Some historical and global examples of tax resistance → United States → Vietnam War, ~1965–75 → No Tax for War Committee protest, 1967 → Maris Cakars

On this date in 1969, The Deseret News published a piece on the American war tax resistance movement:

Why They Won’t Pay

Millions of Americans are sitting up late these nights, agonizing over their financial records, fighting their way through a maze of federal regulations and puzzling over the inconsistencies of their own arithmetical prowess. They’re involved in the nation’s annual orgy of self-revelation: preparation of personal income tax returns.

For many, hours of hard labor will be crowned by the distasteful task of getting out the bankbook, figuring out whether to refinance the car or postpone that midwinter vacation and then writing a check to Uncle Sam for the amount still owed. But for a few, the culmination of the long agony of tax forms will be the pleasure of writing a little note to the tax collector, and sending that instead of a check.

The note will say simply that the author is not paying 10 per cent, or 23 per cent or 67 per cent, or all of his 1968 federal income tax as a protest against the Vietnam war. In a few months, after the exchange of some nasty notes, the Internal Revenue Service will almost certainly get its money, with interest — from the offender’s bank account, by seizing his paychecks or perhaps by selling his car. But even though the protester is clearly violating the law, there is almost no chance he will go to jail. Meanwhile, the nontaxpayer will have made his point: that he disagrees with government policy on Vietnam and that he is not voluntarily financing the war.

Estimates of how many protesters are not paying their taxes vary widely. A spokesman for the Internal Revenue Service in Washington said that in 1968, only 583 persons who filed returns did not pay all or part of their taxes as a protest. This was out of a national total of 73,000,000. But other estimates are higher. Maris Cakars, the enthusiastic young Oceanside native who runs the New York-based Tax Resistance Project of the War Resisters League, said that he had on file 1,000 names of persons who said they refused to pay all or part of their federal income tax last year. Predictably, the government says the number of protesters has leveled off. The protesters say it is climbing.

A larger group has taken to refusing to pay its telephone tax — the 10 per cent federal excise tax added each month to each customer’s phone bill. This tax was continued in 1966 largely to pay the costs of Vietnam. According to a spokesman for American Telephone & Telegraph Co., about 5,600 telephone users nationwide refused to pay the tax on their bills in the third quarter of 1968. This has remained constant since late 1966, he said. However, Cakars said he believed the figure was closer to 10,000, while the IRS said there were 18,000 cases in 1968. But the IRS spokesman added that many of these were repeaters — one customer who refused to pay for 12 months would be counted as 12 in that figure.

The most famous offender is folk singer Joan Baez. Since 1964, she has been withholding roughly 60 per cent of her federal taxes, which she says is the portion of federal expenditures used to support past, present and future wars. This is in the form of the present defense budget, veterans’ benefits and interest on the portion of the national debt paid for past wars. The IRS has merely attached a lien on her bank account, and has recovered most of what she owes plus interest and penalties.

Other notables have also expressed interest in such protest. In January, 1968, when Congress was initially considering levying a 10 per cent surtax which most believed was to support the Vietnamese war, 448 writers and editors signed a newspaper advertisement stating that they would not pay the surtax or any other war-designated increase. About a third also added that they would not pay the 23 per cent of the current taxes that they believed was financing the Vietnam war effort. When action on the surtax was postponed several months — past the April 15 filing deadline — the movement fell apart and no one kept any records of how many did not pay. Gerald Walker, an editor of The New York Times Magazine, who organized the protest, recently refused even to talk about the effort.

Willful failure to file a return or to pay taxes owed are both punishable by fines of up to $10,000 and jail terms up to a year. But both the government and those organizing tax resistance say that only a handful of tax protesters have spent any time behind bars since the end of World War Ⅱ. The longest period known was six months by a New London, Conn., man. He served his time not for refusing to pay taxes, but for contempt of court, when he defied a court order to tell where he had his bank account. Nobody is in jail for tax resistance at the present time, according to the IRS. The revenue service has little interest in locking up tax delinquents, a spokesman said recently. “In most cases, we have gotten the money,” he said. “All we want to do is to get the money that’s coming to us. After all, is IRS going to ask the Justice Department to go to a federal grand jury and get a jury trial to put a man in jail for a dollar, when all we have to do is go to his bank account? These people are making a protest, but most of them are doing it openly, so there’s no fraud or evasion. This way, they apparently feel they’ve satisfied their protest feelings, and we end up getting the money anyway — sometimes with added penalties.” Since Vietnam, he said, the most drastic step the IRS has taken was to seize a California man’s car, sell it and deduct the owed taxes. “He ended up buying his car back anyway,” the spokesman said.

The government, the protesters claim, is also anxious to avoid a confrontation that would produce a test case, a martyr and added publicity. “We’re anxious for a confrontation,” said Cakars. “It would help to add one more serious headache for the government while the war goes on.”

One New York lawyer, who has advised protesters on tax evasion and refusal, doubts that the government would dare prosecute protesters on a large scale. “Many people would be delighted to be put in jail for a cause like this who would not like to be put in jail for passing a red light,” he said. “But the government doesn’t want to raise the issue that someone is being put in jail for not paying $14. It’s the same reason they are so slow to prosecute for burning a draft card.” The lawyer added that any massive prosecution would tend to win sympathy for the protesters from many persons who are now neutral or apathetic. “If they become too repressive, it sounds too much like 1984,” the lawyer said.

So far, the protest movement has been limited mainly to longtime pacifists and professionals. Pacifists have been protesting the use of tax money for armaments for years. The movement was popularized after World War Ⅱ by the late A.J. Muste, clergyman-philosopher, who refused to pay his taxes from 1948 to his death in 1967. Cakars’ War Resisters League, which is one of the organizations promoting tax resistance to its mailing list of 10,000, has been in business advocating peace policies since World War Ⅰ.

Since the Vietnam war most of those who have joined the protest are professionals and intellectuals. Many are clustered around college towns, such as Cambridge, Mass., and Berkeley Calif. Professionals are particularly attracted, said Cakars, because they are often self-employed and therefore not subject to employers’ withholding their taxes.

One organizer who has hopes of expanding the protest to the middle class is Ted Webster, a self-employed publisher in Roxbury, Mass. Webster last year started the Roxbury War Tax Scholarship Fund, into which tax protesters have put $8,000. The money is kept in a savings account, and only Webster keeps records of how much belongs to each protester, thereby preventing the government from seizing the individual’s money. Interest goes to a scholarship for a poor Negro student.

Webster says he is not a pacifist but merely objects to his tax moneys being spent on the “boon-doggle and pork-barrel military-industrial complex.” He counts on the increasing discontent of the great bulk of U.S. taxpayers to add fuel to the protest, as more and more question the need for the present level of military spending. “I’m trying to convey to taxpayers generally that a good deal of their money is generally being wasted,” Webster said. “Americans don’t mind killing people, as long as it doesn’t cost us anything. But now it’s coming home to the middle class, who are being hit hard with taxes and getting a bit uptight about it.”

Reasons for tax resistance vary, but most of those interviewed said they were too old to refuse to be drafted, or felt they had been denied a pro-peace choice among the presidential candidates, or felt that, in accordance with the results of the Nuremberg was crimes trials, they did not want to contribute voluntarily to a government policy which they feel is immoral. E. Russell Stabler, a special associate professor of mathematics at Hofstra University who has not paid the balance due on his income tax since 1962, said: “I feel we are bound by a higher law. We cannot abide by the U.S. income tax law and at the same time avoid responsibility for criminal acts committed in our name and by conscription of our own funds.” He said that he willingly told the IRS where his bank account was, and that the money, plus penalties, had been seized each year. But at least his conscience is absolved. “It’s just a different view of patriotism from the standard one,” he said with a chuckle. “We used to offer to pay the money we owed into a special fund earmarked for constructive, peaceful purposes, but the government wasn’t interested.” Did Stabler, who is 62, ever fear being jailed? “I suppose anybody who does this runs a risk of going to jail eventually, but the government has been fairly generous about it,” he said.

