How you can resist funding the government → the tax resistance movement → birth of the modern American war tax resistance movement → Peacemakers

I found a peek at the birth of the modern American tax resistance movement hidden away in a 1948 edition of the MANAS Journal which features the article “No Compromise:”

These articles can also be found in the book We Won’t Pay!: A Tax Resistance Reader.

Among those taking a decisive position are a number of men calling themselves the “Peacemakers,” who met in Chicago last April and pledged themselves (1) to refuse to serve in the armed forces in either peace or war; (2) to refuse to make or transport weapons of war; (3) the refuse to be conscripted or to register; (4) to consider to refuse to pay taxes for war purposes — a position already adopted by some; (5) to spread the idea of peacemaking and to develop non-violent methods of opposing war through various forms of non-cooperation and to advocate unilateral disarmament and economic democracy. (Reported in the Spring 1948 Politics.)

The idea of non-payment of taxes has been put into practice by Ammon Hennacy, a Tolstoyan of Arizona, and by Mrs. Caroline Urie of Yellow Springs, Ohio (see MANAS, March 31), and possibly by others. Milton Mayer, of the University of Chicago, who writes regularly for the Progressive and has contributed to Harper’s, the Saturday Evening Post and other magazines, has frequently written and spoken of this form of protest against war. Walter Gormly, of Mt. Vernon, Iowa, finds the payment of taxes for war a violation of the principle established by the International Military Tribune which conducted the Nuremberg Trials. The Tribune Charter identifies as a crime against peace, the “planning, preparation, initiating or waging of a war of aggression,” and in a letter to the Bureau of Internal Revenue Gormly asserts that the United States is doing just that “by maintaining bases, subservient governments and military forces from Korea to Turkey, by intensive research on methods of mass slaughter and by maintaining a huge military organization.” As Section Ⅱ, Article B, of the Charter declares that “the fact that the defendant acted pursuant to order of his government or of a superior shall not free him from responsibility,” Mr. Gormly feels obliged, to avoid possible prosecution as a “war criminal,” to refuse to pay a federal income tax, a large part of which goes for preparation for war, and he has so informed the Federal Government.

The story of “Mrs. Caroline Urie of Yellow Springs, Ohio” is given in an earlier edition:

The determination of Mrs. Caroline Urie, social worker and widow of an American naval officer, to pay no taxes for war purposes will probably strike many Americans as an irrational attitude. On March 14 (the day before income tax payments were due), Mrs. Urie wrote President Truman announcing that she had deducted 34.6 per cent of her tax — the proportion she estimates is earmarked for war. “If they want to send me to jail,” she said, “that’s all right with me… I’ll never pay any more money for war.”

Democracy, it will be argued, is a rational process. Nobody likes war, and nobody likes income taxes, but we have to put up with both. We have a Congress to decide these things, and if everyone could question the decisions of the Congress whenever he pleased, soon there would be no Government, no order, no national defense, no anything.

So Mrs. Urie is irrational. But what, exactly, is she to do, feeling the way she does? From where she stands, paying for a war is irrational. Maybe she has read Morgenstern’s Pearl Harbor. Maybe she is convinced that democracy means the right to have no part of killing anybody, for any reason, and to take the consequences of this position. In her case, the consequences might be a jail sentence, although this may be doubted. Mrs. Urie once worked with Jane Addams at Hull House. For five years she was director of the School for Immigrant Children. The Government may feel a little silly trying to put her in jail. Maybe it should.

A week or so ago a leading news magazine blandly announced that a war with Russia is “in the cards,” not now, but later, when both nations are “ready.” This was followed by a page of explanation telling why the war would be delayed. Nobody wants a war, but there it is, and all the man-in-the-street can do is wait around …or so it seems. The news magazine also told what the war would mean — compulsory labor, compulsory financing, compulsory everything. Compulsory death for millions was not mentioned — that is taken for granted, we suppose. The news magazine said nothing about stopping the war. It was just a nice, objective account for the American business man — what to expect, and when.

A visit to a large aircraft factory here on the Pacific Coast adds considerable local color to one’s sense of doom. One plant, at least, seems to be making no commercial planes at all. In the plant in question, 10,000 men working two shifts are turning out jet fighters and bombers as fast as they can. The plant has Government contracts. It’s all official, according to schedule, and absolutely democratic and rational.

But from Mrs. Urie’s viewpoint, it’s not rational at all. She objects to buying death for somebody on a cost plus basis. Thoreau had a similar idea, about a century ago. Actually, there are two rationales in this problem: there is the rationale of a great nation getting ready for war, and the rationale of a lonely individual getting ready for peace. So far as Mrs. Urie and her income tax are concerned, the democratic process is 34.6 per cent irrational, and she won’t go along. This is her way of trying to be a good citizen and a good human being at the same time. It is beginning to take some imagination.

A 1960 edition has a letter to the IRS (and an amusing recollection of a telephone conversation with an IRS agent) by tax resister Richard Groff. Other issues of the journal include a review of Edmund Wilson’s The Cold War and the Income Tax, and a great deal of discussion of the work and thought of Gandhi and Thoreau. I plan to spend some time browsing their free archives on-line in the coming days.

I just recently learned that the newsletters of the Syracuse Peace Council from 1936 to the present day are available on-line. This makes for an interesting historical walk-through of the concerns of the anti-war movements.

There are interesting bits of war tax resistance history to be found there. For instance, one newsletter from 1975 contains this article about the IRS seizure of Ernest and Marion Bromley’s home 33 years ago today:

Peacemakers Resist IRS Attack

Probably the most dramatic and blatant attack by the Internal Revenue Service on an antiwar group is before us in the Peacemaker Movement case… The basic facts are:

1. In 1972, IRS initiated an audit of the records of the Peacemaker Movement — a nation-wide community formed in 1948 and dedicated to radical nonviolent social change and simple living. IRS claimed that $24,671.31 is owed them by this non-profit organization. Initially, the claim was based on IRS’ listing the recipients of the Sharing Fund (those families receiving assistance from the Peacemaker while the wage earned is imprisoned for draft refusal and other similar acts of war resistance) as employees of the Peacemaker. When national protest forced IRS to drop this outlandish charge, they changed the figures slightly, and issued a revised assessment for approximately the same amount.
2. In an attempt to collect the taxes owed by the Peacemaker Movement on their non-taxable income, on Jan. 31, 1975, IRS seized the home of Marion and Ernest Bromley in Gano, Ohio. The Bromleys are long-time pacifists and Peacemaker activists. Their home is owned by a non-profit corporation, Gano Peacemakers. No financial or formal ties have ever existed between Gano Peacemakers Inc. and the Peacemaker Movement.
3. The audit of the Peacemaker accounts and the initial levy against Gano Peacemakers Inc. occurred while the Special Services Staff of the IRS was operating. The SSS was charged with conducting surveillance on thousands of radicals and anti-war activists. This has been documented by the US Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights. There is conclusive evidence that Ernest Bromley was among those singled out by the SSS. The Sucommittee’s report “Political Intelligence in the IRS” (Dec. 74, p. 222) contains a substantiating memorandum. While Ernest’s name and the name Peacemaker Movement have been blanked out, there can be no mistaking whom is being targeted. The memo’s description of the group is taken verbatim from the masthead of The Peacemaker, the Movement’s newsletter.

IRS Auctions Bromley Home

Despite months of continuous picketing and leafletting in an attempt to force IRS to back off, the Bromleys’ home was sold on May 28 in a sealed-bid auction at the Federal Building in Cincinnati. The creative action of the Peacemakers and their supporters on that occasion spoke of the togetherness of the group and the absurdity of the situation. The day began with a silent vigil initiated by the local Quaker group. While the bids were being read inside the building, guerrilla theatre took place out on the sidewalk. At one point the Federal building was auctioned (offers ranging from 25¢ to 2 bottle caps). Several supporters present at the proceedings inside made brief statements about the unjust nature of the whole ordeal. Waldo the Clown was also there, face painted sadly, opening envelopes along with the IRS person. As the official read the bids and the names of the bidders, Waldo searched his envelopes and revealed their contents: a flower, a unicorn, some toilet paper, which he handed to different office people. Marion Bromley also spoke as the bids were opened, reiterating that the seizure was based on fraudulent assumptions, and that therefore the property could not be rightfully sold. A young child, belonging to one of the bidders sat under a desk, crying loudly during the event. The winning bid was $25,100, ironically close to the amount assessed.

Nat’l Call for Direct Action
Washington, DC Sept 2–3

What now? The Peacemakers have called a demonstration of nonviolent direct action at the national headquarters of IRS to demand the following:

1. an end to the IRS attack against Peacemakers;
2. a return of the Bromley House;
3. an end to all political harassment by the IRS;
4. publication of the secret SSS “enemies list”;
5. access for all groups and individuals to all IRS files relating to them;
6. an end to war taxes.

The stakes are high. They are: the house which has been the home of the Bromley family and others for 25 years; the very existence of the Peacemaker Movement and the Sharing Fund will be jeopardized if the false claim on which the IRS based its attack is not exposed and withdrawn; the freedom and future of all who dissent will be seriously threatened if IRS is allowed to make fraudulent claims and proceed against those who oppose government policies; the danger is particularly great for those people and groups who also oppose militarism and work for peace; concern is not only for the Peacemakers, but for us all.

You may be skeptical that peaceniks practicing guerrilla theater on the sidewalk and clowns fishing unicorns out of envelopes would get very far with their list of demands, but here’s the news from the next issue:

Peacemakers Win!
IRS Returns Bromleys’ Home

— We’re in a no win position. So we want to do what’s right. — That’s how IRS Commissioner Donald Alexander broke the news that IRS was wrong: the assessment against the Peacemakers was an error, and the sale of the Bromleys’ home would be reversed. The Peacemakers were informed of this late Friday, Aug. 29, just three days before the planned (and well publicized) Washington demonstration (and just after some of them had spent all day with mops and brooms cleaning up IRS).

IRS’s recanting came after months of persistent, day-in, day-out work by many people, but especially by the small Peacemaker collective that had moved into Washington to fight the case.

The non-bureaucratic response

The Peacemakers were resolute that their confrontation with the government would be on their terms. Believing that the legal system is an instrument of oppression and exists to protect the state and the property of the powerful, they refused to take their case into the courts. Instead they worked to make the truth known through personal meetings with IRS officials, through continuous leafletting, through appealing to their supporters country-wide to demand justice. They insisted on their right to retrieve their secret files from IRS (refusing to cite the Freedom of Information Act), they dissected the data and fought back with [it]. They put enormous energy into building relationships with IRS officials that would allow for honest dialogue. And always, they challenged and responded to the bureaucracy in a highly personal manner.

Initially it appeared that IRS’ reversal had been an act of faith in the Peacemakers; that it had been touched by the group’s philosophy of truth and their consistent methods. It wasn’t that complete a victory. The Commissioner had been sufficiently impressed by these people to where he called for a special investigation — which verified the Peacemakers’ statement.

Join us for lunch

The dropping of charges didn’t affect the call of the demonstration. There were still the issues of political intelligence and harassment, the enemies list and the secret files, and of course war taxes. The returning of the Bromley home did remove the urgency so that civil disobedience seemed no longer appropriate. Instead the dimension of celebration was added. For the two days preceding the demo, the thousands of employees at IRS were leafletted with the good news and an invitation to join us to celebrate at lunch — in the courtyard inside the IRS building.

But government agencies can’t or won’t trust. That day there were armed guards at the one entrance left open after the early morning arrival of the workers. Promptly at noon, we went to the door, bearing our bread and fruit, and once again extended our invitation to everyone from Alexander on down to meet us in the courtyard. Alexander refused the invitation and we were refused entry, so we contented ourselves with the front steps. We shared a brief silence, then enjoyed our food to the accompaniment of our country band of fiddles, guitars and a washtub. There was much gaiety with singing and dancing, there in front of the guarded portals engraved with “Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society”.

8,000 enemies

Later, two of the Commissioner’s top aides met with us out on the lawn. Typical dialogue: What about the secret files? They will be destroyed as soon as Congress has finished all its investigations of IRS. If you think you are on the enemies list, write us and ask for your file. Why won’t you notify the 11,000 enemies of their select state? That would create paranoia. Paranoia? The government’s collecting intelligence data on 8,000 people and 3,000 organizations for political purposes was a very real activity. If the secret files are no longer active, why are copies on file in the district offices throughout the country? To recall them would focus attention on their contents and perhaps have the reverse effect. (In truth, the damage to people is irreparable until all IRS records are destroyed. For example, a common audit sheet on Ernest Bromley has a margin note — “house filled with hippies”.) How does it feel to collect moneys for death? We can’t all grow gardens in Ohio.

That evening, after nine hours of picketing, singing and leafletting, we evaluated the action. The same old problems were identified: we honestly had been at a loss to relate to the many IRS employees who had taken their lunch hour on the steps with us in the warm September sunshine (other than offering them our apples and leaflets). And in the afternoon discussion, had we not put too much emphasis on “cleaning up” IRS, ignoring the basic issue of its very legitimacy?

The Peacemakers have won an important victory, not only for themselves as a community, and for Ernest and Marion Bromley, but for all of us who must dissent.

 — Chris Murray

It’s finished, I’ve approved the proofs, and it’s orderable and everything — We Won’t Pay: A Tax Resistance Reader has gone from being my little project to being a not-so-little-anymore (just shy of 600 pages) reality.

It’s got examples of writing from tax resisters from many countries and time periods, with a wide range of ideologies and tactics and concerns — as well as some pieces from critics of tax resistance whose criticisms are every bit as interesting.

I’m really happy with how it turned out. It’s full of thought-provoking and challenging material that covers a broad spectrum of tax resistance, and it’s handsomely-packaged as well.

Here’s an overview of what you’ll find in the pages of We Won’t Pay!:

We Won’t Pay: A Tax Resistance Reader, edited by David M. Gross

1. The Time of Jesus
2. John Hampden
3. The American Quakers
4. Other Christian Pacifists
5. The Regulators
6. The American Revolution
7. Paul Cuffe
8. The Whiskey Rebellion
9. The French Revolution
10. The Breton Association
11. Reform Bill Agitation
12. The Bezuidenhout Affair
13. 19^th Century Pacifists
14. Henry David Thoreau
15. Tolstoy’s Christian Anarchism
16. Karl Marx
17. The Irish Land League
18. Benjamin Ricketson Tucker
19. The Church Rates
20. British Nonconformists
21. The Vyborg Manifesto
22. World War Ⅰ in the United States
23. Women’s Suffrage
24. Julia and Abby Smith
25. Mahatma Gandhi
26. The Amish and Social Security
27. Ammon Hennacy
28. Libertarians, Objectivists, and Voluntaryists
29. American Constitutionalists and the Peace Tax
30. Karl Hess
31. The Cold War and the Arms Race
32. 21^st Century Tax Resistance
33. Scholarship

Most of the examples in today’s Picket Line can be found in greater detail in the book We Won’t Pay!: A Tax Resistance Reader.

A while back, I started looking for examples of ways tax resisters have organized mutual aid pacts to help diffuse the effects of government retaliation. In the course of doing the research, though, I started collecting examples instead of a larger variety of collective projects resisters and their sympathizers have used in support of tax resistance.

Here are some of the examples I found:

1. Tax resister “insurance”

   For instance, the Breton Association in 19^th century France, which organized to “form a common stock or fund… to indemnify the subscribers for any expense they may be put to by their refusal to pay any illegal contributions imposed upon the public.”

   Another example was the Association of Real Estate Taxpayers in 1930s Chicago, which formed a cooperative legal fund to fight an offensive legal battle against the tax.

   American war tax resisters today can use the War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund to defray penalties and interest seized by the IRS. The fund is raised as-needed by asking subscribers to contribute an equal amount.

   The oath of the Regulator tax resistance movement in the North Carolina colony bound its signers to “bear an equal share in paying and making up [the] loss” if “any of our company be put to expense or under any confinement.”

2. Communes, collectives, and co-housing projects.

   Some tax resisters have formed mutual support communities. Whiteway Colony was founded to try to live up to Tolstoyan ideals. The members of the Bijou and Agape communities live below a taxable income so as to avoid paying taxes.

3. Supporting resisters as an employer

   Some members of the Restored Israel of Yahweh ran a construction business and agreed not to withhold federal taxes from the wages of those employees who were fellow-members and who were resisting taxes.

   Vivien Kellems refused to withhold taxes from her employees’ wages, saying: “They are all free American citizens, thoroughly capable of performing all of the duties and responsibilities of citizenship for themselves. And so, from this day, I am not collecting nor paying their income taxes for them.”

   Charles Kanjama recently urged Kenyans to begin a tax resistance campaign, and said that to foil pay-as-you-earn withholding, “participating employers and employees can enter into a voluntary contract to convert monthly employment into quarterly or half-yearly employment, thus effectively delaying tax liability for several months.”

4. Disrupting auctions of seized property

   Earlier this year I recounted a dramatic and successful example of the American group “Peacemakers” blocking the sale of Ernest & Marion Bromley’s seized home.

   British nonconformists and women’s suffrage activists a century ago also used this tactic. Auctions became rallies, with speeches and banners and crowds that could number in the thousands. Supporters would pack the auction house and refuse to leave their seats. On some occasions, violence broke out. In some cases, auctioneers refused to handle goods that had been seized for tax refusal.

   Simply boycotting the auctions and refusing to buy seized goods is one way communities offer support. It was part of the Quaker “Discipline” to refuse to buy seized goods. When Valentine Byler’s horse was seized for non-payment of the social security tax, “no Amish came to bid on the horses and, due to a lack of bidders, they went for a good price, with the harnesses ‘thrown in’ by the auctioneer.”

5. Pay cash so as not to leave a paper trail

   Jessica Ramer and a Claire Files contributor brought this idea up. If you pay in cash whenever you can, you give the recipient the opportunity to decide whether or not to declare the income.

   Cash tips are easy to under-report. I asked about that recently and was told that most people pay with credit card/debit card and that the government now uses a percentage method for tips. They look at the charged meals, look at the number of total meals served, and then look at the charged tips to figure out how much cash tips you received.

   (100 meals served. 50 paid with card, tipping 15%. the government calculates 15% from 100 meals even if cash tips are only 10%)

   You can help out by tipping more when paying with cash or better yet, when you pay with card, put 1% tip on it and put the rest out as cash. I even leave a note for the server saying “this is your money, don’t tell your boss, or the government. share it with the buss boy if that is the policy.” This will help lower the average tip figures, but still give the nice server what they have earned.

6. Use barter to avoid taxable/seizable transactions

   Karl Hess found people willing to barter with him as he was dodging IRS seizures:

   The other day I welded up a fish-smoking rack for a family in Washington, D.C. It will earn me a year’s supply of smoked fish. At about the same time, I helped a friend dig a foundation. He’ll help me lay the concrete blocks for a workshop. Part of my pay for a lecture at a New England college was the use of the school’s welding shop, to make some metal sculptures. Three such sculptures have paid my attorney’s fees in maintaining the tax resistance which is the reason barter has become such an integral part of my life.

7. Manufacture and sell goods as alternatives to taxed products

   Before the American Revolution, colonists who opposed Britain’s economic control boycotted British products and began to produce homespun cloth, alternatives to tea, and so forth. Gandhi’s independence campaign in India made the wearing and production of homespun cloth central to the opposition, and the Salt March was focused on the illegal production of untaxed, non-foreign-monopoly salt.

   An example today is home-brewed beer (which beats the excise tax on alcoholic beverages).

8. Buycotts and boycotts that favor resisting businesses

   One report from World War Ⅰ-era America noted that this was a technique used by those who opposed the “Liberty Bonds”:

   Efforts to prevent banks from handling the bonds have centered chiefly in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Missouri and Oklahoma. The President of a Wisconsin bank has advised the Treasury that his depositors, mostly Germans, or of German parentage, have withdrawn many thousands of dollars from his bank because he aided the First Liberty Loan.

   These depositors, he added, had taken their accounts to two rival banks on the understanding that those banks would not aid the second Liberty Loan. The two banks, he reported, were not aiding the loan in any way.

   Many banks have felt the pressure of German influence in this propaganda, reports indicate. So pronounced was the movement that the States of Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and Montana recently decided that they would withdraw State funds from any bank which did not support the loan.

9. Social boycotts / shunning / noncooperation with tax collectors
   • Adolf Hausrath writes of Roman-occupied Judaea,

     The people knew how to torment these officials of the Roman customs with the petty cruelty which ordinary people develop with irreconcilable persistency, whenever they believe this persistency to be due to their moral indignation. In consequence of the theocratic scruples about the duty of paying taxes, the tax-gatherers were declared to be unclean and half Gentile.… among the Jews the words “tax-gatherers and sinners,” “tax-gatherers and Gentiles,” “tax-gatherers and harlots,” “tax-gatherers, murderers and robbers,” and similar insulting combinations, were not only ready on the tongue and familiar, but were accepted as theocratically identical in meaning. Thrust out from all social intercourse, the tax-gatherers became more and more the pariahs of the Jewish world. With holy horror did the Pharisee sweep past the lost son of Israel who had sold himself to the Gentile for the vilest purpose, and avoid the places which his sinful breath contaminated. Their testimony was not accepted by Jewish tribunals. It was forbidden to sit at table with them or eat of their bread. But their money-chests especially were the summary of all uncleanness and the chief object of pious horror, since their contents consisted of none but unlawful receipts, and every single coin betokened a breach of some theocratic regulation. To exchange their money or receive alms from them might easily put a whole house in the condition of being unclean, and necessitate many purifications. From these relations of the tax-officials to the rest of the population, it can be readily understood that only the refuse of Judaism undertook the office.

   • A social boycott of tax collectors was practiced in the years before the American revolution. John Adams wrote:

     At Philadelphia, the Heart-and-Hand Fire Company has expelled Mr. Hughes, the stamp man for that colony. The freemen of Talbot county, in Maryland, have erected a gibbet before the door of the court-house, twenty feet high, and have hanged on it the effigies of a stamp informer in chains, in terrorem till the Stamp Act shall be repealed; and have resolved, unanimously, to hold in utter contempt and abhorrence every stamp officer, and every favorer of the Stamp Act, and to “have no communication with any such person, not even to speak to him, unless to upbraid him with his baseness.” So triumphant is the spirit of liberty everywhere.

   • Harassment of tax collectors was a signature action of the Whiskey Rebellion. An early published resolution of the rebels read in part:

     [W]hereas some men may be found amongst us, so far lost to every sense of virtue and feeling for the distresses of this country, as to accept offices for the collection of the duty:

     Resolved, therefore, That in future we will consider such persons as unworthy of our friendship; have no intercourse or dealings with them; withdraw from them every assistance, and withhold all the comforts of life which depend upon those duties that as men and fellow citizens we owe to each other; and upon all occasions treat them with that contempt they deserve; and that it be, and it is hereby most earnestly recommended to the people at large to follow the same line of conduct towards them.

10. Violently resist tax collectors, disrupt trials/auctions, intimidate collaborators

    Tax collectors were tarred-and-feathered in America, both before and after the revolution — the violent expulsion of tax collectors was a frequent technique of the Whiskey rebels. Tax collectors have been the targets of violent reprisal at many times and in many places. Because of this, governments have often had to pay high salaries — or, frequently, percentages of the take — to convince collectors to take on the job, which only increases the resentment of those being collected from.

    During the French Revolution and its aftermath, customs houses were burned by mobs, tax rolls were destroyed, excise collectors were made to renounce their jobs and then were run out of town — or in some cases killed.

    The first Boer War was triggered when an armed group of Boers seized a wagon that was being auctioned after it was distrained for resisted taxes.

    The Whiskey rebels threatened to destroy the stills of those distillers who complied in paying the excise tax.

11. Boycotts / social boycotts of non-resisters

    If a tax resisting movement is large enough, it may be able to dissuade people from paying taxes through boycotts or social boycotts of people who are tax compliant. In Massachusetts, a group enforced a boycott of taxed British imports by declaring that

    …we further promise and engage, that we will not purchase any goods of any persons who, preferring their own interest to that of the public, shall import merchandise from Great Britain, until a general importation takes place; or of any trader who purchases his goods of such importer: and that we will hold no intercourse, or connection, or correspondence, with any person who shall purchase goods of such importer, or retailer; and we will hold him dishonored, an enemy to the liberties of his country, and infamous, who shall break this agreement.

12. Maintain solidarity in the face of divide-and-conquer tactics

    In mid-19^th century Germany, the government attempted to break a tax resistance movement by offering to moderate its enforcement efforts against people who could show that they had limited means. Karl Marx, who was promoting the resistance at the time, saw this as a divide-and-conquer tactic:

    The intention of the Ministry is only too clear. It wants to divide the democrats; it wants to make the peasants and workers count themselves as non-payers owing to lack of means to pay, in order to split them from those not paying out of regard for legality, and thereby deprive the latter of the support of the former. But this plan will fail; the people realizes that it is responsible for solidarity in the refusal to pay taxes, just as previously it was responsible for solidarity in payment of them.

13. Keep a record of the “sufferings” of resisters

    The Quakers responded to persecution by keeping careful records of individuals who had suffered thereby. In the archives of Quaker meetings, you can find lists of people who had resisted militia taxes or tithes for establishment church ministers, and what property was distrained by which tax collector.

14. Sign petitions and public advertisements, engage in public protests

    When the American Amish were trying to resist compulsory enrollment in the social security system, 14,000 of them signed a petition to Congress.

    During the Vietnam War, public advertisements were taken out by tax resisters. In early 1968, for instance, 448 writers and editors put a full-page ad in the New York Post declaring their intention to refuse to pay taxes for the Vietnam War. The signatories included James Baldwin, Noam Chomsky, Philip K. Dick, Betty Friedan, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Goodman, Paul Krassner, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Tillie Olsen, Grace Paley, Thomas Pynchon, Susan Sontag, Benjamin Spock, Gloria Steinem, Norman Thomas, Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut, and Howard Zinn.

    This year’s 2008 War Tax Boycott, Don’t Buy Bush’s War, and Pledge for Peace campaigns also have a public-signing component.

    Protests, rallies, pickets, and the like have been a part of many large-scale tax resistance campaigns.

15. Hold resisters’ property as an informal trustee

    Some resisters who are vulnerable to property seizure find sympathetic friends who are willing to hold the resisters’ property in their names as a way of foiling seizure. Some war tax resister alternative funds function partially as “warehouse banks” that hold deposits of war tax resisters.

    When a frustrated tax collector seized Ammon Hennacy’s protest signs as he was picketing the IRS office — claiming that he planned to auction them off to pay Hennacy’s tax debt — a friend of Hennacy helped him make new signs, each one marked “this sign is the personal property of Joseph Craigmyle.”

16. Keep in contact with resisters and express support

    After the press reported that Valentine Byler’s horse had been seized by the IRS as he was plowing his field, he got letters of support from all across the country.

17. Form groups for mutual support & coordinated decision-making

    Here there are too many examples to list.

18. Give financial aid to evicted rent strikers

    When the Irish Land League launched its rent strike, it claimed that “The funds will be poured out unstintedly to all who may endure eviction in the course of the struggle. Our exiled brothers in America may be relied on to contribute, if necessary, as many millions in money as they have thousands, to starve out the landlords and bring the English tenantry to its knees.”

19. Comfort and aid imprisoned resisters

    The trick to supporting imprisoned tax resisters is to respect their real needs and desires. When “someone interfered,” as Thoreau put it, and paid his taxes in order to spring him from his night in jail, they thought wrongly that they were doing Thoreau a favor, “for they thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall.”

    Juanita Nelson tells of the support she received in jail, where she had been taken in her bathrobe from her home. Her supporters took the time to learn how to support her in a way that was appropriate to her resistance:

    Two fellow pacifists, one of them also a tax refuser, had been permitted to come to me, since I would not go to them. I asked them what was uppermost in my mind, what they’d do about getting properly dressed? They said that this was something I would have to settle for myself. I sensed that they thought it the better part of wisdom and modesty for me to be dressed for my appearance in court. They were more concerned about the public relations aspect of getting across the witness than I was. They were also genuinely concerned, I knew, about making their actions truly nonviolent, cognizant of the other person’s feelings, attitudes and readiness. I was shaken enough to concede that I would like to have my clothes at hand, in case I decided I would feel more at ease in them. The older visitor, a dignified man with white hair, agreed to go for the clothes in a taxicab.

    They left, and on their heels came another visitor. She had been told that in permitting her to come up, the officials were treating me with more courtesy than I was according them. It was her assessment that the chief deputy was hopeful that someone would be able to hammer some sense into me and was willing to make concessions in that hope. But he had misjudged the reliance he might place in her — she was not as critical as the men. She did not know what she would do, but she thought she might wish to have the strength and the audacity to carry through in the vein in which I had started.

    And she said. “You know, you look like a female Gandhi in that robe. You look, well, dignified.”

    That was my first encouragement. Everyone else had tended to make me feel like a fool of the first water, had confirmed fears I already had on that score. My respect and admiration for Gandhi, though not uncritical, was deep. And if I in any way resembled him in appearance I was prepared to try to emulate a more becoming state of mind. I reminded myself, too, that I had on considerably more than the loincloth in which Gandhi was able to greet kings and statesmen with ease. I need not be unduly perturbed about wearing a robe into the presence of his honor.

20. Support the families of imprisoned resisters

    When Gandhi was preparing the groundwork for a tax refusal campaign in India, he noted that the Indian National Congress “should undertake to feed the wives and families of those who may be imprisoned.”

21. Study the law, give legal support

    When Elizabeth Cady Stanton was contemplating a tax resistance campaign for women’s suffrage in the United States, she noted, “One thing is certain, this course will necessarily involve a good deal of litigation, and we shall need lawyers of our own sex whose intellects, sharpened by their interests, shall be quick to discover the loopholes of retreat.”

22. Combine redirected taxes for dramatic charity giveaways

    Larry Rosenwald wrote, of this technique, “To sit on the Grants and Loans Committee of New England War Tax Resistance, and to dispense the interest on refused taxes to a youth group in Chelsea, a video for cable television on United States involvement in Central America, and a people’s garden in Roxbury is to be reminded of the ideal community, however blurred and fragmented, that war tax resistance is done on behalf of, in the hope of helping to make it clear and whole.”

Can you think of any I’ve missed?

The Miami News 1 March 1951

I didn’t find much else about the Riggses in on-line newspaper archives, but one other article, from 15 March 1950, reads:

Tax Collector Wins, But Refusal Registers War Tax Protest

Boston — AP — The tax collectors always catch up with Mrs. Francis R. Riggs — by her own admissions — but she feels she scores a point.

The Cambridge woman was one of nearly a score of persons who participated in a public protest yesterday against use of tax funds for military purposes.

She told reporters that for seven years she had deducted from her federal income tax that proportion she believes is being spent to prepare for war.

This year, she said, she and her husband are withholding 39.3 per cent of their tax.

“They catch up with me in the end and charge me six per cent,” Mrs. Riggs said, “but I am convinced that public protest is morally right and necessary.”

The group, led by the Rev. Wolcott Cutler of St. John’s Protestant Episcopal Church, Charlestown, carried posters reading “I refuse war taxes” and “H-bombs return to burn.”

The posters said members of the group represented the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the War Resisters’ League and the Peacemakers.

They walked for an hour on Tremont Street between Park and Boylston Streets. The protest was timed to interest workers hurrying home at 5 P.M.

The MIT Tech ran this editorial in their 11 April 1950 edition:

The Saga of Valerie: The Tech receives all sorts of mail — bills, checks, Clipsheets from the Board of Temperance. But in garnering material for this article, I was handed a letter with the scribbled commentary, “required reading.” It is from one Valerie Riggs, who says that she has refused to pay income taxes since 1944 and is refusing again this year because, to put it simply, she doesn’t like the way the government is spending it. She says that “…those in our government who are deciding our fate for us … are consulting the cleverest minds in science to concoct the most diabolical schemes for killing innocent men, women, and children…” This is probably accurate enough to make the boys in Ballistics run their fingers around the insides of their collars, but Valerie has found the solution, fellows! Just refuse to pay your taxes, and the world situation is solved! Let’s all Laissez-faire with a big bang!

We appreciate the thought, but someone, whose initials are V.R., is being awfully idealistic. There is even an organization known as the Peacemakers whose members are doing the same as Valerie. So if any of you want to do away with your taxes, we can give you the address of these people and you too can refuse to pay. There’s only one catch — it’s illegal.

And this is from the 14 March 1952 Rome News-Tribune:

Pacifist Couple Refuses To Pay War Tax Funds

Whittier, Calif. March 14 — (AP) — A Quaker pacifist couple have mailed their income tax returns to the Bureau of Internal Revenue, minus 72.6 per cent of the tax due, which they figure is the amount the government would spend on war.

