Have things really gotten that bad? →
U.S. government is cruel, despotic, a threat to people →
robbing the public and spending irresponsibly →
bloated military budget →
federal budget pie chart
This entry will be of most interest to those of you who are interested in war tax resistance in particular, and less interested in tax resistance in general.
Maybe you’ve seen this pie chart from the War Resisters League that shows how that group believes your tax dollars are spent by the federal government:
But then maybe you’ve seen a pie chart like this one from the government itself that tries to show you the same thing (a similar one can be found in your tax booklet each year):
Well, which one is it? Does the government spend 47 cents of your tax dollar on the military, or 16 cents?
Well, let’s dig a bit:
I’ll start with the 16 cent figure.
It’s way off, or at least it doesn’t measure what you might think it measures.
It certainly doesn’t tell you how much of your federal income tax dollar pays for war and arms and defense.
It turns out there’s an interesting history of sleight-of-hand that led to this figure.
The government has been steadily changing how it reports the budget to make it appear that less is being spent on the military than is really the case.
If you look at the pie charts published in the government’s budget report through the years, you’ll see the military section shrinking and shrinking.
This is the case particularly during the Vietnam War years when the public was becoming more upset about the cost of the war in lives and in money.
Some sample years:
Year
Budget category pie chart name(s)
Combined budget percentage
“National Defense, International, and Space”, "Veterans”
69%
“National Defense, International, and Space”, “Veterans”
56%
“National Defense,” “Vietnam,” “Veterans”
45%
“National Defense”
36%
“National Defense”
29%
Well, what to make of this?
Did military spending (as a percentage of the total budget) really drop that dramatically as the Vietnam war accelerated?
Well, as you might guess, the answer is no.
What changed was the way they used the numbers.
Some examples:
In , note that “International” and “Space” are included in the defense category.
This might have something to do with the larger numbers in those years, although when “International” became its own category in , it only amounted to 2% of the budget, and both it and the space program were at least partly military in nature.
In the government pie charters decided to pull the social security and other trust funds into the main budget.
These trust funds aren’t supposed to be part of the general fund — they’re supposed to be our money held by the government for safe keeping, not the government’s money to budget and spend.
But this accounting trick does make the pie chart much different, with a new 23% category of “Social Security and Other Trust Funds” shrinking everything else.
In , this new trust fund category got combined with some others, including what used to be called “Veterans” into a super-category called “Human Resources.”
This new category replaced “National Defense” as the biggest one in the pie chart.
In short, by defining more and more military spending as not part of the “national defense” budget, and by absorbing trust funds into the budget for reporting purposes, the amount of your tax dollar going to war and defense has appeared to shrink over time.
(It should be heartening to peaceniks that the government feels that all this obfuscation is worth the effort — they’re either ashamed of how they’re spending our money, or they’re afraid of what people would do if they knew the truth.)
Note also that all of that money that Bush has been requesting for the adventures in Iraq and for other aspects of the War on Terrorism wasn’t in the military’s bloated budget to begin with — that’s gonna take “extra” money that Bush has had to ask for above and beyond what’s allocated in the budget.
Now on to the 47% figure:
When the War Resisters League tries to figure out its percentage each year, it looks not only at the Defense Department budget, but things like veterans’ benefits and those parts of other departments’ budgets that are also military spending (a lot of the nuclear weapons spending is done through the Department of Energy, for instance).
Different people have different ideas of what constitutes military spending — is the Coast Guard a branch of the military, or is it more of a police force?
is NASA military, or only the part of its budget that goes expressly to military satellites and such? etc.
These are judgment calls, and the War Resisters League has its judgments but yours might very well be different.
Then there’s the question of estimating how much of the national debt was generated by military spending.
If a certain percentage of the debt was accumulated to support military spending, then some percentage of the interest on that debt ought to be counted as military spending too.
There are a couple of ways you could figure this:
Suppose that for a particular year military spending was $300 billion and total spending was $600 billion, and the deficit for that year was $100 billion.
Methodology A: Since military spending was 50% of total spending, you could argue that the military portion of that debt was 50% or $50 billion.
Methodology B: Or you could argue that if there were no military spending, there would be no debt — in fact, we would have a surplus; therefore, the debt for that year is entirely military-created.
The War Resisters league also uses the non-trust-fund portion of the federal budget in its calculations, the same way the government pie-charters did before .
So it’s a more accurate view of where your federal income tax dollar is spent (because it doesn’t also include your payments to social security or medicare in the calculation).
Because of differences of methodology, different groups come up with different totals for the same budget:
The Center for Defense Information believes that 51% of the federal budget went to military spending.
The Friends Committee on National Legislation came up with a figure of 41%.
The National Priorities Project leaves such things as interest payments, veterans’ benefits, and the like out of its calculation and gets a figure of 26.2% for the budget.
The War Resisters League says in the budget, the number is 47% and they go into their methodology at some length on their site.
In addition to the web sites I’ve linked to above, I got a lot of information for this page (including the quote about different debt calculation methodologies) from the book War Tax Resistance: A Guide to Withholding Your Support from the Military 5th ed., , published by the War Resisters League.
The little hard-to-read slice in the bottom center is the $50 billion in additional funding for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that the White House didn’t include in its budget but plans to request after the election is safely past.
You can compare this to last year’s chart, which I discussed in ’s Picket Line.
The War Resisters League has released its annual “pie chart” to show, according to their analysis, where your income tax money really goes.
This year, according to the WRL, 20% of your tax dollar will go to pay for military spending and wars of yesteryear, and another 31% to pay for today’s war budget — including 7% that is being spent directly on the war in Iraq and the increasingly global terror war.
The WRL is respectful enough to detail how they did their accounting, and to explain why they made the choices they did and why their numbers don’t always match up with other groups who do similar calculations.
You can get PDF copies of the flier from their website.
Military spending took a jump this year and now, according to the League’s analysis, takes up 54% of what the government spends your income tax dollar on.
And don’t expect that figure to drop much any time soon:
In , the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the [Iraq] war had so far cost about $500 billion.
That figure was obviously far higher than initial Bush administration estimates, but [Joseph] Stiglitz and [Linda] Bilmes suspected it was still much too low.
After researching the issue, they published a paper in that conservatively estimated that the true cost of the war would be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion.
Even at the time, they regarded that estimate as excessively conservative, but didn’t want to appear extreme.
Stiglitz and Bilmes’ [new] book, which is based on that paper, doubles their earlier estimates to $3 trillion, making Iraq the second most expensive war in U.S. history, trailing only World War Ⅱ, which cost an adjusted $5 trillion (and in which 16.3 million Americans served in the armed forces, with 400,000 dying).