Like most college faculty members, Stabler has not been threatened by his employer for his unorthodox views. There is talk among war protesters that others have had their jobs threatened or even lost them, for nonpayment of taxes. But this is difficult to substantiate because employer disapproval of an unorthodox employe can be subtle and may also be attributable to other “quirks” in the employe. Employers do, however, cooperate with the IRS by making protesters’ paychecks available for seizure — in fact they are required to by federal law.

One protester who has so far avoided all government attempts to collect his back taxes is Eric Weinberger, who is a paid worker for the Fifth Avenue Peace Parade Committee. His employer has refused to turn over his paychecks to the IRS although Weinberger has not paid anything for five years. He said he does not own a car or a house and has so little money that he does not even have a bank account that can be seized. He has been threatened with prosecution, he said, but no further action has been taken. He added with a note of resignation, “I suppose they’ll find some way to get it eventually. But they’ll have to take it. I’m a pacifist and I don’t intend to give them my money for the purpose of war.”

I’m a little surprised I hadn’t come across the name Maris Cakars before in my research. He was active with the War Resisters League and with the Committee for Non-Violent Action during the Vietnam War period, and both of those organizations were close to the war tax resistance movement of the time.

Of the other tax resisters mentioned in the article whose names I hadn’t come across before — E[dward?]. Russell Stabler, Gerald Walker, Ted Webster, and Eric Weinberger — I wasn’t able to find out much more. You can find some of Stabler’s work in mathematics on-line. Walker is mentioned in a couple of articles about the Writers & Editors war tax protest, and besides his work for The New York Times Magazine is also known as the author of the novel Cruising which was adapted into the Al Pacino movie of the same name. Ted Webster remains a mystery to me. I found a photo of an Eric Weinberger from 1992 serving up food to the homeless in front of the Bush/Quayle campaign headquarters in Boston in a “Food Not Bombs” action — perhaps the same Eric Weinberger, perhaps not.

On this date in 1967, just a few days after Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his powerful “Beyond Vietnam” speech, Eric Weinberger, the national secretary of the Committee for Nonviolent Action, wrote to to ask if King would publicly sign on to their war tax resistance campaign:

I don’t know how (or if) King responded to this request. I have seen no indications that he participated in the war tax resistance of the period.

King had been targeted by politically-motivated tax prosecutions in areas where he had been active. Because of this he had been under particular pressure to keep to the straight-and-narrow when it came to tax filing, so as not to give his enemies a potentially fruitful avenue of attack. This may have discouraged him from making war tax resistance part of his protest against U.S. militarism and the Vietnam War. It is also possible that, since King was killed a little less than a year after this letter was written, he just didn’t have time to put any possibly-intended resistance into practice.

The CNVA letterhead as shown on this letter is a clue as to who was associated with the emerging war tax resistance movement of the time. Many of these names are familiar to me, but some others are not:

The time has come, and that time was 14 April 1966.

350 Balk at Taxes in a War Protest

Ad in Capital Paper Urges Others to Bar Payment

Washington, April 14 — Some 350 persons who disapprove of the war in Vietnam announced today that they would not voluntarily pay their Federal income taxes, due tomorrow. 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 this morning 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 last year 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 yesterday 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 2:15 P.M. today 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 11 A.M. to 3:30 P.M., 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.

In December, 1969, the Washington Monthly carried a story about war tax resisters written by Kennett Love, himself a signer of the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge.

Tax Resistance: Hell No — I Won’t Pay

“We believe that the right of conscientious objection to war belongs to all the people, not just to those of draft age,” says a pamphlet now being sent out across the country from a littered, poster-bright office on New York’s Lower East Side. It carries a radical call to the citizenry to come out against the war in Vietnam by refusing to pay taxes that finance the war.

Such tax resistance is now gathering adherents outside traditional pacifist circles. Although it is still far from a major headache to the government, Internal Revenue Service men are being assigned to locate bank accounts of resisters and to seize the sums due — plus six per cent interest. Out of the frustration of the anti-Vietnam-war segment of the population, which is growing rapidly according to the polls; out of dashed hopes raised by peace promises and peace gestures from the Nixon and Johnson Administrations alike; and out of a feeling that orthodox democratic forms of protest — elections and demonstrations — have been ignored, an increasing number of otherwise law-abiding people are following their consciences into what Gandhi called the last stage of civil disobedience by openly refusing to pay part or all of their federal taxes.

The chief targets of the tax-resistance movement are the income tax, particularly the 10 per cent war surtax imposed last year, and the 10 per cent federal excise tax on telephone service. Other federal taxes have been rejected either as too complicated to resist, such as the liquor tax, which is collected at the wholesale level before individual purchase, or as earmarked for such non-war uses as highway construction. One pacifist, imprisoned for draft refusal and therefore lacking income to refuse taxes on, gave up smoking because the cigarette tax brings the government more revenue than any other single consumer-commodity tax.

The telephone tax is the most popular one to resist, partly because it was the first to be specifically linked to the war in Vietnam and partly because the American Telephone and Telegraph Company has proven courteous in its handling of tax resisters. The telephone tax was due to be reduced to three per cent in the spring of 1966. In approving the White House request for its extension of the 10 per cent level, Chairman Wilbur Mills (D-Ark.) of the House Ways and Means Committee said: “It is clear that the Vietnam and only the Vietnam operation makes this bill necessary.”

Resistance to the telephone tax began soon afterward. Karl Meyer of Chicago, a former Congressman’s son and a free-lance writer immersed in pacifist causes, conceived the idea and proposed it to Maris Cakars of the War Resisters League in New York. Meyer drafted a pamphlet, “Hang Up On War!,” which has become a staple among the literature distributed by the War Resisters League through the mails and at peace booths. It explains the link between the telephone tax and the war, summarizes moral and legal objections to the war, and provides practical advice for resisters of the tax, including a candid assessment of the possible risks. Of the risks, it points out that under Section 7203 of the Internal Revenue Code, which covers both the telephone and the income tax, one who “willfully fails to pay” could be imprisoned for up to one year and fined up to $10,000. It adds that the experiences of tax resisters over the past several years show that the government is not willing to press criminal charges but, instead, acts to collect the taxes (with interest) directly, when and where it can.

AT&T records indicate that telephone tax resisters were relatively unmoved by President Johnson’s famous “abdication” speech on March 31, 1968, but that about a quarter of them resumed payment of their telephone taxes at the end of 1968 in the belief that President-elect Nixon would end the war. A table of the telephone company statistics follows, giving the number of telephone tax refusers at the end of each quarter since 1966:

Quarter	No. of resisters to telephone tax
1967 — 1st	1,800
2nd	2,300
3rd	2,600
4th	3,400
1968 — 1st	3,400
2nd	4,700
3rd	5,300
4th	4,700
1969 — 1st	4,000
2nd	4,000

The figure for the third quarter of this year is not available yet, but the revived intensity of the anti-war movement, manifested in the national student moratorium on October 15 and the big demonstrations on November 15, presage an increase.

Measured against the telephone company’s 43,459,000 residence customers, the percentage of tax resisters is minuscule. But in view of the seriousness of the act of tax resistance, the number of resisters is a source of satisfaction and encouragement to the leaders of the movement.

A spokeswoman for the telephone company told me its standing orders are to continue service to tax resisters so long as its own charges are paid. The company notifies the IRS of tax non-payments so it can do its own collecting. If a tax resister informs the local business office of the telephone company that he is deliberately omitting the tax from his payment, the office will not carry the tax charges forward to his next bill. “It would seem logical to assume that we don’t like to be a collecting agency,” she said, “but we do what we’re obliged to do.” She said that telephone tax resisters are located mainly in college communities.