Francis Behn Riggs, 70, retired boys’ school headmaster, and his wife, Valerie, 67, said they expect the bureau to seize the missing funds from their savings accounts. “as it has been doing since 1944.”

But, Mrs. Riggs added, “There is a difference between handing the government our income tax for the military and the government taking it from us.”

Along with the returns, Mrs. Riggs sent a note saying: “My conscience tells me that the killing of human beings is a criminal act, and that paying for that killing is likewise criminal. This conviction is based on religious belief.”

From the 4 March 1978 Spokane Daily Chronicle:

Irwin Hogenauer (1912–1984)

Tax Protest Techniques Told

Military expenditures take up 53 percent of the national budget, “a disproportionate amount,” but there are ways to protest it, Irwin Hogenauer, a war tax resistance counselor, said here today.

“Resistance can take two directions: Personal, by not paying taxes to carry out your convictions, disengaging yourself from the production of war material; and public, making it a political effort to raise the social consciousness of others,” Hogenauer said in an interview.

Some methods of tax resistance are legal and others are not, he added. One that is legal is to file a return with a letter of protest, saying the money is being paid under duress, he said.

“Let your employer and your friends know how you feel,” Hogenauer said. “But the government still gets the money. That’s one of the difficulties.”

Hogenauer, 66, has been a volunteer war tax resistance counselor in Seattle for 30 years. Before he retired four years ago he said he showed his resistance to use of tax money for war materials by refusing to file a yearly tax return.

He was never prosecuted, Hogenauer said, although from time to time an Internal Revenue Service employee would appear at his door.

“But that’s not unusual,” he said. “Thousands of people across the nation don’t file a tax return and there are no efforts at prosecution of most of them. It is selective and hit-and-miss.”

Hogenauer is in Spokane today to lead a “Personal Responses to War Taxes Workshop” sponsored by the Spokane Fellowship of Reconciliation.

He said he was one of about a half dozen conscientious objectors during World War Ⅱ who formed a tax refusal committee.

He said there is no way of knowing how many people refuse to pay income tax, but said the number is increasing.

Hogenauer cautioned that there is always the potential for prosecution and incarceration of war tax resisters. The IRS can get the tax payments and penalties from bank accounts, wages and seizure of property.

“But even for refusal to pay the telephone tax, the amount is so small, say $12 a year, that it would cost the government a minimum of $50 or more to begin to collect it.”

He said he advocates total disarmament of the United States, and unilateral disarmament of the rest of the world [sic].

Asked if he would approve of disarmament if the United States were the only country to go through with it, Hogenauer said:

“That’s fine. It’s about time some country take the lead. The strongest need to do it because the weakest won’t.”

Hogenauer was among that group of World War Ⅱ conscientious objectors who qualified for civilian work camps but then soured on the idea and decided that they could not accept being conscripted even into civilian work tangentially-related to the war effort. He went AWOL from his civilian work camp and ended up doing 10 months of a two year sentence in prison.

Here’s a second article on Hogenauer’s resistance, from 1983:

No tax woes — he just doesn’t file

Seattle (AP) — Irwin Hogenauer doesn’t fret or fume as tax deadline nears. The 70-year-old Quaker and war protester just keeps doing what he’s done since 1948 — refuse to pay.

To protest spending taxes on the military, Hogenauer hasn’t filed a tax return for 35 years.

“I’ve lived a life of principle and I’ll continue to stand by it,” he says.

Occasionally, the Internal Revenue Service checks up on him.

“Once they came to my door and asked me to sit down with them and fill out a form,” he says. “I told them I wasn’t interested.”

Another time, he had a chat with an IRS official in Tacoma, who said “he would be sure my papers would come across his desk and I’d be hearing from him. I never heard a single thing from him,” says Hogenauer.

He is one of a small but committed group of people who resist paying income tax because of moral objection to war.

Few, however, are so extreme. Most file proper 1040 forms and, like Roman Catholic Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle, withhold a port of their tax equivalent to the budget’s percentage of military spending. Others wind up paying when the IRS closes in.

But Hogenauer feels that even filing a return cooperates “with the system of war.”

Why hasn’t the IRS grabbed him?

One reason is that his income usually hasn’t been taxable. Hogenauer, who is retired, has held a variety of jobs, including milk truck driver, bowling alley attendant, school janitor, children’s program director, carpenter, and YMCA executive secretary.

“People who are conscientious objectors often mold their lifestyles so they don’t have any taxes to pay,” said Helen Provost-Kees, IRS spokeswoman.

On 13 March 1949, the St. Petersburg Times covered the early days of the modern American war tax resistance in the Peacemakers group:

Group Plans Tax Strike

Pacifists Balk At Helping Pay For U.S. Defense

New York — (AP) — A pacifist Presbyterian minister said yesterday 150 members of a peace-seeking group had decided they would not pay any Federal income taxes to be used for financing “war preparations.”

The Rev. A.J. Muste, national secretary of the Peacemaker said yesterday he himself was one of “about 15” members of the organization in the New York City area who have launched the tax resistance movement.

Muste described the Peacemakers as a “non-violent revolutionary pacifist group engaged in a campaign similar to that of the late Mahatma Gandhi in India.” The organization has about 2,000 members, he said.

The 150 persons throughout the country who have joined in the tax resistance movement, Muste said, have either decided “to withhold all their taxes or just that part of them which proportionately would go to war preparations.”

Muste predicted general resistance to war preparedness in the form of refusals to register for draft and the tax resistance movement would increase.

He said the Peacemakers organization is “completely non-political, opposed to totalitarianism in any form, including communism.”

Muste also is national chairman of the Fellowship of Reconciliation which he described as a religious organization numbering some 15,000 and dedicated to peace.

Meanwhile, in Yellow Springs, O., a 75-year-old Quaker widow deducted 32.2 per cent from the first installment of her income tax because she said “war and preparation for war in the atomic era is a crime against humanity.”

Mrs. Caroline Urie failed last year in a similar protest. She deducted 34.6 per cent of her estimated tax for the year, but, after taxes in her bracket were reduced, she had still paid more than was called for and at the year’s end the government owed her money.

She said yesterday she had made sure the same things wouldn’t happen this year. She said she would withhold the full amount of military taxes by paying only the first installment of the tax now and giving herself until Jan. 15, 1950, to pay the final quarter.

From the 14 March 1951 Schenectady Gazette:

59 Refuse to Pay Taxes for War Support

New York — Saying that they find it “impossible to support the war in Korea, or any other war,” 29 men and 30 women announced their refusal to pay income taxes, and called upon all who share their feelings to join them. They released the following statement through the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers, a national pacifist movement with headquarters in New York city.

“Feeling that war must inevitably come unless something drastic is done by individuals to show their unwillingness to go along with war-making policies of their governments, we the undersigned state hereby that we are not going to pay our federal taxes due March 15. For some of us this means that we will not pay that percentage which corresponds to the nation’s outlay for militarism; for others of us it means we will not pay even the first cent for the maintenance of a government whose main business is preparation for annihilation.

“We are particularly concerned at this time about the situation in Korea, where a civil struggle has been provoked and aggravated by two power-states to the point where it is already a major war — one which may be the spark that will set the world afire. We find it impossible to support policies and activities of this kind with our allegiance or with our money. We must, therefore, refuse to give money for such purposes of conquest and massacre, and must give it instead to causes which build understanding and world community.

“To our fellow citizens who may feel that this action singles out our nation for opposition we say we are unalterably opposed to militarism in all nations. It is always the first duty for citizens to attempt to reform their own governments: thus we begin with the United States. We hope that our country will change its policy and take the lead in establishing peace in the earth; we believe she should do right regardless of what others do. And we believe that her doing right will encourage other nations to do the same.

“We are certain that the only real hope lies in the abandonment of violence and in the practice of brotherhood among all peoples of the world. We invite all who share our feelings to join us now in refusing to pay taxes for war as one clear-cut and unmistakable expression of our desire for peace and brotherhood.”

The Tax Refusal Committee, whose chairman is the Rev. Ernest R. Bromley, Sharonville, Ohio, stated that refusal to pay taxes to governments, or to certain functions of governments, is an “honored action in the history of several countries, including India and the United States.”

A 1957 news report on the same group said that Bromley and “about 50 others” planned to resist their taxes that year, though Bromley himself said that his tax resistance group had “several hundred” members. “It is patterned,” he said, “after the Gandhi movement, with the emphasis on the individual changing rather than getting other people to do something.”

Caroline Urie was mentioned in an article I excerpted here a couple of days ago. Here is some more information about her resistance. From the 15 March 1948 Spokane Daily Chronicle:

Widow Refuses to Pay War Tax

Yellow Springs, Ohio, March 15. (AP) — Mrs. Caroline Urie is a pacifist. So she paid only 65.4 per cent of her 1947 federal income tax today.

Mrs. Urie, white-haired widow of a career navy officer, figures the rest of her tax was earmarked for military expenses.

“As a Christian, I must henceforth refuse to contribute in any way to maintaining the institution of war,” she wrote President Truman and the internal revenue department.

Mrs. Urie didn’t keep the 34.6 per cent “war tax.” She sent the money to four pacifist organizations (every one of them non-profit” [sic]) and inclosed her contribution receipts with the tax return.

“If they want to send me to jail because I won’t pay the other 34.6 per cent, that’s all right with me,” she said. “I’m perfectly willing to go to jail. I’ll never pay any more money for war.”

Mrs. Urie describes herself as “a Quaker, a pacifist, a social worker and a white-haired widow — a very aged widow, at that.”

Caroline Urie, reading Satyagraha

Urie was one of the founding members of the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers in 1948, which launched the modern American war tax resistance movement. Her 1948 protest fizzled, as the law changed, reducing the tax rate for her tax bracket, so that even after reducing her tax payments by 34.6% she ended up overpaying and getting a refund. But the following year she refined her technique and was at it again:

Widow Defies Government

Yellow Springs, Ohio, March 14 — Mrs. Caroline Urie, 75-year-old widow, deducted 32.3 per cent of the first installment of her income tax because she said “war and preparation for war in the atomic era is a crime against nature.” The percentage deducted — the amount she estimated would go for military purposes — will be donated to three non-profit agencies working for peace and abolition of war, she said.

Urie died in 1955.

From the 21 June 1964 Eugene Register-Guard:

Nay Saying Taxpayers Reject Arms Expenditures

By John Pierson
Of United Press International

Washington — Folk singer Joan Baez, who usually raises her crystal-clear voice only in song, has raised it in protest against the federal income tax.

“I do not believe in war. I do not believe in the weapons of war. I am not going to volunteer the 60 per cent of my year’s income tax that goes to armaments,” Miss Baez recently wrote the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

The 22-year-old singer thus joined a little band of “tax refusers” who believe that by “personal disarmament” they are “showing the way to world disarmament.”

Though small in numbers, these conscientious objectors to defense spending are costing an irritated IRS much time an effort. The agency’s job is to collect taxes, and it is not easily discouraged from doing so.

“Conscientious objector” is a description that would probably appeal to the tax refusers. A group known as the Peacemakers, with headquarters in Cincinnati, claims to stand not only for non-payment of federal income taxes but also for non-registration for the military draft, “economic sharing, personal revolution (inner transformation) and non-violence as a principle of life.”

In March, prior to the April 15 deadline for filing federal tax returns, the Peacemakers distributed several thousand copies of a pamphlet, “watch your dollars or they will vote for war.” According to this publication, out of every dollar the federal government spends, 79 cents goes for wars “past, present and future.” This reckoning includes the national debt and interest on the debt from World War Ⅱ, as well as veterans’ pensions.

“There is no good reason to cooperate with evil,” the pamphlet said.

The government takes a dim view of this sort of activity. One Treasury official, deploring tax refusal as “inconsistent with the democratic process,” told UPI that people who object to defense spending should “bring pressure to bear on Congress,” if they can, in order to get disarmament.

The IRS doesn’t stop with pious utterance. “We have no authority to excuse anyone from complying with the internal revenue laws, no matter what beliefs or reasons he may have for not wishing to do so,” said one tax official.

IRS begins by writing the tax refuser a letter. The agency points out the futility of paying only 40 per cent or 21 per cent or whatever on the grounds that the rest would “go for war.” It says that federal income tax revenues are not earmarked for specific purposes. They all go into the general fund of the Treasury.

Thus, whatever amount of money a taxpayer sends in, some of it will be used to buy missiles, helmet liners, etc.

After lecturing the tax refuser on the democratic principle “that the majority opinion shall prevail,” the IRS warns him that unless the tax refuser coughs up, the IRS will take the money out of his bank account or will seize some other asset. Under the law, the tax agency has authority to do this.

Joan Baez was aware of the law when she announced she was going to pay only 40 per cent. While unwilling to “volunteer” the rest, she planned to put it “aside” and pay it only “when they come for it.”

“I’m not ready yet to go to jail,” Miss Baez told a reporter.

Neither is San Francisco bookstore owner Roy C. Kepler. Ever since 1955, Kepler, too, has been sending the government only 40 per cent. “Why should I pay more?” he asked. “That extra 60 per cent is budgeted for genocide.”

And every year, a couple of months after the April 15 deadline, a revenue agent visits Kepler’s bank, shows a tax lien, and quietly withdraws the unpaid balance, plus 6 per cent interest for late payment.

Last year writer Edmund Wilson, published a book, “The Cold War and the Income Tax.” Wilson was not a refuser to begin with. He simply neglected to file any returns for the years 1946 to 1955, thinking “that this obligation could always be attended to later.”

But when IRS came after the money, Wilson began to look into what the taxes go for. Like the Peacemakers, he came to the conclusion that “the bulk of the nation’s funds is being spent … on the exploration of space, the arrears from past wars and the preparation, in prospect of future wars, of the instruments of wholesale destruction and deliberate contamination.”

Since Wilson was unable to pay all the money the government said he owed, he signed a “collateral agreement” whereby he paid some money down and agreed to give the IRS everything he earned over a certain amount for the next three years.

But disenchanted with what the money would go for, Wilson said he would “out-maneuver” both the collateral agreement and the basic taxes themselves “by making as little money as possible and so keeping below taxable levels.”

Whatever IRS thought, this philosophy and strategy didn’t stop President Johnson last December from giving Wilson one of 31 presidential merits of freedom. The medal is described as “the highest civilian honor conferred by the President for service in peacetime.”

The Wilson citation read:

“Critic and historian, he has converted criticism into a creative act, while setting for the nation a stern and uncompromising standard of independent judgment.”

From the 30 December 1949 Kentucky New Era:

Police Scatter “Peace” Group

Non-Taxpayer Ready To Leave Prison Cell

Ashland, Ky., Dec. 29. — (AP) — Members of a peace group of six charged today they were ordered off a highway by state police while demonstrating to welcome Katsuki James Otsuka from prison.

Otsuka, a 28-year-old American-born Japanese [sic], completed 120 days in the Ashland Federal Correctional Institution, near here, for non-payment of war taxes.

Warden R.O. Culver indicated, however, that any release was out of his hands. He said Otsuka first must appear before United States Commissioner J.C. Yeager here for non-payment of a $100 fine in connection with his sentence.

The peace group, led by the Rev. Ralph Templin of the Wilberforce, O., University faculty, appeared on the state highway near the prison at 6 a.m..

At Frankfort, Police Commissioner Guthrie F. Crowe said three troopers have been assigned to maintain order outside the institution. The troopers were sent there at the request of Warden Culver, Crowe said.

The state policemen have been instructed to keep the highway clear and to see that no one is injured, Crowe said. “The police will not interfere with placards, banners or speeches,” he added.

Crowe said the group interfered with the free movement of guards and other institutional employes as they went to work this morning.

Templin and the Rev. Ernest Bromley of Wilmington, O., later attempted to interview prison officials about Otsuka’s release, but were told by a tower guard that none was available at that hour.

Templin said that “four carloads of state police” drove up shortly after 8 a.m. and ordered him and the others, all carrying peace placards, off the road and that they broke one of the placards.

The sign read:

“You did right in refusing to pay taxes for A-bombs.”

Templin said he asked what law was being violated by the picketing, but that he got no answer.

No one was available at the Ashland state police detachment for comment.

Other demonstrators included Henry Dyer of Yellow Springs, O., employe of a printing establishment; Lloyd Danzeisen, a railroad postal clerk of Brookville, O., near Dayton, and Mr. and Mrs. Wallace Nelson of Covington, Ky.

Nelson is a construction worker.

Otsuka, native of San Diego, Calif., was sentenced to 90 days and fined $100 on Sept. 1 in Indianapolis, Ind., by Federal Judge Robert C. Baltzell for refusing to pay 29 per cent of his income taxes, amounting to $4.50, which he considered to be for war purposes.

He has served an additional 30 days in lieu of the fine, but Culver said he must still appear before the commissioner.

Ralph Templin was a former missionary stationed in India, and an admirer of Gandhi’s techniques. The British government expelled him because of his support for Gandhi’s movement.

Back in the U.S., Templin noted that Gandhi had eagerly learned from American predecessors like William Lloyd Garrison and Henry David Thoreau, and proposed that Americans should return the favor by learning a thing or two from Gandhi. To this end, he helped to form the “Harlem Ashram” and its Non-violence Direct Action Committee, which concentrated on non-violent actions to fight racial discrimination.

Dyer was one of the World War Ⅱ conscientious objectors who was further radicalized by / helped radicalize the civilian work camps to which drafted conscientious objectors in the United States were assigned (he was later one of thousands of conscientious objectors the U.S. imprisoned).

Lloyd Danzeisen was one of the “Peacemakers” group. Wally & Juanita Nelson and Ernest Bromley I’ve covered here before in more or less detail.

From the 21 January 1950 Toledo Blade:

Fight On War Tax to Go On, Nisei Pledges

5 Months in Jail for Levy of $4.50 Fail to Daunt Him

Yellow Springs, O., Jan. 21 (AP) — Five months in prison have failed to daunt Katsuki James Otsuka in his determination to continue to refuse payment of taxes he believes will be used for war purposes.

A party of some 20 persons calling themselves “The Peacemakers” heard the American-born Japanese pledge himself last night to retain the stand which landed him in a federal correctional institution at Ashland, Ky.

Mr. Otsuka was sentenced to the institution and fined $100 by a Federal Court in Indianapolis. He had refused to pay 29 per cent of his income tax — amounting to $4.50.

The party was held at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Anderson.

The Rev. Ernesr Bromley, Wilmington, leader of “The Peacemakers,” told the group:

“Do not consider this a victory celebration, for Otsuka’s release was not our goal. We must remember our principal attack is against war as a means of settling disputes.”

What happened between the time when Peacemakers was leading the war tax resistance charge and 1982, when the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee was founded? There was another group, simply called “National War Tax Resistance,” that took the reins during the Vietnam War.

Here are some more excerpts from Robert Cooney’s and Helen Michalowski’s The Power of the People: Active Nonviolence in the United States about this transition period:

1965 was, as the CNVA Bulletin declared, “The Year of Vietnam.” Picketing and sit-downs across the country marked the announcement of the first US bombing of North Vietnam on February 7. These continued throughout the month and much effort was expended gathering signatures for a new appeal, the Declaration of Conscience, circulated by radical pacifist groups, urging civil disobedience. The Peacemakers group in Cincinnati organized a “No Tax for War in Vietnam Committee” calling for tax resistance. In December 1969 a separate group — War Tax Resistance, coordinated by Bob Calvert — was established and at the time included some 200 local tax resistance centers across the country.

From the 4 March 1965 newsletter of the Syracuse Peace Council

Nonpayment of war taxes, practiced by Quakers and others, disappeared as a pacifist testimony soon after the Civil War and Thoreau’s famous stand against the U.S. foray in Mexico. It first reappeared in World War Ⅱ when a few widely scattered individuals refused to pay federal taxes on the grounds that there was no way to prevent a significant part of their money from being used for military purposes. One resister, Ernest Bromley, was prosecuted and imprisoned for his refusal. Many others began to inform the Internal Revenue Service that payment violated their principles.

The enactment during World War Ⅱ of a measure which required employers to withhold taxes from their employees caused particular difficulties for pacifists and led to the formation of Peacemakers in 1948. A Peacemaker committee promoted tax refusal and provided research, literature, action suggestions, and publicity for those in the tax resistance movement. Although many hundreds of people were refusing to pay income taxes during the 15 years following 1948, the government prosecuted and imprisoned only six: James Otsuka of Indiana, Maurice McCrackin of Ohio, Eroseanna Robinson of Illinois, Walter Gormly of Iowa, Arthur Evans of Colorado, and Neil Haworth of Connecticut. These imprisonments and the seizure of a few cars and houses by the IRS, served to highlight the tax refusal testimony and establish it as a major nonviolent principle and tactic.

Tax resistance, like other forms of opposition to the military, increased dramatically during the Vietnam War. In 1966 the federal government levied an additional tax on every private telephone, and in a rare moment of candor, admitted that the money would help subsidize the war in Indochina. Peacemakers, the War Resisters League, and other nonviolent groups urged refusal of this tax and in the following years countless thousands heeded their call. Under the leadership of Bob and Angie Calvert, War Tax Resistance was formed in 1969 as a separate organization to investigate all aspects and ramifications of conscientious tax refusal. During the war there were over 200 local war tax resistance centers, as well as a number of “alternative life funds” which rechanneled refused tax money back into the local community for constructive purposes. Many of these continued after the end of the war.

The tactic of claiming enough dependents so that no income tax would be withheld became more widespread as the Vietnam war continued. Often the tax refuser would make clear the moral grounds for the protest by listing, for example, “all the Vietnamese” as dependents. Refusing to pay for war by claiming excessive exemptions brought particularly strong response from the government. A number of people were prosecuted and imprisoned: Jim Shea, Karl Meyer, William Himmelbauer, Mark Riley, Ellis Rece, Carole Nelson, John Leininger, and Martha Tranquilli (a 64-year-old grandmother and nurse). The tax resistance movement continued after the war and grew to include both pacifists and non-pacifists who could no longer in conscience support the military priorities of the government.

From the 4 March 1965 newsletter of the Syracuse Peace Council

As more and more tax money was directed toward the [Reagan era] military buildup, many activists revived interest in war tax resistance. Protests were organized each year, and individual resisters tried a variety of means to deny the government money for war. In April 1981, demonstrations were held in Dallas, Atlanta, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other cities and 24 people were arrested at IRS offices in New York City. The following year, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee was formed by the Center on Law and Pacifism, Conscience and Military Tax Campaign, WRL, Peacemakers and eighty local groups. Nineteen eighty-three featured the largest show of war tax resistance actions in ten years, including Ralph Dull, an Ohio farmer and tax resister since 1951, who drove a truckload of grain to the IRS office as payment for his taxes. The IRS instituted a “frivolous returns” penalty to discourage the filing of returns with any but the requested information, and some resisters began an insurance fund, pooling their resources to pay fines and interest charges levied against fellow tax resisters.

From the 14 March 1949 New York Times:

41 Pacifists Oppose Tax

Refusal to Pay Whole Income Levy Laid to “War” Spending

An increase of persons refusing to pay full income tax was announced yesterday by Peacemakers, a pacifist organization with offices at 2013 Fifth Avenue. The group reported that twenty-five men and sixteen women had declared publicly that they would refuse to pay the entire tax because they were “unwilling to contribute to preparations for war.”

The organization added that some of the forty-one persons would pay no portion of their tax, “since they maintain that the major activity of the Federal Government at this time is war.” A.J. Muste, a Presbyterian minister who is secretary of the organization, was opposed to both World Wars.

From the 15 March 1950 issue of the Kentucky New Era (and with many typos faithfully reproduced):

Pamphlets Are Distributed At Oak Ridge; Pacifist Is Blamed

Oak Ridge, Tenn., March 15 — A self-described pacifist was picked up by police today while distributing leaflets inside the restricted area of the Oak Ridge atomic plants.

Atomic energy Commission security officers identified the man as K. James Otsuka, 29 of Richmond, Ind., They said he was questioned by security officers and FBI agents and released.

Otsuka said he was a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers) and the Peacemakers. He described the latter organization as a “pacific group which objects to war or the preparation for war.”

He said he gained entrance to the close-guarded area by boarding a bus carrying construction workers inside it.

“No one asked me for a pass,” he declared. “The guards must have assumed I was a worker.”

The leaflets Otsuka distributed outside the K-25 plant — the one which makes uranium-2-35 by the gaseous diffusion process — protested the use of tax money for “weapons of human destruction.”

A statement from the AEC security office said Otsuka was under observation from the time he lighted from the bus.

Otsuka said he was a maintenance worker on the farm of Perry Kissick near Richmond. He said he planned to return to Indiana this afternoon.

The leaflets he distributed said in part:

“I came today to burn at that hour 70 percent of a dollar bill, symbolizing the percentage of taxes which, according to our president, Harry Truman, is being used for military preparation and for fighting the cold war.”

At another point the pamphlet said:

“Thought we must stop serving Mammon, we must stop being afraid and start acting for peace courageously, as Jesus and Ghandi fighting the cold war.”

Otsuka, an Earlham (Ind.) College student, recently was released from the federal correctional institution at Ashland, Ky., after serving five months for refusal to pay his income tax.

I like the “non-Communist demonstrators” bit. From the 18 March 1952 New York Times (excerpt):

In a faint protest against tax funds going for military spending, ten non-Communist demonstrators picketed the office of the Third Internal Revenue District at 110 East Forty-fifth Street and reported that forty-one persons in the nation were refusing to pay part of their income taxes because of objections to arming.

The anti-war pickets at the Third District, who paraded from noon to 1 P.M., called themselves the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers with headquarters at 2013 Fifth Avenue. They distributed leaflets saying that the “real crime in connection with the Bureau of Internal Revenue” is not corruption but collection of money for “preparations for mass murder — for a third world war.”

Among the forty-one Americans listed as refusing to pay part of their taxes as an anti-arms protest were the Rev. A.J. Muste and the Rev. George M. Houser, both officers of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a pacifist group; James Peck, a restaurant worker, of 552 Riverside Drive, and his wife, and Miss Mary S. McDowell, a retired school teacher, of 555 Ocean Avenue, Brooklyn.

Mr. Hoffman said his district had received “maybe a dozen” letters from taxpayers declaring that they were paying only 45 per cent of their taxes, to cover non-arms parts of the Federal budget. The collector reported that the office would bill them for the rest and attach their property is [sic] necessary.

Some of these names are pretty new to me. George M. Houser I think is still around, and you can find some stuff on line about him and his long career in activism.

Mary S. McDowell was fired from her job as a teacher in 1918 for the crime of being a pacifist. As the Times put it at the time: “officials feel that a teacher with pacifist views cannot give satisfactory service at present because of the many war-time activities engaging the attention of the children.” She apparently wrote some editorials on the subject of war tax resistance, but I haven’t found them yet. An excerpt from a letter she wrote to the IRS in 1954, the year before she died, reads:

In reply to your notice of Oct. 7 that I owe… 246.28… I believe that war is wicked and contrary to our democratic faith… and it is also contrary to our Christian faith which teaches us to overcome evil with good. Moreover, in the atomic age and in an interdependent world, even victorious war could only bring disaster to our own country as well as others. War preparations and threats of atomic war cannot give us security. True patriotism calls for world-wide cooperation for human welfare and immediate steps toward universal disarmament through the United Nations. Accordingly, I still refuse to pay the 70% of the tax which I calculate is the proportion of the tax used for present and future wars. The portion used for civilian welfare I am glad to pay.

Among James Peck’s other adventures in pacifist agitation included a three-year stint in prison as a draft resister during World War Ⅱ, piloting a sailboat into a nuclear weapons testing zone in the Pacific to try to disrupt the tests, engaging in the Freedom Rides and attempts to integrate restaurants in the South, and disrupting an event where President Lyndon Johnson was scheduled to accept the “National Freedom Award” from the U.S.-government funded group Freedom House to give him lip about Vietnam.

From the 2 April 1949 New York Times:

“Peacemakers” Convene

Group Organized to Fight Draft With “Gandhian Methods”

Chicago, April 1 — The Peacemakers, organized a year ago in Chicago to apply “Gandhian methods” to resist militarism and conscription, opened its first annual conference here today.

Attended by 200 delegates from about fifteen states, the first sessions of the three-day meeting were devoted to reports from committees and speeches by four young men who explained their reasons for refusing to register for the draft. A.J. Muste of New York, secretary of the group’s national committee, presided.

In a press conference, the Rev. Ernest Bromley of Wilmington, Ohio, chairman of the organization’s tax refusal committee, said that on March 15 forty-three persons from various parts of the country “concertedly refused to pay all or part of their income taxes on the ground that such funds were being devoted to preparation for atomic and biological warfare.”

Here is an excerpt from Scott H. Bennett’s Radical Pacifism: The War Resisters League and Gandhian Nonviolence in America concerning the origins of the modern American war tax resistance movement:

In 1948 a small tax resistance movement emerged when several tax refusers learned about one another and began to correspond. Many of these early tax resisters were WRL members. Abraham Kaufman, the League’s executive secretary, facilitated many of these contacts. At its founding conference in 1948, Peacemakers established a Tax Refusal Committee. League members formed a majority on this committee, which was chaired by Ernest Bromley, a Methodist minister and the nation’s leading proponent of tax resistance.

For the next two decades, Bromley championed tax resistance and publicized examples from three continents to demonstrate its power. American examples included Quaker tax resistance during both the French and Indian War and the American Revolution, the popular tax protests by colonists during the American Revolution, and Henry David Thoreau’s refusal to pay the Massachusetts poll tax to protest the Mexican War. He also cited England’s Wat Tyler (fourteenth century) and John Hampden (seventeenth century). Finally, he invoked Gandhi and the Indian independence movement; both resorted to tax resistance in the struggle against British rule.

For both moral and pragmatic reasons, tax resistance appealed to Peacemakers and to radical pacifists. Most important, it enabled absolutists to express their total commitment against militarism and war. The Peacemakers’ literature underscored this uncompromising position. One publication explained that tax resistance “is not merely a protest. It is an act.” Aware that modern, technological warfare required huge expenditures, tax resisters were seeking to cripple war preparation — and war — through nonpayment of taxes. Other literature asserted that nearly 35 percent of the national budget was earmarked for the military and that 80 percent paid for past, present, and future wars. The “new push-button type warfare,” Bromley declared, would require “more drafted dollars than drafted men.” Tax resisters were hoping to influence American policy by publicly repudiating military preparedness and weapon stockpiling before conflict broke out again. Unlike COs and nonregistration, tax resistance was both age and gender neutral. By enabling men and women of all ages and occupations to participate, tax refusal expanded the sphere of war resistance and promoted solidarity with draft-eligible men.

Ernest and Marion Bromley, whose Wilmington, Ohio, home served as unofficial headquarters of the Tax Refusal Committee, embodied the spirit of tax resistance. “The time has now come,” Ernest exclaimed in his 1948 IRS tax statement, “when men ought no longer to depend solely upon their spoken witness against war or preparation for it. They ought to prepare themselves for an outright resistance by a thorough-going dissociation with the war-making system.” In her March 1948 letter to the tax collector, Marion charged that “this country did not turn to peace at the end of World War Ⅱ, but instead sought to protect and expand an American Empire,” declaring “I want to dissociate myself as completely as possible from these tragic, suicidal and evil policies… and to do all I can to convince my fellow citizens that we must completely renounce the way of war and violence.” The Bromleys believed that radical pacifist individuals and organizations must assume risks for war resistance. Anticipating the New Left, Ernest asserted: “Pacifists believe… that there is a… time and place where they as individuals must simply come to a stop, and ‘clog [the system] with their whole weight.’ Perhaps that time and place have come.”

Four months after its formation, Peacemakers’ Tax Refusal Committee published the statements of active tax resisters. Many of these people were WRL members. These statements illustrate the total commitment and absolutist nature of Peacemakers and of a section of the League. Writing in a different venue, Caroline Urie similarly declared:

In a time of crisis like the present it is our duty as sovereign citizens to defend our country not only with protest but with our lives, if necessary, against military enslavement and the possible annihilation implicit in atomic and bacterial warfare. In the brief time at our disposal, protest is not enough; if we are to assume real responsibility, we must act in a manner simple enough and clear enough to be understood and to arouse public conscience.

As justification for tax resistance, several WRL members pointed to the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, which had established the principle of individual responsibility for wartime actions, even in the face of wartime orders. In his 1948 letter to the IRS, Walter Gormley declared that he was “refusing to make any federal income tax payment, because they money would be used mostly for ‘crimes against peace.’ ” “The U.S. is preparing for a shooting war of aggression by maintaining bases, subservient governments and military forces from Korea to Turkey, by intensive research on methods of mass slaughter and by maintaining a huge military organization,” he charged. “I must refrain from supporting such a government.” Likewise, Valerie Riggs explained that “if our government… at Nuremberg could hold individuals responsible to stand against crime… I feel thoroughly justified by my own government in not paying this part of my tax.”