But the authors regard even their new figure as conservative:
Their estimates range from $2 trillion, in the best-case scenario in which the U.S. withdraws all combat troops and fewer veterans need medical and disability pay, to more than $5 trillion.
Add in the cost to the rest of the world, and the price tag could exceed $6 trillion.
As the authors detail, the Bush administration has used every trick in the book to hide the real price tag — concealing non-combat casualty figures, keeping double sets of books, not factoring in support troops, and allowing the Pentagon to produce budgets so contradictory, obscure and incompetently presented that there is literally no way to determine how much it has spent.
The authors had to use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain much of the information in their book.
But the administration’s biggest sleight of hand has been ignoring the enormous future costs of caring for the hundreds of thousands of disabled veterans who will require vast medical and disability payments, many for the rest of their lives.
Those costs will be staggering: an estimated $717 billion.
Relatively little attention is paid to those costs, because they haven’t shown up on the books yet.
But as the authors point out in one of the book’s more arresting statistics, they’re coming:
We’re already paying $4.3 billion a year to the veterans of the first Gulf War, which lasted less than two months and in which only 148 U.S. soldiers were killed.
…the monthly “burn rate” to pay for the wars has gone steadily up, from $4.4 billion in to $16 billion .
This means that every American household is spending $138 a month on the current operating expenses of the wars.
Graphic design is not my strong suit, but for Northern California War Tax Resistance’s actions I’ve been tasked with coming up with some sort of sign that uses a bar chart to illustrate the U.S. federal government’s discretionary spending priorities based on Barry Hermanson’s numbers
Well, I’ve sketched out an idea.
It’s not much to look at, but here ’tis:
As you can see, I’ve integrated tea bags into the design as a way of tapping in to the latest trend in Tax Day protesting and in hopes of catching the eye of those protesters who are outraged at government spending but aren’t clear on just why that spending is so darned high.
I dunno.
What do you think?
It strikes me as a little cluttered and confusing, while at the same time being a little too oversimplified (for instance, the graphic doesn’t indicate that it’s talking about discretionary spending rather than all government spending).
I’m not crazy about the “your tax dollars…” tag line either.
Any ideas?
I mentioned that I was trying to come up with a creative bar-chart representing the lopsided military spending in the federal discretionary budget.
Thanks to “Z” who gave me the inspiration for the following sketch:
A diarist at Daily Kos has written up a splendid commentary on the issue of bloated military spending that covers all the angles — well, except the angle of how individuals can stop their contributions to the problem (but I’ll try to pick up the slack).
The War Resisters League has revised their popular “pie chart” graph that purports to show the destiny of the federal discretionary budget and thereby the destiny of your federal income tax dollar. This year, because Obama’s budget called for a reduction in the payroll tax rate with the missing money to come explicitly out of that raised by the income tax in the general fund, the chart’s conceit of keeping trust funds and the taxes ostensibly destined for them separate from the rest of the accounts is even more awkward than usual. Still, the fliers make for good conversation-starters.
The number of people who expatriated from the United States and renounced their U.S. citizenship jumped , more than doubling the number in .
A site called “Rethink Afghanistan” is featuring a cost-of-war calculator that purports to tell the American taxpayer how much he or she paid to keep the U.S. fighting there.
The group is not advocating war tax resistance, but merely using the cost of war as a pragmatic prompting for additional outrage:
Many of us are about to write checks to the IRS, and we’re about to do it at a time when, frankly, we don’t have a lot of money to spare.
That’s why it’s important that we take a good, hard look at where our dollars are going and make sure our elected officials hear from us when they make bad decisions that waste scare resources.
Anything that helps connect in the minds of taxpayers the money they pay and the consequences of the resulting spending is a good thing, and I like to think that the anti-war activists who came up with this campaign (and those who find it persuasive) might be receptive to a war tax resistance message.
Meanwhile, some folks from the Global Day of Action on Military Spending went on to the campus of American University and asked some students there to fill out a blank pie chart with their best guess as to what percentage of the federal discretionary budget goes to various budget categories.
Most people know that the U.S. government spends a lot on its military, but even so they can be shocked when they see just how much, and how it crowds out other spending that they prefer:
NWTRCC announces ’s crop of “tax day” actions:
Tax Day — Antiwar Protests, Public Demonstrations, and Individual Refusal to Pay for War
On thousands of people across the
United States will be refusing to pay some or all of their federal income tax
to protest U.S.
wars and escalating military spending. These tax refusers, who see themselves
as responsible citizens, want their money used for peaceful purposes and
often give taxes to social programs instead.
, is the final day to file
tax returns, and “war tax resisters” will be among those participating in
events around the country to protest what they see as the skewed priorities
of the U.S.
government.
Many hand out the pie chart produced by the War Resisters League, which calculates nearly 50% of federal income taxes pay for current or past wars.
Erica Weiland in Seattle, Washington, decided to refuse to pay for war in
response to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Our money and time are much
better spent addressing the issues in the
U.S. and around
the world that cause wars in the first place,” she says. Groups in Seattle
are organizing leafleting with federal budget information at area post
offices.
John K. Stoner, a retired Mennonite minister in Akron, Pennsylvania, says, “I keep wondering why people who say they oppose war continue to pay for it without a whimper of protest.”
He and others in his community have launched a campaign of symbolic protest called 1040 for Peace, to encourage U.S. taxpayers to express their opposition to U.S. military spending by refusing $10.40 of any taxes due, telling the government why, and giving that money to projects that promote peace or fund human needs.
War tax resistance has a long history in the
U.S. and
worldwide. The most famous case was Henry David Thoreau’s refusal of $1 for
the Mexican-American War. He spent a night in jail for this act of
resistance. Today’s resisters refuse to pay anything from $1 to thousands of
dollars of federal income taxes, while risking collection from the Internal
Revenue Service for their stand.
Patricia Tompkins, a farmer in Bakersville, North Carolina, speaks for many
as she accepts the risks of confronting the
IRS to
stand up for her beliefs. “I made the decision to become a war tax resister
in protest to our government’s policies in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
For me, the essence of life is connection to the land and to each other,
because without the first we cannot live and without the second we cannot be
fully human.”
In St. Louis activists are
taking their message to cut the military budget and fund human needs to
Senator Roy Blunt’s office and announcing grants to humanitarian groups. In
Milwaukee, the protest will be in front of the Federal Courthouse. Lincoln
Rice, a Milwaukee organizer, says, “My war tax resistance is grounded in my
Catholic Christian spirituality. I cannot in good conscience pay my federal
income taxes and contribute to the harming my Muslim brothers and sisters in
Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and elsewhere.”
Individual resisters are available for interviews. Please contact
NWTRCC
if you need contacts in your area.
A bunch happened while I was away and I’m only just getting caught up.