Income tax resisters, although fewer than telephone tax resisters, appear to be a more stubborn breed, unmoved by political gestures and prepared to hold out until the war actually ends. An IRS spokesman in Washington gave me a statistical summary of the growth of such tax resistance. So far as he knew, it first became a public issue when Joan Baez, the singer, refused in 1964 to pay 60 per cent of her income tax in an act to dissociate herself from what she called the immoral, impractical, and stupid war in Vietnam. She refused the same proportion in 1965 and wrote the IRS: “This country has gone mad. But I will not go mad with it. I will not pay for organized murder. I will not pay for the war in Vietnam.” Joan Baez and a scattered handful of old-line pacifists, a few of whom had been refusing war taxes since 1941, were not worth keeping statistics on, so far as the IRS was concerned.

Then, in April, 1966, a committee under the chairmanship of the Reverend A.J. Muste circulated a tax-refusal pledge among persons on the mailing lists of the Committee for Non-Violent Action and the War Resisters League. They obtained 370 signatures for an advertisement in The Washington Post that stated: “We believe that the ordinary channels of protest have been exhausted…” Joan Baez headed the list of signers. According to an IRS analysis, about one-quarter of the signers had no taxable income, about one-half cooperated with the IRS to the extent of telling the agent who called on them where their money could be seized, and about one-quarter put the IRS to the trouble of ferreting out their bank accounts. The number of actual resisters came to about 275.

The following year the IRS began keeping a count of tax protesters. The number rose to 375. In 1968 there were 533 taxpayers who refused part or all of their income taxes and wrote the IRS that they were doing so in protest against the Vietnam war. This year there were 848 who set themselves against the law on grounds of conscientious objection to the war. The IRS spokesman told me that roughly three-quarters of the income-tax protesters live on the east and west coasts and that the same proportion held for persons refusing to pay the telephone tax.

IRS spokesmen emphasize that the number of refusers is only a tiny fraction of the total number of taxpayers. There were some 71 million returns filed in 1967, about 73 million in 1968, and 75 million in 1969. But again, tax-resistance leaders find significance in the fact that the very idea of tax refusal was unthinkable to nearly all of the resisters until their consciences impelled them to it. Furthermore, although the numbers are small, the rate of increase of tax resisters is far greater than the annual increase in tax returns.

Fear of prosecution and jail is a deterrent to potential tax refusers. Many people fail to recognize the distinction between clandestine tax evasion and open tax refusal. The IRS makes the distinction, however, and has shown no inclination to prosecute persons refusing taxes because of the Vietnam war. An IRS spokesman said earlier this year: “Is IRS going to ask the Justice Department to go to a federal grand jury and get a jury trial to put a man in jail for a dollar, when all we have to do is go to his bank account?” Tax-resistance leaders believe also that the government wishes to avoid the publicity attendant on a prosecution, largely because a test case might produce a martyr and create sympathy for the movement. The few prosecutions in recent years have been for refusal to file returns or disclose information rather than for refusal to pay.

War tax refusal in this country is older than the United States itself. It began in 1755 when Mennonites and Quakers refused to pay taxes for the French and Indian wars. They refused again during the American Revolution and the Civil War. The most famous early instance was that of Henry David Thoreau, who spent a night in jail in 1848 for refusing taxes in protest against our invasion of Mexico. He explained in his essay on civil disobedience that he could not “without disgrace be associated with it” and added: “If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a bloody and violent measure, as it would to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood.”

Gandhi, who was deeply influenced by Thoreau, wrote in 1922 that “civil non-payment of taxes is indeed the last stage in non-cooperation. …I know that the withholding of payment of taxes is one of the quickest methods of overthrowing a government.” He went on to say: “I am equally sure that we have not yet evolved that degree of strength and discipline which are necessary… Are the Indian peasantry prepared to remain absolutely non-violent, and see their cattle taken away from them to die of hunger and thirst? …I would urge the greatest caution before embarking upon the dangerous adventure.” But Lord Mountbatten said with relief after India became independent: “If they had started to refuse to pay their taxes, I don’t know what we could have done.”

The idea of modern, organized tax resistance in this country against armaments and war seems to have begun with the Peacemaker Movement, which was formed by 250 pacifists who met in Chicago early in 1948. In February, 1963, the Peacemaker Movement published the first edition of a mimeographed Handbook on Non-Payment of War Taxes, which contains practical advice and case histories. The handbook has now run to three editions and nearly 10,000 copies. It points out that since the bulk of the federal budget (estimates range from 66 to 80 per cent) goes to pay for past wars, finance the Vietnam war, and prepare for future wars, “it is apparent that the major business of the federal government is war… it is useless to act as if the major business of government is civil functions or peaceful pursuits.”

In the summer of 1967, a little more than a year after A.J. Muste’s committee published its tax protest advertisement with 370 signers, Gerald Walker of The New York Times Magazine began to organize a Writers and Editors War Tax Protest, in which all the signatories pledged themselves flatly to refuse the then-proposed 10 per cent war surtax and possibly the 23 per cent of their income taxes allocated to the war effort as well. As was the case with the Reverend Muste’s advertisement, most daily newspapers that Walker approached refused to sell space to him. The New York Times was one that refused and so, this time, was The Washington Post. The New York Post printed Walker’s advertisement in January 1968, as did The New York Review of Books and Ramparts. In all, 528 writers and editors signed the pledge. Walker told me recently that about half of them, including himself, failed to carry out the tax-refusal pledge. “Johnson’s ‘abdication’ two weeks before the tax deadline convinced me that we had won,” he said.

I was myself among the other half of the signers who did refuse part of their taxes — 23 per cent in my case, the 10 per cent surtax not having gone into effect. Since my own hesitant involvement in war tax resistance seems typical among the non-pacifists now joining the movement, I will summarize it here as the case history I know best. With my part payment of my 1967 income tax, I wrote the IRS as follows:

Enclosed please find my check for $1,862.81, which is 77 per cent of the tax required. The 23 per cent unpaid is a protest against the government’s use of that proportion of its revenue for the war in Vietnam. My conscience revolts against the gross immorality of the war… There are also questions of law. The war violates the supreme law of our land, notably the Constitution (Art. Ⅰ, Sec. 8, clause 11), the United Nations Charter (Art. 51), and the Southeast Asia Treaty (Art. Ⅳ)… Responsible jurists and philosophers soberly accuse our government of crimes against international codes on human rights and the conduct of wars and the specific statutes created ex post facto to punish the Nazis…

The prodigal waste of our national energy and treasure in destroying the land and people of Vietnam is so weakening this nation that other powers may bring us to judgment as we once brought the Nazis to account at Nuremburg… It will then be no defense to plead, like the “good Germans,” that we had to obey our government and cannot be held responsible for what it did. By paying taxes which I know my government is using to kill a small nation I commit a greater and more violent breach of laws than I do by not paying…

I was a Navy pilot in World War Ⅱ. I would not serve in this war. If I could prevent my tax dollars from serving, I would do so. Unfortunately, I have not yet learned of a practical way to keep the government altogether from extracting financial support from me for the war. In the meantime, I balk at 23 per cent in token of my dissociation from the cruel injustice and bloodshed to poor and distant strangers being done under my flag, in my name, with my money.