Perhaps A.J. Muste best expressed the compelling logic of tax resistance. “World War Ⅲ has already started,” he exclaimed in May 1948:

I cannot support a government in these war-measures, which I deem insane, wicked and suicidal. I must withdraw support from such war-measures in every possible way. The two decisive powers of government… are the power to conscript and the power to tax. Pacifists recognize that to be consistent they must refuse to be conscripted for military service or training. I have come… to the conviction that I at least am in conscience bound… to challenge the right of the government to tax me for waging war, and in particular for the production of atomic and bacterial weapons… The need for getting our pacifist teaching off the level of talk and writing and onto the level of action is, I believe, imperative.

Peacemakers was highly critical of pacifist organizations — the WRL included — that collected withholding taxes from their employees. By withholding taxes these pacifist groups were effectively barring tax refusers from working for them, or forcing them to resign. Both the WRL and the FOR paid a lot of attention to this issue. A special committee of the FOR examined the problem for a year before recommending that the FOR withhold taxes, even though most FOR employees had indicated that they wanted to make individual decisions about tax refusal. Staff member Marion Coddington (Bromley) resigned over the policy. The WRL also decided to withhold taxes. In justifying this policy, a member of the League’s executive committee declared: “The life of the organization is at stake.” The Peacemakers’ Tax Refusal Committee, which characterized the WRL and other pacifist groups as “tax collectors for the government,” was scathing in its denunciation. “If pacifist organizations, whose business is to create a warless world, are not ready to risk something for war resistance now,” the committee asked, “when will they be ready?”

Tax resistance took various forms. Total refusers paid not tax. Since most workers could not avoid withholding tax, total refusers were often self-employed. Miriam Keeler and Marion Coddington Bromley resigned from the Labor Department and the FOR staff in order to avoid the withholding taxes. Percentage refusers withheld that portion of taxes corresponding to the percentage the federal government would spend on war preparation and the military (calculations ranged from 35 to 80 percent). Finally, some tax resisters chose to live on an income below the taxable level or to work at several part-time, low-income jobs to preclude employers from withholding taxes. Some tax resisters refused to submit tax returns; others explained their action in letters to local tax collectors and the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Some tax resisters, instead of remitting taxes to the government, contributed the money to WRL and other peace and justice organizations.

As a result of Peacemakers’ activism, tax resistance became a major issue for the WRL. The League sold stickers that tax resisters could attach to their tax forms. “This tax goes chiefly for war purposes, as a pacifist I pay under protest.” In the spring of 1948 the League passed several resolutions commending those, members or not, who practiced tax resistance. Beginning in 1948, several tax resisters began donating a portion of their unpaid income tax to the League, an act consistent with their willingness to pay taxes for nonmilitary social programs. The League established a special literature fund for these donations to ensure that they did not go to pay staff salaries, which were subject to withholding taxes.

Ammon Hennacy, a WRL member most often associated with the Catholic Worker movement, was a pioneer tax refuser praised by the League. A “Christian anarchist,” he first practiced tax refusal in 1943, when the tax withholding system was implemented. Each year at tax time he prepared a statement and mailed it to the IRS. Hennacy’s 1945 tax statement reflected the direct action and civil disobedience impulse that would shake the League over the next half-decade. “We can refuse to put our trust in Princes and Presidents,” he declared. “With Thoreau and Gandhi we can start our own campaign of Civil Disobedience by refusal to buy war bonds… and… pay taxes for war or conscription.” In 1950, Hennacy began expanding his protest; each year, on 6 August, he fasted and picketed the local IRS office for as many days as years had passed since Hiroshima. While picketing, he distributed tax statements and leaflets that repudiated war, advocated anarchism, and declared his tax resistance. When threatened with arrest for disturbing the peace while picketing, he retorted: “I’m disturbing the war.”

In a letter to Hennacy, [Abraham] Kaufman expressed his disagreement with tax resistance. But then he added: “I admire your guts and want you to know that I am with you, for each of us must use the methods he feels to be effective in bringing the world out of its present insanity. Your method may prove most effective in the long run.” Although he did not delude himself that his “One Man Revolution” would change government policy or transform the world, Hennacy insisted on the moral imperative of individual resistance to the militaristic state.

By mid-1949, radicals had succeeded in raising the issue of the WRL’s payment of withholding taxes, especially for members like Roy Kepler who supported tax refusal. In October the WRL endorsed CCCO assistance for tax resisters and authorized a review of the issue. Although they extended moral support to tax refusers and publicized their actions, most League members did not support tax resistance, and the WRL did not officially endorse it. Kaufman, in particular, insisted that it would be “unethical” for a small minority to “coerce” the League into accepting such a policy. With minor revisions, the League accepted its subcommittee’s Withholding Tax Report. Concluding that its survival as an organization took priority over tax refusal, the League decided to continue to withhold income taxes from its employees.

The WRL eventually changed its policy on withholding, and stopped withholding income taxes from the wages of one of its tax-resisting employees, Ralph DiGia, in 1956.

On 8 July 1965, Ken Knudson wrote the following letter to the director of the IRS:

Dear Sir:

Tomorrow I shall add an act of fraud to the list of my many “crimes.” I will go to my employer, the University of Wisconsin, and claim ten dependents on form W4. I am claiming seven more dependents than I’m legally entitled in order to avoid the withholding tax and, ultimately, the income tax.

I have, as you know, avoided paying taxes in the past by holding two jobs and limiting my income to $112 per month per job — thus I was able to make a taxable income and have nothing withheld from my salary. Then when April 15^th rolled around, instead of filing form 1040 I was able to picket your office, demanding an end to taxes in general and to war taxes in particular.

I no longer find this method of tax refusal convenient. It’s a pain in the neck to make sure your income doesn’t exceed the $112 limit imposed by law. I have therefore decided to circumvent this law by breaking another.

The reasons for my tax refusal are two-fold. First, as an anarchist I am dedicated to the overthrow of all governments and therefore cannot finance this one. Second, and far more important, I cannot as a pacifist conscientiously give my tax dollar to you knowing that more than 70¢ out of each dollar will go for the sole purpose of killing people. This is morally wrong — far worse than an individual act of “fraud” — and, therefore, I cannot and will not support you and the system you represent.

Yours for Peace and freedom,
Ken Knudson

In 1970, The Libertarian Forum noted that Knudson’s protest seemed to be catching on:

Four years ago, Ken Knudson, a member of the pacifist Peacemaker Movement, pioneered in a new form of tax resistance: the idea of claiming enough exemptions on the Form W-4 Employee’s Withholding Exemption Certificate so that no tax can be withheld from one’s wages. Last fall, on October 5, at Lincoln Park in Chicago, a dozen people gathered to form the first tax resistance group based on the Knudson method. All the members adopt the Knudson approach and claim the exemptions; then they take the money which would have been paid into the U.S. treasury and pool it into a cooperative association, the Chicago Area Alternative Fund, which uses the funds for constructive, as well as voluntary, purposes.

A wire service report from 1966 read:

A 25-year-old Madison [Wisconsin] man burned his $500 check and tore up an income tax form in front of the Internal Revenue Service office Friday. He said he was demonstrating his opposition to military spending and the war in Viet Nam.

But the demonstration quickly backfired against Kenneth Knudson.

The shredded tax form had scarcely touched the sidewalk when a police officer ordered Knudson to pick it up under threat of a $25 fine for littering.

Knudson complied but his troubles weren’t over yet. Another officer served him with a warrant for failing to pay overtime parking tickets amounting to $15. Knudson borrowed the money from several other demonstrators marching with signs that read “No Money for Murder.”

Knudson said the $500 check represented the amount he owes in federal income taxes.

Tax Collector Sheldon S. Cohen commented: “The government has never lost a case in which a taxpayer refused to pay on the grounds he disapproved of how the money is spent.”

From the 11 July 1959 edition of The Afro-American:

Income Tax Objector Is Still Free… But Nervous

Faces fine of $1,000 or year in jail

Philadelphia Mrs. Juanita Nelson of 3509 Baring St. was at home but in suspense last week, she said.

Her anxiety stems from the fact she hasn’t “heard a thing” from the tax agents who had arrested her on June 16 for failure to pay Federal income taxes.

She was given until June 19 to be prepared to pay a $1,000 fine or spend a year in jail for contempt of court.

Mrs. Nelson said, “I’ve been away for the past week with my husband.”

She laughed nervously and said, “I haven’t heard of anyone being here after me, and I didn’t receive any mail from the internal revenue agents.

“So I don’t know what is going to happen to me. My husband and I got home Saturday night.” Her husband, Wallace, is a book company salesman.

Mrs. Nelson and her husband are members of a nationwide pacifist movement which is called “The Peacemakers,” organized in 1948.

This is based on Gandhian principles of non-violence.

She said they believe that peace will never come by means of war and war preparation.

The group advocates that in addition to income tax refusal, they refuse to cooperate with military draft, refuse to work in war industry and will not cooperate with civil defense drills.

They propose non-violent resistance in case of invasion or suppression of freedom and wide-spread economic sharing.

Mrs. Nelson has a master’s degree in speech therapy from Ohio State University. In Philadelphia, she is well known as a neighborhood improvement worker, and is a business secretary.

When Mrs. Nelson was arrested on June 16 she was picked up bodily by deputy marshals and police and carried to a waiting patrol wagon.

The officers said they were forced to carry her bodily because she refused to accompany them willingly after they had served her with the body attachment. She was also carried out of the cellroom to a chair for the hearing.

Mrs. Nelson said she isn’t going to pay income taxes.

U.S. Attorney Harold K. Wood reported that Mrs. Nelson had failed to explain to the Internal Revenue office her reason for not paying $950 in taxes for the years of 1953 and 1954 when she was living in Cincinnati.

Taxes were also due for 1957 and 1958. A summons was ignored on March 13 and several others thereafter. Mr. Nelson was a conscientious objector during World War Ⅱ.

Nelson tells the story of her arrest (and what happened next) in her essay, “A Matter of Freedom.”

In 1975, the U.S. Congress’s Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation issued a report called “Investigation of the Special Service Staff of the Internal Revenue Service.”

The focus of the report was on the Nixon administration’s use of the IRS to go after political opponents, though the “Special Service Staff” project itself dated to the Kennedy administration and was ostensibly designed to gather information on “extremist” groups and individuals and “Ideological Organizations.”

Because of this focus, in addition to going after people on Nixon’s “enemies list,” the Special Service Staff also targeted war tax resisters — under its mandate to “coordinate activities in all Compliance Divisions involving ideological, militant, subversive, radical, and similar type organizations.” The group would come to track 8,585 individuals and 2,873 organizations — and about 800 of these involved war tax resisters.

In 1973, as the Watergate and related scandals were kicking up dirt, the IRS commissioner said that the Special Service Staff would stop investigating subversives in general, and the IRS would stick to investigating only those groups and people that promoted or practiced tax resistance. According to the Joint Committee report, after this point:

…except for 230 cases relating primarily to war tax resisters, no field referrals were made from SSS files after August 9, 1973.

The IRS focus on war tax resisters as such did not begin until 1970, according to the Joint Committee report:

Field referrals on war tax resisters

In 1970 the SSS began to take account of what it called “war tax resisters.” A “war tax resister” generally was defined as an individual or organization that refused to pay Federal income or excise taxes as a protest against the United States’ participation in the Vietnam war or who encouraged others to refuse to pay taxes. (However, the staff reviewed several cases included by the SSS in the war tax resister group of cases where noncompliance occurred because of a tax protest that was not directed toward the Vietnam war.)

The SSS classified approximately 800 files as “war tax resisters,” and it referred to the field 550 of these cases. These referrals occurred in two groups, the first a group of 320 cases during March–April 1972, and the second a group of 230 cases during December 1973, after the SSS had been terminated. Unlike the other field referrals… where the SSS recommended that the field take specific action, the tax resister referrals were sent out for the information of the field offices and for whatever action they “deemed appropriate.”

The Joint Committee staff examined about 10% of the war tax resister case files in the course of its investigation. Here is what it found:

Origins of SSS Activity on War Tax Resisters

Information in the SSS files indicates that SSS employees first began to take account of the war tax resistance movement early in 1970,¹ when the SSS began receiving FBI reports on this activity. However, it appears that the SSS began to focus on war tax resisters around mid-1971. On April 28, 1971, members of a war tax resistance organization held a demonstration at the National Office of the IRS in Washington, D.C. According to an SSS report, the SSS acquired copies of a tax resistance publication shortly after this demonstration and by mid-July 1971, the SSS had used this publication to establish a list of 192 individuals and organizations active in the war tax resistance movement. An SSS report also states that during June 1971, the SSS received from the FBI a list of underground newspapers in the United States and a list of the editors of these papers.²

During 1971, the SSS received additional FBI reports on tax resistance organizations and individuals, and publications the SSS received had begun to carry more articles on this topic. The SSS files also contain information indicating that some IRS offices were having additional problems with tax resistance. (However, it is not clear whether the SSS became aware of these problems during 1971.)

At the end of November, 1971, the Washington Post carried an article on war tax resisters. memoranda in the SSS files indicate that this article came to the attention of Commissioner Johnnie M. Walters. These memoranda also indicate that Mr. Walters was concerned about tax resisters, and his concern was communicated to the IRS employees charged with tax compliance. Memoranda in the SSS files indicate that the SSS participated in drafting a report on tax resisters (dated December 30, 1971) to the Commissioner from the Acting Assistant Commissioner (Compliance) John F. Hanlon. Mr. Walters returned this report with comments directing increased IRS action in this area. Thereafter, the SSS apparently intensified its activity dealing with war tax resisters.

Sources of War Tax Resister Files

The names for the SSS tax resister files were derived from several sources. One major source was publications, such as tax resistance newspapers and underground newspapers received by the SSS. These publications contained lists of individuals or organizations active in tax resistance. They also contained signed letters to the editor and articles on tax resistance activities. (As noted above, the names of a number of newspapers were provided to the SSS by the FBI.)

The SSS also received names of tax resisters from other units in the IRS. IRS Service Centers sent the SSS the names of tax protesters who had come to their attention because of information on returns filed with the Service Centers or letters of tax protest received by the Service Centers. Additional names and information were referred to the SSS by other IRS offices (including letters from the public complaining about the attitudes and activities of the tax resisters).

A third major source was FBI reports. As noted above, the SSS received a number of FBI reports on tax resistance individuals and organizations, and also received a list of underground newspapers.

Field Referrals of War Tax Resister Cases

According to information supplied by the IRS, the SSS had compiled files on approximately 800 war tax resister individuals and organization. Of these 800 cases, 550 were were referred to the field. The referrals of war tax resister cases were transmitted to the field in two groups, the first, a group of 320 cases sent out during March and April of 1972, and the second, a group of 230 cases sent out on December 20, 1973 (after the SSS had been formally terminated)… The 550 total field referrals of “war tax resisters” included 397 individuals and 153 organizations.³

First group of field referrals. — The first group of field referrals was transmitted by the SSS under a memorandum from the Assistant Commissioner (ACTS) to the District Directors. The SSS transmittal memorandum, entitled “War Tax Resisters,” contained a discussion of the war tax resistance movement and a number of exhibits designed to acquaint the District Director with the scope and activities of this movement. A list of the individuals and organizations located in the particular IRS district to which the memorandum was sent was attached to the transmittal letter, along with tax filing history for these individuals and organizations, where this information was available. Unlike the other field referrals… these referrals did not recommend that specific action be undertaken by the field offices, but said that the district should take action as it “deemed appropriate.” The transmittal also asked that a memorandum of any actions taken and results obtained by sent to Paul Wright. (The transmittal memoranda did not mention that the referrals came from the SSS.)

The staff examined a 10-percent random sample of the SSS files on this first group of war tax resister field referrals. The sample included 27 individuals and 6 organizations. The reports from the field included in the SSS files examined by the staff indicate that the referral resulted in field activity in a minority of the cases and that the field activity was by the Audit or Collection Divisions, with no indication that any Intelligence Division action occurred.

The staff examination indicates that some of these field referrals were made without previous analysis to see if there was likelihood of a tax violation. The SSS files on one of the cases referred to the field contained no evidence that the SSS had obtained and reviewed tax information (such as an Individual Master File printout) to determine whether the taxpayer may have failed to comply with the tax laws. In another case the Individual Master File printout showed that tax returns had been filed for all prior years with no balances owed; on this printout an SSS employee had noted that there was no basis for audit action. However, approximately one month later this case was referred to the field.

Not all of the cases in the first group of referrals involved “war” tax resisters. One organization referred to the field was a tax protest group generally classified as an “extremist White racist” group; there was no indication that this group was anti-war. Similarly, another case involved an individual who opposed the progressive income tax rate structure, and there was no indication this individual was anti-war.

Second group of field referrals. — The second group of field referrals was sent out on December 20, 1973, using a different form of transmittal memorandum than was used with the first group. The transmittal memorandum for these referrals was entitled “Information Items” and the District Directors were advised that the attached materials were forwarded for their information and for whatever action they “deem appropriate.” The memorandum also advised that it was not necessary to report any action taken, as was required with the earlier group of referrals. (Apparently no reply was requested because the SSS had been terminated.) Finally, there was attached a list of the individuals and organizations with their tax filing history, if this information was available.

The staff also examined the SSS files of a 10-percent random sample of this group of field referrals. This sample included 22 individuals and one organization. Printouts from the Individual Master File were obtained by the SSS for all of the 22 individuals examined; a master file printout was requested by the SSS for the one organization (but none was found because the organization had never obtained an Employer Identification Number). In comparison with the first group of field referrals, the SSS files on these referrals contained considerably more information indicating possible noncompliance with the tax laws, to support the referral of these cases to the field. (According to the SSS files, two of the names in the staff sample did not involve tax resisters and two of the names were derived from the Justice Department’s “Inter-Divisional Information Unit” list…)

1. IRS concern generally with the failure to pay Federal taxes as a war protest had developed much earlier. For example, the Internal Revenue Manual contained guidelines for the handling of war tax resistance cases as early as 1968. The guidelines originally pertained to failures to pay Federal income taxes, but by 1970 they also included telephone and transportation excise taxes.
2. According to a January 1, 1972, memorandum from Paul Wright to the Director of the Collection Division, the SSS considered that underground newspapers were important to the examination of the war tax resister group because they acted as a “conduit for their movement,” and contained numerous articles on how to file false returns and otherwise confuse IRS operations. “Underground newspaper” was defined to include newspapers of anti-establishment orientation which advocated violent or subversive means to achieve their ends. According to the IRS, the SSS had files on 148 underground newspapers.
3. The staff examination of administrative files and the other field referrals indicates that prior to March of 1972, there were several referrals of cases which could be classified as war tax resisters. A number of underground newspapers were also referred to the field under regular field referral procedures. The SSS also several times sent information concerning war tax resisters to field offices on an informal basis.

The SSS was so tainted by Nixon’s use of it that the IRS Commissioner told Congress that after it completed its investigations, he would try to have its files destroyed. This also made it difficult for the IRS to use information gathered by the SSS in its ongoing actions against war tax resisters.

So some such actions were abandoned in mid-stream: Notably, the seizure and sale of Ernest and Marion Bromley’s home. In 1975, after the IRS had already seized and auctioned off the house, the agency (under sustained pressure from the Peacemakers and their supporters) backed off, canceled the sale, and dropped its enforcement actions against the Bromleys and the Peacemaker movement (see The Picket Line 31 January 2008).

Some years back I noted Dorothy Day’s remarks on visiting a group of tax resisters in New Hampshire. Today I’ll try to track down some more information on them.

Arthur Harvey, then an organic farmer from Hartford, Maine, was profiled in Samuel Fromartz’s book Organic, Inc. because of his legal battle to make sellers who use the “organic” buzzword adhere to the genuine standards of that variety of food production. In the course of this, Formartz also mentions Harvey’s war tax resistance:

It was not the first time Harvey had gone up against the federal government. As a tax resister opposed to military spending, “especially nuclear weapons, and the export of arms and military forces to many places around the world,” Harvey had refused to file or pay federal income taxes since 1959. His wife, Elizabeth Gravalos, hadn’t paid federal taxes since the 1970s. Instead, they donated time and money to social service and environmental organizations. The IRS had come knocking at their door a couple of times, then seized the family’s property in 1996 and demanded $62,000 in back taxes and penalties — about three times the annual income of the farm. When they did not pay, the IRS took the rare step of auctioning off the property at a town office across the street from their house, with protesters outside. They initially lost the blueberry field to a bidder, though luckily no one bid on the house, perhaps because it had only rudimentary plumbing and no electricity. Eventually, Gravalos’s mother bought the house, and the couple’s daughter successfully bid on another parcel of the land, which she later swapped for the blueberry field. They were back in business.

Harvey, an affable and intelligent man with a wiry physique, perhaps owing to his vegetarian diet, said the lesson he learned from that fight was not to stop being a tax resister, but to avoid owning property in his own name that could be seized by the government. “We own a couple of cars, so I guess they could go after those, but they aren’t worth much,” he told me.

Aaron Falbel wrote about the blueberry-growing couple for the War Resisters League’s magazine in 1996:

War Tax Resistance and Blueberry Fields Forever

Arthur Harvey has not filed a federal tax return or paid income tax since 1959. His partner, Elizabeth Gravalos hasn’t filed or paid since 1972. Until recently, the Internal Revenue Service gave them little trouble.

“They visited us twice, once around 1965 and again around 1978, back when we lived in New Hampshire,” Harvey says. “Probably they concluded we had nothing much worth taking and perhaps were not subject to much tax anyway,” he adds. But after the Gravalos/Harvey family moved to Maine ten years ago, earned a bit more money, acquired a house, two wood lots and a blueberry field and started paying state taxes (New Hampshire has no state income tax, but Maine does), the IRS began to take notice. This past April 4, the IRS seized their properties in lieu of tax payments assessed at $62,000 (including interest and penalties) for the six years from 1987 to 1992 an astonishing figure, considering the family’s annual income from their blueberry and flower business averages about $16,000.

Going Once…

The IRS held an auction June 19 at the town office across the street from the Gravalos/Harvey home. “I might have cried if I were alone,” Gravalos admitted. But she was far from alone. About 75 supporters gathered outside the building and spoke of their solidarity with Elizabeth and Arthur. To demonstrate the power and the good that can come out of war tax redirection, Harvey, Gravalos and their family and friends raised over $3,000 to pay off the local property tax liens of seven Hartford residents.

The auction didn’t last long. When Gravalos and her family emerged stoically from the town office, she announced, “The good news is that no one bid on the house.” Emily Harvey, Arthur and Elizabeth’s daughter and a sophomore at Wellesley College, bid on (and won) the small half-acre wood lot on behalf of her younger brother Max. (Max, at age 16, was legally too young to enter a bid.) The town selectman and town clerk teamed up to buy the larger 21-acre wood lot, and another Hartford resident bought the blueberry field.

Harvey speculated that the reason no one bid on the house was that the minimum bid was too high: $21,000 for a house with no electricity or indoor plumbing. At the conclusion of the auction, the IRS declared that they would reevaluate the minimum bid and hold another auction July 16.

Going Twice…

The minimum was eventually set at $7,900. Gravalos and Harvey had originally discouraged friendly bids on their house, feeling that the price was too high. “We really did not want the IRS to get that much money,” Harvey said. But for the second auction, with a lower minimum bid, they didn’t discourage people who would buy the house back for them, even though that meant surrendering money to the IRS.

Harvey explained that what matters most for him is making a strong public statement, bearing witness to the government’s violence: “Our reason for non-cooperating with the IRS is a reluctance to support war preparations, especially nuclear weapons, and the export of arms and military forces to many places around the world. Others have gone a lot further in their war tax resistance than we have, and we honor and respect those people. For [them], the most important thing is to withhold money from the IRS at all costs.”

That, he acknowledged, is not his style of war tax resistance. “There are and there have been war tax resisters who have gone that far. My friend Ammon Hennacy [the legendary pacifist connected with the Catholic Worker movement] was one. Our approach is more complicated to describe and more flexible in practice.” He scoffed at a news article that described him as “unwilling to pay one penny to the IRS.” “We have three cars,” he noted, referring to the federal tax on gasoline that he pays every time he fills up at the pump.

About 35 supporters turned up for the second auction, this time held at the IRS office in Lewiston, Maine. Demonstrators read excerpts from letters to IRS officials and to President Clinton urging them to call off the auction. (As at the first auction, money was given away, this time to groups doing the kind of work tax dollars could fund: $500 to the local Abused Women’s Advocacy Project and $500 to a local chapter of Habitat for Humanity.)

Still Here

In the end, Elizabeth’s mother entered the winning bid for the house at $15,633. The town clerk and town selectman, who bid at the first auction, entered the only other bid of $8,000. The latter two were clearly miffed at having lost such a “bargain.” (One war tax resister described them as “a picture of greed thwarted.”) The clerk, clearly irate, asked, “Why was it okay for her [Elizabeth’s] mother to bid, but not for me?”

A week later, Arthur Harvey reflected on the clerk’s comment, questioning in turn the propriety of the town officials’ taking advantage of a family in a weakened financial position. “That does not seem to me to be a proper thing for a town official to do,” he said.

Elizabeth Gravalos thinks the answer to the town clerk’s question is obvious: “The two of them were trying to take our house from under us, whereas my mother was trying to help us out, to help us continue our way of life here.” Though Gravalos had dissuaded her mother from bidding at the first auction, she did not try to stop her at the second. “It was harder to lose the blueberry field [at the first auction] than I thought. I just didn’t feel I was ready to lose the house,” she admitted.

Harvey and Gravalos calculated that the house was worth somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000 and suggested that $13,000 would be a reasonable bid. Max and Emily were in favor of a friendly bid; Max especially did not want to have to move. “The alternative,” Arthur noted, “would be to go the Randy and Betsy route and not countenance a friendly bid and then risk eviction. We, as a family, decided not to go that route.” (He was referring to Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner, war tax resisters from Colrain, MA, whose supporters maintained an 18-month-long occupation/vigil after Kehler was arrested in 1991 and his and Corner’s house was auctioned off by the IRS.)

In the end, Arthur admitted, the auction “was something of a letdown.” The IRS got a fair amount of money, $39,460 in all more money, he speculated, than it would have gotten if the family had filed and paid taxes all along. Gravalos reflected, “Betsy and Randy did a better job at resisting the IRS than we did. But each family has to draw its own line. I really did not want to stage an occupation [as they did].”

So what does it mean for war tax resistance when the IRS manages to walk away with such a considerable sum? Interestingly, Gravalos and Harvey do not think of themselves as having failed. Along the spectrum of war tax civil disobedience, they are tax resisters rather than tax refusers. (War tax resisters do not willfully hand over money to the Pentagon, but if the government nonetheless forcibly seizes money from them, they take those lumps, as it were; war tax refusers tend to put up more of a fight and are unwilling to let the government collect any money or assets whatsoever.) But they believe both resisters and refusers provide witness to the backward priorities of the federal government. “When it comes to war tax resistance,” Gravalos adds, “anything is better than nothing.” Their 51 years (between them) of resistance to military spending and the redirection through the years of those war tax dollars is not to be scoffed at. And what of the future? Gravalos and Harvey do not hesitate when they are asked whether or not they will continue their war tax resistance. Says Arthur, “We will continue our stand of non-cooperation, but we will certainly make sure not to find ourselves in such a position where we own so much property.” And Elizabeth adds, “I do feel that the risks of paying taxes are greater than the risks of refusing to pay them.”

Philip Devles Broughton’s Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School includes a few more notes of interest about Harvey:

• “He almost failed to graduate from high school after refusing to sign a loyalty oath to the laws and constitution of the United States. ‘I could support the Constitution,’ he said, ‘but I certainly wasn’t going to support all the laws. They told me I was failing the rest of the students in my home room. But I didn’t have much loyalty to my home room.’ Eventually the school gave him his diploma anyway.”
• “In Michigan, a man who had recently returned from India lent him a book by Gandhi. He was immediately struck by Gandhi’s arguments in favor of self-reliance and against excessive consumption. In the late 1950s, Harvey spent six months in prison in Sandstone, Minnesota, for invading a missile base in Nebraska with a group of fellow peace activists. ‘Prison was a blast. I was in there with one of my very best friends [Ammon Hennacy] and we played horseshoes and Scrabble and spent lots of time in the library.’ His tenure as library clerk ended when he refused to compile a list for the prison authorities of the books each prisoner was borrowing.”

A 1960 newspaper article on educational outreach efforts by the pacifist non-violent action group Peacemakers, quoted Harvey on the nature of the group: “We are a radical pacifist organization. We are against war preparation and against use of income tax for war purposes. Our members also oppose mandatory registration for the draft. However, we are not communists. We believe the best defense is a strong spiritual one, in the tradition of the Indian leader Gandhi.”

The Sun-Journal of Lewiston, Maine, covered the 1996 tax auction in a pair of articles:

“Hands off our homes”

Couple protests on day before auction

by Mary Lou Wendell
Sun-Journal Staff Writer

Auburn — The message on one of the placards held by many of the 50 or so protesters marching down Center Street Tuesday morning was simple: “Honor family values. Hands off homes.”

Accomplishing their goal for the day was not going to be so simple, however. They were on their way to Lewiston to convince the Internal Revenue Service to halt the sale of property seized for nonpayment of taxes.

Arthur Harvey, who, before it was taken, owned the house and land in Hartford Center together with his wife Elizabeth Gravalos, led the march. In his pants pocket was a letter the group eventually hand-delivered to the Lewiston IRS office on Main Street after walking there from the Auburn Mall, which took about two-and-a-half hours. The note detailed the couple’s reasons for not paying federal taxes.

Funds collected by the federal government will “support war preparation of all kinds,” the typewritten letter read. “This is not acceptable to our moral and religious beliefs.”

In early April, IRS agents served Harvey and Gravalos with a seizure notice for their property, which includes a small home and out-buildings, a 13-acre blueberry field, and 21 acres of two combined woodlots. Selling blueberries and pansies, which is how the couple earns their living, brings in a total of $18,000 a year, Harvey said.

Based on those earnings, the government calculated Harvey and Gravalos owe $62,000 in unpaid taxes and penalties for a six-year period starting in 1987, according to the couple. A spokeswoman for the IRS in Boston said she would not confirm the amount owed because of disclosure and privacy laws.

Furthermore, the couple wrote in their letter to the IRS, “it is inconceivable that a family could be subject to a 49 percent tax rate, especially a low-income family including two children.”

Harvey and Gravalos have a daughter in college and a teen-age son, Max, who also marched on Tuesday.

IRS spokeswoman Peggy Riley did say the sealed-bid auction will go on as scheduled at 11 a.m. Wednesday morning at the town office in Hartford Center. And if minimum bids were offered, the house and property will be sold, she said. The minimum bid for the single family home was $20,476.98, Riley said. The total minimum bid for everything else, which is divided into three properties, is roughly $16,000.

Against a backdrop of car dealerships, retail outlets and quick-change oil places, the protesters, who came from as far away as Chicago, walked in groups of three and four down Center Street. Some came from New Hampshire and Vermont. Most were from Maine.

Many of the protesters were also war-tax resistors and friends with Harvey and Gravalos. Some had never met the couple but were marching to support their cause.

Sheila Dormody, a member of the 800-member organization, Peace Action Maine, pays her taxes, she said. But she had sympathy for Harvey and Gravalos because she opposes disproportionate military spending, she said.

As the group hiked along, making their way across the Longley Bridge and around downtown Lewiston, Dormody passed out red fliers decrying the practice of “bloating the Pentagon… starving our communities.”

“This year Congress will give the Pentagon $7 billion more than requested,” the filer stated. Education, mass transit, housing programs, job training and environmental spending are all the things that will be cut in order to pay for increased military spending, it said.

If the property is indeed sold Wednesday, “we’ll have to find some place we can rent,” Gravalos said as she walked. “I have a friend in Buckfield who has offered land so I can plant my pansies.”

Her husband thought it was a mistake to buy land, Gravalos said, adding he may have been right.

In hindsight, Harvey said, he would have preferred renting over owning property, which can be taken away.

But, while he and his wife have always paid their state and local taxes, he’s not sorry for not paying federal taxes, he said.

“We both understood the risk and we accepted it,” Harvey said. It’s a matter of “personal responsibility.” Withholding federal taxes is “a job that we can do,” he said.

Home survives IRS sale

Some of tax protesters’ Hartford property sold

by Judith Meyer
Special to the Sun-Journal

Hartford — As sealed bids were opened Wednesday morning, Arthur Harvey and Elizabeth Gravalos heard an Internal Revenue Service employee award three pieces of their property to others, but their home was spared, at least temporarily.

The couple, who are vocal about their resistance to paying federal taxes to a government that they say is spending irresponsibly, were served a notice of seizure on their property in April. That property was offered at a public sale in a sealed bid process inside the Town Office while a large crowd of supporters from throughout New England and reporters waited outside on the lawn Wednesday morning.