Here’s the highlight reel:
The IRS has been pursuing war tax resister Cindy Sheehan for months, and not long ago they hauled her into court to try to get a judge to order her to cough up financial information they could use against her. She fought back, with help from NWTRCC and its legal advisor. The IRS has apparently thrown in the towel! Sheehan posted to her blog a letter she got from the agency in which it informs her that they have withdrawn their summons.
Some notes on the taxable income baseline, how to adjust your withholding as a new employee, and the latest news on the telephone excise tax resistance front.
A “Pull the Pork” protester outside of the Washington, D.C. headquarters of military contractor Lockheed Martin
A coalition of groups have organized a “Pull the Pork (from the Pentagon)” national day of action to try to point out that the sacred cow of Pentagon spending is really a pricey pig in a poke.
Levante profiles ecological and antimilitarist activist Francesc García Barberà, who was involved in the Spanish struggle for the recognition of conscientious objection to military service, and in its war tax resistance movement. Excerpts (my translation):
As a conscientious objector, García Barberà performed alternative service in the Barrio del Cristo, where he became involved in the Workers’ Catholic Action Brotherhood, to which he remains linked, as with the objector movement.
“The objection is in all of life; it’s not only not doing military service, but it’s rethinking the role of the Army and of military spending.
The movement did not end when objection was legalized nor when conscription was abolished,” he notes.
Today he is associated with pacifist groups, never fails each year to make a symbolic assault on the NATO base in Bétera, and practices tax resistance, like a handful of Alaquàsers of his generation.
“We omit the percentage that we estimate is dedicated to military spending (between 7% and 12%) and redirect it to Caritas or some NGO,” he explains, which on some occasions has meant conflict with the Treasury Department.
“Armies defend borders when what ought to be defended is a dignified life for people.
And even if they are dressed up as humanitarian actions, they serve large vested interests.
In a war the strongest wins, not the most just,” he says.
There was a resurgence of war tax resistance news in the
Friends Journal in ,
including an interesting series of articles on the voluntary simplicity / low
income lifestyle as a tax resistance tactic, and the beginning chapters of
the tale of Quaker war tax resister Priscilla Adams.
A note in the issue plugged the
“Conscience and Military Tax Campaign Escrow Account”:
Established in by the Nonviolent Action
Community of Cascadia, the account allows war tax resisters to set aside
refused military taxes in a secure fund. Deposits may be retrieved at any
time (to replace assets seized by the
IRS,
for example), and interest from the account is used to promote war tax
resistance and support peace and social justice activism. Depositors’ funds
are reinvested in socially responsible institutions assisting low-income
communities and minorities. The CMTC Escrow Account is the largest and most
geographically diverse war tax redirection fund in the United States.
War tax resistance is an act of civil disobedience, and resisters potentially
face fines, levies, and seizure of assets. However, the escrow account itself
is a trust fund, and as such is confidential and entirely legal. Depositor
records are not available to the
IRS,
and individual deposits are considered to be anonymous portions of a larger
fund invested in fully insured institutions. Participants receive records of
their transactions, annual statements, and a free subscription to
NACC’s quarterly war tax resistance magazine.
(I wouldn’t rely on any of that as solid legal advice. My understanding is
that the
IRS
sometimes treats “warehouse banks” like these as illegal operations that they
can seize wholesale under the theory that they’re being operated for money
laundering or tax evasion purposes.)
In a letter in the issue, William Kriebel
called out Quakers on their careless or politically-correct use of of language;
in particular he claimed: “There are no ‘war taxes.’ All income tax money goes
into the treasury without earmarking for the military. Taxation is a legitimate
power of any government. Our points of protest really are the decisions
(budget-making, appropriation) to use money out of the common fund for military
purposes.”
An article on the Quaker Council for European Affairs in the same issue noted
in passing that “conscientious objection to war taxes” was one of the “studies
for publication” that the organization had produced. Another article in that
issue noted that the National Association of Evangelicals had endorsed the
Peace Tax Fund bill:
“At first this was just a lonely struggle for the peace churches,” said
Marian Franz, director of the campaign, “then we got the support of the
mainline churches, which represent over 12 million people. Now we have
support from more conservative religious organizations, who, until recently,
had seemed to be unlikely allies.” Marian attributes the recently attained,
broad base of support to a change in tactics from an issue of conscientious
objection to an issue of religious liberties. Marian explained that “having
this broad base of support means that members of Congress, even conservative
members, take the issue more seriously.”
On , there was a benefit premiere
showing of An Act of Conscience, a documentary on
the Kehler/Corner house seizure and subsequent occupation. There was some
tangential Quaker involvement in the benefit (it was sponsored by several
organizations, including a regional AFSC office, and some Massachusetts
Quakers took part in the occupation), and the benefit screening was covered
in a note in the issue.
In the lead editorial in the issue,
editor Vinton Deming paid tribute to Eleanor Webb:
Eleanor Webb, who died , was clerk
of the Journal board when I was appointed
editor-manager in .… It was Eleanor… who
stood firmly in support of staff who resisted paying the military portion of
their federal taxes.
One of the feature articles in the issue
was written by David R. Bassett and told his story as “The Founder of the
Peace Tax Fund Movement.” Excerpts:
marks the 25th year since the
introduction of the Peace Tax Fund Bill in the
U.S. Congress. I
have been involved in the initiation of this legislation, a laborer in the
centuries-long effort to establish on earth the type of peaceful world
envisioned by Jesus and George Fox. I firmly believe that, on some
significant day in the future, some nation will for the first time pass a
Peace Tax Fund Bill, thereby establishing legal recognition of the right of
conscientious objection to the payment of military taxes. Once this is
accomplished, other nations will follow suit. I consider this goal as one of
the crucial and route-determining “trail-signs” on the path to that time and
place where the world will realize that ahimsa (soulforce)
is the preferred way to resolve conflict and to govern communities, and where
conscientious objection to war and other forms of violence will be considered
the norm.
[My] orientation as a conscientious objector to war and of preventing
preventable suffering impelled Miyoko and me, beginning in
, to wrestle with the fact
that each year we were paying (through our federal taxes) to support the
Viemam War and the military system generally. In fact, some 50 percent of
those tax moneys went to support
U.S. military
systems! One of my most graphic memories of that time was, while working many
nights at Queens Hospital in Honolulu, hearing
U.S. Air Force jet
tankers, fully laden with jet fuel, flying over the heavily populated part of
Honolulu on their way to Indochina.