The IRS reply did not come until after I had refused a similar amount of taxes last April. It was a form postcard saying: “Dear Taxpayer: Thank you for your letter. We are looking into the matter you brought up and should have the answer to you shortly… Thank you for your cooperation.” The answer, inevitably, was a series of printed forms, progressing from a “notice of tax due” to a “Final Notice Before Seizure.” The IRS had already seized telephone taxes, which I stopped paying in 1967, from three bank accounts, patiently tracking down the bank to which I transferred my account after each seizure. The IRS obtained the unpaid part of my 1967 tax, plus six per cent interest, in June. At this writing I am awaiting implementation of the Final Notice Before Seizure of the refused portion of my 1968 taxes. Banks are required by law to surrender private assets, including the contents of safe deposit boxes, to the IRS upon demand. Most banks surrender the levied amount immediately and the depositor is informed afterward.

This whole business of deliberately defying and harassing the government, even in a moral protest, is a heavy and anxious experience. When I first considered it in 1966 I was unaware that some hundreds of other people were already doing it. I was afraid of going to jail, which, among other things, would have prevented my fulfilling a contract to complete a book. I began refusing the telephone tax after obtaining the pamphlet “Hang Up On War!” from a pacifist in Princeton in August, 1967. The Writers and Editors War Tax Protest, which came to my attention that fall, gave me a sufficient sense of safety in numbers to begin income-tax resistance.

I am still troubled over possible consequences, particularly after the conspiracy convictions in the Dr. Spock trial, and I find it innately distasteful to resist paying my share of the general tax burden. But my revulsion against the war in Vietnam prevails over anxiety and civic reservations. And the Nixon Administration seems as unwilling or as unable as the Johnson Administration to make a significant and credible effort to end the war. In 1964 the country voted for Johnson and peace and got an escalation of the war. In 1968, between Nixon and Humphrey, there was no real opportunity to vote for peace. Demonstrations have proven equally futile as a means of affecting war policy, so much so that the President declares that he will not be swayed by them. Under these circumstances, tax resistance, distasteful as it is, seems to more and more people to offer the most effective channel of protest.

This summer I participated in the formation of War Tax Resistance, which is working to transform tax protests from essentially individual acts into an integrated political factor. The leading figure in the organization is Bradford Lyttle, a slim, earnest, no-nonsense pacifist who nine years ago led a peace march across the United States and Europe to Moscow, urging unilateral disarmament on governments along the way and exhorting citizens toward non-cooperation with military service and war production. Its “Call to War Tax Resistance,” claiming the right of conscientious objection for taxpayers as well as draft-age men, says:

The first goal… is to convince as many people as possible to refuse at least $5 of some tax owed the government. Nearly everyone can do this by refusing their federal telephone tax or part of their income tax. If hundreds of thousands refuse to pay $5, they will establish mass tax refusal. Besides having the burden of collecting the unpaid amounts, the government will be faced with the political fact of massive non-cooperation with its war-making policies.

In a separate but related action, the poet Allen Ginsberg and I have obtained the backing of the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee for a suit against the government to recover money that has been seized from us in enforcement of tax claims and also to enjoin further seizures. The main ground of our action, as it is now being prepared, is based on the historical equivalency between taxes and service (which is a kind of tax) and the claim that the right of conscientious objection is as inherent to taxpayers as it is to men liable for military service. Conscientious objectors cannot avoid service but they can earmark their service to the exclusion of warlike activity. In the same way, we claim, taxpayers should pay their full share but they should be able to earmark their taxes to the exclusion of war-like applications. In a time when weaponry has achieved the capacity to wipe out civilization, we believe, the people should be accorded a direct voice in deciding whether they shall make war. Since World War Ⅱ the decision has moved ever more into the hands of the executive despite the Constitutional stipulation that it is Congress which should declare war.

Meanwhile, until we are legally able to earmark our taxes for non-warlike applications, we feel conscience-bound to resist paying at least a part of them.

Here are a handful of artifacts relating to the American war tax resistance movement circa 1967.

First, some relics that were filed alongside a letter from Herbert Sonthoff to W. Walter Boyd (though I think this filing may be arbitrary and that the letters are not related to each other):

An Open Letter ^*

At this late date it is pointless to muster the evidence which shows that the war we are waging in Vietnam is wrong. By now you have decided for yourself where you stand. In all probability, if you share our feelings about it, you have expressed your objections both privately and publicly. You have witnessed the small effect these protests have had on our government.

By April 15^th, every American citizen must decide whether he will make a voluntary contribution to the continuation of this war. After grave consideration, we have decided that we can no longer do so, and that we will therefore withhold all or part of the taxes due. The purpose of this letter is to call your attention to the fact that a nationwide tax refusal campaign is in progress, as stated in the accompanying announcement, and to urge you to consider refusing to contribute voluntarily to this barbaric war.

Signed:

Prof. Warren Ambrose	Mathematics, M.I.T.
Dr. Donnell Boardman	Physician, Acton, Mass.
Mrs. Elizabeth Boardman	Acton, Mass.
Prof. Noam Chomsky	Linguistics, M.I.T.
Miss Barbara Deming	Writer, Wellfleet, Mass.
Prof. John Dolan	Philosophy, Chicago University
Prof. John Ek	Anthropology, Long Island University
Martha Bentley Hall	Musician, Brookline, Mass.
Dr. Thomas C. Hall	Physician, Brookline, Mass.
Rev. Arthur B. Jellis	First Parish in Concord, Unitarian-Universalist, Concord, Mass.
Prof. Donald Kalish	Philosophy, U.C.L.A.
Prof. Louis Kampf	Humanities, M.I.T.
Prof. Staughton Lynd	History, Yale University
Milton Mayer	Writer, Mass.
Prof. Jonathan Mirsky	Chinese Language and Literature, Dartmouth College
Prof. Sidney Morgenbesser	Philosophy, Columbia University
Prof. Wayne A. O’Neill	Graduate School of Education, Harvard University
Prof. Anatol Rapoport	Mental Health Research Institute, University of Michigan
Prof. Franz Schurmann	Center for Chinese Studies, University of Calif., Berkeley
Dr. Albert Szent Gyorgy	Institute for Muscle Research, Woods Hole, Mass.
Harold Tovish	Sculptor, Brookline, Mass.
Prof. Howard Zinn	Government, Boston University

^* Institutions listed for informational purposes only

P.S. The No Tax for War Committee intends to make public the names of signers, hence if you wish to add your signature, early return is desirable. Contributions are needed, and checks should be made payable to the Committee.

The following page, dated 11 March 1967, shows a mock-up of the intended public advertisement showing the signers’ names:

The committee will publish the above statement with names of signers at tax deadline — April 15.

Send signed statements to: NO TAX FOR WAR COMMITTEE, c/o Rev. Maurice McCrackin, 932 Dayton St., Cincinnati, Ohio 45214.

For additional copies of this form, put number you will distribute and name and address on the following lines:
No. _____ Name ____________________
Address _________________________