Harvey and Gravalos, who say they earn about $18,000 a year growing blueberries and pansies, owe the IRS $48,555 in unpaid taxes from 1987 to 1992. Their properties were seized to satisfy that debt.

Attending the bid opening were dozens of other tax resisters, including one couple who carried a large painted poster proclaiming their nonpayment of federal taxes since the 1950s.

The properties offered for sale included the couple’s home, which is not equipped with running water or electricity and which uses an organic compost septic system, a small house lot, a 21-acre wood lot and a 13-acre blueberry field.

No bids were submitted for the house, and a second sealed bid opening has been scheduled for July 16 at the IRS office in Lewiston. If the property is not sold at that time, said IRS agent Diane Santoro, who conducted the sale, the federal agency will re-evaluate the $20,476 minimum bid established for the property.

Bids were opened inside the Town Office, which was restricted to bidders, the property owners, town and federal officials and five media representatives chosen by Capt. James Miclon of the Oxford County Sheriff’s Department from a pool of reporters standing in the side yard.

The couple’s children, Emily and Max Harvey, purchased the small house lot for $727, using money 16-year-old Max had earned raking blueberries, beating out a $600 bid from the town of Hartford. Gravalos was visibly upset that the town bid on the property.

The Town Office stands directly across the street from Gravalos’ house on Route 140, and the piece of property the town bid on was being considered as a new Town Office site.

The couple’s wood lot was sold for $10,000 to Kathleen Hutchins and Linda Rowe, both of Hartford, beating out a $9,560 bid for the land. Hutchins is the town’s tax collector, clerk, treasurer and administrative assistant, and Rowe is a selectman, but both women said they bought the land as private citizens.

The third piece of property, the blueberry field that has been cultivated for the past eight years by Harvey and Gravalos, was sold to Alan Noyes of Hartford. Noyes, who left immediately after the bid opening, indicated that he liked the view at the property and would be willing to talk to Harvey and Gravalos about some kind of arrangement to continue farming the land.

Harvey said after the sale, which lasted less than 10 minutes, that he and his family intended to remain in Hartford, would continue to live in their home and would continue farming blueberries on fields they planned to lease from other property owners.

“The good news is that nobody bid on our house,” Gravalos told the crowd after the sale was finished, and Harvey expressed his pleasure at seeing so many people supporting their cause.

“This is not a victory or defeat for anyone,” Harvey said. “It’s just a part of life.” That observation drew a large round of applause from the crowd.

And although the IRS seizure is nearly complete, Harvey said his views on tax resistance haven’t changed and he has no plans to pay any money to the federal government. Harvey has not paid federal taxes since 1959, and Gravalos hasn’t paid since 1972.

Supporter Jim Stockwell of Albion said, “I think (Harvey and Gravalos are) very proud of what they’re doing.” Stockwell praised their resolve to stand firm for their beliefs against increased military spending and decreased spending for education and health care.

Lee Holman, a supporter and neighbor of Harvey and Gravalos, said the couple’s commitment to paying local and state taxes and resisting paying federal taxes comes from their desire to “redirect tax dollars to build real security in this town instead of investing in a false sense of security” with the federal government.

The couple can redeem their properties in the next 180 days if they pay the bid price, plus another 20 percent, and any costs associated with the sale to the IRS.

IRS agent Santoro declined to talk to reporters before or after the sale.

Along with that second article was this sidebar:

Anti-tax group pays off liens of five families

Hartford — The tax resisters who demonstrated in support of Arthur Harvey and Elizabeth Gravalos say they are not against America’s tax system in itself and support payment of local and state taxes to help their own communities. What they protest is the federal government’s use of the tax money, a use that they claim they have no control over.

In an effort to show support for the local property tax system, the group of resisters, who are calling themselves Spears into Pruning Hooks, walked into the Hartford Town Office just before the public sale of the Harvey/Gravalos property and paid off outstanding tax liens for five local families.

Harvey said the group paid nearly $2,200, choosing the liens to be paid off based on whether the property owner had children and actually lived in Hartford, rather than being a part-time resident. The tax resisters did not have contact with the property owners; the payoffs were arranged through the Town Office.

The group originally offered to pay seven liens, but only five were paid because two of the families declined the group’s offer. Tax Collector Kathleen Hutchins said the payment retired tax liens for property owners Joseph Bedard, Ann Carro, Penny Stubbs, Matthew Piantone and James Guilmet.

According to Hutchins, the property owners who declined the resisters’ offer of payment said they did not agree with Harvey and Gravalos’ stand on tax resistance.

Hutchins, who said the town has never seized any property for nonpayment of property taxes, indicated that there are others in Hartford who oppose the stand taken by the Harvey-Gravalos family.

Speaking for the group, which still has $800 in an account reserved for payment of other tax liens, Harvey said Spears into Pruning Hooks plans to continue raising funds and making goodwill gestures for struggling local taxpayers.

Harvey and Gravalos were still at it a decade later:

Federal income tax

Resisters keep incomes below filing threshold

by Kelly Morgan
StaffWriter

Hartford — While many people across the country will be rushing to meet today’s deadline for filing federal income taxes, Arthur Harvey will more likely be home binding books or working on the mowers he’ll soon use to cut his blueberry fields.

It’s not that the 72-year-old organic farmer, inspector and book seller has filed early this year. Instead, Harvey, who lives with his family across from the town office on Main Street, has not paid federal income taxes since about 1959. He won’t pay because he is opposed to where his dollars would be spent.

“My fundamental objection is to nuclear weapons,” he said Thursday while seated at a small table off his kitchen, surrounded by copies of the collected works of Mahatma Gandhi. “And also to sending U.S. military forces to other countries.”

Harvey and his wife, Elizabeth Gravalos, 61, have joined as many as 200 Mainers and 10,000 people nationally who refuse to pay their federal income taxes in protest of military spending.

“We say about 8,000 to 10,000 people,” said Ruth Benn of the Brookly, N.Y.-based National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee on Thursday, “but it’s really hard to count.”

Benn said many, like Harvey and Gravalos, keep their incomes low so they won’t have to pay. Many others protest by refusing to pay federal taxes on their phone bills, another action that’s difficult to track.

According to information from IRS spokeswoman Peggy Riley, who’s based in Boston, the federal government faces what it calls a “gross tax gap” of $300 billion a year. The gap, Riley explained, “is the difference between what taxpayers should pay and what they actually pay.”

Riley said the IRS does not track those who refuse to pay on the grounds of opposing military spending.

Personal property seizures and deductions from paychecks are tools the IRS uses to collect unpaid tax dollars. In 1996, Harvey and Gravalos nearly lost their home and 13 acres of blueberry fields they farm in Hartford. At an auction after the properties were seized, Gravalos’ mother bought back the house. Their daughter Emily later received back the blueberry fields in a trade after the man who had purchased them found farming difficult, Harvey said, laughing.

Harvey, Gravalos and their son Max continue to farm the fields today. They use wood heat and kerosene lamps and drive old Volvos. Harvey sells books on the teachings of Gandhi, which he purchases from India, through the on-line marketplace Amazon.com.

The only electricity in the house comes from a small solar panel that runs a laptop computer and, on sunny days, a copier in a back room.

Because Gravalos now works as a part-time massage therapist, she does pay Social Security taxes, Harvey said. But she hasn’t paid income taxes since 1972.

The two file separately, each having to earn less than $3,100 in order to fall below federal tax filing requirements.

Harvey and Gravalos have taken part in efforts of the War Tax Resistance Resource Center of Maine. People affiliated with the organization often hand out fliers at IRS centers on tax deadline day.

Larry Dansinger, a Monroe-based representative of the group, said Thursday that people are expected to be handing out fliers today from Portland to Ellsworth

He himself doesn’t pay federal phone taxes.

“In our calculations, about 50 percent of every (federal income) tax dollar that people pay is going either directly or indirectly for military purposes,” he said.

Not paying, he added, “is not a nice, easy thing to do.”

I’ve many times mentioned Ammon Hennacy’s tax resistance hereabouts, but have only less-frequently commented on his more-well-known Catholic Worker comrade Dorothy Day’s stance.

The site catholicworker.org now has a search engine with which I have been able to recover some of her writings on the subject, which I’ll excerpt here today.

from “If Conscription Comes For Women” The Catholic Worker January 1943

“Render to Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.” Yes, and we have heard too much of that.

Let E.I. Watkin, founder of the Pax movement in England, author of The Catholic Center, Men and Tendencies, and The Bow in the Clouds, answer as he did in his pamphlet, “The Crime of Conscription.”

Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s. This is a favorite text with the hosts of Christian clerics, Protestant and Catholic, who both in the present and in the past, have abused and still abuse religion to enslave men’s consciences to the unjust bondages of a usurping state. They omit to notice the context. Our Lord has just asked for a coin, and having obtained the admission that it bear’s Caesar’s image and superscription, bids his questioners render to Caesar what is his. This is obviously the coin payable in taxation which bears Caesar’s stamp.

The body and soul of man, however, do not bear Caesar’s image. Whose image they do bear we are told in Holy Scripture. It is the image of God. Obviously, therefore, as we are to render to Caesar what bears his image, namely, money, we are to render to God, not to Caesar, what bears not Caesar’s stamp, but God’s; namely, human beings. Thus the same text which justifies, indeed, imposes the obligation of paying taxes, denies any right of the state to take a toll of man. All forced labor, for example, is implicitly declared unlawful. And still more does the principle here enunciated forbid military conscription. Whether a war be just or unjust, no government may without grave injustice compel me — bearing as I do the divine image which marks me as God’s bondman, but a freeman in respect to my fellows — to slay and be slain in its quarrel unless I freely consent. If a government unlawfully outsteps its prerogative and imposes conscription, any one who, from whatever motive, refuses to serve, is whether he intend it or not, fighting for human dignity and freedom, as also is anyone who abets and supports his resistance.

But now in these days it would be desirable to go even further, as did Thoreau, to refuse even the taxes which were to be used to pay for the means to kill our fellow man. In many cases, however, it is all but impossible to separate the tax from the cost of the commodity needed to maintain life.

from “More About Holy Poverty, Which Is Voluntary Poverty” The Catholic Worker February 1945

We believe that social security legislation, now balled as a great victory for the poor and for the worker, is a great defeat for Christianity. It is an acceptance of the Idea of force and compulsion.

[The people] pay taxes, and it is the city and the state and the federal government that is robbing them and pilfering them, too, They are taxed for every bite they eat, every shoddy rag they put on. They are taxed on their jobs, there are deductions for this and that, there are the war bonds, eighteen dollars for a twenty-five dollar war bond, paid on the Installment plan. And they are not only being taxed, but they are being seduced. Their virtue is being drained from them. They are made into war profiteers, they are forced into the position of usurers. The whole nation, every man woman and child, is forced to become a profiteer — hideous word — in this war.

from “Poverty Without Tears” The Catholic Worker April 1950

If you cry aloud for land and home and tools and the good natural life for the poor without which a good supernatural life is impossible, then you are either an escapist and an inhabitant of an ivory tower, or you are a Communist in disguise trying to do away with property.

And you are a communist also if you cry out for peace and against increased armaments — against the making of the hydrogen and atom bombs and the paying of federal taxes for the making of those bombs. We know, who picketed March 15 before the tax offices up on 45^th street, because we heard these jibes as we walked to and fro with our signs.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker September 1950

We will have more to write about taxes later. We believe in paying our local taxes but not federal. Maybe this is quibbling, but the benefits of hospitals, fire department, street cleaning and health department, etc. make us firm in our decision to always pay our local taxes though we will not pay income tax.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker February 1953

I can scarcely list all the people Ammon [Hennacy] introduced me to, all the friends he has made through his constant protest against war and taxes for war, and his distribution of the Catholic Worker. But I can give a little glimpse of Ammon’s living quarters, in his little three room bungalow on Lin Orme’s place some five miles out of town [Phoenix, Arizona].

Ammon likes to call our Lord the Celestial Bulldozer to indicate that ones way is smoothed for one, the rough ways made plain and the crooked straight. He arrived in Phoenix broke, he said, as he came further south out of the dairy region to the farming section of the country where he could work by the day and not by the month and so avoid the withholding tax. He slept all night on an anarchist’s floor (one of the readers of the CW) and got up at daylight to go to the slave market, as the corner is named in every town in every state, Calif., Texas, Florida, New Mexico and Arizona, where immigrant workers are employed. Some times there are as many as 200 trucks, sometimes only 25. They go as far as seventy miles away for the day’s work. Mexican trucks take only Mexicans. He got on the second truck, owned by the Arena brothers, a corporation which owns land in California, Colorado, and Arizona, and specializes in lettuce, melons, cabbage, celery. This was October 7, 1947, the year the withholding tax began. At the end of his day’s work he asked if there was a shack on the place where he could sleep, and a fellow worker told him of one down the road and he took his sleeping bag and camped out there for the night. He stayed there for some months and as it was on land rented by Mr. Orme to the company, he became acquainted with that old gentleman who later invited him to occupy the vacant shack on his own land. There is one room and two porches, rather than three rooms, really, and before Ammon lived there, twelve Mexicans had camped out there. I sat on the porch one afternoon with Ammon and drank strong black coffee, brewed on a little kitchen stove, stuffed with mesquite which burned fragrantly while we talked.

from “Poverty Is to Care and Not to Care” The Catholic Worker April 1953

How does property fit in, people ask. It was Eric Gill who said that property is proper to man. And St. Thomas Aquinas said that a certain amount of goods is necessary to lead a good life. The recent popes wrote at length about justice rather than charity, that should be sought for the worker. Unions are still fighting for wages and hours, and it is a futile fight with the price of living going up steadily. They are fighting for partial gains and every strike means sacrifice to make them, and still the situation in the long run is not bettered. There may be talk of better standards of living, every worker with his car, and owning his own home, but still this comfort depends on a wage, a boss, on War. Our whole modern economy is based on preparation for war and that is one of the great modern arguments for poverty. If the comfort one has gained has resulted in the death of thousands in Korea and other parts of the world, then that comfort will be have to be atoned for. the argument now is that there is no civilian population, that all are involved in the war (misnamed defense) effort. If you work in a textile mill making cloth, or in a factory making dungarees or blankets, it is still tied up with war. If one raises food or irrigates to raise food, one may be feeding troops or liberating others to serve as troops. If you ride a bus you are paying taxes. Whatever you buy is taxed so you are supporting the state in the war which is “the health of the state.”

The argument may go this way, but we still can choose what seems to us the most honorable occupations, which have to do with human needs. We can choose the kind of work most necessary to do, and if possible where there is no withholding tax for war. Ammon Hennacy in working by the day, at hard farm labor, has not paid income tax for years. One can so cut down one’s standard of living that no income tax is required; families with many children pay no income tax. One can protest in many ways this contribution to the atom and hydrogen bomb. If one owns property the government then can take a lien on it. If one has money in the bank, the government can confiscate it. So truly such protest as this calls for the most profound poverty and a voluntary doing without property.

from “The Pope and Peace” The Catholic Worker February 1954

How obey the laws of a state when they run counter to man’s conscience? “Thou shalt not kill,” Divine law states. “A new precept I give unto you that you love your brother as I have loved you.” St. Peter disobeyed the law of men and stated that he had to obey God rather than man. Wars today involve total destruction, obliteration bombing, killing of the innocent, the stockpiling of atom and hydrogen bombs. When one is drafted for such war, when one registers for the draft for such a war, when one pays income tax, eighty per cent of which goes to support such war, or works where armaments are made, one is participating in this war. We are all involved in war these days. War means hatred and fear. Love casts out fear.

from “Are the Leaders Insane?” The Catholic Worker April 1954

St. Augustine in his City of God says that God never intended man to dominate his fellows. He was to dominate the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, what crawled upon the earth, but men were not to dominate each other. He preferred shepherds to kings. It was man himself who insisted on having a worldly king though he was warned what would happen to him. God allowed the prophets to anoint the kings and once men had accepted their kings they were supposed to show them respect, to obey the authority they had set up. To obey, that is, in all that did not go against their conscience. St. Peter was ordered by lawful authority not to preach in the name of Jesus, and he said he had to obey God rather than man, and he left prison to go out again to the market place and preach the Gospel. Over and over again, men had to disobey lawful authority to follow the voice of their conscience.

This obedience to God and disobedience to the State has over and over again happened through history.

It is time again to cry out against our “leaders,” to question whether or not, since it is not for us to say that they are evil men, they are sane men.

It is all very well to say we must go to the source of all strength, to drink at the living fountain of Christ, but can we go from that fount of Love to a factory where nerve gas and incendiary bombs are manufactured?

When we have talked of a general strike it is of such work and of such evil that we are thinking; when we talk of non-payment of taxes it is of the money which is going to Indo-China in the form of these incendiary bombs and the planes to drop them that we are thinking. It is not thus that we can love God and our brother; it is not in this way that we can love our enemy.

When it is said that we disturb people too much by the words pacifism and anarchism, I can only think that people need to be disturbed, that their consciences need to be aroused, that they do indeed need to look into their work, and study new techniques of love and poverty and suffering for each other. Of course the remedies are drastic, but then too the evil is a terrible one and we are all involved, we are all guilty, and most certainly we are all going to suffer. The fact that we have “the faith,” that we go to the sacraments, is not enough. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” with napalm, nerve gas, our hydrogen bomb…

Each one of us must make our decisions as to what he should do, each one must examine his conscience and beg God for strength. Should one register for the draft? Should one accept conscientious objector status in the army or out of it, taking advantage of the exceptions allowed, but accepting the fact of the draft? Should one pay tax which supports this gigantic program?

I realize how difficult this is to decide. If one is unmarried and strong physically, it is easier to make a decision to do only day labor or work without pay. But there are many whose mental and physical strength is not equal to this decision and there is a withholding tax taken from even the smallest salary. Sometimes one can only make a gesture of protest. It is not for any one to judge his fellow man on how far he can go in resisting participation in preparation for war. In the very works of mercy which we are performing, we at the Catholic Worker are being aided by those who earn what they do only because they pay income tax for war. Oh yes, the editors of The Catholic Worker know only too well how far we too are involved in the city of this world. Perhaps Bob Ludlow, who left us much against our will, felt that he was being more honest in permitting a withholding tax to be taken from his meager wage as hospital attendant that working for nothing for the Catholic Worker. Who knows the heart of another? The temptation is always there to go out on one’s own, to walk the lone path of a St. Francis rather than the community way of a St. Benedict.

from “Mid-Summer Retreat at Maryfarm” The Catholic Worker July–August 1954

[Ammon Hennacy] has had to abandon his life at hard labor and to replace that discipline of work he is fasting Fridays; during our recent retreat he fasted, and again in August for nine days he will picket and fast in reparation for Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the cruel weapons of destruction which we have made. All men are responsible, but Ammon by not paying income tax, and by penance, is doing reparation.

from “What is Happening?” The Catholic Worker November 1955

And the other trouble? It was Federal income taxes and investigations for Ammon Hennacy, Charlie McCormick, Carol Perry and me. Charlie has had no income for all the years he is with The Catholic Worker, but the rest of us could acknowledge having earned money on which we did not pay taxes, and which we refuse to pay because eighty per cent of the money so gathered goes for wars past and present. The others were treated with great courtesy, but one of the revenue agents made a coldly insulting remark to me based on my past, which was entirely uncalled for. But perhaps he was only stupid so I acted as though I did not hear it.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker December 1957

I would like to urge upon the bishops the idea of the non-payment of taxes by Catholic parents for school taxes, when they are sending their children to Catholic schools and so are paying double for their education.

from “The Pope is Dead. Long Live the Pope / Viva John ⅩⅩⅢ” The Catholic Worker November 1958

Yes, we must set ourselves with all the force we possess, against war, and the making of instruments of war, and our means are prayer and fasting, and the non-payment of federal income tax which goes for war.

from “Month of the Dead” The Catholic Worker November 1959

The message of The Catholic Worker is that simple one for all the rank and file, for the masses, that we have free will, we can make our choice, that our personal responsibility which we exercise is what matters. Ammon [Hennacy], in his non-payment of taxes for war, and his civil disobedience, is bringing that message to countless thousands of people.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker March 1960

When we got home from our little tour of the neighborhood and I had explored the view from the eleventh floor, Ammon came for supper and brought us up to date on his journeyings as well as on the news of our own workers in Chicago. He had no sooner arrived in town on Saturday when he was called on to picket in front of the courthouse for Roseanna Robinson. They are keeping up a vigil night and day, people joining for a stint of three hours at a time. I certainly hope to join them sometime these next few days. Roseanna is a young colored woman who had refused to pay any income tax 85 per cent of which goes for war, or to file any returns. She had been given an indeterminate sentence and she is now for two weeks on hunger strike. I suppose they will forcibly feed her. The newspapers are paying little head to this, so it is necessary to have the picket line, and Karl Meyer has gotten out a leaflet which is signed by The Catholic Worker, 164 West Oak street and the War Resisters League which takes in all those who are not Catholic who wish to participate but might hesitate if it were only under Catholic leadership.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker April 1961

There is much to be done in these small Indian schools throughout the country [the United States South-West], and a peace army could be at work there right now, without waiting to be drafted. There would be no pay besides a living, and so no bother about income tax, and so no contributing to war in this way.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker June 1966

I could not help but think of Don Milani’s statement in his defense against the charges made against him of advocating resistance to conscription for war. He said that even those who cooked for troops contributed to war. How involved we all are, what with the hidden taxes we pay for war, the high standard of living all of us enjoy, even when we refuse to pay income tax, so much of which goes for war, and when we build prisons for draft refusers.

“Tribute to the Nelsons” The Catholic Worker February 1968

Every summer for the past three years a Peacemakers training program has been held at our Tivoli farm for the last two or three weeks of August. The old mansion and the Peter Maurin house are filled with guests, and campers come and set up their tents on the lawn facing the river. The organizer of the Peacemakers’ school is Wally Nelson, who has been in the workhouse in Cincinnati for the past two weeks, fasting. He and several others were arrested during a vigil for DeCourcy Squire, an 18 yr. old Antioch student who had been hospitalized after fasting since her arrest Dec. 7 and subsequent sentence of 9 mo. for participating in a peace demonstration. (DeCourcy has since been released.)

A psychiatric examination was ordered for Wally when he refused to co-operate with his arrest and trial. Found by court psychiatrists to be “sane,” he was sentenced for “loitering” to ten days in the workhouse, $25 and costs. Again refusing to co-operate with legalized injustice, he was dragged from the police van by his legs, an action that caused his wife Juanita to follow him, cradling his head in her hands. When they arrived at Wally’s cell, Nita bent over to kiss him, was arrested for “disorderly conduct” and fined $25 and costs. This she refused to pay, and was ordered to the workhouse.

Detailed stories of these arrests are given in the February 10^th issue of the Peacemaker, (10208 Sylvan Avenue, (Gano) Cincinnati, Ohio 45241). I hope that many of our readers will subscribe to the Peacemaker, since news of the conscientious objectors who are in prison and much other war-resistance news can be obtained there. Peacemakers have led in direct action for many years.

Wally and Juanita have both refused to pay income tax for many years, and it is of them particularly I wish to write, with the most heartfelt sympathy for their suffering and the greatest admiration for their dedication. It is their vocation to realize and to lead others to realize the horror of the times through which we are passing. Wally has explained that his fasting during the jail sentences he has undergone was the result not of willful refusal but of a total inability to swallow food while imprisoned. Simone Weil, the French woman whose brilliant writings on man and the state, work and war, were widely published after her death, suffered during the second world war in the same way. She was literally unable to swallow enough food to keep her alive, in the face of world starvation.

In the stories of the saints, one reads of such sensitivity, such penances undergone, such fastings endured and they are little understood by the secular world. I am convinced that this vocation, this calling, to give oneself to one’s brother, in loving communion, in loving understanding of the heinous crimes that are being committed today was at the root of Roger La Porte’s immolation in front of the United Nations two years ago. It is as though such men said, “We will suffer with you, since we have no way of stopping the bombing, the burning, the napalm, the defoliation, the destruction of homes and an entire countryside. There is no act of ours extreme enough, no protest strong enough, to deal with this horror.”

Wally Nelson was in prison for thirty-three months during World War Two and fasted for a hundred and eight days (with forced feeding by tube) as a protest against racial segregation of prisoners. He had had time to think out his position while in Civilian Public Service camp, as forced labor camps which were set up for conscientious objectors were called. These very camps were a concession to pacifists, who had been imprisoned and brutally treated during World War One. But Wally decided to walk out and did so and was arrested and jailed. His example and that of other absolutists led to further concessions. In this present undeclared war in Vietnam, to which ten thousand more men were shipped off yesterday, the conscientious objector position is recognized, and paid employment is offered in home hospitals as “alternative service.” To accept this is still to submit to the draft, hence the continued protests against war, and the drafting of youth to wage this hideous struggle.

from “Ammon Hennacy: ‘Non-Church’ Christian” The Catholic Worker February 1970

[To Hennacy,] Obedience, of course, was a bad word. Authority was a bad word. In vain I pointed out to him that when the retired army major for whom he worked in Arizona told him to do a particular job, he did it, and he did it as he was told to. He admired the army officer because he knew farming. And he cooperated with Ammon in paying him by the day and thus evading the federal income tax which the tax man was trying to collect from Ammon.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker May 1971

I visited Art Harvey of South Ackworth, New Hampshire who has a mail order book shop handling a great number of books by and about Gandhi. Art and Ammon Hennacy served six month terms in Sandstone Prison in Minnesota for trespassing on a missile base some years ago. He carries on a practical application of Karl Meyer’s tax refusal (see article in this issue) by having teams of workers in orchards where they prune trees, harvest apples and later blueberries and work seven months of the year. They work and live in a style which frees them from the payment of taxes for war. Perhaps about a hundred are engaged in this way of life, which results usually in some settling in communities of the moshavim variety, each having some small acreage and a house built by themselves. Considering the New England climate, no small achievement! It certainly means an emphasis on the ascetic, on sacrifice.

from “On Pilgrimage: Russia Ⅱ” The Catholic Worker October–November 1971

The other young man who visited Russia was Karl Meyer, who at present is serving his sentence of a two-year term (and thousand dollar fine) at Sandstone Federal Prison, for obstructing the income tax system by refusal to pay taxes for war. He had made the San Francisco-to-Moscow walk some years before, joining the march at Chicago. The walk ended at Moscow University, where the students, though not agreeing with the American visitors, demanded that the time of their talks be extended. He also distributed leaflets in Red Square!

from “We Go On Record: CW Refuses Tax Exemption” The Catholic Worker May 1972

The Catholic Worker has received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service stating that we owe them $296,359 in fines, penalties, and unpaid income tax for the last six years. As the matter stands right now, there might be a legal battle with delays and postponements which may remind us of Dickens’ Bleak House. Or, since we will not set up a defense committee to campaign for funds, it may terminate swiftly in the confiscation of our property and our bank account (never very large). Our farm at Tivoli and the First Street house could be put up for sale by government agents and our C.W. family evicted.

One of the most costly protests against war, in terms of long-enduring personal sacrifice, is to refuse to pay federal income taxes which go for war. The late Ammon Hennacy, one of our editors, was a prime example of this. He earned his living at agricultural labor, always living on a poverty level so as not to be subject to taxes, though he filed returns. Another of our editors, Karl Meyer, recently spent ten months in jail for what the I.R.S. called fraudulent claims of exemption for dependents. He ran the C.W. House of Hospitality in Chicago for many years, working to earn the money to support the house and his wife and children. Erosanna Robinson, a social worker in Chicago, refused to file returns and was sentenced to a year in prison. While in prison she fasted and was forcibly fed. It will be seen that tax refusal is a serious protest. Wars will cease when we refuse to pay for them (to adapt a slogan of the War Resisters International).

The C.W. has never paid salaries. Everyone gets board, room, and clothes (tuition, recreation included, as the C.W. is in a way a school of living). So we do not need to pay federal income taxes. Of course, there are hidden taxes we all pay. Nothing is ever clear-cut or well defined. We protest in any way we can, according to our responsibilities and temperaments.

(I remember Ammon, a most consistent, brave, and responsible person, saying to one young man, “For the love of the Lord, get a job and quit worrying about taxes. You need to learn how to earn your own living. That is most important for you.”)

We have to accept with humility the fact that we cannot share the destitution of those around us, and that our protests are incomplete. Perhaps the most complete protest is to be in jail, to accept jail, never to give bail or defend ourselves.

In the fifties, Ammon, Charles McCormack (our business manager at the C.W.), and I were summoned to the offices of the I.R.S. in New York to answer questions (under oath) as to our finances. I remember I was asked what happened to the royalties from my books, money from speaking engagements, etc. I could only report that such monies received were deposited in the C.W. account. As for clothes, we wore what came in; my sister was generous to me — shoes, for instance.

Our refusal to apply for exemption status in our practice of the Works of Mercy is part of our protest against war and the present social “order” which brings on wars today.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker June 1972

In the May issue of The Catholic Worker I wrote of the crisis The Catholic Worker found itself in when we received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service stating that we owe them $296,359 in fines and penalties and unpaid income tax for the tax years, 1966 through 1970. This was a very impressive bill, and we wondered what it would be if they started figuring out what they thought we owed them from the years 1933, when we began, up to 1966!

The New York Times, in a story signed by Max Seigel, with a four column head and a picture of a few of us at lunch in our headquarters at 36 East First Street, brought our situation to the attention of a vaster group of readers, and followed up the story with an editorial [“Imagination, Please” 24 May — excerpt: “Surely the IRS must have genuine frauds to investigate. Surely there must be some worthwhile work this agency could be doing instead of obstructing acts of corporal mercy for the poor.”]. The New York evening Post also editorialized on our situation. The National Catholic Reporter and the Commonweal editors also registered their protest and other papers followed suit. Letters come in daily from our friends, reassuring, comforting, indignant at the government, a few of them indignant at us, that we cause them so much worry. We certainly are grateful and must apologize that we cannot keep up with the mail and get them all answered.

There is not any real news for them at the moment, nor will be until our July–August edition of The Catholic Worker. I will have to appear before a Federal Judge on July 3 to explain why the CW refuses to pay taxes, or to “structure itself” so as to be exempt from taxes. We are afraid of that word “structure.” We refuse to become a “corporation.”

We repeat — we do not intend to “incorporate” the Catholic Worker movement. We intend to continue our emphasis on personal responsibility, an emphasis which we were taught from the beginning by Peter Maurin who used to quote Emmanuel Mounier’s Personalist Manifesto, and his Personal and Communitarian Revolution, Peter was our teacher, and being a Frenchman, a peasant, he emphasized decentralization, manual labor, voluntary poverty.

Voluntary poverty meant that everyone at the CW worked without salary, and contributions came from them, and from our readers, which kept the work going.

Rumblings first came from the Internal Revenue service after many on the CW staff, together with other peace groups, demonstrated against war in the Fifties and Sixties and were jailed for Civil Disobedience. Writing about jails and courtrooms resulted in much publicity. But it was Ammon Hennacy and Karl Meyer who wrote most consistently on Tax Refusal, and its importance. “Wars will cease when men refuse to pay for them.”

…And while you are at it, write to TAX Talk, published by War Tax Resistance, 339 Lafayette St., N.Y., N.Y. 10012 which contains letters from all over the country from individual tax resisters, telling what is happening to them. Stimulating and invigorating. Good make up and good format. First Rate.

While I write, Arthur J. Lacey comes in to hand me my mail and it contains a notice from one of our two lawyers. “Please be advised that I have been contacted by the Conference Section of the Internal Revenue Service and we have arranged for the hearing on September 7, 1972.”

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker July–August 1972

Good news first! On July 11^th we received absolution from the U.S. Government in relation to all our tax troubles. In the May Catholic Worker this year we told of the notice we had received — that we owed the government nearly $300,000 in back income taxes which included penalties for “late filing and negligence.” The examining officer of the Manhattan District had arrived at these figures through the reports we had obediently made to Albany on our appeals for funds, which we send out once or twice a year. We accept this compromise with our local state because we are decentralists, personalists, anarchists (in addition to being pacifists). When we first thought about Federal income taxes, most of which go for war or “defense,” we simplistically considered ourselves exempt because we had no income; no salaries are paid at the Catholic Worker, nor ever have been since we started in 1933. I myself have been questioned because of my writings, and lecture fees which were not really fees but offerings made to the work which covered all expenses of travelling and supported the work besides. A crowd of people living together as we do, in houses of hospitality, has to give something of an account to each other as to how well we are living up to our profession of voluntary poverty. We are always bound to have healthy guilt feelings about that, and keep trying to do better. Certainly a number of us do work on the side to provide what we need for books or rent on cheap apartments in the neighborhood, since our house at 36 East First Street is always so crowded.

