How you can resist funding the government →
the tax resistance movement →
birth of the modern American war tax resistance movement →
Kenneth Knudson
Wendy McElroy has been posting a lot of interesting stuff on
her site lately, including Ken
Knudson’s essay on The Contradiction and Tragedy of
Communist-Anarchism (in three parts, so far:
Ⅰ,
Ⅱ,
Ⅲ).
There’s lots of interesting food for thought in the essay, but, this being
The Picket Line, I’ll quote here an excerpt from part
Ⅲ about tax resistance:
There is but one effective way to rid ourselves of the oppressive power of
the state. It is not to shoot it to death; it is not to vote it to death; it
is not even to persuade it to death. It is rather to starve it to death.
Power feeds on its spoils, and dies when its victims refuse to be despoiled.
There is much truth in the well-known pacifist slogan, “Wars will cease when
people refuse to fight.” This slogan can be generalised to say that
“government will cease when people refuse to be governed.” As [Benjamin
Ricketson] Tucker put it, “There is not a tyrant in the civilised world
today who would not do anything in his power to precipitate a bloody
revolution rather than see himself confronted by any large fraction of his
subjects determined not to obey. An insurrection is easily quelled; but no
army is willing or able to train its guns on inoffensive people who do not
even gather in the streets but stay at home and stand back on their rights.”
A particularly effective weapon could be massive tax refusal. If (say)
one-fifth of the population of the United States refused to pay their taxes,
the government would be impaled on the horns of a dilemma. Should they
ignore the problem, it would only get worse — for who is going to willingly
contribute to the government’s coffers when his neighbours are getting away
scotfree? Or should they opt to prosecute, the burden just to feed and guard
so many “parasites” — not to mention the lose of revenue — would be so great
that the other four-fifths of the population would soon rebel. But in order
to succeed, this type of action would require massive numbers. Isolated tax
refusal — like isolated draft refusal — is a useless waste of resources. It
is like trying to purify the salty ocean by dumping a cup of distilled water
into it. The individualist-anarchist would no more advocate such sacrificial
offerings than the violent revolutionary would advocate walking into his
neighbourhood police station and “offing the pig.” As he would tell you,
“It is not wise warfare to throw your
ammunition to the enemy unless you throw it from the cannon’s mouth.”
Tucker agrees. Replying to a critic who felt otherwise he said,
“Placed in a situation where, from
the choice of one or the other horn of a dilemma, it must follow either that
fools will think a man a coward or that wise men will think him a fool, I
can conceive of no possible ground for hesitancy in the selection.”
Reading this, I wonder at two things: First, his matter-of-fact dismissal of
isolated tax resistance by comparing it to isolated draft resistance as a
“useless waste of resources.” What is more of a useless waste of resources
for the isolated draftee, I wonder? Putting up with the consequences of
defying the state and refusing to be drafted, or putting up with the
consequences of obeying the state and submitting to the draft? It doesn’t
seem so clear-cut to me at all.
Secondly, his insistence that if a fifth of Americans refused to pay their
taxes all hell would break loose. Maybe so. But I note that of the
most-refusable tax — the federal income tax — only about half of Americans
are going to owe any this year anyway, and there’s already something like a
15% tax evasion rate. Still the government stands. So I’m not sure his
confidence is well-placed. On the other hand, if 20% were to actively and
loudly refuse, as opposed to just being under-the-line or quietly evading,
that might have more of the effect he envisions.
New York (UPI) — At least 360 persons, including a Nobel Prize winner, a leading
folk-singer, and a controversial Yale professor, have refused to pay all or
part of their federal income taxes for in
protest to “illegal use” of
U.S. forces in
such areas as Viet Nam and the Dominican Republic.
A statement issued by the group said some of the protestors will leave their
tax money in banks where it can be seized by the Internal Revenue Service.
Others, it said, will contribute the money to charities.
The Federal Revenue Code provides for jail sentences of up to one year and
fines as high as $10,000 for conviction of willful refusal to pay federal
income taxes.
Among the protestors who signed the statement were
Prof. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi,
nobel prize-winning bio-chemist; folk singer Joan Baez;
Prof. Staughton Lynd of
Yale, who made an unauthorized trip to Viet Nam last December; veteran
pacifist the Rev. A.J.
Muste; Helen Merrell Lynd; co-author of “Middletown;[”] poet Lawrence
Ferlinghetti; publisher Lyle Stuart;
Prof. William Davidon of
Haverford College; Prof.