Conscientious objection to payment of military taxes
In , with the Vietnam War continuing, we
moved to Ann Arbor to work at the University of Michigan. We became members
of the Ann Arbor Meeting and found there a number of people who were actively
grappling with the issue of whether to continue to pay the military portion
of federal taxes for a war that we opposed. I came to realize that any
nation’s military programs are made possible the, monetary resources that, in
the analysis, are extracted from the nation’s citizens by taxation. It also
became clear to me that one who was conscientiously opposed to military
systems must not allow his or her funds to be used for this purpose.
Surveying the pervasive role of our military system not only in our foreign
policies, but in its effects on our economy, our environment, and on the
nation’s culture and spirit, I carne to feel that this issue was central to
our times. Conscientious objection to payment of military taxes is as
important to be established as was the ending of slavery and of apartheid and
the establishment of women’s right to vote. At the same time, I held then,
and still hold, the view that the federal government is capable of carrying
out many beneficial and constructive programs and that I am willing, indeed
obligated, to pay my full share of taxes to support those programs.
I came to know that it would not be enough simply to focus on reductions in
military spending by influencing legislators and electing new ones (though
this was obviously necessary). The challenge was to extend the right of
conscientious objection to war to include not only one’s physical body, but
also one’s economic resources. I knew further that there had been repeated
resistance in the
U.S. courts to
such change and concluded that, while civil disobedience in this area
(i.e., war tax resistance) would continue to be essential, the
principal focus of attention should be to change the tax laws.
During the year , there was for me
a struggle with my conscience, not in regard to what I believe on this issue
but whether to take some action and what that action should be. Should I live
below a taxable income level? move to Canada? engage in war tax resistance?
take our civil disobedience actions into the judicial system? or attempt to
change the federal tax laws? Miyoko and I knew that to embark on any of these
actions would require great amounts of time and energy; that each course
would require some changes and risks, not all of which we could anticipate at
the outset; and that none were assured of “success.” I knew that to commit
the time necessary to move this issue forward might conflict with my hopes of
making progress in academic medicine and in research into the causes of
atherosclerosis. We gradually came to the view that it seemed wisest to try
to resist paying the military portion of our taxes and to begin to
take steps to bring about legislative change.
It was the quiet voice of conscience that kept nagging me almost every day, as
I found one or another reason not to take some action. Finally, in the
, I phoned Professor
Joseph Sax at the University of Michigan Law School and outlined to him the
basic idea: the need to change the federal tax laws so as to have Congress
grant legal recognition to the right of conscientious objection to
the payment of military taxes, while enabling the taxpayer to pay the full
amount of his or her tax with assurance that those tax monies would
not be used for military expenditures. Professor Sax sketched out how this
might be accomplished. Over a period of eight to nine months, with the
assistance of Michael Hall, we began the process of drafting what became the
World Peace Tax Fund Bill.
Other Ann Arbor Friends, Joe and Fran Eliot and Bob and Margaret Blood, had
been considering drafting a bill. A brief written for them by Thomas Towe (a
Quaker law student) proved a helpful resource. It was not hard to draw
together a working committee of seven or eight people during
to work on
this legislation and to take the initial steps in deciding how to bring the
bill to Congress, how to publicize it, and how to raise funds. We were
encouraged when Ann Arbor’s Interfaith Council for Peace decided to support
the legislative effort and appointed two very effective members to meet with
us on a regular basis.
The World Peace Tax Fund Bill was first introduced in the
U.S. Congress on
, with Representative Ronald
V. Dellums as the lead sponsor, with nine other cosponsors. The Peace Tax
Fund office moved from Ann Arbor to the Florida Avenue Meetinghouse in
Washington,
D.C., in
. The bill was first introduced in
the Senate in , with Senator Mark Hatfield
as its sponsor. In the bill was renamed the
U.S. Peace Tax
Fund Bill. A dedicated staff, led for the past 14 years by Marian Franz, has
coordinated the lobbying effort. The orientation and the gifts that she
brings to her work are evident in her book, Questions That Refuse To Go Away.
A sidebar noted resources available from the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, and also made note of the international conferences at which similar plans proposed in other countries are discussed.
The same issue also contains Clare Hanrahan’s article “Wholesome Poverty: A Revolutionary Adventure.”
Unfortunately, in the archived PDF, some of the opening paragraph is obscured by an insert card.
The article appears to begin with Hanrahan saying that she initially adopted a lower-income simple-living lifestyle in order to resist war taxes, but then came to believe that frugality and thrift and anti-consumerism and simplicity had a larger role to play in the pursuit of “a just and sustainable global community.”
It continues:
When I must work for wages, I do so as an independent contractor so that I can maintain control over tax withholdings.
I redirect a fair percentage of cash wages and many hours of volunteer time to support life-affirming projects at home and abroad.
Self-employment suits my temperament and has enabled me to develop skills and to pursue interests I may never have had the time for in a conventional career.
I’ve tried to be resilient and open to any honest labor.
If I’m asked what I do for a living, each day I can provide a different answer.
One day I might be gathering and saving seeds for next year’s garden or harvesting wild herbs for a winter tea; another day might be spent in household repair, community organizing, or researching and writing a grant for a nonprofit organization.
I’ve learned the wisdom in giving due time each day to labor of the mind and of the body and to quiet reflection that feeds the spirit.
I value my free time and open schedule far more than any accumulation of cash or property, security, or prestige.
The freedom to choose how I will be with each moment is a gift and a challenge that I count as my greatest wealth.
Living on the edge, more or less, over the years I have honed the skills and nurtured an attitude of wholesome poverty.
Meeting basic needs without a substantial cash flow has been least stressful when I’ve lived within a stable community where interdependence and cooperative values are practiced.
But during my nomadic years I learned to trust in the kindness of strangers and the serendipity of life.
I came to value the gifts of the pilgrim spirit and to recognize the importance of the itinerant wayfarer in the lives of the comfortably settled.
I’ve lived and traveled aboard small sail boats, in a tipi, in rural cabins, and in derelict inner-city housing, trading cleanup and repair for rent.
I’ve made do in the back of an old school bus and afloat on a homemade houseboat on a Mississippi backwater.
I’ve worked in a cooperative shelter for displaced women and children, with room and board as compensation, and I’ve battered for home and garden space by exchanging pet and plant care.
My primary transportation is the slow way.
As a pedestrian, a bicyclist, and a bus rider, I keep a less frantic pace, and the more personal contact with those I encounter enriches the journey.
I can borrow a car or catch a lift from a friend if necessary, and by paying my fair share of the cost, the cooperative way serves each of us.
Nutritious food is available in surprising abundance if one is willing to look to unconventional channels:
I’ve participated in grassroots distribution networks of urban gleanings, intercepting the produce, grains, and other surplus foods otherwise lost.
Best of all, I’ve learned to grow my own food in community gardens and backyard plots whenever I had the opportunity.