But with the growing tax resistance throughout the United States, the government has become concerned. Telephone calls and official visits made us realize that trouble was impending. And we have been having it and have reported on it in both the May and June issues of our paper.

Now we are happy to report the outcome. In a conference in late June with William T. Hunter, litigation attorney from the Department of Justice, one of the Assistant Attorney Generals of the United States, we reached a verbal settlement couched in more human and satisfactory terms than the notice we later received.

“They” were willing to recognize our undoubtedly religious convictions in our conflict with the state, and were going to drop any proceedings against us. They had examined and looked into back issues of the Catholic Worker, and they had noted the support we had from the press (the New York Times news story and the editorials of the Times and the New York Post), and had come to this conclusion that ours was a religious conviction. They had come to the conclusion also that it was not necessary that the Federal Government seek for any other kind of a “conviction” against us.

The conference took place in a law office in Manhattan, 9:30 of a Monday morning. John Coster, our lawyer, Mr. Hunter and Ed Forand, Walter Kerell, Patrick Jordan, Ruth Collins and I attended. There were no hostilities expressed. As peacemakers we must have love and respect for each individual we come in contact with. Our struggle is with principalities and powers, not with Church or State. We cannot ever be too complacent about our own uncompromising positions because we know that in our own way we too make compromises. (For instance, in having a second-class mailing privilege from the government we accept a subsidy, just as Mr. Eastland does in Mississippi! [This refers to Senator James Eastland, who was a beneficiary of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in federal cotton subsidies, overseen by a Senate committee he sat on.])

It was Jesus who said that the worst enemies were those of our own household, and we are all part of this country, citizens of the United States and share in its guilt.

Yes, we would survive, I thought to myself, even if the paper were eventually suppressed and we had to turn to leafleting, as we are doing now each Monday against the I.B.M. Wall-Street offices, trying to reach the consciences of all those participating by their daily work in the hideous and cowardly war we are waging in Vietnam.

I must not forget the beautiful young ghinkgo tree which we purchased from the city last year, and which we planted in honor of Carmen Mathews, herself a great lover of the countryside (and of drama). She rescued us from a foreclosure when a first mortgage fell due and so has become part of this house on First Street, and of the bits of greenery back and front of it. The fact that prisoners on Riker’s Island so I have been told, grow these trees which brighten our streets makes that tree especially dear to me. When I pass it, I make the sign of the cross on its bark, to encourage it to grow fast and strong. Maybe we can plant another this year in gratitude to God for saving us from the hands of the tax gatherers. Fr. McNabb, the French Dominican, said that when Jesus left his apostles, “Peter could go back to his nets, but Matthew could not go back to his tax gatherings.”

Letter from the Internal Revenue Service:

From: District Director, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, PO Box 3100, Church St. Station, New York, N.Y., 10008

To: The Catholic Worker Movement, 36 East 1^st Street, New York, N.Y. 10003

July 11, 1972

Gentlemen:

After examining your financial records and reviewing your activities for the above years, we find that you are not required to file annual returns for the years shown, and no further action is necessary regarding the proposals in our letter of January 17, 1972.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely yours,
District Director
Form L-259

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker January 1973

…of our own conflict with the IRS. We live in what we can only regard as a temporary truce. We have not applied for or received tax exemption. The letter we received (and published) from the N.Y. State Offices of the IRS stated:

After examining your financial records and reviewing your activities for the above years (1966–1970), we find that you are not required to file annual returns for the years shown, and no further action is necessary regarding the proposals in our letter of January 17, 1972.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely yours,
District Director
Internal Revenue Service

The Washington official representative who met with us conveyed to us the respect they held for our religious principles and assured us that the presented bill for almost $300,000 could be ignored. The matter would be dropped, it was indicated (but, “for the present” was the qualifying clause in my own mind).

Mr. Nixon’s first statement that he would attack the problem of “permissiveness” was a warning note. The jailing of newspaper reporters, the Ellsberg trial — in fact, any criticisms of government policies or actions was going to meet with repressive measures.

The tax refusal movement all over the country grows. The conflict between State and people is coming out into the open here in the United States. The Totalitarian State is not just Germany (Hitler), Italy (Mussolini) and the USSR (Stalin), but is here and now with the “all encroaching State” as our Catholic bishops once called it, involving China and ourselves, as well as Russia.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker February 1974

We assure our readers that we try to get rid of our gifts as fast as they are given to us. But the threat still hangs over us of prosecution for not paying income tax. We are not tax-exempt. On principle we refuse to pay income tax, because so great a portion goes for wars, preparation for wars (defense, it is termed), and providing other countries with billion of dollars to buy our instruments of war and material and plants to make their own. There is a sizable movement truly the foundation of the peace movement which is based on tax refusal. (Contact Robert Calvert, War Tax Resistance, 912 E. 31^st St., Kansas City, Mo. 64109.)

Our refusal goes deep. Our motivation is fundamentally religious. We are told by Jesus Christ to practice the works of mercy, not the works of war. And we do not see why it is necessary to ask the government for permission to practice the works of mercy which are the opposite of the works of war. To ask that permission to obey Christ by applying for exemption, a costly and lengthy process, is against our religious principles. It is an interference of the state which we must call attention to again and again. A father who educates a young man or woman other than a blood relative is taxed for his generosity. A poor family who takes in another poor family (as many of them do in time of unemployment or crisis), cannot count that as tax deductible. Of course the poor suffer from the withholding tax which is taken from their weekly pay. To understand their rights, they must plough through booklets and forms put out by the government (which I am sure I could not manage to do) before they are able to collect money at the end of the year which is owing to them due to some change of circumstance. To get the advice of the Internal Revenue Department means standing in lines, paying excessive fares by bus or subway, with generally little redress of their grievances.

(A cheering note for us, with our very large family, which seems to increase day after day, is that when confronted by the government forces not long ago, Washington representatives from the Department of Justice were willing to concede that we were not making profits out of the poor, that we were motivated by religious principles, and that they would so notify the New York offices of the Internal Revenue Dept. which had handed us a awful bill for taxes due, along with penalties and fines, over a space of four or five years. The New York office then sent us a brief notice concluding that our income did not obligate us to file returns.)

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker May 1974

To talk economics to the rich and Jesus to the anarchists gathered in convention [a conference at New York’s Hunter College] these two days (and have to write this column) is a job. Besides, I did not “talk Jesus” to the anarchists. There was no time to answer the one great disagreement which was in their minds — how can you reconcile your Faith in the monolithic, authoritarian Church which seems so far from Jesus who “had no place to lay his head,” and who said “sell what you have and give to the poor,” — with your anarchism? Because I have been behind bars in police stations, houses of detention, jails and prison farms, whatsoever they are called, eleven times, and have refused to pay Federal income taxes and have never voted, they accept me as an anarchist. And I in turn, can see Christ in them even though they deny Him, because they are giving themselves to working for a better social order for the wretched of the earth.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker June 1974

Proceeded to the Kansas City, Mo. House of Hospitality and War Tax Resistors’ Center in adjoining buildings and run by Bob and Angela Calvert who are gardening every inch of the land in their front and back yards. It is much to the edification of the city block families and we hope their imitation.

Spent a Sunday afternoon with Karl Meyer and Jean and their three beautiful children, and all happy in the life of voluntary poverty where he receives an income low enough to be untaxable and so will not anticipate any more jail terms. His work is with the retarded in sheltered workshops.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker February 1975

Some of the best all around accounts of this ferment which is going on, among the young especially, is in The Peacemaker, 1255 Paddock Hills Ave., Cincinnati, Ohio 45229. This small packed newspaper deals extensively and specifically in works for peace, listing all those imprisoned for conscience — refusing conscription; one valiant woman is confined on Terminal Island for refusal to pay taxes (Martha Tranquilli, Terminal Island, San Pedro, Ca. 90731). All those activities which we Catholics call “works of mercy,” are also performed by many Protestant, Quaker, and other groups in the country.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker March–April 1975

I remember a young woman who came to help us years ago, who, after her first, early enthusiasm had worn away, used to sigh wearily and say — “What’s it all about?” I am sure many of our friends and readers also pose, more seriously, the same question. For instance, what are Ernest and Marion Bromley all about? Why is this frail, elderly man in jail right now for “disorderly conduct,” that is, for distributing leaflets about the nefarious workings of the Internal Revenue Service and their ways of penalizing people for advocating tax refusal. Remember, it is the Federal taxes paid by each of us that supply arms that are keeping wars going, I cannot go into the important discussion of Tax Refusal now. (Subscribe for The Peacemaker, 1225 Paddock Hills Ave., Cincinnati, Ohio 45229 or write to War Tax Resistance, 339 Lafayette St., New York, N.Y. 10012.)

What I want to bring out is how a pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. And each one of our thoughts, words and deeds are like that. Going to jail, as Ernest Bromley has done, short though his stay may be, causes a ripple of conscience among us all. And of remembrance too.

Did they search him and list every item contained in every pocket? Did they strip him and search every nook and cranny of his body, as they did the young women arrested during the protests against air raids drills (psychological warfare) in the 50’s? As they are doing now to Martin Sostre in Dannemora prison even after every visit from friends or lawyers. What sadistic impulse is it that causes guards to continue these searches?

Ernest Bromley is sharing, in his (we hope) brief jail encounter, the sufferings of the world. And we hope, like the apostles, he rejoices in having been accounted “worthy to suffer.”

The Peacemaker, every issue, has a list of those imprisoned for conscientious objection to war. I was happy to see that Martha Tranquilli was due for release March 3.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker July–August 1975

The Peacemakers discussed, among other subjects like voluntary poverty, life styles, etc., the kind of demonstrations to show our determination not to pay income tax which goes for building up monstrous implements of war. Wally Nelson and his wife Juanita were there, both of whom are familiar with arrests and jailings. I got acquainted with them years ago when Koinonia, in Central Georgia, was literally under fire from the small-towners all around them.

Next issue, I will try to write more about federal income tax which is providing the weapons for war — why we pay local taxes and not the federal income tax. We recognize the seriousness of this and the risks involved for families. The Bromley case is an example. Their house was sold from under them in Cincinnati but they have not yet been evicted. The price paid was excessively above its value. It looks like the government is trying to make an example of them. (It was not bought by friends and given back to them — an erroneous rumor; the Bromleys would not have put up with a connived sale which would mean still more money going to the government for war.)

This is a good and historic case, involving as it does, simple, plain and powerless (?) people.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker October–November 1975

I’d like to call special attention to a story in this issue of the paper — it is Peggy Scherer’s story, on the front page, of the Peacemaker victory [the IRS surrendered in their attempt to seize and sell Ernest and Marion Bromley’s home]. (It is the completed story of the news box which appeared on page three of the last issue.) It is a story of gentle persistence, the power of Truth — faith in Truth (remembering that Christ is our Truth). He is the Way, the Truth, the Life.

Chuck Matthei had told me the story of his interviews with the head of the Internal Revenue Service, the almost daily dialogue that went on between them, and the frank and “manly” admission, made finally by the IRS chief, that a mistake had been made, that the Peacemakers had Truth on their side. I felt a great sense of joy and thanksgiving, a sense of hope too, that our officials in Washington D.C. could be approached in this way — with dignity and perseverance, with courtesy, with the recognition that we are all, each one of us, whether government official or radical (one who gets to the roots of things), children of God. We do believe that we are all brothers and sisters. We believe, too, that we can only show our love for God by our love for our brothers and sisters. So we share our joy with you, our readers, and hope we all have a sense of renewed strength and energy to continue our opposition to all violence, to all wars.

We point out that one way not to have to pay income tax, so much of which goes to the military, into stockpiling, into sales of weapons to other countries, is to seek more ways of living a life of voluntary poverty, to follow our Lord Jesus and his loveable servant St. Francis.

[Speaking of Pentecostal Christian groups on the Mexican border:] I could tell of other works these groups have done, but there is no space here. I only wish that the cause of peace, the rejection of war and service in the armed forces, and refusal to pay income tax could be part of their way of life. Jesus told us to love our enemies and St. Francis’ followers made a rejection of feudal service to the war lords of the time part of their religious commitment.

In 1972 the Catholic Worker organization itself was targeted by the IRS for failure to pay income tax. Eventually the IRS backed down in the face of public ridicule and Catholic Worker resistance. Some of the Catholic Worker articles about this were written by Dorothy Day and I’ve already excerpted them in an earlier Picket Line post focusing on her writings.

The June 1972 issue published a couple of reader reactions to the kerfluffle:

Dear Dorothy,

Ho, you are on the right track. I just read your tax exemption article in the May issue. You are absolutely correct.

I don’t know how you will do it. But you owe to all those you help, not the money represented, but the faith and steadfast purpose for which you stand — the guiding light. I pray for you. I hope some way you can make it — somehow.

Love,
Dick Mayer
409 West 11th St.
Newton, Kansas 67114

Dear Friends at CW,

I just read the 39^th Anniversary issue and am tremendously excited by the article: “If the Present Is Different…”

We are in a bit of a “predicament,” between seizure of our car and auction by the IRS. The IRS has adjourned the open auction and declared an auction for sealed bids; peace people around here are ready to rise to that challenge also.

We are starting a peace action center in this area. We’d be interested in literature lists of books and pamphlets written by CW people.

We read that the CW has to appear in court to justify its tax refusal and its refusal to ask for exemption — as if mercy had to ask permission! We are in a three-family intentional communlty of Mennonite background. War tax resistance is one of our pillars and we’ve not yet found our way out of tbe maze of incorporation into some status that gives us the kind of freedom we seek. But our existence together, our resistance and service, are dally victories. So we keep on.

Peace and Joy be with you,
David Jansen of the Bridge

People will be less reluctant to take risks in a tax resistance campaign if they know other people are willing to share those risks. One way of providing this sort of reassurance is for resisters to join together in a mutual insurance plan, so that if the government takes legal action against a resister, or retaliates against them in some other way, they won’t have to bear these consequences alone.

Today I’ll review some examples of how a variety of tax resistance campaigns have created mutual insurance plans to protect resisters.

War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund

The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund reimburses American war tax resisters who have penalties & interest seized by the IRS. The fund is operated by a team of resisters and sympathizers, and has hundreds of subscribers:

In 1982 a core group of 83 people across the country decided we could easily share $463.14 in penalties and interest incurred by a few military tax resisters who appealed to the war tax resistance community for help. The more people we could recruit to shoulder the penalties and interest of resisters, the lighter the burden for everyone. With the modest help we could provide, conscientious resisters were able to keep on keeping on.

The penalty fund had the added benefit of making us all tax resisters, not just those who withheld all or a portion of their income taxes. The base list of supporters has been as high as 800 people sharing the weight. In nearly every appeal, at least 200 people respond, usually more. In all we’ve paid out about $250,000 to help resisters stay in the struggle.

Resisters who have had money seized by the IRS send the fund documentation showing how much of the seizure was the result of interest and penalties, and then the fund sends out an appeal to its members to help reimburse the cost:

We divide the total amount for all resisters by the number of active names on the membership list to arrive at a “share.” We then send out an appeal to both actives and inactive members. Each contributor pays all of a share or whatever amount she can afford. Some pay more than a share. If we collect 75 percent of the total we ask for, each resister gets 75 percent of the amount they requested. We cannot promise that we will collect the total amount requested; usually, however, we can reimburse between 50% and 80% of each appeal.

I have personal experience with this mutual insurance plan. In 2007 and 2008 the IRS seized some bank accounts of mine to recover taxes I had refused to pay. This included $813 in interest and penalties. I applied to the War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund, which sent me a check for $649 from the amount the subscribers to the fund pledged.

Irish Land League

When the National Land League launched a rent strike targeting English absentee landlords in Ireland in 1881, it made sure resisters knew it would have their backs if the landlords tried to evict them. The leaders of the League issued a rent strike manifesto from Kilmainham Jail that declared:

If you only act together in the spirit to which within the last two years you have countless times pledged your vows, they can no more evict a whole nation than they can imprison them.

The funds of the National Land League will be poured out unstintingly for the support of all who may endure eviction in the course of the struggle. Our exiled brothers in America may be relied upon to contribute if necessary as many millions of money as they have contributed thousands to starve out landlordism and bring English tyranny to its knees.

One of the ways this played out was for evicted tenants to be temporarily put up, along with their livestock if any, on the property of unevicted tenants and sympathetic landowners, in what came to be called “Land League Villages.” Each family was given a small monthly allowance from the Land League.

Dublin Water Charge Strike

In 1994, the resistance campaign against the water charge in Dublin initiated a mutual insurance fund. One of the campaign leaders recalls:

Obviously the council/government tactic was to try to individualise their intimidation. By summonsing individuals to court maybe they could bypass the mass participation that the protests against disconnections had seen. The campaign immediately took a decision that when any individual was summonsed to court, we would turn up and contest every case — and that we would turn up in force. It was at this time that we made a decision which would prove crucial to the success of the campaign. We decided to initiate a membership of the campaign at £2 per household. This money would go into a warchest to pay legal fees so that no individual would be left facing a legal bill. The idea that the individuals being taken to court were representing all of us was paramount. Within weeks 2,500 households had paid the £2 membership fee, and within 12 months there were over 10,000 paid-up households making the campaign without doubt the biggest to have existed in decades.

Breton Association

When Charles Ⅹ of France attempted to bypass the legislature and enact his own taxes in 1829, French liberals in the Breton Association organized tax resistance and created a fund to defray the costs of any tax resisters who were prosecuted. By the terms of the Association’s manifesto:

We declare… [t]o subscribe individually for ten francs… This subscription will form a common stock or fund for all Brittany, destined to indemnify the subscribers for any expense they may be put to by their refusal to pay any illegal contributions imposed upon the public…

And this is how the fund was to be administered:

[Elected procurators are to] receive the subscriptions, to afford indemnities conformably to the [section quoted above], at the request of any subscriber prosecuted for the payment of illegal contributions; to sue in his name… for justice against the exactors by all possible means allowed by law…

War of the Regulation

The Regulator movement, a tax resistance rebellion in pre-American Revolution North Carolina, had an oath that members took that committed each of them to come to the aid of any others who might be arrested or whose property was being seized for nonpayment:

I will, with the aid of other sufficient help, go and take, if in my power, from said officer, and return to the party from whom taken; and in case any one concerned should be imprisoned, or under arrest, or otherwise confined, or if his estate, or any part thereof, by reason or means of joining this company of Regulators, for refusing to comply with the extortionate demands of unlawful tax gatherers, that I will immediately exert my best endeavors to raise as many of said subscribers as will be force sufficient, and, if in my power, I will set the said person at liberty…

The oath also created a mutual insurance pledge:

I do further promise and swear that if, in case this, our scheme, should be broken or otherwise fail, and should any of our company be put to expense or under any confinement, that I will bear an equal share in paying and making up said loss to the sufferer.

Reformed Israel of Yahweh

Members of the small Christian group called the Reformed Israel of Yahweh were, like its founder, conscientious objectors to military taxation. When some of the members of the group were convicted on tax evasion charges, the Reformed Israel of Yahweh organization paid their fines.

Pacific Yearly Meeting

A committee of the collection of American Quaker congregations known as the Pacific Yearly Meeting administers something it calls “the Fund for Concerns:”

Its purpose is to assist members and attenders of Monthly Meetings to follow individual leadings arising from peace, social order, or spiritual concerns. … Up to $100 per fiscal year per person will be available to help with the interest and penalty expenses of war tax resisters who are members or regular attenders of a Monthly Meeting. The Monthly Meeting must indicate approval and provide matching funds.

New York Yearly Meeting

During the Vietnam War, the New York Yearly Meeting advocated war tax resistance and “promised financial help through special committees if [Quaker resisters] changed jobs or refused to pay taxes in protest against the war.”

Papuan Courier

In 1919, Papua, which had been a territory occupied and run by the German Empire until World War Ⅰ when Australia took over, began to agitate against taxation without representation, and many people refused to pay.

The Papuan Courier, which was sympathetic to the tax resisters,

…as evidence of its bona fides on the question, has decided, to form a fund for the defence of any resident who may by victimised, persecuted, or prosecuted for failure to pay the tax, and to that end we open the list with a contribution of Five Guineas.

Tithe War

In the 1830s, Irish Catholics rebelled against paying government-mandated tithes to the Anglican church. In this case, the Catholic church itself provided some insurance to the resisters. The Anglican archbishop Richard Whately complained:

Every possible legal evasion has been resorted to to prevent the incumbent from obtaining his due. A parish purse has been raised to meet law expenses for this purpose, and the result has been that in most instances nothing whatever, in others a very small proportion of the arrears, has been recovered. … [One Anglican clergyman] instituted a tithe-suit which was decided in his favour; but, instead of receiving the amount, he was met by an appeal to the High Court of Delegates, and is informed that a continued resistance to the utmost extremity of the law is to be supported by a parish purse.

Addio-Pizzo Movement

In 2007, a number of individuals and businesses opposed to paying mafia protection money began to use a number of techniques to interrupt the payments and to support those resisters whom the mafia was threatening with reprisals. The mayor of Palermo, Diego Cammarata, pledged €50,000 to assist merchants who had been victims of extortion.

Peacemakers

The group “Peacemakers,” which launched the modern American war tax resistance movement sixty-some years ago, had a mutual insurance component from the beginning:

Peacemakers at the Ohio cell… established the Peacemaker Sharing Fund, a mutual aid plan designed to insure aid to dependents of imprisoned Peacemakers and to help finance group projects. During the Vietnam war, the sharing fund became the main vehicle for donations to meet the needs of war resisters’ families.

Penalty Sharing Community

The Iowa Peace Network maintains a mailing list of persons who have made a commitment to the Penalty Sharing Community to share in the penalties assessed to individuals and families who have chosen to resist war taxes or have participated in civil disobedience or non-violent direct action. When a request for assistance is received, a mailing is sent out which explains the resister’s situation and the amount of money needed. For example, if the resister was assessed a $300.00 penalty, each of the persons in the Community would pay an equal portion of the $300.00. Thus if there were 200 people in the Community, each would pay $1.50. The Iowa Peace Network will also add into the amount requested its costs for printing and mailing. Such costs have proven to be minimal.

Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters

Members of the Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters redirected their federal taxes into an “alternative fund” that served partially as an escrow account, and partially as a way of redirecting some of the money to charitable organizations. Part of the fund was reserved to help defray any legal costs incurred by members in the course of their resistance.

“New Rush” Resisters

White miners at the “New Rush” in Kimberly, South Africa, voted in 1874 to form “a Defence League and Protection Association… not to assail the Government, but to protect individuals if assailed unrighteously by the Government.” The pledge of the association said in part:

I shall to the utmost of my power, with purse and person, protect any and every officer and member of the League against coercion or consequences of what nature soever arising out of the action necessitated by this pledge.

The pledge had a clause that made it binding when it would be signed by 400 men, whereupon:

The Government will be defied if they dare to touch a single claim for non-payment of license. The diamond buyers will refuse to pay further license and will be defended from harm.

Ruhrkampf

When the Ruhr region of Germany began resisting reparation payments to the victorious nations of World War Ⅰ, France and Belgium occupied the region to take the payments by force. Germans responded with a campaign of mass nonviolent resistance, including tax resistance, and were backed up by their own government.

One of the ways the German government supported the campaign was by paying the strikers itself, to the tune of 715 million marks. It did this in part by printing off more currency, which helped fuel the hyperinflation of 1923 (itself a sort of resistance strategy that made it difficult or impractical to account for reparations payments).

Louisiana Anti-Reconstructionists

During the “Reconstruction” period after the American Civil War, white supremacists in Louisiana refused their allegiance to a federally-backed, mixed-race state government, and demonstrated this through tax resistance.

Several attorneys issued a statement offering to “engage themselves, without compensation, and as a matter of public service, to defend professionally all [tax resisters].” A mass-meeting issued a tax resistance pledge, and resolved:

That a committee of five be appointed to draw up a plan by which the citizens may co-operate, to employ counsel and mutually assist each other in their refusal to pay taxes.

Satyagraha in South Africa

Gopal Krishna Gokhale, an officer in the Indian National Congress fighting for the independence of India, pledged £2,000 a month to support Indian satyagrahis in South Africa who were engaged in tax resistance and other tactics under Gandhi’s direction.

Occasionally, tax resisters will join forces to form cooperative housing or business relationships that help to facilitate their resistance. This is most often found among war tax resisters, for whom resistance is an ongoing commitment rather than a protest or rebellion against a particular government or policy. Today I’ll summarize some examples of this that I have encountered in my research.

Bijou Community

Evan Weissman wrote up some thoughts about the Bijou Community:

The Bijou community of Colorado Springs, Colorado is a living example of nonviolent community resistance in the “belly of the beast” of right-wing military and Christian extremism.

The members of this community live below a taxable income level so that they don’t pay for war.

In addition to ongoing bannering and civil disobedience at some of the 5 major military institutions in the area, the Bijou community runs services for the mentally-ill, homeless, working poor, incarcerated, and the general community including: a soup kitchen, food banks, a land trust, several homes for transitional and homeless folks, a free bicycle clinic, and a musical theater group.

The Agape Community

The Agape Community was founded in 1982 by a group of Catholics who wanted to live closer to the ideal of Christian community they found in the Bible. Among the founders were tax resisters Brayton & Suzanne Shanley and Emmanuel Charles McCarthy. They formed the community in such a way that it could support itself with members earning less than a taxable income, for example by being able to grow their own food. The Shanleys have stayed with the two-house community since its founding, and it has had dozens of more transient residents through the years. The community hosts speakers and workshops on nonviolence and related topics.

The Whiteway Colony

A group of Tolstoyans made a go of creating a colony based on their interpretation of Tolstoy’s Christian anarchism, which included tax resistance, and was eventually the home to forty people. The land was operated by a committee headed by noted Tolstoyan (and Tolstoy translator) Aylmer Maude, and this committee held the land in trust, while allowing anyone to settle on and work the land, with the understanding that nobody would own any of it except by virtue of being engaged in occupying and working on it. (The Whiteway community still exists, but has abandoned the more radical communal-ownership principles — today the land is communally owned, but the homes on it are bought and sold as private property.)

Possibility Alliance

The Possibility Alliance farm is a simple-living showcase guided by the following five principles: radical simplicity, service, social activism, inner work, and gratitude. It hosts free skills-share classes and a group called the Superheroes who dress up like caped crusaders and bike out to do good deeds here and there. The founders are war tax resisters who resist by maintaining a very low (sub-poverty line) income.

Joanne Sheehan

When the Hartford Courant profiled war tax resisters Anna Aschenbach and Joanne Sheehan, who have been resisting taxes since the Vietnam War, it noted Sheehan’s participation in cooperative projects as being helpful to her resistance:

Along with her partner, who’s also a tax resister, Sheehan raised two kids with a family income of about $24,000. Now that their children are grown, and can no longer be claimed as deductions, each earns less than about $8,000 a year in order to keep from paying taxes. They’ve lived in collectives and communes much of the time, sharing living expenses with other resisters. They practice “radical simplicity” by going “back to basics” — doing things like hanging clothes instead of using a dryer, not going to restaurants or buying pre-packaged foods.

“Land League Villages”

During the rent strike that the National Land League organized against English absentee landlords in Ireland, when landlords were successful in evicting tenants who refused to pay rent, the League would try to find them (and sometimes their livestock) a temporary home on the land of someone who was sympathetic with the resisters. These might grow to hold several families and were sometimes called “Land League Villages.”

Amish Milk Cooperatives

The cooperatives used by Amish communities to process and package milk turned out to be useful also when the Amish began resisting the then-new social security taxes (they believed the social security program would require them to violate principles of their faith, and after many years of resistance, they won a legal exemption from the program). The government tried to levy the checks that the cooperative wrote to pay those of its milk suppliers who were resisting the tax, but the responsible officials of the cooperative refused to sign the checks.

Peacemakers

The “Peacemakers” group that pioneered the modern American war tax resistance movement had a communal-living facet from the beginning. Robert Cooney & Helen Michalowski report in their book The Power of the People: Active Nonviolence in the United States:

Peacemakers attempted to build a decentralized and self-disciplined movement which stressed local initiative and group coordination along the lines of the nonviolent revolutionary movement in India. Emphasis was put on building intentional communities which practiced communal living. “Groups or cells are the real basis of the movement,” Peacemakers announced, “for this is not an attempt to organize another pacifist membership organization, which one joins by signing a statement or paying a membership fee.” Instead, Peacemakers emphasized a living program which included resistance to the draft and war taxes, personal transformation, and group participation in work for political and economic democracy.

Peacemakers at the Ohio cell organized a land trust to remove property from the market place…

Juanita and Wally Nelson, founding members of Peacemakers, and war tax resisters Betsy Corner, Randy Kehler, and Bob Bady were among the organizers of the Valley Community Land Trust. The trust resisted IRS attempts to seize the Corner/Kehler home for back taxes, and helped to get their home returned to them.

Art Harvey’s farm

Dorothy Day visited Art Harvey’s farm in 1971 and described it this way:

He carries on a practical application of Karl Meyer’s tax refusal… by having teams of workers in orchards where they prune trees, harvest apples and later blueberries and work seven months of the year. They work and live in a style which frees them from the payment of taxes for war. Perhaps about a hundred are engaged in this way of life, which results usually in some settling in communities of the moshavim variety, each having some small acreage and a house built by themselves. Considering the New England climate, no small achievement! It certainly means an emphasis on the ascetic, on sacrifice.

Peter Maurin Farm

Peter Maurin Farm is a Catholic Worker project — a “hospitality house on the land” near Manhattan that also grows food for the urban hospitality houses. Many of those involved in the project were conscientious objectors, and appreciated being able to be part of a self-supporting project that required its volunteers to earn little or no taxable income and so enabled them to stay under the tax line.

Collective Impressions

War tax resister Ed Guinan created a business to help facilitate the tax resistance of its employees. One news profile described it this way:

[I]n Washington, D.C., is another group of tax resisters who have formed a nonprofit cooperative print shop and who refuse to send their taxes to the IRS. Ed Guinan is a priest and the coordinator of the shop, called Collective Impressions. A year and a half ago Guinan and his colleagues decided to continue paying social security taxes but to send their withholding taxes to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

“Every quarter, when taxes are due, we send a check to the Arms Control Agency,” Guinan says. “They return it with a polite note saying that they cannot accept it, and we put it into a tax escrow account which cannot be used for normal business expenses.” Collective Impressions owes only $500 per quarter to the IRS, but Guinan and his coworkers believe they are making an effective protest against U.S. military spending policies.

Restored Israel of Yahweh

Similarly, members of the small religious group called the Restored Israel of Yahweh formed a small construction business and helped those of its employees who were also members of the group to resist their taxes — eventually facing criminal tax evasion convictions for this.

If a tax resistance campaign, or any civil disobedience campaign, anticipates that resisters may be imprisoned, it can give those resisters one less thing to worry about by organizing to help the families of those behind bars.

Gandhi in South Africa

Gandhi usually stressed that satyagrahis should be self-reliant and not expect much in the way of organizational assistance, but when he was planning a tax strike in South Africa in 1911 he thought that supporting imprisoned strikers’ families was a priority:

Finally the refusal to pay the tax! Then, undoubtedly, the Congress should undertake to feed the wives and families of those who may be imprisoned. The men would undoubtedly go to gaol, if there is a body of earnest workers. … The thing cannot be taken up haphazard. If the men were asked to go to gaol today, I do not think you would find anybody taking up the suggestion, but if the preliminary steps as described above, are taken, by the time a final reply is received the men will have been thoroughly prepared to face the music.

Some of these families of resisters were put up temporarily at “Tolstoy farm” and donations from campaign supporters were used to provide for them.

Peacemakers

According to Robert Cooney’s & Helen Michalowski’s The Power of the People: Active Nonviolence in the United States:

Peacemakers at the Ohio cell organized a land trust to remove property from the market place and established the Peacemaker Sharing Fund, a mutual aid plan designed to insure aid to dependents of imprisoned Peacemakers and to help finance group projects. During the Vietnam war, the sharing fund became the main vehicle for donations to meet the needs of war resisters’ families.

The Rosenburg Fund for Children

In the United States, The Rosenburg Fund for Children is designed “to provide for the educational and emotional needs of children whose parents have suffered because of their progressive activities and who, therefore, are no longer able to provide fully for their children.”

U.K. Poll Tax resistance

The Trafalgar Square Defendants’ Campaign provided some funds to help facilitate visits to imprisoned resisters from their families.

Sometimes the decisive turn in a tax resistance campaign has come when the resisters have coalesced into a formal group with the authority to organize and coordinate resistance actions. Today I’ll give some examples of this.

