the right not to kill against one’s conscience is in jeopardy due to two as yet unsolved theoretical controversies.
The first controversy is the one engendered by classic utilitarianism’s principle that morality is always determined by whatever serves the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people.
As recently as John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard U. Press, ; cf. The New York Times Book Review, ), philosophers have joined in continued debate about the adequacy of the greatest happiness principle and have argued the pragmatic need to supplement it by postulating an equal and, in some ways, prior principle of justice:
Since certain individual rights of life or liberty are inalienable, their inviolability necessarily, if sometimes invisibly, brings about the greatest happiness.
This principle is not acceptable to everyone since it seems verifiable only in the future.
The second controversy has been sharpened by analysis of ethical language.
Are rights something people merely feel about and confer or bestow on one another?
If rights are dependent on what others think of us or what they contract with us, how can rights be inalienable?
Or, if some rights are inalienable, what is the source of human certitude in specifying them, intuition or what?
Ethical thought which is not rooted in heteronomous religious authority continues to founder on these two controversies and lacks the ringing certitude about inalienable rights proclaimed by the United States Declaration of Independence and the Founding Fathers, by the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or by the international principles of Nuremberg.
Consequently, the sources of national and international laws manifest a greater unanimity and authority than do conflicting approaches in theoretical ethics.
Whoever does not immediately perceive the self-evidence of the liberty not to kill against one’s conscience will apparently function best when he appeals not to a universal authority in reasoned ethics but to the legal authority and presuppositions of constitutions or international law.
As mentioned previously, those who are convinced of conscientious objection’s legality should work for its logical extension into the economic sphere.
Not all wars or military spending appear so clearly immoral to so many people as does the war in Vietnam.
There are other issues on which progressives or conservatives may be divided among their own groups, e.g., future support of military operations in the Near East or Latin America, nuclear defense programs powerful enough to destroy the planet many times over, or foreign aid programs thought to be gravely exploitative and imperialistic.
The authors of the World Peace Tax Fund Act give assurances that exemption from war taxes would not open the floodgates for citizens who wish to earmark their tax dollars in other programs.
On the contrary, this concern may be offset with the judgment that, given a plurality of fundamental human rights, there may be many other crucial moral issues on which citizens should vote with their dollars.
The lasting merit of the growing war tax resistance movement may not be that it helped end the war in Indochina, but that it raised the question of citizens’ coresponsibility to the moral priority it deserves, not only in matters of war and peace, but in every matter of life and death.
The issue of citizens’ coresponsible decision-making entails more than the purity and liberty of individual consciences.
If free and informed decisions by greater numbers have anything to do with the effectiveness of democracy, the future of democracy itself may be involved.
Roderick Hindery teaches religious ethics at Temple university in Philadelphia.