Signers So Far

• Meldon and Amy Acheson
• Michael J. Ames
• Alfred F. Andersen
• Ross Anderson
• Beulah K. Arndt
• Joan Baez
• Richard Baker
• Bruce & Pam Beck
• Ruth T. Best
• Robert & Margaret Blood
• Karel F. Botermans
• Marion & Ernest Bromley
• Edwin Brooks
• A. Dale Brothington
• Mrs. Lydia Bruns
• Wendal Bull
• Mrs. Dorothy Bucknell
• John Burslem
• Lindley J. Burton
• Catharine J. Cadbury
• Maris Cakars
• Robert and Phyllis Calese
• William N. Calloway
• Betty Camp
• Daryle V. Carter
• Jared & Susan Carter
• Horace & Beulah Champney
• Ken & Peggy Champney
• Hank & Henry Chapin
• Holly Chenery
• Richard A. Chinn
• Naom [sic] Chomsky
• John & Judy Christian
• Gordon & Mary Christiansen
• Peter Christiansen
• Donald F. Cole
• John Augustine Cook
• Helen Marr Cook
• Jack Coolidge, Jr.
• Allen Cooper
• Martin J. Corbin
• Tom & Monica Cornell
• Dorothy J. Cunningham
• Jean DaCosta
• Ann & William Davidon
• Stanley F. Davis
• Dorothy Day
• Dave Dellinger
• Barbara Deming
• Robert Dewart
• Ruth Dodd
• John M. Dolan
• Orin Doty
• Allen Duberstein
• Ralph Dull
• Malcolm Dundas
• Margaret E. Dungan
• Henry Dyer
• Susan Eanet
• Bob Eaton
• Marc Paul Edelman
• Johan & Francis Eliot
• Jerry Engelbach
• George J. Etu, Jr.
• Mary C. Eubanks
• Arthur Evans
• Jonathan Evans
• William E. Evans
• Pearl Ewald
• Franklin Farmer
• Bertha Faust
• Dianne M. Feeley
• Rice A. Felder
• Henry A. Felisone
• Mildred Fellin
• Glenn Fisher
• John Forbes
• Don & Ann Fortenberry
• Marion C. Frenyear
• Ruth Gage-Colby
• Lawrence H. Geller
• Richard Ghelli
• Charles Gibadlo
• Bruce Glushakow
• Walter Gormly
• Arthur Goulston
• Thomas Grabell
• Steven Green
• Walter Grengg
• Joseph Gribbins
• Kenneth Gross
• John M. Grzywacz, Jr.
• Catherine Guertin
• David Hartsough
• David Hartsough
• Arthur Harvey
• Janet Hawksley
• James P. Hayes, Jr.
• R.F. Helstern
• Ammon Hennacy
• Norman Henry
• Robert Hickey
• Dick & Heide Hiler
• William Himelhoch
• C.J. Hinke
• Anthony Hinrichs
• William M. Hodsdon
• Irwin R. Hogenauer
• Florence Howe
• Donald & Mary Huck
• Philip Isely
• Michael Itkin
• Charles T. Jackson
• Paul Jacobs
• Martin & Nancy Jezer
• F. Robert Johnson
• Woodbridge O. Johnson
• Ashton & Marie Jones
• Paul Jordan
• Paul Keiser
• Joel C. Kent
• Roy C. Kepler
• Paul & Pauline Kermiet
• Peter Kiger
• Richard King
• H.A. Kreinkamp
• Arthur & Margaret Landes
• Paul Lauter
• Peter and Marolyn Leach
• Gertrud & George A. Lear, Jr.
• Alan and Elin Learnard
• Titus Lehman
• Richard A. Lema
• Florence Levinsohn
• Elliot Linzer
• David C. Lorenz
• Preston B. Luitweiler
• Bradford Lyttle
• Adriann van L. Maas
• Ben & Sue Mann
• Paul and Salome Mann
• Howard E. Marston, Sr.
• Milton and Jane Mayer
• Martin & Helen Mayfield
• Maurice McCrackin
• Lilian McFarland
• Maureen & Felix McGowan
• Maryann McNaughton
• Gelston McNeil
• Guy W. Meyer
• Karl Meyer
• David & Catherine Miller
• James Missey
• Mark Morris
• Janet Murphy
• Thomas P. Murray
• Rosemary Nagy
• Wally & Juanita Nelson
• Marilyn Neuhauser
• Neal D. Newby, Jr.
• Miriam Nicholas
• Robert B. Nichols
• David Nolan
• Raymond S. Olds
• Wayne A. O’Neil
• Michael O’Quin
• Ruth Orcutt
• Eleanor Ostroff
• Doug Palmer
• Malcolm & Margaret Parker
• Jim Peck
• Michael E. Pettie
• John Pettigrew
• Lydia H. Philips
• Dean W. Plagowski
• Jefferson Poland
• A.J. Porth
• Ralph Powell
• Charles F. Purvis
• Jean Putnam
• Harriet Putterman
• Robert Reitz
• Ben & Helen Reyes
• Elsa G. Richmond
• Eroseanna Robinson
• Pat Rusk
• Joe & Helen Ryan
• Paul Salstrom
• Ira J. Sandperl
• Jerry & Rae Schwartz
• Martin Shepard
• Richard T. Sherman
• Louis Silverstein
• T.W. Simer
• Ann B. Sims
• Jane Beverly Smith
• Linda Smith
• Thomas W. Smuda
• Bob Speck
• Elizabeth P. Steiner
• Lee D. Stern
• Beverly Sterner
• Michael Stocker
• Charles H. Straut, Jr.
• Stephen Suffet
• Albert & Joyce Sunderland, Jr.
• Mr. & Mrs. Michael R. Sutter
• Marjorie & Robert Swann
• Oliver & Katherine Tatum
• Gary G. Taylor
• Harold Tovish
• Joe & Cele Tuchinsky
• Lloyd & Phyllis Tyler
• Samuel R. Tyson
• Ingegerd Uppman
• Margaret von Selle
• Mrs. Evelyn Wallace
• Wilbur & Joan Ann Wallis
• William & Mary Webb
• Barbara Webster
• John K. White
• Willson Whitman
• Denny & Ida Wilcher
• Huw Williams
• George & Lillian Willoughby
• Bob Wilson
• Emily T. Wilson
• Jim & Raona Wilson
• W.W. Wittkamper
• Sylvia Woog
• Wilmer & Mildred Young
• Franklin Zahn
• Betty & Louis Zemel
• Vicki Jo Zilinkas

Following this was a page explaining how to go about resisting:

Some Methods of Nonpayment

1. For those owing nothing because of the Withholding Tax.
   
   Such persons write a letter to the Internal Revenue Service, to be filed with the tax return, stating that the writer cannot in good conscience help support the war in Vietnam, voluntarily. The writer therefore requests a return of a percentage of the money collected from his salary.
   
   Note: Of course, the IRS will not return the money. However, the writer has refused to pay for the war voluntarily and has put it in writing. This symbolic action is not to be belittled since anybody who does this allies himself with those who will withhold money due the IRS.
2. For those self-employed or owing money beyond what has been withheld from salary.
   
   Such persons write a letter to be filed with the tax return, stating that the writer does not object to the income tax in principle, but will not, as a matter of conscience, help pay for the war in Vietnam. The writer is therefore withholding some or all of the tax due.

Note: In all cases, we recommend that copies of these letters be sent to the President and to your Senators.

Remarks:

The Internal Revenue Service has the legal power to confiscate money due it. They will get that money, one way or another. However, to obstruct the IRS from collecting money due (by not filing a return at all, for example) seems less important to us than the fact that each is refusing to pay his tax voluntarily. With this in mind, many of us are placing the taxes owed in special accounts and we will so inform the IRS in our letters.

Willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $10,000 and up to a year in jail, together with the costs of prosecution. So far, the IRS has prosecuted only those who have obstructed collection (by refusing to file a return, by refusing to answer a summons, etc.). Usually, the IRS has collected the tax due plus 6% interest and possibly an added fine of 5% for “negligence”. The fact that the IRS has rarely, if at all, prosecuted tax-refusers to the full extent of the law does not mean they will not do so in the future.

Finally, an article from the December 1967 edition of The Capitol East Gazette:

Tax Refusal Urged by Group

Two thousand anti-war leaflets on telephone tax refusal were distributed in Capitol East on Saturday, Nov. 18, by members of CHOICE, a group of local residents who are withdrawing their support for the Vietnam war.

The leaflet explains that the 10% phone tax was enacted in April 1966 specifically to raise money for the Vietnam war.

According to CHOICE, the phone company will not remove a person’s telephone if he refuses to pay the tax. The company asks refusers to state why they are withholding the tax and then turns the matter over to the Internal Revenue Service.