• The Great Confederated Anti-Dray and Land Tax League of South Australia formed in the Spring of 1850 to fight taxes associated with a recently-enacted Road Act, and, once organized, the League was successful in its fight. Organizer Jonathan Norman remarked to a meeting of the League in September: “They had before them an example of what might be achieved by union. In everything they had been victorious; the dray-tax. which from time to time was threatened to be enforced, was ultimately abandoned altogether. The various memorials from the different hundreds, backed by the memorial of the united delegates, had caused the Government to introduce an amended Act, which promised almost everything they desired.”
• When Charles Ⅹ and his ministers threatened to bypass the elected legislature and start taxing and spending on their own initiative in 1829, French liberals declared that since such actions violated the constitution, the people were under no obligation to pay for them with their taxes. Taxed landholders in Brittany formed the “Breton Association” to coordinate their resistance.

  This Association had a two-fold object. They proposed, in the first place, to refuse to pay any illegal tax, and in the second place to raise by contribution a common fund for indemnifying any subscriber, whose property or person might suffer by reason of his refusal.

  The members subscribed each ten francs. In the event of any tax being imposed without the consent of the Chambers, or with the consent of a Chamber of Deputies created by any illegal alteration of the existing law, payment of the tax was to be refused, and the money subscribed was to be employed in defending and indemnifying the persons who should so refuse, and to prosecute all who might be concerned in the imposing, or the levying of such illegal taxes.

  The association enacted a trigger mechanism for an organized tax strike and a process for collecting and distributing a mutual insurance fund. In this way they were able to present a credible threat to the planned royal usurpation — so much so that the newspapers that dared to print the Association’s charter were prosecuted and their editors imprisoned. This only served to fuel the movement: “The associations spread over the greater part of the kingdom; they embraced more than half the Chamber of Deputies, and a very considerable number of peers.”
• The Rebeccaites formed Farmers Unions which met in secret to discuss the same sort of grievances that, in disguise, Rebecca and her sisters would address vigilante-style, and which corresponded with each other in a regional network. One farmer said: “This Union among us is a very excellent thing if all join. When they elect members of Parliament they do just as they please, and we have no voice, but here we have. There is no way of putting things to rights till we get up this Union, and then we can do as we please and think best. If we had had this Union many years ago we should be better off than we are now!”
• The Women’s Tax Resistance League formed in 1909 when about twenty women from existing suffrage groups came together in London “with the single-minded aim of starting ‘an entirely independent society quite separate from any existing suffrage society with the object of spreading the principles of tax resistance.’ ” League organizer Margaret Kineton Parkes explained that it “included Suffragists from every camp, Conservative, Liberal, Socialist, as well as non-party, and was making every effort to get a large number of influential women to refuse to pay taxes” because “[t]he isolated refusal to pay was ineffective and only caused trouble to the refuser; but a large and unexpected number would cause considerable trouble to the Government and would bring the question at issue home to them.”
• Elias Rishmawi was among those who organized tax resistance in Beit Sahour during the first intifada. He remembers how important it was to have formed a network of committees so as to distribute communication and decision-making in anticipation of Israeli military disruption by means of curfews and arrests of the resistance leadership.
• Direct action-oriented pacifists in the United States came together in the late 1940s to form Peacemakers. “[T]his is not an attempt to organize another pacifist membership organization, which one joins by signing a statement or paying a membership fee,” they announced. By 1949 the group had about 2,000 members, about 150 of which were resisting taxes. A second group, War Tax Resistance, promoted the tactic within the anti-Vietnam War activist community. In 1982, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee formed to help a variety of groups that included war tax resistance as part of their work to coordinate and share resources and expertise.
• During the Great Depression in the United States, taxpayers’ leagues, some of which organized property tax strikes, proliferated in the thousands. Such groups “spring up like mushrooms,” one critic complained, “every time you go out in the morning, you find more of them.” These leagues attacked the taxes on multiple fronts — not only organizing tax strikes but also coordinating legal suits and pressuring political figures.
• A proposed sales tax boycott in Ottawa in 1981 was boosted by the group Human Action to Limit Taxes. “As individuals we are lost,” one resister said. “But as a group we would have some impact.”
• In January, 1830 the Birmingham Political Union of the Middle and Lower Classes formed. It would play a strong role — and would advocate tax resistance — in the battle to pass the Reform Act of 1832. But it also began as a war tax resistance group, asking its members to sign the following oath:

  That in the event of the present ministers so misconducting the affairs of the country as to make it probable we shall be involved in a Continental war [with Belgium], we will consider the propriety of checking so mischievous an event by withholding the means as far as may lay in our power, and will then consider whether or not refusing to pay direct taxes may not be advisable.

• Similarly, the Catalonian “National Union” began life as a committee to direct a tax resistance action in 1899 and grew into the organizing party for an ambitious reform movement: “its demands included the entire reorganization of the vital forces of the nation: fiscal and administrative reform, the amelioration of the judicial system, the introduction of an effective system of compulsory education, the improvement of the provincial governments.”



• In Danny Burns’s book on the Poll Tax Rebellion, he stresses how important it was for the success of the campaign that people formed and ran their own small-scale, neighbor­hood resistance groups, rather than ceding control of the movement to the various established left-wing partisan and labor-union groups who wanted to use the movement to their own ends but were also afraid to identify themselves too closely with the law-breaking resisters.

  Prior to the Anti-Poll Tax campaign, many people’s only experience of politics was a traditional Labour Party or trade union meeting — the sort of meeting where the top table takes up 90% of the discussion; where the only items discussed are those decided by the executive committee; where half the meeting time is spent discussing procedural motions or the order of words in a resolution; where political factions throw rhetoric across the room in angry and unproductive exchanges. Essentially, boring meetings which stretch long into the night. Hundreds of thousands of people have been to these meetings just once and never returned. To engage people in a mass campaign, the Anti-Poll Tax Unions had to challenge this culture of organisation. They had to make people feel wanted and included and give everyone a sense that they had a role.… This immediate form of organisation also meant that people weren’t patronised by those who had political experience. In the local groups, people didn’t need permission to act, they just had to get on the phone to their neighbours and get something going. People stay involved in political campaigns if they can contribute in the way that they feel is most effective. Very often this is not by sitting in boring meetings.

  …most of the successful Anti-Poll Tax Unions operated on a principle of parallel development. Rather than trying to assert majority control or spend hours reaching consensus, people were allowed to get on with what they thought was most important. Everything could be done in the name of the Anti-Poll Tax Union, which existed to coordinate activity against the Poll Tax, not to specify its exact nature.

  However, he also notes:

  …it was sometimes in the places where the Anti-Poll Tax Unions were weakest that resistance was strongest. For example, St. Pauls was almost the only area in Bristol which couldn’t sustain an Anti-Poll Tax group. Local people didn’t feel the need to set up new groups because, as in many inner city areas, they already had strong networks of solidarity, and there was already a high level of general hostility to officials of any sort. … By the end of 1990, three times as many people had turned up to court to contest their cases from St. Pauls than any other area.

• White supremacists in Louisiana met in 1872 to form “The People’s Association to Resist Unconstitutional Taxation” to coordinate their resistance to state and city taxes enacted by the reconstruction government there, and to provide legal support for resisters.
• Property owners of Silver Lake Assembly met in 1908 to decide how to respond to a property tax they felt was being illegally put over on them by a government with no authority to do so. They decided to respond as a group, “and perfected an organization for the purpose,” issuing a resolution saying that they “individually and collectively will resist the payment of the so-called taxes.”

A very frequently-used tactic of tax resistance campaigns is to take public oaths or sign public pledges of resistance. This signals to potential resisters that they will not be alone, and is a show of defiance to the authorities. I’ve collected dozens of examples, which I’ll summarize here:

• When Gandhi launched his first satyagraha-based campaign in South Africa in 1906, a member of the meeting asked everyone present to take a solemn oath of opposition. Gandhi remarked:

  There is no one in this meeting who can be classed as an infant or as wanting in understanding. You are all well advanced in age and have seen the world; many of you are delegates and have discharged responsibilities in a greater or lesser measure. No one present, therefore, can ever hope to excuse himself by saying that he did not know what he was about when he took the oath.

  I know that pledges and vows are, and should be, taken on rare occasions. A man who takes a vow every now and then is sure to stumble. But if I can imagine a crisis in the history of the Indian community of South Africa when it would be in the fitness of things to take pledges, that crisis is surely now. … Resolutions of this nature cannot be passed by a majority vote. Only those who take a pledge can be bound by it. This pledge must not be taken with a view to produce an effect on outsiders. No one should trouble to consider what impression it might have upon the local Government, the Imperial Government, or the Government of India. Every one must only search his own heart, and if the inner voice assures him that he has the requisite strength to carry him through, then only should he pledge himself and then only would his pledge bear fruit.

  His entire speech, which reflects on vows and the responsibility of vow makers, is worth reading in this context.
• In 1935, “98 per cent of the merchants at Stuttgart and… 60 out of 60 merchants at DeWitt,” Arkansas, signed pledges to refuse to collect a new sales tax from their customers or to pay it to the government.
• Also in 1935, in Verdun (then a suburb of Montreal), 164 shopkeepers, including the mayor, signed a pledge to refuse to collect or pay a Montreal city sales tax.
• The following year, merchants in Gadsen, Alabama followed suit: gathering and voting unanimously to refuse to collect or pay a sales tax.
• In Ghana, in 1854, the Akuashongs met and “swore not to… pay any tax, even if the government should fight with them, and to make war with any party breaking the agreement.”
• In 1829 several French newspapers printed the text of a pledge in which French liberals vowed to resist any taxes that the monarchy instituted without going through constitutional channels. The newspapers were themselves prosecuted for this. However, in court, they pointed out that the King himself, before he took the throne, had signed a tax resistance pledge of his own, along with three other members of the nobility, as a protest against republican infringements on their privileges.
• In Castine, Maine, in 1975, the pledge took the form of a vote: the town voted 125 to 65 at a specially-convened town meeting, to refuse to collect a school funding tax in defiance of a superior court order to do so.
• In 1913, some 5,000 businessmen in Belfast vowed to “keep back payment of all taxes which they can control, so long as any attempt to put into operation the provisions of the Home Rule Bill is persevered in.”
• In the Women’s Tax Resistance League, members signed “pledge cards” that indicated which taxes they would be resisting if the government persisted in denying women the vote.
• The Reform Act agitation really hit its stride in 1831 when a huge rally, 150,000 people strong, vowed as a group to stop paying taxes until the Act’s passage. One account of the meeting read:

  He declared before God, that, if all constitutional modes of obtaining the success of the reform measure failed, he should and would, be the first man to refuse the payment of taxes, except by a levy upon his goods [tremendous cheering, which lasted some minutes]. I now call upon all who hear me, and who are prepared to join me in this step, to hold up your hands [an immense forest of hands was immediately elevated, accompanied by vehement cheering]. I now call upon you who are not prepared to adopt this course, to hold up your hands and signify your dissent [not a single hand appearing, loud shouts and cheers were repeated].

• In South Africa’s “New Rush” in 1874, a number of miners signed a pledge reading, in part, “I promise on my honour and in presence of the people that I shall not from this day forward — until released from this obligation by the officers of the League — pay any taxes or impositions whatsoever to the Government, id est, for the support and maintenance of the Government of this territory; and that I shall buy from, sell to, or deal with only such men as have also taken this pledge or obligation; and that I shall to the utmost of my power, with purse and person, protect any and every officer and member of the League against coercion or consequences of what nature soever arising out of the action necessitated by this pledge.
• At least 1,000 taxpayers in Elmira, New York, signed a declaration in 1933 saying that “The undersigned taxpayers… believing the county, city, and school tax rates as levied are too high, hereby refuse to pay until the budget has been thoroughly examined by the committee of the Taxpayers’ league. We also refuse to pay penalties until such revision has been made and a lower tax adopted.”
• 500 taxpayers in Cadillac, Michigan, signed a petition in 1961 in which they vowed to refuse to pay taxes for two years unless the local government cut its budget by 20%.
• In 1715, 36 New Jersey residents signed their name to a petition to the home country in which they declared that they would refuse to pay any further taxes so long as a Roman Catholic was in charge of tax assessment.
• At a “monster meeting” at Castlemaine in Australia in 1854, a group of miners unanimously adopted a resolution to refuse to take out licenses.
• Taxpayers in Zeehan, Tasmania, met in an open-air meeting in 1904 and passed a resolution stating that they “hereby express our solemn determination to passively resist the payment of the unjust income tax imposed by the late Government.”
• A Queensland, Australia stealth tax on rural irrigation improvements, was resisted by the farmers there in 1927, who, organized in groups called “Local Producers’ Associations,” passed motions vowing to resist. For example, the Association in Rockhampton “unanimously decided that all members pledge themselves to offer passive resistance to the operation of the Act by refusing to make the required applications or to furnish any returns, or to make any payments as demanded by the Act. Further, it was decided to invite all other LPAs and kindred bodies to adopt a similar attitude.”
• Earlier this year, about twenty households near Paddock Wood, England, “signed a declaration to withhold [tax] payments” to protest the lack of government action against vagabonds camping in their neighborhood.
• When the Russian Duma-in-exile issued the Vyborg manifesto in 1906, calling on Russians to refuse to pay taxes to the Czarist autocracy, a number of villages responded by voting whether or not to heed the call and then taking the results of the vote as a pledge they were bound to abide by.
• In 1938, 149 members of a Catholic War Veterans post vowed to refuse to pay their real estate taxes unless the government dismissed a Communist Party member from his post as an advisor to the Borough President of Manhattan.
• At a meeting of the Charleston Board of Trade in South Carolina in 1871, the white supremacist group unanimously passed a series of resolutions declaring that they considered debts incurred by the reconstruction government to be illegitimate and that they would resist the payment of taxes meant to pay them off.
• At a mass meeting of white supremacists in Louisiana in 1872, they passed a resolution vowing that “we will pay no more taxes to State or city.”
• Some resisters of Thatcher’s poll tax made their resistance dramatically public by burning their “final reminder notices” at demonstrations.
• This tactic has been prominent in the American war tax resistance movement. For example:
  • In 1951 the American pacifist group Peacemakers released a statement, signed by 59 members, in which “the undersigned state hereby that we are not going to pay our federal taxes.”
  • In 1966, some 370 people signed a public oath saying “We will refuse to pay our federal income taxes voluntarily.”
  • In 1967, more than five hundred writers and editors added their names to a war tax resistance pledge that appeared as a newspaper advertisement. The names included James Baldwin, Noam Chomsky, Philip K. Dick, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Grace Paley, Susan Sontag, Benjamin Spock, Gloria Steinem, William Styron, Hunter S. Thompson, Thomas Pynchon, Betty Friedan, and Kurt Vonnegut.
  • Also in 1967, a letter was circulated largely among academics, and signed by more than a dozen professors, among others, organized as the “No Tax for War Committee” in which the signatories pledged to “withhold all or part of the taxes due” and urged the recipients to join their public pledge.
  • The ongoing War Tax Boycott has a public sign-on component.

It may sound like a long shot, but have you considered trying to make friends with the tax collector? It’s a strategy that’s so crazy it just might work!

Here are some examples of where tax resisters or their allies have tried it:

• The Peacemakers were eventually successful in winning back war tax resisters Ernest and Marion Bromley’s home, which had been seized for back taxes. In a retrospective, they claimed:

  The Peacemakers were resolute that their confrontation with the government would be on their terms. Believing that the legal system is an instrument of oppression and exists to protect the state and the property of the powerful, they refused to take their case into the courts. Instead they worked to make the truth known through personal meetings with IRS officials, through continuous leafletting, through appealing to their supporters country-wide to demand justice.… They put enormous energy into building relationships with IRS officials that would allow for honest dialogue. And always, they challenged and responded to the bureaucracy in a highly personal manner.

  Initially it appeared that IRS’ reversal had been an act of faith in the Peacemakers; that it had been touched by the group’s philosophy of truth and their consistent methods. It wasn’t that complete a victory. The Commissioner had been sufficiently impressed by these people to where he called for a special investigation — which verified the Peacemakers’ statement.

  Dorothy Day wrote of this:

  Chuck Matthei had told me the story of his interviews with the head of the Internal Revenue Service, the almost daily dialogue that went on between them, and the frank and “manly” admission, made finally by the IRS chief, that a mistake had been made, that the Peacemakers had Truth on their side. I felt a great sense of joy and thanksgiving, a sense of hope too, that our officials in Washington D.C. could be approached in this way — with dignity and perseverance, with courtesy, with the recognition that we are all, each one of us, whether government official or radical (one who gets to the roots of things), children of God. We do believe that we are all brothers and sisters. We believe, too, that we can only show our love for God by our love for our brothers and sisters. So we share our joy with you, our readers, and hope we all have a sense of renewed strength and energy to continue our opposition to all violence, to all wars.

• Quaker Thomas Watson was seized by the American army during the revolution, and condemned “to be stripped and ironed, and on the next afternoon to be publicly hanged” for refusing to take the continental currency that Congress was using to finance the war, his family was given little hope for him. “You may go home,” one petitioner was told, “and rest assured your uncle will be hanged.”

  But the wife of the prisoner had a warm friend in the landlady of the inn at Newtown; and when was woman’s kindness ever invoked for the relief of suffering, or woman’s tact required in vain? She was advised not to apply in person for the release of her husband. The landlady had learned Lord Sterling’s fondness for the creaturely comforts of life; and knew that wine had the effect to soften the severity of his temper. To take advantage of this disposition, she invited him to a sumptuous dinner. He did full justice to the delicacies of the table, and willingly partook of the generous old wine, which had been reserved for special occasions. As the wine warmed the General’s good-nature and disposed him to kindlier feelings, she cautiously introduced the case of the condemned; pitied his condition, cold, and in irons; regarded his treatment as needlessly severe; and at length requested that his fetters might be removed and his clothes restored to him. He could not resist this appeal of his hostess; and a note was sent to the guard in answer to her request.

  The good woman continued her entreaties, and still plied the wine; when, at the proper moment, the wife was introduced. She fell on her knees before him, burst into a flood of tears, and told him who she was, and, with all the earnestness, feeling, and eloquence of a loving wife pleading for the one she loved best on earth, begged him to spare her husband’s life. Her entreaties were of a nature hard to be withstood. He remained some time silent; then, raising her to her feet, he said, “Madam, you have conquered. I must relent at the tears and supplications of so noble and so good a woman as you. Your husband is saved.” He immediately wrote a pardon for the prisoner, and ordered his discharge. The happy pair now returned to their homes rejoicing.

• Such friendly meetings do not always end well. Quaker Henry Paxson found this out when he was visited by the tax collector some 300 years ago:

  Paxson kindly treats [the tax collector] with best he had, and when he had filled his wem, and drank plentifully of good cider, he distrains the plates he had eaten on, and the tankard he so freely toped out of, but the wife begged the tankard, and bid him take something in lieu of it.

• In 1779, a delegation of Quakers met with the sheriff, his sub-lieutenants, a judge, magistrates, and a tax collector in their area of Pennsylvania. They reported:

  [We] had opportunity of laying before them the reasons and grounds of our refusal to comply with several requisitions, made for the support of, or that have near connection with, war; and to open our principles, and the consistency thereof with the doctrines of the Gospel, as set forth in the New Testament and pointed out by the prophets, and the inconsistency of Christians oppressing one another for conscience sake.

  They generally appeared friendly, and to receive our visit kindly, some of them particularly so; and most of them acknowledged that the prophecies concerning the disuse of carnal weapons, pointed to the Gospel dispensation, and was much to be desired.

  We had good satisfaction in the performance of this service, believing truth owned it, and that there is encouragement for Friends to use further endeavors of this kind.

• The Rebecca Rioters could be cruel, or even deadly, to the keepers of the toll gates they were destroying. More frequently, they would allow the keepers a few moments to collect their personal belongings and remove them from the building before they demolished it. And on some occasions, the encounters were almost cordial:

  The gate-keeper begged of them not to destroy the furniture, as it was his own; and his wife and child were in bed, but they might do as they liked with the gate and toll-house. Rebecca went to the door, and ordered her [Rebecca’s] daughters not to touch anything but the gate and the roof of the toll-house, and not to break the ceiling for fear the rain would harm the woman and child in bed. In their hurry, however, to unroof the house, one of them slipped between the rafters, and his foot got through the ceiling. Rebecca expressed her sorrow at the accident, as it might cause inconvenience to the gate-keeper.

  They behaved remarkably well to the gate-keeper, and frequently desired him and his wife not to be alarmed, as they would not injure them in the least; but at parting Rebecca desired him not to exact tolls at that gate any more.

• There was no more persistent foe of the IRS than Vivien Kellems, but:

  Miss Kellems stresses that she holds no animosity toward the officials who enforce the tax laws. When IRS Commissioner Johnnie M. Walker took office earlier this year [1971] she sent him a note outlining their differences but congratulating him on his appointment. “He sent back a nice thank you note,” she said.

• During the tax resistance campaign for women’s suffrage in Britain, good relationships between the resisters and the auctioneers who were enlisted to sell off their goods for taxes allowed them to better use these auctions as rally and propaganda opportunities. On one occasion:

  …the auctioneer opened the proceedings by declaring himself a convinced Suffragist, which attitude of mind he attributed largely to a constant contact with women householders in his capacity as tax collector.

  When Kate Raleigh’s property was seized by the tax collector:

  Miss Raleigh naturally made use of the occasion for propaganda purposes, conversing with the tax collector for some time on the subject of Woman Suffrage, and presenting him with Suffrage literature, which he accepted. Before taking his leave he expressed himself as, on the whole, in favour of women’s claims to enfranchisement.

• The movement against Thatcher’s Poll Tax initially tried to reach out to the councils who were responsible for setting the budgets that implemented the tax, and to the labor union representing the tax collectors who would be enforcing it, to ask them not to cooperate. However, this met with very little success.
• War tax resister Robin Harper met with a tax auditor and a “frivolous tax coordinator” at an IRS office in 2000. He described how it went:

  I quickly assured them that an accurate accounting should of course be established, but that in no way could I alter my refusal to deliver my tax dollars into the U.S. military machine. Earlier I had described how my Conscientious Objection was rooted in our Quaker Peace Testimony and how I had performed two years of civilian alternative service with a self-help housing project during the Korean War.

  With his defensive posture evaporating, Mr. Means [the “frivolous tax coordinator”] told us that his father fought in the Korean War and came home tormented by post traumatic stress disorder. Thereafter he would have nothing more to do with guns, “because he had seen what guns can do.” That gave my supporter, who had lived through World War Two in Germany, an opening. Drawing a parallel with my war tax refusal, she pointed out how German income taxes funded the governmental atrocities of the Third Reich.

  …

  At one point, when I was describing how the International Center has been installing solar water purification units in Central American villages, Mr. Means broadened our discussion, noting that the scarcity of safe water is becoming a global problem. In my followup letter to our interview, I sent him a copy of an eye-opening article from the Resist newsletter discussing this issue in depth.

  Near the end I took the opportunity to unfurl the large chart which chronicles my war tax redirection these past forty-one years and to describe how I was first propelled into war tax protest by U.S. nuclear atmospheric bomb testing in Nevada and the Pacific.

  After more than three hours (and well past normal lunchtime), the two finally closed the interview with smiles and friendly handshakes. Mr. Means even admitted that his title of “Frivolous Tax Coordinator” was really a substitute for “Tax Protester Coordinator,” an internal administrative category which Congress had abolished in recent Taxpayer Bill of Rights legislation.

  Despite their training to be suspicious (all taxpayers are trying to get away with something), IRS folk, like all human beings, can be positively affected by openness, honesty and sincerity. Transparency can often trump suspicion.

  I have learned how we all hunger for caring, person-to-person exchanges. Look how a one hour audit stretched into more than three hours, much of which involved genuine sharing far beyond the scope of the audit!

  As our discussion rose above tax details, Mr. Means, the tax protester “sheriff,” was led to cast aside some of his official person and let his personal feelings and thoughts come through. He also became increasingly interested in discerning what makes war tax refusers tick. I am sure he came to understand that our witness is anything but “frivolous.”

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.

A United Press dispatch from this date in 1951:

Minister Refuses Taxes for Arms

New York (UP) — A Presbyterian minister filed his income tax Monday. It consisted of a three-page letter to the collector of internal revenue on his political views, a copy of the gospels and Henry Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience.

The Rev. A.J. Muste said he would not file a return or pay taxes because he opposes the armament race between the U.S. and Russia.

He refused to file for 1948 and 1949, too.

He was joined by 58 other pacifists in 14 states who belong to the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers.

Mary Stone McDowell is a rare — perhaps unique — example of someone who took a war tax resistance stand during World War Ⅰ and was also part of the post World War Ⅱ revival of war tax resistance in America.

From the 14 March 1918 New York Herald (excerpt):

Woman Teacher Is Suspended on Pacifist Charge

Miss Mary S. McDowell, Member of Society of Friends, to Face Trial.

Miss Mary S. McDowell, a teacher of Latin in the Manual Training High School, was suspended from duty without pay yesterday as a result of charges of pacifism brought against her several weeks ago by the Board of Superindendents.

The order suspending Miss McDowell, issued by Dr. Gustave Straubenmuller, acting Superintendent of Schools, was approved formally by the Board of Education at its meeting. In the formal notice the cause for suspension is given as “conduct unbecoming a teacher.”

Miss McDowell will be called before a special committee of the School Board to show cause why she should not be dismissed from the service. No date has been set for the trial.

Miss McDowell, who lives with her mother at No. 20 Crooke avenue, Brooklyn, is a member of the Society of Friends and declares that by reason of her faith she conscientiously is opposed to war and all its activities. It is alleged she repeatedly refused to sign loyalty pledges circulated among the teachers and refused to take part in Red Cross work and Liberty Bond sales.

Miss McDowell has been a teacher in the public schools for thirteen years and, in the opinion of Dr. Straubenmuller, is “a very estimable woman and an excellent Latin teacher, with unfortunate views regarding the war.”

(The New York Times, always jealous in defending its own freedom of speech, though it so rarely has anything to say that the government would find any need to censor, editorialized that “it becomes the Friends to retire from and to keep out of positions which in their very nature involved the declaration and teaching of patriotism as it is understood by a majority of human beings so large that its members have a right to consider themselves normal and everybody else abnormal. For these reasons it seems to us that a Friend, at this time, is distinctly out of place as a teacher in a public school — that if well advised such a teacher will resign, and that if not docile to good counsel, he or she, as the case may be, should be dismissed.”)

From the 15 September 1949 Brooklyn Eagle:

Ex-Boro Teacher Joins 69 in Income Tax Defy

Today is Federal income tax payment day, but 70 pacifists throughout the country, including a former school teacher in Brooklyn, will refuse to pay Uncle Sam who, they say, is spending his money preparing for a war.

The group has grown since last March 15 when about 40 pacifists, objecting to the “war preparations,” refused to pay either all or a part of their taxes.

Mary McDowall of 555 Ocean Ave., a Quaker who taught Latin at Abraham Lincoln High School until her retirement five years ago, is a member of the group, known as the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers.

“I’m Not Stingy”

Miss McDowall has withheld one-third of her total tax, claiming “at least that proportion is used for war preparation.” The withheld amount, she points out is donated to the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers).

“I don’t want the money I withhold,” she says. “I’m not stingy. I merely won’t help in construction for war.

Miss McDowall’s Quaker principles caused her suspension from the faculty of Manual Training High School in 1918. She was suspended for “disloyalty and insubordination,” having refused to take part in the school’s patriotic aid program of World War Ⅰ.

She was cleared and reinstated in 1923 when it was officially admitted that her Board of Education trial had been held “at a time of great public excitement.”

Has Jaile[d] Confrere

The 70 “tax refusers,” in a statement issued at their headquarters, 2013 5^th Ave., Manhattan, announced they “hail the courage of Katsuki James Otsuka,” who drew a three-month Federal sentence and a $100 fine in Indianapolis earlier this month for refusing to pay $4.50 in income taxes.

Otsuka also refused to pay the fine, choosing instead an additional sentence.

Among the organization’s Manhattan members is Sander Katz, 25, who served 19 months in jail for refusing to report for induction in World War Ⅱ and who was sentenced to another year and a day last November for refusing to register under the 1948 Draft Act.

Another Brooklyn Eagle article, from, I think, around tax day of the following year:

Pacifist Balks at “War” Use of Income Tax

Mary S. McDowell, 74, retired public school teacher of 555 Ocean Ave., wants it known that again this year she is paying only two-thirds of her Federal income tax.

The reason, she advised during a call at the Brooklyn Eagle office, is that she is opposed to war and refuses to finance the manufacture of war materials.

“An estimated third of income tax collections goes for defense,” she said. “So one-third of my tax payment, or what would be a third of it, I am giving to a charity. I did it last year on my own initiative and this year I am withholding one-third as a member of the ‘Peacemakers’.”

From its Manhattan office at 2013 5^th Ave. the Peacemakers issued a press release in which it described itself as “a national pacifist movement” and listed “27 men and 19 women in scattered parts of the United States” who are not paying income taxes because they “refuse to finance war preparations.” Miss McDowell is among those listed.

“I am a Quaker,” said Miss McDowell, the only Brooklynite on the Peacemakers’ list. “I have always been opposed to war. Not paying income tax is a practical Way of expressing opposition to war.

“I was opposed to the first World War. I was teaching at Manual Training High School then. Because of my expressed opposition I was fired. It wasn’t until five years later that I was reinstated as a teacher.”

She was at Abraham Lincoln when she retired in 1945.

The Peacemakers’ list of tax rebels includes the names of the Rev. A.J. Muste of 21 Audubon Ave., Manhattan, described as secretary of the organization, and the Rev. Ernest R. Bromley of Wilmington, Ohio, named as chairman of the Tax Refusal Committee.

“One omission from the list,” the release explains, “is the name of Katsuki James Otsuka, an earlham college student of Richmond, Ind. He was released on Jan. 16 after serving nearly five months in the Federal Correctional Institution, Ashland, Ky., for his refusal to pay $4.50 income taxes. He was released even though he continued to refuse to pay. His name does not appear because his imprisonment prevented his earning a taxable income for 1949.”

The Eagle covered her protest again in 1952:

Ex-Teacher Here Joins “Tax-Refuser” Movement

A retired Brooklyn Latin teacher was one of 41 “Tax Refusers” across the nation who deducted from their Federal returns — due last midnight — percentages they said would be used for present and future wars.

Mary S. McDowell of 555 Ocean Ave., a Quaker who started teaching in borough schools in 1900 and was suspended from the school system from 1918 to 1923 for pacifist activities, in a letter to the local internal revenue office said she was sending $237 — 60 percent of her return — to the American Friends Service Committee, a charity, to keep herself from being “involved in war preparations.”

The 76-year-old woman wrote: “All war is contrary to the essential principle of Christianity and to the basic faith of democracy.” She inclosed a pamphlet entitled “A Democratic Program for a Durable Peace” which she recently had published.

Last year at this time, she said, she deducted only 45 percent from her tax return. The increase this year, she explained, was prompted not by inflation but by mounting Government spending for rearmament.

Government Takes Lien

The income tax office last July, in a move to collect the unpaid balance of her return, placed a lien on the elderly ex-teacher’s pension.

A native of New Jersey, Miss McDowell attended Swarthmore College and taught in Manual Training and Abraham Lincoln High Schools. She retired in 1945.

Her letter, in part, said: “I realize that I cannot entirely free myself from being involved in war preparations; but I believe it is important to bear my testimony in action as far as I can.

“Now that we are so largely devoting our men and our resources to war preparations and taking part in an armament race, it seems clearer than ever that our course may be leading toward world war and inconceivable slaughter and destruction to our own country as well as the world.

“Accordingly, it would seem that not only religious pacifists, but all intelligent true patriots should do everything in their power to halt rearmament and vastly increase constructive activities looking toward worldwide human welfare and durable peace.”

The Eagle covered her protest again in 1953:

Woman, 77, Clings to Tax-Strike Vow

A 77-year-old former Latin teacher has taken a stand in which many of her neighbors would like to join her today, although for more personal reasons. Mary McDowell of 555 Ocean Ave. has refused to pay her income tax.

Member of the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers — a group of individuals scattered over the nation who withhold that part of their tax which they believe will be used for armaments — Miss McDowell this year held back 70 percent.

Each year the tally grows. In 1952, the elderly teacher said, she deducted only 60 percent from her return. The year before it was 45 percent. It is her custom to contribute the deducted amounts to the American Friends Service Committee.

The Quaker lady has been fighting a war against war nearly all her life. She started teaching in Brooklyn in 1900 but was suspended from the school system from 1918 to 1923 because of her pacifist activities during World War Ⅰ.

Her defiance of the tax collector, Miss McDowell calls “the new patriotism.” The popular idea, she said, holds up the soldier as a model of patriotism but, against this, she matches her own method of “trying to prevent a disaster to one’s country.”

Each year the U.S. Government refuses to be persuaded and places a lien on her teacher’s pension. Each year Miss McDowell tries, in the same way, to express her belief that “war or threats of war cannot bring security.”