As a worker-member at the local coop I claimed a significant reduction on food purchases, and by eliminating meat from my diet, the cost of my sustenance is affordable and sustainable.
Insurance against old age, disability, accident, or disease has never been an affordable option, nor one in which I place my faith.
Catastrophic illness or accident or the incapacities of age could happen to anyone.
Yet time and again, I’ve been sustained through economic precarity with help that comes at just the right moment.
This has happened so often that I live with a trust that keeps fear at bay.
I have learned to lean into the present moment, focused on the work before me, while keeping a well-honed sense of the adventure of it all and a very real faith in the unfolding process.
The inherent goodness of the universe has been made visible through the most unlikely of allies, and the travelers I’ve met along the way have been the wisest of teachers.
Peace Pilgrim, writing in her pamphlet, Steps Toward Inner Peace, recalled a visit to a city that had been her home:
In the poorer sections I am tolerated.
In the wealthier sections some glances seem a bit startled, and some are disdainful.
On both sides of us as we walk are displayed the things that we can buy if we are willing to stay in the orderly lines, day after day, year after year…
Thousands of things are displayed — and yet the most valuable things are missing.
Freedom is not displayed, nor health, nor happiness, nor peace of mind.
To obtain these, my friends, you too may need to escape from the orderly lines and risk being looked upon disdainfully.
Stepping outside the tyranny of “orderly lines” and daring to risk the uncertainties of disaffiliation can make of our very lives a revolution.
The way to the just and sustainable global community that we seek will open before us as we walk.
Another article in the same issue took the “voluntary simplicity” idea and ran with it.
Starting with Jesus’s one-sentence summary of his teachings — love your neighbor as much as you love yourself — the authors took this to mean “taking our fair share of global resources and no more.”
This starts with refusing war taxes because militarism is directly destructive of “our global neighbors.”
But that’s just step one of a six-step process.
Step two would be to imagine the world’s resources shared equally, which, the authors assert, means “an annual ‘fair share’ of just over $3,000 per person.”
But because the world is not using its resources in an environmentally sustainable way, step #3 is to reduce this fair share some more, to a more sustainable level: $1,800 per person per year.
But since that much money would go further in a place like the United States, where it’s relatively easier to live off the cast-offs of the wealthy, level #4 “challenges us to live on even less than level three, since we have an easier time doing so in a society with a relatively affluent public infrastructure.”
We’re not done yet.
Level #5 considers the non-monetary wealth most Americans enjoy because of the relatively high levels of medical care and education they have had access to.
“With such advantages (and others), we ought to be able to live on less resources than folks who lack education and have chronic medical problems.”
Finally, level #6 is for those who are not hampered by disabilities, encouraging them to sacrifice yet more so as to leave more for those who have to struggle harder.
Challenging? Certainly.
Even the authors only seem to have made it half way to step #2, limiting their income as a couple to $12,000 a year.
Some other choices they made were to “keep the majority of our savings in the form of non-interest-bearing loans” so as to avoid the sin of usury, and to “give away each year an amount equal to what we spend on ourselves.”
(A letter-to-the-editor in the issue criticized this radical simplicity, saying it smacked of “intelligent, able-bodied adults who consciously decide to let others subsidize” the benefits of society.
In particular: “In reducing their income to avoid paying taxes to support the military, this couple also avoids paying taxes that support the other half of the federal budget.
So, there goes their support for many of the roads they use, for medical research they might avail themselves of through that subsidized doctor, for other federally supported scientific and social research, for national parks, and so forth.
The authors are obviously well educated.
Their education was probably supported by local, state, and federal subsidies.
One wonders if they are repaying society for the educational benefit they’ve received.”)
Another brief note in the issue reported on the results of a “penny poll” that had been “conducted by Christian Peacemaker Teams in Elkhart, Ind.” and had indicated that those polled implicitly supported huge reductions in military spending.
A letter-to-the-editor from Marjorie Schier and Suzanne Day of the “Philadelphia Yearly Meeting War Tax Concerns Support Committee” published in the issue summarized the war tax issue as they saw it:
Resisting taxes
When a draft call finds some conscientious objectors unable to participate in war, the government not only has provided them alternatives, but also has proceeded to draft others who will participate.
It is individual conscience that makes the difference, not how the government allocates the recruits.
Some Friends have been unable to enlist, and some cannot voluntarily send dollars in federal tax for military uses.
Interacting with the federal government through tax resistance as witness for peace is more than symbolic; it can be earnest, meaningful religious conscience in action.
However, it does not change how the government allocates its resources, and efforts to witness for changed priorities are also significant.
Many Friends and others work for passage of the Peace Tax Fund Bill by the U.S. Congress because it would not only provide a legal opportunity for pacifists to pay their full federal tax without supporting war, but also give the government an indication of the numbers of citizens exercising this option.
Yes, the federal tax on telephone service is refused by many pacifists (with
a note of explanation accompanying the refusal and redirection of the money
for constructive purposes) because that tax was specifically reinstated to
support the war in Vietnam. Federal bookkeeping does not distinguish certain
tax streams for specific purposes, and has not since John Woolman wrestled
with this same issue. Nevertheless, many Friends are prompted to take a stand
for peace via taxes and thereby find a forum for disclosing that witness with
meetings, governmental representatives, families, and neighbors.
An obituary notice for Abram Bresel Goldstein in that same issue noted that
“[t]hough he worked briefly for the Internal Revenue Service, Abram left that
position during the Korean War to avoid aiding the collection of taxes for
war.”
On , NWTRCC and
the War Tax Concerns Support Committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting sponsored
a seminar on “Corporate Conscience and War Taxes” at the Moorestown, New
Jersey, Meeting (according to a calendar listing in the
issue).
Priscilla Adams
The war tax resistance of Quaker Priscilla Adams became a cause célèbre that
played out over in the
Friends Journal starting in
. I’ll break with my chronological examination of the Journal for a while to follow this thread.
The issue introduces Adams and her
legal case:
Priscilla Adams, a war tax resister and member of Haddonfield
(N.J.) Meeting, is
challenging the
IRS
in court under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Her case is the
first of its kind to test conscientious war tax resistance since the passage
of the RFRA in . Priscilla and her lawyer,
Peter Goldberger, will challenge two points covered by the act: the
government’s use of penalties against war tax resisters for their stands of
conscience; and the lack of a government accommodation for conscientious
objectors to paying for war (like a Peace Tax Fund). The RFRA states that in
conflicts between the government and religious freedom, the government must
show compelling state interest and then use the least restrictive means
necessary. In this case, Priscilla is challenging the government’s lack of
recognition of conscience in response to the
IRS
assessing her taxes and penalties. She and Peter are arguing that under RFRA,
the IRS
should waive penalties for religious war tax resisters as long as they
recognize other forms of reasonable cause for noncompliance with the tax law.