According to CHOICE, there are presently 25 known tax refusers in the Capitol Hill area.

Those desiring CHOICE’s leaflet are asked to call LI 6‒9836.

War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1967

By 1967, though there was still no consensus in the Society of Friends about whether paying taxes was the right thing to do (and if not, how best to resist it), the issue had become impossible to avoid. The issues of the Friends Journal published that year reflect this, with most of them including at least a mention of war tax resistance or of the dilemma for Quaker taxpayers.

War tax resistance was again on the agenda of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s annual conference in March, but the Journal only includes the topic in a list of “special concerns” that were covered on the last day of the meeting, without giving any details of how the conversation went.

In the opening article in the 15 May issue, “Tithing for Peace” by Alan Strain, the author expresses his anguish over how much he has “tithed for war and instruments of war… several dollars each day to create a warfare state in which fear and violence have become ever more accepted and expected.” However: “I cannot see how to disentangle myself from this madness… I cannot even see a way to end my involuntary tithing for war.” Rather than resist the war tithe, he has decided to try to match it with a peace tithe: “giving this amount to private or public agencies working to remove the causes of war and to develop the conditions and institutions of peace.”

In that same issue, a note about the Canadian Friends Service Committee’s humanitarian efforts in Vietnam includes a parenthetical remark that some of the $60,000 donated to the cause came from “two U.S. churchmen who sent money normally used to pay income taxes.”

In the 15 June issue, the American Friends Service Committee tried to capitalize on the new craze with this ad:

In August the Baltimore Yearly Meetings approved a minute “including refusal to pay the surtax for the war if such a tax is imposed.”

An article by Cynthia E. Kerman on “The Rationale of Protest” in the 15 September issue made note in passing of the communicative possibilities of war tax resistance: “Tax refusal, for instance, may be a means of speaking to people — not only of purifying our lives.”

In the 1 November issue, a letter from Lucy P. Carner picked up where Cynthia E. Kerman left off, asserting that there are “possibilities for witness inherent in tax refusal” that are not immediately obvious to people who are looking for a quick fix “to put a stop to war.” Excerpts:

Tax refusal enables one to “speak truth to power.” A letter to the Revenue Service protesting the tax, but paying it, is likely to get less attention than one explaining why one is not paying a portion of the tax. In the latter case, the Revenue Service has to do something about it. A representative of the service has to make a telephone call reminding the taxpayer of his delinquency. Here is another opportunity to witness.

“You mean you do not intend to pay?” said the incredulous voice of the representative. I explained to him what I had already written to his office. “Yes, I know that you will eventually get the money from my bank. That isn’t your fault and you have very courteously fulfilled your duty. But this is my way of saying that I think the war is wrong. Only for that reason would I break the law — I’m not accustomed to breaking laws.”

“Yes,” said he, rather helplessly, and hung up.

A few months later a bank official will send a letter saying how much the bank would regret allowing the tax collector to take money from my account and won’t I please pay up and avoid this embarrassment. Here is another opportunity to write my objection to the war. Refusal to pay the additional Federal tax on my telephone bill provides similar opportunity to make my voice heard.

Tax refusal, then, is a manner of speaking to government officials, to banks and business concerns. It is a nonviolent way of reaching the hard-to-reach, for it has nuisance value. It deserves wide consideration as one way of bearing witness to one’s conscientious objection to war.

The lead editorial in that same issue, by Ruth A. Miner, suggests that instead of resisting war taxes, Quakers should pay an additional tax — “the same amount (or a practicable fraction of it — or even more!)” — to the United Nations. This, she suggests, would be in the spirit of Jesus’s suggestion that “whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two.”

That issue was also the first to feature the ad from “Southern California Business Service” (see ♇ 1 July 2013) that included the message: “A word about tax refusal: Since we limit our income to avoid paying income tax, our rates are low — and — in hiring our help we actively seek out C.O.s and/or tax refusers.”

Phone tax resistance

James B. Osgood, in a letter-to-the-editor in the 1 January issue, takes note of the American Friends Service Committee’s “stickers which one can attach to one’s phone bill to make payment of the war tax under protest” (see ♇ 13 July 2013).

This form of protest is better than nothing, but its practical effect is next to nothing. No real witness is made; no war funds are withheld from the government; no one’s reputation is put on the line.

Those of us who have refused to pay the ten per cent tax hope that others joining us will make a great visible witness and will cause sufficient trouble to the government to give it pause for thought over both collection and prosecution of those who conscientiously refuse. This, however, will require a real step forward, not a mere licking of a label.

Maris Cakars of the Committee for Nonviolent Action also wrote in, and his letter appeared in the following issue. He believed that there were “hundreds” of telephone tax resisters who had not notified the Committee of their resistance, and hoped they would speak up so that the campaign could move on to its next phase: “placing advertisement in newspapers and holding press conferences. For this phase to have maximum impact it is important for us to have as complete a list of tax refusers as possible.”

The 15 March issue announced that the Claremont (California) Meeting had decided to resist the telephone tax on its meetinghouse phone.

In the 15 July issue was a letter from a representative of 57^th Street Meeting in Chicago, in which they noted that two other Meetings had contacted them about actions they had taken in response to their call for phone tax resistance, and said “we would be pleased to act as a clearinghouse on positions taken by Meetings on telephone-tax refusal…”

In the 1 November issue, George Lakey wrote an article about why he was joining the crew of the Phoenix to illegally (by U.S. law) bring humanitarian aid to North Vietnam. He described the escalation of his activism, from letter-writing and congressman-lobbying to his current action. Along the way, he says, “I stopped paying the telephone tax.”

War tax resistance internationally

The 15 April issue noted that Quakers in The Netherlands had formed a “Conscientious Objectors’ Committee Against Paying Taxes for Defense Purposes” which was trying to come up with some sort of government-approved “peace tax”-style plan. I got a wry smile out of the closing sentence: “In The Netherlands it is not permitted to affix protest stickers on tax forms; instead one must use a written announcement of protest.”

The fourth Friends World Conference was held that summer. The “Protest and Direct Action group” there “called upon Friends in countries party to the [Vietnam] conflict to ‘go as far as conscience dictates in withholding support from their governments’ war-making machinery,’ first by direct communication with those against whom the protest is made, and then if necessary by public witness and individual action, including the possibility of refusal to pay taxes for war.”

“Corporate Witness and Individual Conscience”

The lead (guest) editorial in the 15 August issue was “Corporate Witness and Individual Conscience” by Lindsley H. Noble. It cautioned Quaker corporate bodies (like Meetings) that were contemplating civil disobedience actions like phone tax resistance. For one thing, he says, a Quaker group should make sure to have the consent of all of its members before it takes such a drastic step, something he thinks some groups have been careless about. Secondly, even if every member of the group consents to civil disobedience, the group as a corporation has a different relationship to the state than individuals do. While individuals and their consciences predate and arguably supersede the state, corporations are creatures of the state and are therefore necessarily subordinate to them. Quakers incorporate their meetings in part in order to get government privileges associated with legal incorporation. “In voluntarily putting ourselves under the law to receive these subsidies do we not morally forego corporately the right to refuse to obey other laws not to our liking?” If Quakers, as a group, find a law so intolerable that they must disobey it as a group, he says, they should first legally detach themselves — “withdraw from our contract with the state and give up our subsidies before setting out on this path.”