The Tax Refusers, she said, “strive not only to avoid assisting in preparations for war, but also to point out constructive courses of action, that will bring durable peace through human welfare, disarmament and solution of world problems.”

Miss McDowell believes the great day of permanent peace “will come like Spring,” suddenly but only as a result of slow preparation and a multitude of just such efforts as her own small token resistance to the tax collector.

A year later, McDowell was at it again, and the Eagle was there:

Anti-War Ex-Teacher Defies Uncle Sam Again on Taxes

Mary McDowell, 78, retired high school teacher of 555 Ocean Ave., last week figured out her 1953 Federal income tax.

It came to $300.

She promptly sent a check for $90 as her tax to the Internal Revenue Bureau.

“I’m paying only 30 percent of my tax,” she said yesterday.” I refuse to pay the 70 percent which goes for war purposes.”

She calls her tax defiance “the new patriotism.”

Miss McDowell is a member of the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers — a group of individuals scattered over the nation who each year withhold part of their tax which they believe will go for armaments. This is the fourth year she has withheld part of her tax.

Each year the Government refuses to go along with her and it places a lien on her teacher’s pension.

She is a Quaker and has been fighting against war all her life.

“War is contrary to Christian principles and is contrary to democratic ideals,” she contends.

In 1964, the Mary S. McDowell story became the second of the “Profiles in Courage” featured on the short-lived television series of that name. The Friends Journal published a profile of McDowell in 2004.

Here is some more war tax resistance news from the 1950s. First, from the Tonawanda Evening News of 15 March 1950 (excerpts):

Some Insist They Won’t

It’s T- (for Tax) Day and Rush To Pay Up Gets Terrific

Chicago (UP) — Americans rushed today to file their income taxes before the midnight deadline but a few individuals and groups risked imprisonment by defying the inevitable.

Pacifists Won’t Pay

At Washington, the Justice Department revealed it expected to have indictments by tonight’s deadline against 149 persons for trying to evade $10,000,000 in wartime taxes. There is a six-year statute of limitation in tax cases.

Nevertheless, some people announced today that they would refuse to pay taxes at the risk of going to prison.

At Des Moines, a Quaker couple and an engineer told the tax collector they wouldn’t pay because they were Pacifists. Both the Quaker husband and the engineer were sentenced as conscientious objectors during World War Ⅱ.

An organization calling itself “Peacemakers” planned a noontime picket of the Internal Revenue Bureau in New York City. The signs said “Your Taxes Pay for the H-Bomb” and “Refuse to pay Taxes for War Purposes.”

The Gandhi Manner

The group which says it is dedicated to non-violent resistance to militarism and war, announced that at least 27 men and 19 women members throughout the country would refuse to pay taxes.

At Cincinnati, three members of the group announced their refusal in order to demonstrate “non-violent resistance to evil, after the manner of Mohandas K. Ghandi [sic] of India.”

Arthur Sternberg of St. Paul figured out for himself that 32 percent of his tax goes for defense and he withheld that amount — $51 — from his payment.

From The Cedar Rapids Gazette on the same day:

Three Iowans Refuse To Pay Taxes for “War Spending”

Des Moines (UP) — The hydrogen bomb hasn’t been exploded, but it had income tax day reactions in Iowa.

Three lowans listed the bomb among reasons why they refused to pay their federal income tax for 1949.

One of them is a 35-year-old mechanical engineer, Walter Gormly of Mt. Vernon, who said he also refused to pay his tax for the years 1947 and 1948.

Gormly, who said he is a “pacifist” and “a philosophical objector to war,” said the hydrogen, bomb was only one of his reasons for refusing to pay the tax.

“In the side-stepping of all efforts to hold high level conferences with Russia, the United States seems to fear Russia might appease the U.S. in any such, conference and spoil the excuse for continued war spending,” he asserted.

Gormly said he was a conscientious objector during the recent war and served three years in prison as an objector.

“I object to authoritarianism,” he said, in explaining why he refused to sign his tax return. His tax was approximately $100.

Gormly said he was associated with the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers. That group issued a statement advocating peacemakers to refuse “to pay taxes which are for the purpose of carrying on war.”

Arthur Emery of Earlham sent a joint return for himself and wife, along with a statement of taxes withheld from his wife’s wages as an employe for a time last year at Perin college in Oskaloosa, and a receipt for a $105 donation to a peace organization.

“We do not object to paying 40 percent of our tax which we feel goes for constructive purposes,” Emery wrote the internal revenue collector, but, he added: “We cannot conscientiously finance the construction of atom and hydrogen bombs.”

From the Carroll Daily Times Herald, 17 March 1952:

Mt. Vernon Objector Again Refuses to Pay Income Tax

Mt. Vernon, IA. (AP) — Walter Gormly, 37, who says he is a “philosophical objector to war,” says he again has refused to pay his federal income taxes.

Gormly made public copies of his letter to the Internal Revenue office in Des Moines announcing his intentions of not paying the tax.

Last year the self-styled consulting engineer similarly refused to pay his federal income tax as “a protest gesture.” The government seized his station wagon to satisfy a $270 tax lien. It was sold at auction for $230.

Gormly served a three-year federal prison term for draft law violations during World war Ⅱ. In his letter of refusal to pay his 1951 income taxes, he asserts the Korean war “is illegal” and says he does not wish to provide the government with funds which may be used in carrying on the war.

A press release by a national pacifist group known as “Peacemakers” lists Gormly and two other Iowans among a group of 41 Americans who are refusing to pay income taxes as an expression of their opposition to war.

The other two Iowans are Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Emery, Earlham Quakers who also refused to pay taxes a year ago. As in Gormly’s case, the Emery car was put up for auction by the federal government to satisfy a tax lien.

From The Cedar Rapids Gazette on 15 March 1954:

Gormly Says He Will Not Pay U.S. Tax

Special to The Gazette.

Mt. Vernon — Walter Gormly, Mt. Vernon’s self-styled anti-war crusader, announced Monday that he was refusing for the eighth time to pay federal income taxes.

The announcement was made in a letter to Frank J. Halpin, Iowa collector of internal revenue. A copy of the letter was received Saturday by The Gazette, but Gormly set Monday — income tax deadline — as the release date.

Gormly said his reason for refusing to pay his income tax was that the federal government’s major function “is to prepare for and to wage war.”

“Something like 90 percent of the proposed Eisenhower budget is for past, present, and future wars,” he wrote. “However, some of the remaining 10 percent is used for thought control, persecution of political minorities, and for other nefarious purposes and ought not be paid any more than the money for war.”

Served Prison Term.

Gormly, 39, drew attention in March, 1951, when federal agents auctioned off his 1948 model car for $230 because he refused to pay income taxes for 1947 through 1949.

He is a mechanical engineer and does free-lance design work for small industry.

He also served three years of a five-year federal prison term for refusing to comply with selective service laws. He was sent to prison in October, 1943.

Gormly’s name is one of 43 on a list of persons who have refused to pay federal income tax. The list, which contains the names of no other Iowans, was sent out by the Rev. Ernest R. Bromley of Gano, Sharonsville, Ohio, chairman of the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers.

The group is described as a national pacifist organization “which advocates the practice of non-violence as demonstrated by the late Mohandas K. Gandhi.”

Text of Letter.

Gormly’s letter to Halpin also took issue with the federal government’s handling of Communist spies.

“It is constantly dinned into us that all Communists are spies,” the letter said. “J. Edgar Hoover says there are 271,000 people dedicated to communism, others would place the number higher…

“I tried to find out from the department of justice, Senator McCarthy, Senator Jenner, Senator Hickenlooper, Rep. Velde, and the house un-American activities committee how many people have been convicted of spying for Russia and how many of them were Communists, but none of them answered my questions.

“Finally I read in a newspaper column by Roscoe Drummond that 13 Communists had been convicted of espionage and related activities

“Either J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI are ridiculously inept in being able to convict on five-one thousandths of one percent of the spies, or the story that all Communists are spies is a hoax.”

The letter goes on to say that FBI sources show that the average Communist does not stick with the party more than two or three years.

“No spy conspiracy could work with that kind of defection,” Gormly’s letter said.

The modern American war tax resistance movement was born around 1948. Here are a couple of newspaper bits from its earliest years.

From the Tonawanda Evening News, 26 March 1949:

U.S. Is Confident “Holdouts” Will Pay Their Income Taxes

Washington (UP) — The Internal Revenue Bureau is confident that it will collect any income taxes which may be owed by the “peacemakers” or other protestors.

Several of the peacemakers organization have stated their opposition to income taxes. They take the stand that a large proportion of the tax goes into equipment for war. They’re against war so they’re against helping to finance it. They say they won’t pay that part of their taxes which they say is alloted for military purposes.

Internal Revenue Bureau officials say they have found that most of these threats are made for publicity purposes. The end result is that the people usually come forward and pay, a spokesman said.

However, if they don’t meet their tax bills, then they get notices by mail. If that sort of prodding doesn’t work, then an agent will call. That’s usually all that’s necessary.

Such cases seldom get into court, the spokesman said. The bureau, he added, uses the “horse sense” approach.

Such journalism!

From the Brookfield Courier, 7 April 1949:

War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in 1973

Quaker war tax resistance methods and theories diversified and became more developed, as can be seen from the pages of the Friends Journal of 1973.

One thing that stood in the way of some Quakers (and some Quaker organizations) adopting war tax resistance was a bias toward being law-abiding, and a worry that civil disobedience might be one step too far on a slippery slope to anarchy. In the 15 January issue, lawyer (and Quaker) Allen S. Olmsted Ⅱ tried to remove this impediment:

Those who in sweeping terms condemn all law breaking seldom stop to inquire what the law actually is and who declares it. Is the policeman or the draft board or the tax collector the law? All of these have been reversed by the Courts time and again. Is the demonstrator who defies a police ban, a draft resister who refuses to shoulder a rifle, or a citizen who refuses to pay war taxes, ipso facto a law breaker? These citizens seek to vindicate their lawfulness, i.e. their loyalty to the Constitution, by breaking and then appealing the “law” which the lowest echelon of authority is seeking to enforce.

Perhaps the feature of the war resister’s mind which most clearly differentiates him from other law defiers is his complete loyalty to the spirit, as distinguished from the letter, of the law. This is most evident in his reaction to the tax laws. The spirit of the tax laws is, as some of us see it, that the government must go on and all of us should share the expense thereof according to our means.

Let us take the example of a retired school teacher, or minister whose income is somewhat over the exemption and deductibles. His income tax is, say, $100. He advises the tax collector that since 70 percent of the government’s income is used to prosecute an unjust war he is refusing to pay 70 percent of his tax and encloses his check for $30. He has defied the law and in due course the government will clamp down on his bank account and collect the $70 plus penalties.

Now take the example of the man with an income of $100,000, some of which is gained in selling war supplies to the government. Does he feel that in the spirit of the law he should contribute his fair share to the support of the government from which he has profited so handsomely? Merely to ask the question seems to most people quixotic, naive and bizarre. Our wealthy tax avoider employs a man learned in the letter of the law to show him how he may avoid any taxes whatever. As long as he keeps within the letter of the law he may pound his chest and say “What a smart boy am I.”

The difference between the tax refuser and the tax avoider is twofold: (1) The first violates the letter of the law, the second does not. (2) The first is motivated by the love of his country, his brothers, and his God; the other by the love of himself and his money.

Those who break unjust laws because they are unjust and not for personal profit or convenience, who do so in a humble spirit of submission to the moral law and without breaking the peace, are moving not toward anarchy but away from it. In the name of all that is holy — and I do mean holy — let us stop calling the nonviolent conscientious law resisters breeders of anarchy.

Immediately following that piece was a poem by Raymond Paavo Arvio that began “I am one with the tax refusers, / The long beards, the jail birds / … / The pacifists / The anarchists”.

And immediately after that was an article by Mary Timberlake that considered Quaker meetings and Quaker action to be the necessary one-two punch of Quaker practice:

I learn that 60 percent of all income taxes go to the military. I must refuse to pay that when my income becomes taxable. Ten percent of the phone bill is a federal excise tax, an appropriation approved by Congress in 1966 solely to provide additional funds for our operation in Vietnam (so reads the Congressional Record). I have a telephone. My meeting has a telephone. Dear Friends, the dollars the government collects from us in this way fall as napalm in Vietnam. I must refuse to pay all war taxes, urge you to refuse, take my personal funds out of banks so the government cannot get the money by placing a lien on my account; support instead an alternative fund — to send medical aid to North and South Vietnam, to rechannel this money into my own community where it is needed so desperately; to continue this effort after the war ends in Indochina, because what is the sense of winning the arms race and losing the human race? I do not want to go to prison. but more I don’t want a Vietnamese person or my American brother in uniform (his name is Billy) to die because of a bullet I bought.

The 1 February issue opened with a report about a creative action by Peace Investors of Eugene (PIE):

“More Pie for the People, Less for War” is the slogan of a fast-growing alternative fund begun by tax resisters in Eugene, Oregon. Called Peace Investors of Eugene (PIE), the fund is aimed at redistributing refused tax money to meet human needs by helping to finance a day care center, a free clinic, a crisis switchboard, and a half-way house. Last March the founders of the fund, including members and attenders of Eugene Meeting, handed small slivers of pumpkin pie to persons entering the state employment building and explained, “Sorry we can’t give you more, but the rest goes to the military.” 64 percent of each pie was handed to a person representing the military, and these large pieces were later distributed to local armed forces recruiters. Other creative actions by tax resisters involved in PIE include providing a peace-oriented tax consultant service and posting notices at places where 1040 forms are distributed advising people of the proportion of the federal budget assigned to war-making. At the IRS where such notices were prohibited three of the group stamped directly on the forms the phrase, “Warning: more than half of your taxes go for war.” Charles Gray of PIE says the group has grown not only through such actions, but also through their cooperative relationship with people in the community service groups to whom money has been given. “We feel that in a small way, the war machine has been replaced by new and more loving social priorities.”

The 1 March issue opened with “Some Friendly Tax Tips” from Meg Dickinson. Excerpts:

Fortunately for us there has been a dramatic change in tax resistance. The IRS itself has revised its forms to permit resistance without “falsifying” records, i.e. claiming more dependents than actually exist, a practice that even when done quite openly (with accompanying letters) left something to be desired.

For many… the essential question continues to be how to refuse much larger amounts, so that we are not only protesting but actually removing our taxes from the syndrome of destruction our government seems committed to. How can we not only protest, but stop paying for, stop buying war? This is where IRS’s revised W-4 helps.

For wage earners it is always possible to submit a new W-4 to the employer. The revised one does not even mention the word “dependents.” Instead it asks how many allowances you claim. “Allowances” is not defined, but is used to indicate dependents, special conditions such as blindness, and also amounts of anticipated itemized deductions. If you decide you will itemize your deductions and claim a peace deduction for the amount that might otherwise go to military expenditures, you simply add these allowances to those you have taken for family members, etc. On the form you give your employer you enter only the total.

Another part of the IRS revision changes the statement you must sign. No longer does one “under the penalties of perjury” certify that the number is correct. Instead one certifies “to the best of my knowledge and belief” that the number is right.

To figure how many allowances to claim, divide your annual salary by $750. This gives you the total number of allowances in your salary. You then add the number of allowances you have for family members, etc., to the number of allowances that correspond to the percentage of the remainder that you want to refuse. With $15,000 salary you have 20 allowances. If with a family of four (4) you wish to refuse 66 percent, subtract 4 from 20 (16 allowances left) and take 66 percent of 16 (13 allowances). Adding 13 to 4, you take 17 allowances.…

This brings up the question of what to tell your employer. Obviously individual decisions vary from complete candor to no discussion at all. IRS regulations are clear in making the wage earner, not the employer, responsible for the accuracy of the W-4.

One thing that should be understood is that if you take allowances for anticipated peace deductions (or Gandhian deductions or Woolman witnesses or name your own) you are committing yourself to filling out the regular 1040 Form the following April. Unless you have this intention you are misrepresenting your allowances on the W-4. Prosecution seems unlikely, according to tax resistance lawyers, but is a possibility. IRS has strengthened our claim of legality by actually returning money to surprising numbers of persons claiming war crimes deductions. There are even instances of individuals receiving refunds two years in a row.

A frequent question from those who have given tax refusal some thought concerns IRS’s collection. Doesn’t the government always get the money? Many who refused the phone tax found it was taken from their bank accounts (with hefty bank charges added sometimes) and felt too little had been accomplished by the action. The change in this situation lies not with IRS but with the development of creative ways to use the refused funds. Alternative funds have proliferated over the country, some giving the interest from the accounts to worthwhile projects, some using the whole amount to offer short-term loans to peace and community-oriented groups. The Philadelphia People’s Bail Fund is in large part using refused taxes for their contingency fund.

Collection can be delayed through a series of routine conferences, usually a total of four or five in a period of a couple years. These not only allow dialog with IRS people but keep your funds in the service of peace longer. The culmination of these can be a petitioning of tax court in your own behalf, thus contesting the constitutionality of various factors involved in taxes and military power.

Tax Resistance may seem complicated, but it is really a very simple concept: finding the ways you support war and removing them from your life. It is hard indeed to live in such a way as to take away the occasion for all war, but harder still to do it while helping to pay for the Pentagon’s program.

Robert Schultz responded to this with a letter-to-the-editor in the 1 May issue in which he wrote that he thought it was folly to try to only resist a certain percentage of the tax or a certain “war tax” (since all the money you give to the government is fungible), and also questioned whether Dickinson’s approach might be “un-Quakerly.” Excerpts:

[T]he encouragement to resort to subterfuges, claiming that you are entitled to certain deductions or allowances according to your particular religious or ideological scruples… does not seem quite honest to me…. I would prefer to come out in the clear and say frankly that I am not paying what the law requires me to pay because I do not approve of either the way, the means, or the end of the payments. Frankly, I believe that the recommendations suggested, if followed to their logical conclusion, are pointing directly to anarchy and chaos. Government has to function, and for an individual to take upon himself the responsibility of determining what that functioning should include strikes me as being a bit of arrogance.

I respect the Quakerly concern in regard to war. But I would rather further it by complete simplicity of living, a renunciation of all unnecessary income (following the example of John Woolman), a discriminating selection of all I consume or the services I use, and a careful examination of all sources of my income.

Also, one should avoid using any article or service upon which a Federal excise tax is levied. To do otherwise is to negate all one thinks one gains by withholding Federal taxes directly and raises the question of the sincerity of one’s convictions.

Dickinson was also mentioned in the 15 March issue, concerning a Tax Court filing in which she was trying to get the government “to return taxes taken from her during 1970.”

She has contributed amounts, comparable to those refused, to organizations she believes would use the money responsibly. She charges that payment of these taxes makes her an accomplice in war-making and is against her right of religious freedom.

The 1 May issue also opened with tales of tax resistance:

“Common Sense” is the name of a storefront tax consulting service set up this spring by members of the Roxbury Alternative Fund. This group of Boston area tax resisters drew on the expertise of trained tax accountants to provide two services: counseling for tax resisters and aid to anyone in preparing tax forms. The project ran from February through April 16. Clients often were poor or working class people. Many were helped to avoid tax overpayments, and a large degree of friendly communication was established. Members of Cambridge Meeting started the Roxbury Fund, and several participated in Common Sense.

On 6 May 1973 the North Columbus (Ohio) Friends Meeting decided to discontinue its telephone service “as the only course on which we are able to unite in meeting the dilemma of the payment or non-payment of the telephone tax.” For the previous two years, the Meeting had been unable to reach a consensus on phone tax resistance.

The 15 May issue of the Journal announced that “Young Friends of North America” was making available an “informational packet on Friends and War Taxes, including practical suggestions for the Friend troubled over taxation for war” called Who Buys the Guns?

The Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting and Association met in mid-May. According to a Journal report on the gathering, “[f]riends were sobered by a call to be present at the June trial of a Durham, NC, Friend for refusal to pay income tax for war purposes.”

In the 1 June issue, Marion Dobbert and Jeannette Marquardt proposed what they called “Legal Resistance to War Tax”:

DeKalb, Illinois, Friends have developed a stop-gap measure for resistance to payment of war taxes. We suggest that all Friends wishing to protest war taxes in a legal manner file form 843 with the IRS for the return of that portion of their taxes which they calculate to be war-related. This form is used to file for the return of already paid taxes which have been “illegally, erroneously or excessively collected.” Friends should find it easy to claim that collecting taxes to be used for the making of war is as much a violation of their freedom of religion as would be required military service, since both service and tax money involve the individual in the taking of human lives.

The completed Form 843 is sent to the same office where you filed your Form 1040 for the year in question. The commissioner for that office then has six months to rule on the validity of your claim. If your request to have the war tax portion of your income tax returned is denied, you may appeal within the IRS, or take your case to the proper district court. In either case, you will need a lawyer.

Each individual can make his filing of Form 843 more effective by sending a letter with the form explaining that you are protesting war taxes, and why. A copy of this letter should be sent to each senator and representative, along with a covering letter asking for a change in the law to provide an alternative for conscientious objectors who wish to channel their tax money into projects other than military.

DeKalb Friends Meeting has created a committee on Legal Resistance to War Taxes to collect the names of interested individuals, keep them informed on what is happening, what they might do to help, and co-ordinate the efforts of groups throughout the nation. Eventually, we hope to find lawyers who will help us appeal adverse rulings on our Form 843 claims, both within the IRS system and in the courts. Anyone wishing to join in our work may sign the following and send it to: Legal Resistance to War Tax, c/o Dan and Marion Dobbert, 327 River Drive, DeKalb, Illinois 60115.

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I am conscientiously opposed to war and must in conscience refuse to pay war taxes. I will therefore take the legal means open to me to avoid paying such taxes. As one step to this end. I join with like-minded people in the Legal Resistance to War Taxes and seek a provision in the tax laws for conscientious objectors.

Signed…

Ernest & Marion Bromley

Ernest Bromley had been resisting the federal income tax since the late 1940s. Here are some excerpts from a 1949 newspaper article on Bromley, whom it identified as “a Methodist minister”:

Draft For Back in News

Rev. Bromley Leads Anti-Tax Fight

Forty-three pacifists throughout the country, led by the Rev. Ernest Bromley, who created a stir last summer in Nassau when in a sermon he advised young men not to register for the draft, declared today they would refuse to pay federal income taxes this year as a “civil disobedience” protest against the government’s military expenditures.” [sic.]

A tax refusal committee of Peacemakers, pacifist organization with headquarters in New York City, announced the stand for 41 of the group. The Rev. Mr. Bromley now of Wilmington, Ohio, is chairman of the committee. Another list was issued at the same time by Walter G. Longstreth, Philadelphia lawyer, which included 11 names, all but two of which were contained in the Peacemakers’ statement.

…He has refused to pay taxes before.

The 25 men and 16 women of the Peacemakers group declared in a statement they were “determined upon a course of civil disobedience” being “unwilling to contribute to preparations for war.”

“We plead with our fellow citizens of the United States to join us in acting for peace by refusing to manufacture weapons of war, refusing to serve in the armed forces, and refusing to finance war preparations,” the statement said.

The committee said some would pay no part of their tax, since they maintain the major activity of the federal government is war, with 80 per cent of the national budget devoted to “past, present and future wars.” Others will refuse to pay that percentage of their tax which corresponds with the percentage which the government spends for military preparations. Some of the refusers are Quakers, while others are members of various other Christian and Jewish denominations and some follow a humanist philosophy.

In Albany. Walter R. Sturr, collector of internal revenue, said imprisonment of the group is unlikely since fraud probably would not be involved. He said the government would probably move against the group as against others owing tax money and could, as a last resort, seize property or bank accounts.

On the peacemakers’ list is Robert C. Friend, formerly a Unitarian religious education director in Schenectady, who moved to Los Angeles last summer where he is engaged in the same kind of work.

Bromley’s stand didn’t make the pages of the Friends Journal until 1973. In the 15 March issue was this note:

Do peace activists have any responsibility for federal income taxes on monies paid through a sharing fund to families whose wage-earners were in prison for draft and war resistance? This and other important questions are involved in a case brought by the Internal Revenue Service against Marion Bromley, a Cincinnati Quaker, and Ernest Bromley. The IRS has assessed the Bromleys $9,000 and Gano Peacemakers, Inc., which owns the home where they live, $21,000. This assessment is based on an IRS contention that the Peacemaker movement is synonymous with Gano Peacemakers, Inc., and that everyone who received checks from the Peacemaker Fund were actually employees of Gano Peacemakers and that therefore income tax, Social Security and other monies should have been withheld from the payments. The IRS, however, has been informed by many persons that there is a clear distinction between Gano Peacemakers, Inc., and other Peacemaker activities and organizations. Members also insist that recipients of aid from the sharing fund were not employees.

The Bromleys and Gano Peacemakers, Inc., are unwilling to cooperate with IRS in its attempt to collect thousands of dollars, mostly for war uses. They are also unwilling to cooperate with such total misrepresentation. Ernest Bromley points out that “the spirit and focus of any action should not be on the protection of property or personal security, but rather on continuing to deny money to a war-making government and to encourage tax refusal.” If any steps are taken toward seizure of assets or property of The Peacemaker or Gano Peacemakers, Inc., a campaign of public education, direct action and publicity will begin in the Cincinnati area.

In the 1 March 1975, the Journal published a follow-up on the case, with an interesting editor’s note attached (note also that Ernest Bromley is now also identified as a Quaker), written by Journal editor James D. Lenhart:

Pacifism and the IRS

“The position of the pacifist is unbearable if he (or she) does not undertake intense, practical action of his (or her) own… We need the firm rock of well-directed action if we are to resist the terrible drift dragging us towards reactions of fear, hatred, and violence.”

Pierre Ceresole

Editor’s Note: With post-Watergate disclosures of apparently illegal activities by officials of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Internal Revenue Service vying for space in national news media with statements by Pentagon spokesmen who are beating the drums for increased military spending in general and continued support for South Vietnam’s President Thieu in particular, the following news from Cincinnati of “intense, practical action” and its consequences probably will not receive very much attention anywhere else. So we decided to print it here.

Two acres and a house in Gano, twenty miles north of Cincinnati, were purchased by a small group of pacifists in 1950. In 1952 they formed a nonprofit corporation, Gano Peacemakers, Inc. and within eight years had paid off the mortgage on the property. Meanwhile, Ernest Bromley, a Quaker, had become editor of The Peacemaker, a small newspaper that promotes and publicizes nonviolence. In 1958, the publishing address was moved to the Gano residence but the records, funds and operations of the corporation and the newspaper were kept entirely separate. They still are separate.

Between 1966 and 1971 a sharing fund administered through the newspaper received money from those opposed to the Vietnam war who wanted to help support dependents of imprisoned war objectors. Monthly checks were issued to the dependents, most of whom were mothers of young children. Other expenditures were exclusively for the newspaper and other literature about nonviolence. There was no paid staff and all work was done without pay.

Ernest Bromley and his wife; Marion, have refused to pay income taxes for many years as a form of witness to the peace testimony. It is their claim that the money contributed to the sharing fund was not taxable and that even if it were, the Internal Revenue Service would have to take action against the newspaper. Instead, IRS made an assessment of almost $25,000 against Gano Peacemakers, Inc. and on January 31 two IRS agents posted notices of seizure on the front and back doors of the Gano house where the Bromleys live.

The Bromleys have openly and consistently stated their refusal to pay taxes for war. In fact, they do not favor going to court to protect their rights but instead rely on personal witness and public disclosures of the abuse of power. Ironically, while the Bromleys were taking and proclaiming their stand, the IRS’s recently revealed “Special Services Staff” was secretly investigating organizations and individuals opposed to United States policies in Southeast Asia. Its audit of The Peacemaker newspaper began during this same period.

This is what Ernest and Marion Bromley have to say.

“Writing on the day after IRS posted a notice of seizure on the house here in Gano, we wanted to let you know how we were feeling about the threatened sale.

“Of course we would hate to see such a horrendous sum as nearly $25,000 collected by the government for the budget which is so preponderantly spent for weapons, death and destruction. Since we feel so strongly about that, it seems to us that this is a good time to have attention focused on refusal to pay taxes for war. There aren’t many other ways people in this country can make meaningful protest about the proposed additional appropriations for Saigon and Phnom Penh, for example.

“If we had been under any illusions about the justice and ‘lawfulness’ of this system and this government, it might be quite shocking to see IRS proceed to seize property on the basis of an entirely false tax claim. There is no basis whatever for a claim against Gano Peacemakers, Inc. — and IRS knows this. But we have realized for a long time that governments do not dispense justice — they wield power.

“…we feel the same as we did in the beginning about noncooperation with IRS. Even though this claim is a very false one, we still feel that the witness is being made.

“We want to call attention to the actions of IRS in any way we can, and others may think of ways to do that.”

We invite readers to suggest ways. Meanwhile, you can write or send telegrams to either or both the District Director of IRS and the Regional Commissioner of IRS, Federal Office Building, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202. And you can inform others of your actions and urge them to express their opinions, too. Painful as it might be to law-abiding Friends, you also could consider refusing to pay taxes yourself. You certainly would be in good, even Friendly, company.

There was a further follow-up in the 15 April 1975 issue:

Ernest Bromley, a Cincinnati Friend, continues to witness to the whole truth of the Quaker Peace Testimony by refusing to cooperate with the Internal Revenue Service and by steadfastly proclaiming that payment of taxes to support a budget that spends billions for military purposes is wrong. And he continues to feel the weight of the cross he is bearing.

The IRS moved to seize his and Marion Bromley’s home… on January 31. On February 10 Ernest began distributing leaflets outside the Federal Office Building in downtown Cincinnati. The leaflets simply and clearly stated the facts as the Bromleys and others saw them, and clearly and simply pointed out that more than half of the 1976 federal budget will be spent for war or war-related purposes. On March 5 he was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct and obstructing official business. While being transported to jail he received a two-inch cut on his head which officials could not explain. These charges were subsequently dismissed.

In this entire process Ernest Bromley has refused to recognize any authority of the IRS or the courts over himself. While he was in jail he fasted totally. When he is physically able, he intends to resume his witness.

The Executive Committee of Friends General Conference, meeting in Cincinnati the weekend of March 8–9, adopted a minute expressing general agreement that the arrest and charges are unjustified and supporting “these acts of conscience by Ernest Bromley and others that issue from leadings of the Spirit. Individual members of the Committee were encouraged to take specific actions in support of Ernest Bromley and Peacemakers.” These actions could include messages to the District Director of IRS and the Regional Commissioner of IRS…

The following illustration comes from the 1 May 1975 issue:

As you may remember from earlier Picket Line posts on the Bromleys, the story has a happy ending. Here is how the Journal put it in its 1 October 1975 issue:

A verbal commitment was received on Friday, August 29^th, from IRS Commissioner Donald Alexander and IRS Cincinnati District Director Dwight James that the Bromley/Gano Peacemaker House will be returned! Peacemakers presented IRS officials with a detailed analysis of IRS files and actions pointing out that the bases for the confiscation of the Bromley home were shot through with political biases, faulty logic, and lacks of evidence. At a meeting with Peacemakers that afternoon, IRS officials revealed their decision to return the property: “We realized that IRS was in a no-win situation and decided to do what was right.” Legal technicalities, however, are still being worked out.

Despite this cause for celebration, it must be kept in mind that little has changed: taxation for warmaking goes on, the production and development of weapons grows daily funded by our tax dollars, 11,000 persons and organizations remain on the secret IRS enemies list. Again, Friends are urged to take action to stop tax funding of war and to promote the development of a peaceful and loving world community.

And a follow-up to that came in the 15 December 1975 issue:

While Marion Bromley and her husband, Ernest, were struggling against the Internal Revenue Service’s illegal seizure of their home in Cincinnati, Marion wrote, “We appreciate the expressions of concern for us personally, and if we are unable to prevent sale of the house we will have to turn to the question of where we would relocate. But our energies now are directed to exposing the arrogant power methods the IRS revealed in dealing with Peacemakers, and in urging the people who learn of this to take some responsibility for their own support of a government which seems to be permanently locking the people into a war system… We think if enough public clamor is raised about the wholly fraudulent actions of IRS in the matter of seizure of the property of Gano Peacemakers it might cause IRS to remove the lien [Ed. It did.] and more important, it would serve the larger purpose of educating the public about the methods of the warfare state.” [Ed. Did it?]

The next mention of the Bromleys’s tax resistance that I found was, alas, in an obituary notice for Ernest Bromley in the June 1998 issue. Excerpts:

In 1942, Ernest was arrested for not paying an automobile tax, the proceeds of which would have gone to help pay for the expense of World War Ⅱ.… Throughout the 1950s Ernest worked with other Peacemakers on local and national political issues, including integration, opposition to nuclear weapons testing, and war tax refusal.… In the 1970s the Internal Revenue Service attempted to take their house away. Their resistance to this effort brought them to the attention of President Richard Nixon and Attorney General John Mitchell. Ultimately, they were able to keep the house because it belonged to the land trust. During the last 15 years of his life, despite failing eyesight, Ernest continued to correspond with peace activists and war tax refusers throughout the country.… In his last years, Ernest… maintained his communication with tax refusers, continuing his life-long radical pursuit of peace and justice.