They also are stating that the RFRA requires the enactment of something like a
peace tax fund for religious war tax resisters who are willing to accept a
reasonable accommodation, such as earmarking tax monies for non-warlike
purposes in the federal government. The case has completed its earliest
procedural stages and will be heard in United States Tax Court. Though no
date has been set, lawyers expect a trial date
. Priscilla has participated in
several clearness committees and is receiving guidance and support from
Haddonfield Meeting, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee,
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s War Tax Concerns Support Committee, the
National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, and family and friends.
The issue gave an update:
Priscilla Adams… will appeal the court’s decision rejecting her right to
refuse to pay taxes. The case went before the Philadelphia Tax Court, where
Adams presented an extensive outline of Quaker history and beliefs related to
war tax objections. The court’s decision states, “Religious Freedom
Restoration Act of does not exempt Quaker
from federal income taxes, despite taxpayer’s religious opposition to
military expenditures.” , Rosa Packard of Purchase
(N.Y.) Meeting and
Gordon and Edith Browne of Plainfield
(Vt.) Meeting also have filed
complaints in federal district courts seeking to protect their conscientious
acts of war tax refusal.
The issue mentioned her appeal:
Tax resister Priscilla Lippincott Adams… faced the Federal Court of Appeals
on . Her case against the
IRS for
penalizing her for her religious objections to paying the military through
taxes was dismissed in … The court
had the choice of hearing oral arguments or making a decision based on the
written briefs. In a positive turn, the judges heard oral arguments. Adams
said her lawyer, Peter Goldberger, passionately presented her case, “just
like a lawyer on T.V.”
The three judges will now make a decision, a process that could take anywhere
from six weeks to six months.
From there, to the Supreme Court, according to a
press release that formed the
basis for a
Journal news brief:
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting has filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the
U.S. Supreme Court
in support of its member, Priscilla Adams… who petitioned the high court in
, following unsuccessful efforts
in lower courts to obtain government accommodation for her conscientious
objection to paying war taxes by allowing her to pay federal taxes without
paying for military expenditures. Her employer, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting,
supports religious witness by not forwarding the military portion of a
conscientious objector’s taxes to the
IRS. A
Peace Tax Fund, where tax dollars of conscientious objectors would be directed
exclusively to nonmilitary programs, is one possible solution to the dilemma
for adherents to nonviolence; a bill to establish a Peace Tax Fund has been
introduced in every Congress .
…Lower courts addressed the issue of accommodating war tax resistance only by
declaring that the government has a compelling interest in collecting taxes;
the courts have not dealt with the arguments that accommodation of
conscientious objection would be possible within the context of mandatory
participation in taxation. The Supreme Court has not heard any case that
raises these religious liberty questions under the
law.
By then it was too late, though. The issue noted that Adams’s Supreme Court appeal had been turned down:
On , the
U.S. Supreme Court
declined to hear appeals by Gordon and Edith Browne and Priscilla Lippincott
Adams to lower-court rulings that allowed the Internal Revenue Service to
impose late fees and interest for their conscientious refusal to pay the
military portion of their federal tax. The issue in this case was not paying
the tax when forced to do so by the
IRS,
but whether a “religious hardship” existed that should enable them to pay
without any penalties and interest. The lower-court rulings reaffirmed a
statement of the Supreme Court in that “The
tax system could not function if denominations were allowed to challenge [it]
because tax payments were spent in a manner that violates their religious
belief.” The Justice Department lawyers said that “Voluntary compliance with
the tax laws is the least restrictive means of furthering the government’s
compelling interest in collecting taxes.”… “We’re very disappointed that the
Supreme Court will not be taking the opportunity to reinforce religious
freedom and freedom of conscience,” said Marian Franz, executive director of
the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund. “Congress seems like the most
appropriate place where this human right can be protected.”
Adams wasn’t going to give up though. Whether or not the government was going
to deign to make her war tax resistance legal, she was going to resist, and
the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting was willing to help her. From the
issue:
The United States Department of Justice, Tax Division, is suing Philadelphia
Yearly Meeting for refusing to forward wages of an employee to the Internal
Revenue Service. The employee, Priscilla Adams, resists paying taxes for war
and the military on the basis of religious conscience. The lawsuit, filed in
, is a move to attain funds from
PYM
as recompense for taxes owed by Priscilla Adams, plus a 50-percent penalty
for not garnishing her wages as instructed by the
IRS in
. If the
IRS
succeeds,
PYM
would owe approximately $60,000.
On ,
PYM’s
Interim Meeting decided to respond to the lawsuit and defend its position in
court.
PYM
stated that to garnish Priscilla Adams’s wages would infringe upon her
religious beliefs, and
PYM
should not “be required to act as a collection agent for the government when
doing so will require it to violate key tenets of the Quaker faith.”
Thomas Jeavons,
PYM
general secretary, commented in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “About 50 percent
of our taxes pay for weapons and warfare… We have long sought the creation of
a Peace Tax Fund, a government fund for nonmilitary use, where taxes of
[those who regard paying for war as a violation of religious conscience]
could go. Legislation for this has been in Congress for many years. It should
be passed now.”
The issue spelled out the
Meeting’s legal argument:
On , Philadelphia Yearly
Meeting filed its answer to a Justice Department lawsuit that asks a $20,000
penalty to be imposed on them and seeks to make them the collection agent for
the government. The yearly meeting’s response makes dear its intention to
stand by its essential religious principles, and publicly defend the free
exercise of religion on all possible grounds, including constitutional and
statutory religious freedom defenses. The
IRS
contends that
PYM
must garnish the salary of one of its employees and members who refuses — in
keeping with longstanding Quaker convictions — to pay taxes that support war
and preparations for war. While the
IRS
could easily take other courses to collect the back taxes it claims are due,
instead the federal government is trying to force a church to collect these
funds for it, an action that would require this Quaker organization to
violate its own essential religious convictions regarding freedom of
conscience.
PYM
has refused to do so. The answer to the suit says that the government “asks
the court to assist it in violating the most fundamental religious principles
of an established church… Although those principles and the yearly meeting’s
reasons for its actions have been painstakingly explained to the [government]…
the complaint purports to set forth the history of this matter without even
mentioning
PYM’s
efforts at communication and conciliation. Further, the complaint labels the
Yearly Meeting’s religiously mandated actions as a ‘failure’ to submit to
government coercion, and brands the [Quaker] theological scruples as
‘unreasonable’ and deserving of harsh penalties.” The news release from
PYM
adds, “Quakers have long been known for their religious pacifism, opposition
to war, and support of religious freedom and freedom of conscience.