This led to months of discussion in the letters-to-the-editor sections of future issues, in particular:

• Victor Paschkis thought that Noble’s argument failed on both points. First, his call for groups to reach consensus before taking a civilly disobedient stand should be understood for what it is — merely a preference for the law-abiding status quo. After all, “inaction in a given situation may violate the conscience of some members just as action may violate the conscience of others.” Secondly, a Quaker Meeting, whether or not it has incorporated under the laws of the state, still has a yet higher allegiance to God that must be taken into account. Also, what’s the point of having Meetings if they do not have “corporate insight” greater than the sum of their parts?
• Stephen G. Cary mirrored some of this: “There are times when inaction speaks to the world as clearly as action. In these situations inaction does not leave us neutral, but committed by default. Responsibility is not a one-way street, resting only on Friends who wish an action taken. Those who oppose the action are committing the Meeting, too. I do not suggest that the proponents’ views should necessarily prevail; I only want it recognized that responsibility to conscience cuts both ways and requires both sides to search their hearts.” He is also suspect of the idea that corporate entities have no responsibility to disobey unjust laws: “Does the Nuremburg principle have no bearing on the institutions of society? I prefer to regard the corporation as the creature of those who create and operate it, and the fact that the state charters it does not make the state its ultimate master.”
• Marie S. Klooz also defended “corporate witness” as being not exactly “the witness of a corporation” but the collective witness of the corporation’s “component members.” Such a thing is not only justifiable, but is particularly important to Quakers: “Each member is supposed to test his light by the corporate light.” And: “If the light requires social action, it is our duty to labor lovingly with those whose light differs, not to refrain from action.” It is no more necessary for a Meeting to divest itself of its corporate charter to be civilly disobedient, than it is necessary for an individual to first renounce his citizenship.
• Pat Foreman found himself uncomfortable with the peace testimony “as interpreted by most Friends” and thinks Quakers like him “sometimes have the feeling that we are being shunned.” He wants “to remind Friends that Quakerism is a religion and not a prodigious committee.”
• Evan Howe thought that dissenters were asking too much if they were asking Quaker Meetings to give up their corporate privileges in order to engage in civilly disobedient actions under the direction of the “sense of the Meeting.” Such a “surrender of subsidies, as I see it, while apparently a demand of conscience, is rather a surrender of conscience with the ultimate consequence of destroying the society. I do not believe that dissent gives anyone that right.”
• Norman J. Whitney stressed that “Meetings do have a responsibility for corporate witness if the integrity of our testimonies is to be maintained. It is not enough to shift responsibility to ad hoc committees or special groups among us.”
• Roy W. Moger suggested that Noble had hit on a truth when he suggested that legal incorporation was a sort of “trap” that the Religious Society of Friends had fallen into, “thereby placing our conscience in jeopardy.”:

  I wonder if the Religious Society of Friends should not begin to unincorporate and remove itself from the trap into which it has fallen, so that Friends can once more seek dependence upon the Holy Spirit, act under guidance of that Spirit as a corporate body, and not have to say, “As a group we dare not take corporate action [and offend the state] because our corporate life depends upon the State, and we are obligated to obey. The individual can alone take the risk and break the law of the State if he feels the law of the State breaks the law of God.”

• Roger S. Lorenz said that because there is a good argument that the Vietnam war is itself illegal, both under international and under domestic law, what it means for a person (or a corporation) to remain within the law under our circumstances is no easy question to answer.

David Hartsough

Over the years, starting in 1967, David Hartsough contributed several pieces to the Friends Journal touching on war tax resistance:

• In the 15 May 1967 issue, he set out a simple, compelling case for war tax resistance — “is it not our responsibility to set the example and refuse to pay our taxes for the weapons and ammunition which inflict this suffering?” He also suggested that if enough people were to refuse, the government would probably legalize some form of conscientious objection to military taxation.
• In the 15 May 1968 issue, he paraphrased George Fox’s advice to William Penn: “Pay the military portion of thy tax as long as thou canst.” He suggested that people begin now by resisting the phone tax, and then prepare to resist “the 69.2 percent of our income taxes which go for war” next April.
• In the 1 January 1969 issue, he told the story of what happened when an IRS agent came to his office to try to collect his unpaid income taxes. Excerpts:

  We talked about the Nürnburg trials, in which the Americans told the Germans that they should obey their consciences rather than their state. I told him I felt that when we are bombing and burning people and their homes in Vietnam, I cannot condone this action by paying other people to do it.

  “I want to make it clear that I have no argument with you on your position about the war,” he said. “I do not argue that you shouldn’t follow your conscience. But it is my responsibility to get this money.”

  …he gave me a financial statement to fill out. I refused. He reminded me: “It’s my job to get this money in any way I can. I don’t like to do this, but we can take any property you have — your house, your car, or whatever.”

  “I have a bicycle downstairs,” I said, “and the suit I’m wearing.”

  “No, no, I wouldn’t take your bike or your suit.”

  He also expressed concern about the dangers of the poorer neighborhood where I live — a concern beyond his responsibility.

  “I guess I’ll have to do what I believe is right,” I said when he was leaving, “and, friend, you will have to do what you believe is right.”

  He left without collecting the overdue tax or taking any of my property.

• In the 15 March 1969 issue, he penned another exhortation: “Let us, like Friends through the years, blaze the trail and set the example for others, rather than wait until there are masses of people taking this action.” He recommended redirecting taxes to the American Friends Service Committee or the Friends Committee on National Legislation, which “will do a much better job of putting our beliefs into action than does the Pentagon.”
• David & Jan Hartsough returned to the Journal in May of last year with a letter expressing the same basic argument, and giving some details as to how their tax resistance technique had evolved: “Each year we write a check to the Department of Human Services (rather than the IRS) for the 50 percent of our taxes that we do pay. Along with the check, we send our 1040 form to the IRS and ask them to spend all that money for healing and education, not for killing. And the other 50 percent (the war portion), we refuse to pay. Instead, we contribute those funds to organizations helping to feed the hungry, heal the sick, house the homeless, and work for justice and peace in the world.”

The 14 May 1970 edition of Cycle, a student paper from Fitchburg (Massachusetts) State College, gives us a good peek into the rhetoric and tactics of the war tax resistance movement at that time:

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bill this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure as it would be to pay them and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood.

Henry David Thoreau

A Call to War Tax Resistance

In 1968, the United States government spend $103 billion to pay for present and past wars and to be prepared in case of future wars. This was 66% of the entire federal budget of $156 billion. One hundred and three billion dollars exceeds the gross national product of all but six nations.

Of this $103,198,100,000, $29 billion was spent on the Vietnam war, to continue a conflict whose brutality, immorality, and illegality have sickened most Americans and the vast majority of the people of the world. Already, this war has brought death to more than 42,000 Americans and more than two million Vietnamese. It is a spur to the arms race and continually threatens world peace.

Almost $20 billion will be invested this fiscal year in making more frightful our nuclear missile and bomber arsenal, weapons already so destructive that they can deliver ten tons of explosive power for every person on the globe.

$330 million will be spent on chemical and biological weapons that are polluting the environment and endangering the people in the United States and other countries without even being used; simply by being improperly stored.

$7.5 billion will go toward research on new and yet more fearful weapons.

$1.2 billion has been authorized for the Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) system in 1968.

$500 million to $1 billion is the estimated budget of the CIA.

Vast sums will be paid to the corporations and research institutes that design and build the weapons. In fiscal year 1968, the following companies, a handful of the biggest among thousands engaged in war production and research, enjoyed these military contracts:

General Dynamics	$2.2 billion
Lockheed Aircraft	$1.8 billion
General Electric	$1.4 billion
United Aircraft	$1.3 billion
McDonnell-Douglas	$1.1 billion
AT&T	$777 million

The following amounts were spent in fiscal 1968 for projects that seem to have little to do with primary human needs:

For moon and other space exploration $3.4 billion.

For farm subsidies to wealthy landowners $3.1 billion.

In comparison to the enormous expenditures for acts and instruments of military violence, luxury space programs, and subsidies to the wealthy, and at a time when city governments are crying for more funds, the United States government spent these sums on improving the health, education, and general welfare of the people within this country.