Carroll C. Pratt of Rider College; editor Dorothy Day of The Catholic Worker,
and Prof. John M. Vickers
of the University of Illinois.
A version of the same story in
The Milwaukee Journal has some minor wording
changes, lists CARE and
UNICEF as two of the charities some of the
resisters are redirecting their taxes to, notes that “Almost every state in
the union is represented in the group,” and adds a couple of paragraphs about
Wisconsin resisters:
Dr. Carl M. Kline, a Wausau
psychiatrist who formerly practiced in Milwaukee, was one of the signers. He
said: “I am just going to refuse to pay a part of it, and I will leave that
money in my bank account. I realize you can’t beat this thing, but it is a
matter of expressing my feelings. I am a Quaker, and I am against war
altogether, but I feel particularly that our action in Vietnam is wrong, and
this is my way of protesting. I wish I could do more.”
Another Wisconsin signer was Kenneth Knudson, of Madison. Knudson picketed
the Madison internal revenue office in and
to protest use of federal funds for
military purposes.
That article also adds this detail:
Miss Baez earlier had refused to pay 60% of her
federal income tax to protest government
expenditures for armament. The internal revenue service collected more than
$34,000 from her after attaching a lien to her income and property.
I shall add an act of fraud to the list of my many “crimes.”
I will go to my employer, the University of Wisconsin, and claim ten dependents on form W4.
I am claiming seven more dependents than I’m legally entitled in order to avoid the withholding tax and, ultimately, the income tax.
I have, as you know, avoided paying taxes in the past by holding two jobs and limiting my income to $112 per month per job — thus I was able to make a taxable income and have nothing withheld from my salary.
Then when April 15th rolled around, instead of filing form 1040 I was able to picket your office, demanding an end to taxes in general and to war taxes in particular.
I no longer find this method of tax refusal convenient.
It’s a pain in the neck to make sure your income doesn’t exceed the $112 limit imposed by law.
I have therefore decided to circumvent this law by breaking another.
The reasons for my tax refusal are two-fold. First, as an anarchist I am
dedicated to the overthrow of all governments and therefore cannot finance
this one. Second, and far more important, I cannot as a pacifist
conscientiously give my tax dollar to you knowing that more than 70¢ out of
each dollar will go for the sole purpose of killing people. This is morally
wrong — far worse than an individual act of “fraud” — and, therefore, I
cannot and will not support you and the system you represent.
Four years ago, Ken Knudson, a member of the pacifist Peacemaker Movement,
pioneered in a new form of tax resistance: the idea of claiming enough
exemptions on the Form W-4 Employee’s Withholding Exemption Certificate so
that no tax can be withheld from one’s wages. Last fall, on
, at Lincoln Park in Chicago, a
dozen people gathered to form the first tax resistance group based on the
Knudson method. All the members adopt the Knudson approach and claim the
exemptions; then they take the money which would have been paid into the
U.S. treasury and
pool it into a cooperative association, the Chicago Area Alternative Fund,
which uses the funds for constructive, as well as voluntary, purposes.
A 25-year-old Madison [Wisconsin] man burned his $500 check and tore up an
income tax form in front of the Internal Revenue Service office
. He said he was demonstrating his
opposition to military spending and the war in Viet Nam.
But the demonstration quickly backfired against Kenneth Knudson.
The shredded tax form had scarcely touched the sidewalk when a police officer
ordered Knudson to pick it up under threat of a $25 fine for littering.
Knudson complied but his troubles weren’t over yet. Another officer served
him with a warrant for failing to pay overtime parking tickets amounting to
$15. Knudson borrowed the money from several other demonstrators marching
with signs that read “No Money for Murder.”
Knudson said the $500 check represented the amount he owes in federal income
taxes.
Tax Collector Sheldon S. Cohen commented: “The government has never lost a
case in which a taxpayer refused to pay on the grounds he disapproved of how
the money is spent.”
The time has come, and that time was .
350 Balk at Taxes in a War Protest
Ad in Capital Paper Urges Others to Bar Payment
Washington, — Some 350 persons who disapprove of the war in Vietnam
announced that they would not
voluntarily pay their Federal income taxes, due
. They urged others to join them
in this protest.
The Internal Revenue Service immediately made clear that it would take
whatever steps were necessary to collect the taxes.
The group announced its plans
in an advertisement in The Washington Post.