PYM
regrets that being true to its faith has now brought us into conflict with
the government. The Quaker organization sees itself as defending freedom of
religion and freedom of conscience — and not just for itself, but for all
those who desire to be both good citizens and people of faith. While
PYM
regrets the need to resort to legal action, it looks forward to a full airing
of the issues involved in a public forum where both the sound reasons and
religious principles that guide this Quaker organization’s actions may be
upheld.
PYM’s
defense will rest on the constitutional right to freedom of religion
generally, and particularly as upheld and restated in the Religious Freedom
Restoration Act of .”
The issue reported on how far
they’d gotten with that argument:
On , A federal judge ruled that
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting must comply with a levy on the wages of war tax
refuser Priscilla Adams, but rejected a 50 percent penalty desired by the
Internal Revenue Service.
U.S. District
Judge Stewart Dalzell agreed with the Quaker argument that complying with the
levy “substantially burdens its exercise of religion,” because, as
PYM
General Secretary Thomas Jeavons earlier testified, the organization
“considers it a sacred duty to support the conscientious actions of its
individual members, especially in such historic witnesses as the Peace
Testimony.” Judge Stewan Dalzell also agreed that the
PYM
defense “raised novel and important questions,” thus demonstrating in this
instance that the previous refusal of
PYM
to comply was not a frivolous activity. But he disagreed that the
IRS had
practical alternative means to collect taxes from Priscilla Adams. The
government should not be required “to engage in a time-consuming, and
possibly fruitless, scavenger hunt for other assets.” In
, the Third
U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals had already rejected Priscilla Adams’s claim that the government
could devise a means for earmarking taxes for nonmilitary expenditures,
stating that there were “particularly difficult problems with administration
should exceptions on religious grounds be carved out by the courts.”
That issue also noted:
Film students from Brooklyn Friends School are directing and producing a
video documentary about Quaker peace activist Priscilla Adams. The students
came to Friends Center in Philadelphia to interview her about how her
religious beliefs led her to refuse payment of taxes in order to avoid
contributing to military funding. The students also interviewed George Lakey,
head of Training for Change, and Gene Hillman, adult religious education
coordinator for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. This documentary film may be an
entry for Bridge Film Festival, which is open to middle and upper school
students at Quaker schools worldwide.
The issue noted that the film had
been made — a 16-minute short titled A Need to Witness. And hey, look — it’s on-line:
The list of upcoming actions in the U.S. is beginning to fill out.
And just in time for events like these the War Resisters League has just updated their popular “pie chart” flyer which is meant to show the percentage of your income tax dollar that goes to military spending.
The chart is based on Obama’s proposed budget for , but from what I hear, nobody really expects his budget to even come up for a vote.
Instead, a divided Congress will wrangle their own budget together.
Knowing that his budget would be ignored by Congress, Obama decided to use it more as a public relations vehicle than an actual budget.
Part of this public relations included Pentagon budget “cuts” which, though they’re the sort of “cuts” that always seem to leave the budget bigger than it was last year, and though they are accompanied by an anticipated supplemental slush-fund that isn’t part of the budget, still raised howls from the usual warmongers.
In any case, the real budget Congress passes is predicted to stuff all of the usual military pork back in.
So the “pie chart,” which is based on the for-show Obama budget, as bad as it looks, probably understates how dreadful the budget will end up looking.
I’ve recently come to realize that all too often the pie chart… has been used
as a means to avoid taking action or, at least, direct action. Having these
obscene specific dollar figures and percentages readily displayed can be
seductive (even mesmerizing): billions of dollars going to this or that
imperialist war or horrible weapons system. Though this can spur people to
lobby Congress or the President, generate letters to the editor, and even
provide ammo, so to speak, for protest signs (“No More Money for War!”), all
too many people seem consumed by the mechanics of the budget process to such
an extent that it paralyzes them from moving beyond protest.…
…It’s almost as if protesting military spending — they (the
government) did to us so they have to fix it — is safer and less
threatening than contemplating taking matters into our own hands by
declaring “The
U.S. war and
military spending is a crime against humanity. I refuse to wait for the
politicians to correct these injustices, so I will refuse to be complicit
and, from this day forward, will resist payment of war taxes to the
IRS!”
[T]he group is encouraging Catalans to use an arcane legal formula to pay their taxes to an escrow account controlled by the regional government.
That would potentially deny more than 8 billion euros ($9 billion) to the Spanish state, which is legally entitled to collect taxes directly in Catalonia and most of the rest of country
The technique allows taxpayers to meet their legal obligations to the state before the regional government transfers the money to Madrid.
If the dispute over Catalan sovereignty turns nasty, the regional government can then withhold revenue from Spain without exposing voters to legal or financial reprisals from the central government.
“One of the most important spiritual directors in my life has been the Internal Revenue Service.
Janis Joplin’s lyric, ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,’ comes to mind.
War tax refusers learn ways to become impervious to collection, and that generally means finding ways to live without owning property, relying on savings, or growing attached to a job that one couldn’t leave in the event of an IRS notice about wage garnishment.
“Becoming a war tax refuser was one of the simplest decisions I’ve ever made and one of the easiest decisions to maintain.
I can’t imagine ever changing my mind.”
The War Resisters League have come out with their annual U.S. Federal Budget Pie Chart, which purports to tell you “where your income tax money really goes.”
This is based on the Obama administration’s budget proposal for , which is more than usually an exercise in showmanship as the Republicans who control Congress will get the final say.
Still, the chart makes for a useful conversation starter in some contexts.
In Greece, too, the new government has moved to make things easier for those who practiced tax refusal in recent years.
Such resisters can, if they agree to begin paying something, have large hunks of their arrears written-off, and can make plans to pay the rest in up to 100 small installments without any interest of penalties.
As in the case of Scotland, critics are suggesting that these moves will encourage future tax resisters to be more bold in the hopes that they too might benefit from a future amnesty.
Some links that have slid past my browser window in recent days:
The War Resisters League’s pie chart flyer:
“Where Your Income Tax Money Really Goes”
has been updated for the proposed 2020 federal budget. The flyers, which
show about half of the federal non-trust-fund budget going to pay for past
and present military-related expenses, are good conversation-starters,
especially during tax season as people in the United States tally up how
much they’ve been contributing to this budget over the year.
NWTRCC
is keeping a running tally of
“Tax Day” actions taking
place in the
U.S.
The head of the police in Paris was dismissed and the government brought in
the army, while banning protests in French cities, as it attempts to quell
the frequent outbreaks of gilets jaunes protests.
Meanwhile, the
destruction of
traffic cameras
continues in France, and to a lesser extent elsewhere.
Some recent tax resistance links of note:
Long-time war tax resisters Arcadi Oliveres and David Zarembka have died.