Slum rebuilding $1.9 billion.

Other poverty programs $7.2 billion.

Health programs $1.8 billion.

Educational programs and subsidies $3.7 billion.

Direct, nonmilitary foreign aid to underdeveloped countries totaled about $1.6 billion.

The U.S. appropriation to the United Nations was $109 million, about the cost of one Polaris submarine.

In fiscal 1968, the total of all non-military expenditure was approximately 34% of the military expenses.

Throughout the United States, young people by the hundreds of thousands are rebelling in disgust and anger against this squandering of resources on war, and neglect of the day-to-day practical needs of the people. They are not alone in seeing only massive social disruption and probably nuclear war as eventual consequences. They are risking their freedom, careers, and often their lives to protest and resist what they see to be wrong.

In the face of this shameful and alarming situation and in solidarity with the youth resisting it, we, as participants in War Tax Resistance, are resolved to confront our own complicity in war, waste, and callousness. We resolve to end to the extent we can our cooperation in a federal tax program geared to death more than life. The least measure of our resistance will be not to pay voluntarily $5 of federal taxes due.

We are prepared to bear the consequences of our actions, be these criticism and unpopularity, financial penalties, confiscation of our bank accounts and property, and, perhaps, imprisonment. These seem to us small inconveniences beside the agony of those killed or bereft by war, and the numb hopelessness of those crippled by poverty.

We invite all Americans to join us in some form of tax refusal. War tax resistance is not always easy, particularly for those whose taxes are withheld from their wages, but for most there is some variety of tax refusal that they can conscientiously adopt. It may be by not paying part or all of a balance “owed,” or by not paying federal telephone tax. War Tax Resistance has prepared literature and is setting up counseling services designed to help each individual find the best way of tax refusal and resistance for him. A list of Methods of War Tax Resistance follows this statement of purpose.

We also are developing a war tax resistance promotional program that will include advertisements, demonstrations, meetings, a bulletin, and other literature distribution. If you become a war tax resister, we hope you will allow yourself to be publicly identified with the movement and permit your name to be used on tax resistance literature.

War Tax Resistance will do more than concentrate on the weeks just before April 15. We are planning a year round educational and resistance program. If you agree with conscientious tax resistance as a means for opposing war, we hope you will communicate with us now. The included coupon is for your convenience.

Methods of Refusal

Refuse to pay at least $5 of your tax

The first goal of War Tax Resistance is to convince as many people as possible to refuse at least $5 of some tax owed the government. Nearly everyone can do this by refusing their federal telephone tax or part of their income tax. If hundreds of thousands refuse to pay $5, they will establish mass tax refusal. Besides having the burden of collecting the unpaid amounts, the government will be faced with the political fact of massive noncooperation with its warmaking policies.

Better yet, refuse to pay all the taxes you can

Even if some of your taxes are withheld, you can refuse to pay the balance and other taxes. These might include: taxes on additional income, the 10% surtax, and the telephone tax.

You can refuse to pay that percentage of your tax that goes for war

Two thirds or more of the federal budget pays for wars past, present, and future. To protest against war, a person can refuse that percentage of his tax. He can base his refusal on the percentage of the total national budget used for war, on the cost of the war in Vietnam, or on other calculations. Some people pay part of their tax and contribute the rest as a peace tax. Some give to the UN, or a relief agency, or some other organization engaged in peaceful, constructive work.

You can refuse to pay the 10% surtax

This surtax was imposed in 1968 to help pay for the war in Vietnam. Refusing to pay it is a direct protest against the war.

You can refuse to pay the federal telephone tax

The federal telephone tax was revived in 1966 to help pay for the war. Thousands are already not paying it. In all cases known to us but one, the telephone companies have continued service and referred the tax collection to IRS.

To Reduce or Eliminate the Withholding of Your Taxes You Can

Claim additional dependents

If you claim a sufficient number of dependents on your W-4 form you can reduce the amount of taxes withheld from your salary to zero. The law reads that a dependent has to live in your household and be supported by you. The fact is that many people, particularly draft age young men and the Vietnamese, depend on you. So long as you declare at the end of the year that by the government’s standards you owe so much and are refusing to pay it, the moral point is made

The law reads that it is illegal — fraudulent — to state on a tax form that someone claimed as a dependent falls within that category, as defined by the IRS, when he does not. But no fraud appears to be involved if the people claimed as dependents are identified as being outside the IRS categories. The issue has not been tested in the courts.

Make your employer an ally

Although the law reads that it is illegal not to withhold taxes from an employee’s wages, your employer may be sympathetic to your protest and be willing to assist — and make a protest of his own — by not withholding from your salary. It is always valuable to raise the question.

Organize an employment agency

Have your agency hire you and then have your present employer hire the agency to supply him with you. Naturally, an agency that you control will not withhold taxes from its employees. Getting organized is complicated, but if you and a few friends get together you can work out the problem. Write us for information.

Also You Can

Demand a refund

There are four ways to do this:

1. You may request a refund right on the 1040 form and stand a good chance of receiving it. Ask for a tax credit on Part Ⅴ of the form.
2. You may file form 843 for a refund.
3. If the above demands are refused, go to the Income Tax Board of Appeals. If the Board turns you down, sue.
4. You can also sue the government to refund all your taxes on the grounds that the taxes have been used for illegal and immoral purposes.

Protest by letter or in person

Any protest to IRS or other government officials will help express opposition to the war and to militarism. If you are unable to refuse taxes, protest them as vigorously as you can.

Maximize the Impact

Talk about your tax refusal with friends, neighbors, co-workers. This sort of direct contact changes many minds. Distribute tax refusal literature.

Inform the newspapers and other mass media in your neighborhood that you are resisting war taxes and why. Start a war tax resistance group in your community.

Organize or join demonstrations at your local IRS office.

Inform yourself thoroughly and become a tax refusal counselor. Let your community know through ads, leaflets, etc. that a counseling service is available.

Keep the War Tax Resistance Clearinghouse informed by writing or phoning about your activities. Communication is the lifeblood of any movement.

We invite war tax resisters to send War Tax Resistance the first $5 or more refused the federal government. This money will be used to publicize and expand the war tax resistance movement.

Until now, the government has not imprisoned anyone for conscientious tax refusal. A few have been given short sentences for refusing to reveal information about their incomes. In general, the IRS has been content to take money from tax refusers’ bank accounts, garnishee part of their wages, or, on rare occasions, seize and auction property.

Sponsors of War Tax Resistance

• Winslow Ames
• Joan Baez
• Norma Becker
• James Bristol
• Prof. Noam Chomsky
• Prof. Frank Collins
• Tom Cornell
• Prof. William Davidon
• Dorothy Day
• Dave Dellinger
• Barbara Deming
• Ralph DiGia
• Prof. Douglas Dowd
• Prof. Margaret Eberbach
• Ruth Gage-Colby
• Allen Ginsberg
• Bob Haskell
• James Leo Herlihy
• Faye Knopp
• Kennett Love
• David McReynolds
• Stewart and Charlotte Meacham
• Rev. and Mrs. Arthur G. Melville
• Karl Meyer
• Jack Newfield
• Grace Paley
• Igal Roodenko
• Rev. Finley Schaef
• Dr. Benjamin Spock
• Marj and Bob Swann
• Arthur Waskow
• George and Lillian Willoughby
• Irma Zigas

Working Committee (in formation)

• Norma Becker
• Maris Cakars
• Frank Collins
• John Darr
• Jerry Dickinson
• Ralph DiGia
• Bob Haskell
• Neil Haworth
• Peter Kiger
• Kennett Love
• Bradford Lyttle
• Mark Morris
• Christopher Pollock
• Melinda Reed
• Kay Van Deurs
• Eric Weinberger