“We will refuse to pay our Federal income taxes voluntarily,” the
advertisement said. “Some of us will leave the money we owe the Government in
our bank accounts, where the Internal Revenue Service may seize it if they
wish. Some will contribute the money to
CARE,
UNICEF or similar organizations. Some of us
will continue to pay that percentage of our taxes which is not used for
military purposes.”
Joan Baez, Lynd, Muste
The first signature on the advertisement was that of Joan Baez, the folk
singer. Others who signed it were Staughton Lynd, the Yale professor who
traveled to North Vietnam in violation
of State Department regulations, and the
Rev. A.J. Muste, the
pacifist leader.
The advertisement contained a coupon soliciting contributions for the protest.
The ad said that further information could be obtained from Mr. Muste at
Room 1003, 5 Beekman Street, New York City.
Those who placed the advertisement — which bore the heading “The Time Has
Come” — said that those who sponsored it “recognize the gravity of this step.
However, we prefer to risk violating the Internal Revenue Code, rather than
to participate, by voluntarily paying our taxes, in the serious crimes
against humanity being committed by our Government.”
The advertisement mentioned not only the war in Vietnam “against hungry,
scantily armed Vietnamese guerrillas and civilians” but also “the spectacle
of the United States invasion of the Dominican Republic,” an event the
sponsors said “will go down in history alongside Russia’s criminal
intervention in Hungary.”
Cohen Is Determined
The determination of Internal Revenue to collect the taxes the Government is
owed was expressed in a formal statement by the Commissioner of Internal
Revenue, Sheldon S. Cohen.
He said Internal Revenue would take “appropriate action” to collect the
taxes “in fairness to the many millions of taxpayers who do fulfill their
obligations.”
The Government has been upheld in court on all occasions when individuals
have refused to pay taxes because of disapproval with the uses to which their
money was being put, revenue officials said.
Ad Prepared Here
The headquarters of the Committee for Nonviolent Action, 5 Beekman Street,
said that it had prepared the
advertisement carried in the Washington newspaper after receiving 350
responses to invitations it had sent out soliciting participation in “an act
of civil disobedience.”
A spokesman for the committee said that Mr. Muste, the chairman, was out of
town and would return in about a week. The spokesman said that although
monetary contributions in response to the advertisement had not yet begun to
come in, the committee was prepared to mail literature explaining its program
to those who responded to the advertisement.
The spokesman said that the tax protest had been intended to represent “a
more radical and meaningful protest against the Vietnam War.”
The committee announced that members would appear at
in front of the Internal
Revenue Service office, 120 Church Street, to distribute leaflets concerning
the tax protest.
It also said that a rally and picketing would be staged from
, in front of the Federal
Building in San Francisco under the sponsorship of the War Resisters League.
The league also has offices at 5 Beekman Street.
With press coverage like this, including even the address to write to for
more information, Muste hardly needed to pay for ad space in the
Times (assuming they would have printed the ad — many
papers rejected ads like this).
Some other names I recognize from the ad are Noam Chomsky, Dorothy Day, Dave
Dellinger, Barbara Deming, Diane di Prima, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Milton Mayer,
David McReynolds, Grace Paley, Eroseanna Robinson, Ira Sandperl, Albert
Szent-Gyorgyi, Ralph Templin, Marion Bromley, Horace Champney, Ralph Dull,
Walter Gormly, Richard Groff, Irwin Hogenauer, Roy Kepler, Ken Knudson,
Bradford Lyttle, Karl Meyer, Ed Rosenthal, Maris Cakars, Gordon Christiansen,
William Davidon, Johan Eliot, Carroll Pratt, Helen Merrell Lynd, E. Russell
Stabler, Lyle Stuart, John M. Vickers, and Eric Weinberger.
The text of the ad (without the signatures and “coupon”) is as follows:
The Time Has Come
The spectacle of the United States — with its jet bombers, helicopters,
fragmentation and napalm bombs and disabling gas — carrying on an endless war
against the hungry, scantily armed Vietnamese guerrillas and civilians…
this spectacle will go down in history alongside the unforgivable
atrocities of Italy in Ethiopia.
The spectacle of the United States invasion of the Dominican Republic — again
pitting our terrifying weaponry mainly against civilians armed with rifles…
this spectacle will go down in history alongside Russia’s criminal
intervention in Hungary.
But the spectacle of the indifference of so many Americans to the crimes
being committed in their names, by their brothers, and with their tax money…
this spectacle reminds us more and more of the indifference of the
majority of the German people to the killing of six million Jews.