Oliveres was one of the founders of the modern war tax resistance movement in Spain, while Zarembka was one of those who helped NWTRCC get off the ground in the United States, serving as its first treasurer.
More info:
Chuck Faber’s tribute to David Zarembka on A Friendly Letter, including autobiographical writings from Zarembka himself that go into his five decades of war tax resistance in detail
In my last update I noted that the city government of Vic had decided to stop remitting its taxes to the Spanish federal government, instead sending those taxes to the independence-minded Catalan government.
Vic has now been joined by Girona, capital of Girona province, as well as some other medium-sized towns.
The U.S. State Department can refuse to give you a passport or can revoke your existing passport if the IRS tells them you’re way behind on your taxes and aren’t doing anything about it.
And the IRS can make this happen just by notifying the State Department.
Is that unconstitutional? To take away your fundamental right to travel without due process of law?
Paul L. Caron, at TaxProf Blog, investigates the issue and a recent test case that did a poor job of trying to test it in Tax Court.
Caron doesn’t think the constitutionality argument will work, even if it is raised more competently in a more receptive legal forum.
For one thing, the right of an American citizen to travel internationally is not very well protected by American law: the courts do not consider it to be all that important.
For that reason, the courts’ threshold for what they consider sufficient “due process” to deprive you of such a right is pretty low.
President Biden has now come out and said explicitly what had been suspected: that he hopes to help fund his spending spree by increasing IRS enforcement spending, as part of a sock-it-to-big-business plan that also includes increasing corporate tax rates, broadening the corporate tax base, and eliminating big business loopholes.
We’ll have to keep an eye on this as it burbles through the legislative tract.
At the NWTRCC blog, tax resister William E. Ruhaak shared his experience trying to get the government to acknowledge his carefully-drafted, personal “statement of conscience.”
He fought a determined pro se legal battle to get the U.S. Tax Court to admit his statement of conscience as evidence in his tax appeal.
He believes such a struggle is important in order to defend “The fundamental human right to publicly express an opinion or belief.
And also the right to have a written expression of that belief included in government documentation for future reference.”
The Court eventually gave in and added his statement as a piece of evidence, but seemingly only to humor him.
The ruling in his case reads in part:
We nevertheless admonish petitioner that instituting future proceedings before the Tax Court for the purpose of advancing frivolous arguments relating to his conscientious objection to the payment of Federal taxes is likely to result in the imposition of a significant section 6673 penalty against him.
We recognized four decades ago that “there has been a long and undeviating parade of cases in this and other courts” rejecting the arguments of conscientious objectors who sought to avoid paying “the part of their taxes which they estimated to be attributable to military expenditures and to which they objected because of their religious, moral, and ethical objections to war and because of their claimed ‘rights’ under various constitutional provisions, the Nuremberg Principles, international law, and numerous international agreements and treaties.”
Greenberg v. Commissioner, 73 T.C. 806, 810 ().
At this late date, the Court will not condone the continued assertion of similar frivolous positions in meritless litigation that wastes both its own limited resources and those of the IRS.
The War Resisters League has released its annual “Where Your Income Tax Money Really Goes” pie chart fliers, based on the Biden Administration’s proposed budget for .
As Pentagon spending continues to rise, and yet more millions are being spent to arm Ukraine, pie chart aficionados may be surprised to see that the military-spending slice of the pie chart seems to have noticibly shrunk this year.
Ed Hedemann and Ruth Benn, who do the research and composition for the pie chart, explain why.
In part, the reason is that they are operating on the proposed budget, not whatever budget (and supplementary appropriations) Congress will eventually, tardily enact.
The Biden Administration’s proposed budget is chockablock with a wish list of non-military spending that Congress will probably not enact.
The absolute amount of military spending has risen substantially, but relatively it looks smaller because of all that extra wish list spending.
The latest NWTRCC newsletter is out, with a preview of the upcoming tax filing season and other news from the American war tax resistance scene.
The only thing that comes close to the problems we’re seeing now at the Internal Revenue Service was in 1985, when the agency was rolling out some new technology—technology it’s still using today.
Back then, the processing centers got so behind on their work that employees started hiding tax returns in closets and putting them in bags in the trash.
Now it’s way worse, with the IRS, for the second year in a row, entering the filing season with a backlog of millions of not yet processed returns and pieces of correspondence.
The current National Taxpayer Advocate released an amusing blog post about how pathetic and outdated the IRS processes for handling tax returns are. Excerpts:
When I released my annual report in , I said that paper is the IRS’s Kryptonite and the IRS is buried in it.
The reason paper returns are so challenging is that the IRS still has not implemented technology to machine read them, so each digit on every paper return must be manually keystroked into IRS systems by an employee.
The IRS has announced that it plans to hire thousands of new workers to try to deal with its paperwork backlog.
But, in a tight labor market, and unable to offer competitive pay rates to compensate for the soul-crushing tedium ($15.61/hour anyone?), they’re finding it a challenge to turn those plans into personnel.
The Washington Post took a look at a recent job fair the agency held.
IRS employees don’t follow the rules on paid time-off, with a suspicious pattern of sick leave days allowing employees to make their own three-day weekends and extended holidays.
Catalan separatist group / government-in-exile Council for the Republic is promoting a tax redirection campaign in which Catalan citizens withhold the portion of their taxes that would go to the Spanish monarchy or to its repression apparatus, and give that money instead to Front Republicà d’Acció Solidària or some such group working for Catalan independence.
Doomed, quixotic, gonzo tax resister John McAfee is trying to get in the last word by means of a set of interviews he gave when he was on the run from the law.
In them, he explains why he stopped paying. Excerpts:
I’d just had enough.
I’d paid $50 million in income tax over the years.
I thought that was plenty.
I hadn’t paid tax since I went to Belize, but technically, as an American citizen, even if you’re not living in the country, using the services and driving on the roads, you still have to file and pay 30% of your income to the United States.
The only two countries in the world that enforce that rule are the United States and Eritrea!
How [frigging] bizarre is that?
Anyway, I just said, “I’m sorry.
This is insane.
I’m not doing this anymore.”
[I]n America, income tax is in fact unconstitutional anyway.
It was only ever created to fund the war effort in , but that edict, like many others, was never extinguished after the need for it ceased to exist.
I was telling people that I thought taxes were illegal, and if they also felt that they were illegal and/or unjust they should just stop paying, too.
Not just that, I was showing them how to do it without getting caught.
I stumbled somehow on the No Obligation Challenge website.
It looks like a U.K. version of the familiar U.S. tax protester song-and-dance (“Did you know there is no law obligating you to pay council tax?”) but I was impressed by the quality of the graphic design and layout of the website, which is head and shoulders above what I usually see from that segment of the fringe.