The United States government has not reacted constructively to legitimate
criticism, protests and appeals:
by world leaders including the Pope, U Thant and President De Gaulle —
by United States leaders including Senators Morse, Gruening, Church, Fulbright, Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy and Stephen Young —
by hundreds of thousands of citizens including 2,500 clergymen and countless professors who placed protest advertisements in leading newspapers —
by innumerable students, many tens of thousands of whom have taken their protest to Washington on several occasions —
by celebrated individuals such as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Robert Lowell, Arthur Miller and Dr. Benjamin Spock —
and by leading newspapers, including the New York Times.
We believe that the ordinary channels of protest have been exhausted and that
the time has come for Americans of conscience to take more radical action in
the hope of averting nuclear war.
Therefore, the undersigned hereby declare that at least as long as
U.S. Forces are
clearly being used in violation of the
U.S. Constitution,
International Law and the United Nations Charter…
We will refuse to pay our federal income taxes voluntarily
Some of us will leave the money we owe the government in our bank accounts,
where the Internal Revenue Service may seize it if they wish. Others will
contribute the money to CARE,
UNICEF or similar organizations. Some of us
will continue to pay that percentage of our taxes which is not used for
military purposes.
We recognize the gravity of this step. However, we prefer to risk violating
the Internal Revenue Code, rather than to participate, by voluntarily paying
our taxes, in the serious crimes against humanity being committed by our
Government.
A group of mayors who belong to Italy’s Northern League have announced a tax strike starting and aimed at the unified municipal tax (called the IMU in Italy) as it applies to people’s homes.
One way of spreading the tax resistance message and of targeting potential tax resisters when they may be most receptive to that message is to propagandize them at the time and place when they make their tax payments.
This tactic is prominent in the modern war tax resistance movement, which often conducts demonstrations and other outreach activities on the day when income tax forms are due (for instance, around April 15th in the U.S. nowadays).
Here are some examples from the modern U.S. war tax resistance movement:
“Instances have been brought to the attention of officials,” said a
New York Times article about “pro-German agents
in the United States” in ,
“where buyers [of World War Ⅰ ‘Liberty Bonds’] have been approached,
apparently in a spirit of great friendship, and advised not to buy the
bonds.”
War tax resisters in Spain held a
“chorizada,” or barbecue, in front of the Palacio
Foral in Biscay, to protest the “chorizada,” or swindle,
of military spending, passing out pieces of “chorizo”
(sausage) to passers by while promoting war tax resistance and
redirection.
Ken Knudson was ahead of the curve as a young American war tax resister in
, and he invented the clever
tactic of highlighting the similarities between military conscription and
taxation by publicly burning a check to the
IRS in
the same way that some potential draftees were burning their draft cards.
The article below highlights how his protest successfully got the attention of
the authorities. (A similar protest today, alas, would probably mostly be
ignored.)
A United Press International dispatch from
:
U.W.
Employe Refuses to Pay
Tax Rebel to Face Federal Prosecution
Madison (UPI) — Tax
records of a man who burned a $500 check in front of the local Internal
Revenue Service have been turned
over to federal authorities, officials at the University of Wisconsin said
.
Kenneth Knudson, 25, an employe of the university’s physics department, said
the check he burned represented the amount he owed on his
taxes. He said he refused to pay the taxes
because they were being used, in part, to finance the war in Viet Nam.
Madison Campus Chancellor R.W. Fleming said Knudson, who is married and has
one child, claimed 12 exemptions on a dependent exemption form filed with the
university. Fleming noted Knudson acknowledged
this was a false statement
“designed to prevent the withholding of any of his salary for income tax
purposes.”
“The Internal Revenue Law provides, and it is so stated on the back of the W‒4
form, that it is a violation of the law to overstate the number of exemptions
claimed by the taxpayer,” Fleming said. “Mr. Knudson has therefore publicly
advised the university that he is in violation of the law.”
Prosecution in Prospect
Fleming said the form was turned over to federal authorities at the request of
the IRS.
He said Knudson has also been advised that “the university cannot be party to
violating the law, and he has indicated that he is filing an amended form.”
Fleming also said Knudson is “neither a student nor a member of the university
faculty. He is an employe supervising scanners and measures in an elementary
particle physics project.”
Knudson, who also tore up his 1040 form
, said he has not paid income taxes
for four years because the money was going for the war. Tax officials said at
that time he would be “treated the same as any other taxpayer” if he hadn’t
paid his back taxes.
Knudson said he was a member of the “No Tax for Viet Nam” committee, which he
said has 200 members across the country who have pledged not to pay taxes
because of the war.