Lyle & Sue Snider

Another case whose coverage began in 1973 was that of Lyle Snider. The 1 May issue gave this report:

Lyle Snider, clerk of Durham Meeting and teacher at Carolina Friends School, was arraigned March 9 for “willfully filing a false and fraudulent withholding statement.” He had filed a W-4 form in May, 1972 claiming 3 billion dependents — approximately one for every person on earth. Lyle’s reasoning: “At least half of our tax money will be spent on the instruments of war. Every person on earth depends on someone in this country to say ‘no’ to the military and to raise a voice to protest militarism.” Both Durham Meeting and the school have passed minutes in support of Lyle’s action. He faces up to one year of prison.

The 15 October issue gave this follow-up:

Tax resister Lyle Snider was tried June 11 in Greensboro, NC, for willfully filing a false and fraudulent W-4 form…. Over 80 supporters of Lyle and his wife, Sue, including students and staff from Carolina Friends School and Quakers from several North Carolina meetings, gathered at a pretrial celebration and at the court itself. Despite conflicts with the court system (Lyle was cited 16 times and Sue once for contempt because of refusal to stand for the judge), Lyle reports, “Sue and I and other supporting witnesses were able to communicate extensively and powerfully on the spiritual nature of our war tax resistance.” The jury required over a day of deliberation to find Lyle guilty. He was sentenced to 8 months for tax resistance and 30 days for contempt of court, and Sue was given 10 days for contempt. All sentences are being appealed.

Lyle writes of the trial experience: “We created a presence of love in and around the courtroom… fused with a strong and unequivocal witness for peace and nonviolence. Many people felt that the trial… had changed their lives in a very significant way… The suffering of the Indochinese people is still very much with us in our thoughts and prayers. We continue to search for ways of expressing our love and compassion for these people.”

The Sniders were back in the pages of the 15 September 1974 issue:

North Carolina Friends Lyle and Sue Snider have been acquitted by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals of charges stemming from Lyle’s claim of three billion dependents in order to avoid paying war taxes. The court found that Lyle had engaged in “hyperbole,” not willful fraud, that he was exercising his right of free speech, and that persons may choose not to stand for a judge without being guilty of contempt. Last summer Lyle was sentenced to nine months in jail after a trial attended by some 80 supporters of the Quaker couple.

Here are a couple more data points about the war tax resistance of American Quaker Katsuki James Otsuka. First, a United Press dispatch from 1 September 1949:

Refuses to Pay Tax, Sentenced

Indianapolis — UP — A Japanese-American Quaker today was fined $100 and costs and sentenced to 90 days in jail for failing to pay a $4.50 federal income tax.

Federal Judge Robert C. Baltzell sentenced Katsuki James Otsuka, 28, a student at Earlham college in Richmond, Ind.

Otsuka paid 71 per cent of his tax but refused to pay the other 29 per cent because it “would be used for military purposes.” He is a farm worker between terms at school.

Next, a second United Press dispatch (as distilled through an Indiana paper), from 16 March 1950:

Hoosier Carpenter Among Those Who Refuse To Pay Tax

New York — (UP) — Only one Hoosier was listed among 40 “peacemakers” who refused to pay all of their 1949 federal income tax.

National headquarters of the organization here said the Hoosier was Roy Nusbaum, a carpenter of Wakarusa, Ind.

There would have been two from Indiana on the list, but Katsuki James Otsuka, former Earlham college student from Richmond, did not earn a taxable income in 1949, the statement said.

Otsuka was in federal prison nearly half of last year because he refused to pay $4.50 in a previous year, a part of his income tax. The Peacemakers refuse to pay that part of their tax which, they say, corresponds to the percentage of national budget now allocated for defense.

In a prepared statement, the Peacemakers said President Truman’s decision to make the hydrogen bomb made them “even more determined than before” not to pay taxes.

At the upcoming national gathering of NWTRCC at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, I’m going to be presenting a summary of the history of war tax resistance in the Society of Friends (Quakers).

Today I’m going to try to coalesce some of the notes I’ve assembled about the renaissance of Quaker war tax resistance during the Cold War. Much of what I have assembled here comes from my close look at the archives of the Friends Journal, the only Quaker publication from this period I have reviewed thoroughly, and so whatever editorial biases that publication may have had may also bias my history of this phase.

There is a lot that happens in this short period of time, and in some places my narrative is going to be condensed into a bunch of bullet-point-like summaries of the rapid-fire events to try to keep up with it all.

The Renaissance (1959–1991)

The modern war tax resistance movement began in the wake of World War Ⅱ in the United States. There had been isolated war tax resisters here and there in other places in recent years, and there was a quiet war tax resistance tendency hiding under the surface of the Society of Friends, but things did not come out into the open in any organized and growing fashion until then.

Quakers were not in the forefront of this movement, but Quaker war tax resisters took courage from it, and it wasn’t long before they began trying to reestablish the war tax resistance traditions in the Society of Friends. The earliest mention of this that I have found from this period concerns Franklin Zahn of the Pacific Yearly Meeting, who was distributing a leaflet on war tax resistance as early as 1959.

A report on the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting that year noted that the subject of war taxes had come up and had led to what sounds like a long and earnest discussion:

Few present felt it right to refuse to pay, nor yet felt comfortable to pay. Varied suggestions were presented: Send an accompanying letter expressing one’s feeling about war; live so simply that income is below tax level; make no report, but once a year send a check for nonmilitary purposes; engage in peace walks and other minority demonstrations; follow Jesus’ example of rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; beware of taking for granted the evils deplored, such as riding on military planes; associate more closely with the Mennonites, who share Friends’ concerns; rise above one’s own shortcomings through personal devotion; work to unite with all Friends Yearly Meetings in refusal to pay taxes. Nothing can be done unless there is a willingness to suffer unto death.[!]

The blinders put on during the Great Forgetting period were still evident. An article in a 1960 issue of the Friends Journal described “refusal to pay taxes for support of war effort emerging as a new testimony” [my emphasis]. Another article from the same issue, titled “The Quaker Peace Testimony: Some Suggestions for Witness and Rededication” didn’t mention taxes at all.

By this time some Friends in Switzerland had been refusing to pay war taxes (I would guess, under the tutelage of Pierre Cérésole).

In 1961 some Quakers in the Pacific Yearly Meeting began to sketch out the initial drafts of a legislative “peace tax” proposal which they envisioned would be a way for conscientious objectors to pay their taxes into a fund that the government could only spend on non-military items. The idea that there might be a legislative solution that could make tax-paying no longer an act of complicity with war would bob up throughout this period, until, by the end of it, the temptation of lobbying instead of committing to direct action would contribute to the eventual decline of war tax resistance in the Society of Friends.

That year also, the Yellow Springs Monthly Meeting issued a statement of support for war tax resisters, the first example of new institutional support for war tax resistance in the Society of Friends that I could find from the 20^th century.

In 1962 there was a burst of excitement about war tax resistance in the Baltimore Yearly Meeting (yet a survey of 350 adults from that meeting found only two or three who were willing to consider actually becoming resisters; whereas almost half of those surveyed were totally unconcerned about their tax money going to the military).

A group of about twenty Quakers, organized by Clarence Pickett and Henry Cadbury, met at the 1963 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to discuss war tax resistance, but they were unable to come up with a consensus statement. Quaker war tax resister Arthur Evans was imprisoned for three months that Fall for his tax refusal.

In 1964 the Friends Journal ended what strikes me as a policy of editorial embarrassment about Quakers and war tax resistance by publishing its first article devoted to the practice, and one that also full-throatedly advocated it. This started a debate in the letters-to-the-editor column and certainly caused more Quakers to confront the question, directly or indirectly.

By the mid-sixties the tide was shifting rapidly. Before this time, individual Quaker tax resisters are unusual enough to highlight individually as being on the cutting-edge; after this, Quaker war tax resistance becomes commonplace enough that individual resisters are exemplars of a larger trend. In 1966 the New York Yearly Meeting promoted war tax resistance in an official statement, and promised financial assistance for any Quakers in the Meeting who might be forced to change jobs or to suffer other financial hardship for their stand. The statement in part read:

We call upon Friends to examine their consciences concerning whether they cannot more fully dissociate themselves from the war machine by tax refusal or changing occupations.

That was the most concrete advocacy of war tax resistance by a Quaker institution in years.

That year also Franklin Zahn wrote a booklet on Early Friends and War Taxes to reintroduce Quakers to their own history and to further banish the Great Forgetting.

The support from Quaker institutions and publications at this point is often noncommittal and is usually vague about exactly how to go about war tax resistance, which taxes to resist, and how to deal with government reprisals. There is nothing like the specific, concrete discipline of earlier Quaker Meetings. This means that Quaker war tax resisters from this period are largely making it up as they go along, conferring with each other informally and organizing, when they are organizing, in groups like Peacemakers, the War Resisters League, and the Committee for Non-Violent Action — that is to say, with non-Quaker groups. (There was briefly something called the “Committee for Nonpayment of War Taxes” run out of Quaker war tax resister Margaret G. Bowman’s home in 1966, but I have not found much about it.)

Quakers were using a broad variety of tax resistance tactics. Arthur Evans and Neil Haworth refused to pay some or all of their income taxes or to cooperate with an IRS summons for their financial records. Johan Eliot redirected twice the amount of his taxes to the United Nations to promote international federalism as a world peace strategy. Clarissa & Samuel Cooper lowered their family income below the tax line. John L.P. Maynard and Robert W. Eaton took pay cuts that reduced their incomes to the maximum allowable before federal income tax withholding was mandatory. Lyle Snyder stopped withholding by declaring three million dependents on his W-4 forms. Alfred & Connie Andersen stopped filing income tax returns. Some Quakers fled to Canada as taxpatriates to join the draft evaders there. Others deposited their taxes into escrow accounts and invited the IRS to seize the accounts while refusing to pay voluntarily. Lloyd C. Shank advocated “the ‘sneaky’ way” of tax resistance — what many people would call tax evasion — saying “ ‘cheating’ is only an oppressive government’s name for a good man’s refusal to murder.” Phone tax resistance was beginning to become widespread, and many Quaker meetings began resisting this tax on their office phones (one meeting was unable to reach consensus on resisting the phone tax and compromised by dropping its phone service entirely). People too timid to resist, and meetings unable to reach consensus on resisting, might instead write their legislators to urge them to enact some form of legal conscientious objection to military taxation. The most timid groups, like the American Friends Service Committee, urged people to pay taxes “under protest” or to match their war tax payments with additional payments to the AFSC.

Robert E. Dickinson had perhaps the most creative tactic of the bunch. He designed and built a set of furniture for his home that was formed of interlocking sheets of plywood such that it could be quickly disassembled and hidden away. He called this “my tax refusal furniture” and meant it to frustrate IRS attempts to seize furnishings from him for back taxes.

Two Quaker employees of two groups within the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting asked their employers to stop withholding income tax from their paychecks, and that Meeting tried to come up with a good policy to follow in such cases.

The fourth Friends World Conference was held in the Summer of 1967. 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.”

U.S. President Johnson called for a 10% income tax surcharge explicitly to fund the Vietnam War. This would be the first explicit “war tax” (other than, arguably, the phone tax) since World War Ⅱ, and its announcement prompted renewed interest in war tax resistance inside and outside the Society of Friends. Quakers were, because of this tax, better-enabled to quote the discipline of early Quakers on refusal to pay explicit war taxes as a way of explaining their own stands.

In October 1968 203 delegates from “nineteen Yearly Meetings, eight Quaker colleges, fifteen Friends secondary schools, the American Friends Service Committee National Board and its twelve regional offices, and nine other peace or directly-related organizations” met in Richmond, Indiana, to draft a “Declaration on the Draft and Conscription.” Part of this declaration mentioned the war tax concern:

We call on Friends everywhere to recognize the oppressive burden of militarism and conscription. We acknowledge our complicity in these evils in ways sometimes silent and subtle, at times painfully apparent. We are under obligation as children of God and members of the Religious Society of Friends to break the yoke of that complicity.

We also recognize that the problem of paying war taxes has intensified; this compels us to find realistic ways to refuse to pay these taxes.

After only ten years of thaw, some seventy years of Great Forgetting have been melted away, and the Society of Friends has again reached a consensus that Quakers are compelled to refuse to pay war taxes.

President Johnson’s war surtax went into effect in 1969, adding a 7.5% surtax to the income tax returns for the 1968 tax year, and 10% for the following year (the tax would be extended at a reduced rate into 1970 and then abandoned).

Meetings all across the country were discussing and passing minutes on war tax resistance, though few would advocate it in specific and unreserved ways, most choosing instead to voice expressions of unspecified “approval and loving support” for Quakers who felt compelled to resist. In 1970, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting passed a relatively strong minute stating:

Refusal to pay the military portion of taxes is an honorable testimony, fully in keeping with the history and practices of Friends… We warmly approve of people following their conscience, and openly approve civil disobedience in this matter under Divine compulsion. We ask all to consider carefully the implications of paying taxes that relate to war-making… Specifically, we offer encouragement and support to people caught up in the problem of seizure, and of payment against their will.

The New York Yearly Meeting decided to begin resisting corporately by refusing to honor liens on the salaries of tax resisting employees (though it could not reach consensus on a refusal to withhold income tax from such employees), and, the following year, by refusing to pay its own phone tax.

The American Friends Service Committee finally decided to do something concrete about the war tax question, but it was a little odd. They withheld and paid taxes from a war tax resisting employee and then sued the government for a refund. The strange structure of their process seems to have been a very deliberate way to structure a legal suit for maximum effectiveness, and it did (briefly) show some success. A court ruled in 1974, on First Amendment freedom-of-religion grounds, that the government could not force the organization to pay the taxes of an objecting employee — alas, the Supreme Court almost immediately, and overwhelmingly, overturned this.

Also in 1974, Susumu Ishitani, a Japanese Quaker, formed a war tax resistance group in Japan — the first example I am aware of from Asia.

By the mid-1970s, the Friends Journal’s coverage of war tax resistance is less occupied with advocacy, debate, and the presentation of individual exemplars, and is more concerned with the practical aspects of how Quakers are going about it. The editorial stance shifts again, to one of more forthright advocacy. It is assumed that Quakers want to avoid paying war taxes, and the question is how to do so well.

The ending of the U.S. war on Vietnam did not seem to slow the enthusiasm for war tax resistance. In 1976 the Friends Journal devoted an issue to the subject for the first time. In 1977 Robert Anthony began another attempt to get the courts to legalize conscientious objection to military taxation. It went nowhere, but notably, in a letter to the court, his monthly meeting wrote:

We assert that the free exercise of the Quaker religion entails the avoidance of any participation in war or financial contribution to that part of the national budget used by the military.

If not exaggerated for effect, this statement would be among the strongest yet articulated by a Quaker institution in this renaissance period — not simply expressing support for war tax resisters, or encouraging Friends to consider resisting, but asserting that to practice the Quaker religion necessarily meant to refuse to pay war taxes.

In 1978, Quakers met with their Brethren and Mennonite counterparts to draft a joint statement that encouraged war tax resistance — the “New Call to Peacemaking.” The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting asked its ongoing representative meeting to draft some formal guidance for Quaker war tax resisters for how they should go about it, and to set up an alternative fund to hold and redirect resisted taxes. (New England Yearly Meeting began its own alternative fund for resisted taxes the following year.)

By this time war tax resistance is a core part of any discussion of the Quaker peace testimony, and there are increasing calls for Meetings to resist taxes as an institution.

In 1979 the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting approved a minute on war tax resistance that pulled its punches a bit:

Our strength and our security are derived from our belief in the reality of a loving God and the oneness of that of God in all people. In order to say yes to this belief, we must seriously consider saying no to payment of war taxes.

This “seriously consider” compares poorly to discipline of times past (e.g. “a tax levied for the purchasing of drums, colors, or for other warlike uses, cannot be paid consistently with our Christian testimony” [Ohio Yearly Meeting, 1819]). It also, some Quakers point out, sometimes pales next to the more direct and certain advice from some meetings that young Quaker men resist the draft.

As more Quakers and Meetings feel the pressure to take a stand on war taxes, the more timid ones are increasingly desperate to find ways to do so without actually having to resist. Silly ideas, like writing “not for military spending” in the memo field of their tax payment checks, and “peace tax fund” ideas proliferate. By 1982, Quakers in Canada and Australia are floating their own peace tax fund legislation ideas.

Meanwhile, Quakers in England seem to have gotten the tax resisting bug. The Friends World Committee for Consultation and London Yearly Meeting stopped withholding income taxes from twenty-five war tax resisting employees in 1982, putting the money in escrow. (This resistance was short-lived; after losing a legal appeal in 1985, they went back to withholding.)

In 1983 war tax resistance, according to Friends Journal reports, was a “major preoccupation” of the London Yearly Meeting, and a “burning concern” at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (where “unity could not be achieved”). Lake Erie Yearly Meeting encouraged its Monthly Meetings “to establish meetings for sufferings to aid war tax resisters.” Pacific Yearly Meeting started an alternative fund.

Smaller Monthly and Quarterly meetings around the country were beginning to take even stronger stands. The Minneapolis and Twin Cities Meetings approved a minute that asked “all members of our meetings to practice some form of war tax resistance”! The Davis (California) meeting passed a similar minute. Monthly Meetings are assembling “clearness committees” to help each other find responses to the war tax problem that are appropriate to their conscientious “leadings.”

That year also, the Friends General Conference promoted the idea of Quakers giving interest-free loans to them, a thinly-veiled (not explicitly stated) way of hiding assets from IRS:

…Friends loan money to F.G.C. at no interest, which F.G.C. invests to earn income which is used to support the varied programs of the Conference, such as publications, religious education curricula, and the ongoing nurture program. These loans provide regular dependable monthly income to the Conference, and reduce the interest income on which the lender must pay federal income taxes, while providing the lender with protection against unforeseen financial reversals. F.G.C. will repay the principal amount within 30 days after receiving a written request from the lender. All principal amounts are kept in insured investments.

In 1984 the Friends Journal, now edited by a war tax resister, devoted another issue to the subject. Non-resisting Quakers were now very much on the defensive. One complained that at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting that year, taxpaying Quakers like him “were compared to the Quaker slaveholders of the 18^th century, and not a dissenting voice was raised,” but even he had to acknowledge that war tax resistance was “in the mainstream of Quaker thought, and therefore entitled to support from Quaker bodies.”

The meeting itself though could only agree to issue another minute that would “not urge” Friends to resist, but would “give strong support” to those who did.

In 1985, the Friends World Committee for Consultation held a war tax resistance conference in Washington, D.C., and formed a standing “Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns.” The following year, they held a conference for Quaker organizations that had war tax resisting employees. The conference was attended by 35 people, including representatives from 21 such organizations. They were united by an interest in supporting the war tax resistance of their employees in an open and honest fashion, in a way that included the redirection of the resisted taxes to beneficial causes, and that used the “clearness committee” process.

You definitely get the feeling that momentum is building and Quaker war tax resistance is having a vigorous revival. Unfortunately, though, it seems to me that this is the high-water mark. In surprisingly little time the tide will begin to recede. But there is still some forward progress to be made.

In 1987 the London Yearly Meeting declared:

We are convinced by the Spirit of God to say without any hesitation whatsoever that we must support the right of conscientious objection to paying taxes for war purposes… We ask Meeting for Sufferings to explore further and with urgency the role our religious society should corporately take in this concern and then to take such action as it sees necessary on our behalf.

The Friends United Meeting adopted a policy of not withholding taxes from resisting employees that year as well. The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting soon followed suit, and refused to withhold federal taxes from three war tax resisters on the payroll (after a legal battle, they would pay “under duress” a few years later). The Baltimore Yearly Meeting also adopted such a policy, in 1990.

In 1988 another conference for employers of tax resisting employees was held, this one expanded to include Mennonite and Church of the Brethren employers. The Friends Journal got an IRS levy on the salary of its editor, and it devoted a third issue to the topic of war tax resistance. Some Quakers begin using the tax resistance tactic in the service of other causes, such as opposition to capital punishment or nuclear power.

In an early sign of the receding of the war tax resistance tide, the Friends World Committee for Consultation retired its “Friends Committee on War Tax Concerns” in favor of a “Committee on Peace Concerns.” From here, sadly, it’s pretty much all downhill. In the next and final segment of this series on the history of Quaker war tax resistance, I’ll try to describe and explore the second “forgetting.”

From the front page of The Sandusky [Ohio] Register Star-News on this date in 1949:

8 Ohioans Refuse To Pay Tax For “Financing War”

Columbus, March 14 (UP) — Eight Ohioans said today they will refuse to pay all or part of their 1948 income tax because the money will be used to “finance war preparations.”

The eight were among 41 persons in the nation who announced they will not pay all or part of their income taxes. All are members of Peacemakers, a pacifist group with headquarters in New York city.

In a prepared statement, the eight Ohioans renounced war and violence and said they were “acting for peace by refusing to manufacture weapons of war, refusing to serve in the armed forces, and refusing to finance war preparations.”

The Rev. Ernest Bromley, Wilmington, O. was identified as chairman of the tax refusal committee of peacemakers. His wife, Marion, also was listed among those who will refuse to pay income taxes.

Other Ohioans listed include Horace Champney, Caroline Urie, and Ralph Templin, all of Yellow Springs; Max Sandin, Cleveland; Wallace Nelson, Cincinnati, and Aleck D. Dodd, Toledo.

Mrs. Urie, a 75-year-old widow, attempted last year to deduct 34.6 percent of her estimated tax for that year. Congress, however, reduced taxes in her income bracket and her income fell enough below her estimate that at the end of the year the government owed her money instead.

There had been a flurry of articles the previous year about Urie’s tax resistance. I’ve posted some of these before.

A caption to a wire service photo of Urie published in many papers around that time reads: “Mrs. Caroline Foulke Urie, 74-year-old Yellow Springs, Ohio, widow [“of a navy World War Ⅰ officer,” some versions add], has paid $294.30 of her 1947 income tax, but has refused to pay the remaining 34.6 percent, because it would be allocated for military purposes. Crippled by arthritis for 14 years, Mrs. Urie is bedridden most of the time.”

And here’s a United Press dispatch from March 1948 that adds some more details to the story:

Quaker Refuses to Pay Tax for War Expenditures

Yellow Springs, O., (UP) — The elderly widow of a career Navy officer refused to pay 34.6 per cent of her income tax today because “I’ll never pay any more money for war.”

Mrs. Caroline Fouke Urie, 74-year-old Quaker, wrote President Truman and the Internal Revenue Department that she would pay only 65.4 per cent of her income tax.

“If they want to send me to jail because I won’t pay, that’s all right with me,” she said. “I’m perfectly willing to go to jail. I’ll never pay any more money for war.”

She would donate the other 34.6 per cent, she said, to non-profit agencies “engaged in practical efforts toward removing some of the causes of war.”

Mrs. Urie said her husband, a Navy medical officer, retired before World War Ⅰ because of injuries suffered in a target practice blast on a battle ship.

In her letter to Mr. Truman, Mrs. Urie explained that in previous years “I have affixed to my income tax return, and to the check in payment of the tax, a typed or printed protest stating that the tax is paid under duress because most of it goes to military expenditures.

“Now that the atomic bomb has reduced to a final criminal absurdity the whole war system… I have come to the conclusion that — as a Christian, a Quaker, a religious and conscientious objector to the whole institution of organized war — I must henceforth refuse to contribute to it in any way I can avoid.”

She said the atomic bomb has involved the United States in the “shame and guilt” of having been the first to exploit its criminal possibilities.

“It’s time for people to start thinking,” the modest and retiring widow said.

Once expelled from Italy by the Mussolini government because of anti-fascist statements, Mrs. Urie was a social worker for the Society of Friends in England, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Germany, and Italy.

Her friends said that even though crippled by arthritis, Mrs. Urie keeps abreast of community and world activity by reading and maintaining a large volume of correspondence.

Until 1955 the federal income tax filing deadline in the United States was March 15, not April 15 as it (usually) is these days. For this reason, some of the early examples of press accounts of the modern American war tax resistance movement are bunched around this date.

For example, there’s this, from the North Adams, Massachusetts, Transcript of this date in 1950:

Berkshire Couple Refuses to Pay Tax

Among 16 Signers of Statement Opposing Financing of War Preparations

Two Berkshire county persons, Mr. and Mrs. Roger Drury of Sheffield, are among 46 signers of a statement indicating refusal to pay income taxes because of a determination not to finance war preparations.

Released through the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers, the statement cites President Truman’s decision to go ahead with the production of the hydrogen bomb as basis for an even firmer attitude.

One paragraph reads: “Today is the deadline for payment of 1949 income taxes. Unitedly we affirm our determination to refuse to pay taxes which are levied for the purpose of carrying on war. President Truman’s decision to begin the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb makes us even more determined than before to refuse the finance armaments.” [sic]

There was an article about the Peacemakers in the 15 April 1959 Daily Intelligencer of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, but the only copy of that paper I’ve been able to locate is missing the opening page of the article. Here is what remains:

73 Refuse To Pay Tax

…ents of four children. Swann is a designer and builder.

Peacemakers is a nation-wide movement based on Gandhian concepts of non-violence. Believing that peace will never come by means of war and war preparations, the group advocates, in addition to income tax refusal, refusal to cooperate with the draft and refusal to work in war industry.

Opposes CD Drill

The executive committee of Peacemakers recently issued a statement calling for non-cooperation with the civil defense drill on April 17, and suggesting that instead of “duck and cover” drills, schools conduct “an alternative program in which the constructive ways individuals can work for peace be presented.”

The Peacemaker group also advocates non-violent resistance in case of invasion or suppression of freedom; wide-spread and complete economic sharing; inner transformation within the individual.

A complete statement of the 73 non-payers released today is as follows:

“War-making has come to be the major activity of the Federal Government. Nowhere is the fact better reflected than in the Federal budget. The staggering tax load placed on the American people is staggering only because of military expenditures, which take four-fifths of each tax dollar. The sharp upward trend of expenditures for high-powered bombs and long-range missiles greatly increases the possibility that mankind will be extinguished.

“We dissent and want our lives to be a counter-friction to stop the machines. As individual we assert with Henry David Thoreau ‘What I have to do is to see that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.’

“Some of us have refused to pay the whole of our taxes, some of us have refused to pay part of them, some are living on incomes intentionally kept too low to be taxable, some have given non-cooperation to collection of taxes for war by filing no tax return.”

And, over 50 years later, that’s still pretty much the lay of the land in American war tax resistance circles.

A United Press dispatch from 17 April 1956:

An Unpaid Bill

Pair Refuse To Pay Tax For Military Use

Menlo Park (UP) — Roy C. Kepler and his wife, Patricia, refused yesterday to pay their 1955 federal income tax because they object to the government’s military spending.

The Keplers, who operate a book store here, sent their 1955 return properly made out to the collector of Internal Revenue in San Francisco. But instead of enclosing a check, they sent a letter.

The letter stated their opposition to the nation’s $34 billion military budget and development of the H-bomb.

“This policy of deterrence through mutual terror and the threat of massive retaliation is, in plain words, preparation for mass killing on the one hand and suicide on the other,” they said.

Kepler said he and his wife belong to a group known as the Tax Refusal Committee. He said it was founded years ago by Rev. Ernest R. Bromley, Sharonville, Ohio, whose name appeared on a mimeographed statement attached to the Keplers’ letter. The statement bore the names of 29 persons, including the Keplers, who comprise the committee.

Harold Hawkins, district director of Internal Revenue, said the affair will be handled “in a routine manner.” He said the local office would send a written request for remittance. If this is ignored, tax liens will probably be filed against the Keplers.

The Keplers turned up again in a San Mateo Times article the following year (3 July 1957):

Menlo Couple Resist U.S. Tax

Menlo Park — Roy C. Kepler, local book store owner, has again informed the federal government that he doesn’t intend to pay his income tax as long as the country continues to create and test nuclear weapons.

Replying to a notice that his 1956 income taxes are unpaid and overdue, Kepler states in a letter to the district director of internal revenue that “my wife and I… are determined not to support any government in the preparation of genocidal weapons which can destroy a whole city by blast and fire, and then kill millions of others for thousands of miles around through radioactive fallout…”

The Keplers first came to gain publicity on their stand a year ago when they refused to pay their 1955 income taxes.

Unperturbed internal revenue officials at that time merely attached a portion of the Keplers’ bank account to pay the taxes and penalties. They have indicated they will follow the same procedure this year.

In his letter to the district director, Kepler states, “One significant change has come about since our initial refusal last year.”

“The American people,” he claims, “are more disturbed than ever before about the creation and testing of nuclear weapons of mass murder; public opinion here and throughout the world is increasingly demanding an end to such madness…”

I haven’t yet visited any archives that hold material from the Peacemakers, that group that coordinated the early modern American war tax resistance movement beginning in the late 1940s. But while I was following another thread, I found the following article which gave the most complete membership run-down of the tax refusal committee of Peacemakers that I have yet seen:

43 Pacifists Won’t Pay U.S. Tax in Arms Protest

Special in The [Philadelphia] Inquirer and New York Herald Tribune

New York, March 13 [1949]. — Forty-three pacifists throughout the United States declared today that they would refuse to pay all or a part of their Federal income taxes this year as a protest against the Nation’s military expenditures.

The group, including a number of Quakers, conscientious objectors, and several who have refused payment of taxes before, issued a statement through Peacemakers, [a] national pacifist group with headquarters here, in which they said:

“Believing that men are accountable for their actions, and that laws requiring immoral acts should not be obeyed, we have after serious consideration determined upon a course of civil disobedience with relation to the income tax laws of the United States.”

Headed by Pastor

Forty-one of the tax refusers acted under a tax refusal committee of Peacemakers, headed by Rev. Ernest Bromley, of Wilmington, O. Their statement was issued by Rev. A.J. Muste, secretary of the organization, and also secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Mr. Muste, former director of the Presbyterian Labor Temple, and one-time president of the defunct Brookwood Labor College at Katonah, N.Y., has long been known in the labor movement, and as a pacifist and campaigner against military conscription.

Two additional persons were listed as tax refusers in a statement issued on behalf of 11 Philadelphians by Walter C. Longstreth, Philadelphia lawyer. The other nine were all included in the Peacemakers list.

Some Withhold 36.4 Pct.

Mr. Muste, who said he personally would refuse to pay any income taxes this year, as he did last, declared that some of the signers would follow his course of action; while others will withhold the 36.4 percent estimated by the Bureau of the Budget as that portion of tax money expended for military purposes.

Others on the list issued by the Peacemakers were:

Ross Anderson, of Portland Ore.; B. Bargen, of Newton, Kas.; Marilyn Blaise, religious education director, New York City; Marion Bromley, of Wilmington, O.; Lindley Burton, of Bryn Mawr, Pa.; Horace Champney, of Yellow Springs, O.; Miriam Keeler Cornelius, labor economist, Washington D.C.; Aleck D. Dodd, clergyman, of Toledo, O.; Margaret E. Dungan, of Wallingford, Pa.; William Bacon Evans, of Morrestown, N.J.; Caleb Foote, of Arden, Del.; Hope Foote, of Arden, Del.; Marion C. Frenyear, clergyman, of Plainfield, Mass.; Robert C. Friend, religious education director, of Schenectady, N.Y.; Walter Gormly, of Mt. Vernon, Ia.; J. William Hawkins, of Winters, Calif.; Ammon Hennacy, of Phoenix, Ariz.; George M. Houser, of New York City; Sander Katz, of New York City; Raymond E. Kinney, of Los Angeles; Emily Longstreth, of Philadelphia; Walter Longstreth, of Philadelphia; Mary Bacon Mason, of Newton Center, Mass.; Milton Mayer, of Chicago; Mary McDowell, of Brooklyn, N.Y.; Wallace Nelson, of Cincinnati; James Peck, of New York City; Paula Beck, of New York City; Caroline Philips, of Wilmington, Del.; Lydia Philips, of Wilmington, Del.; Grace Rhoads, of Moorestown, N.J.; Francis B. Riggs, of Cambridge, Mass.; Valerie Riggs, of Cambridge, Mass.; Igal Roodenko, of Bronx, N.Y.; Max Sandin, of Cleveland; Laurence Scott, of Kansas City, Mo.; Ralph Templin, of Yellow Springs, O.; Louise Thomas, of Cherry Valley, N.Y.; Mrs. Caroline Urie, of Yellow Springs, O.; Beverly White, of Wichita, Kas..

Many of these names I’ve encountered before, but several were new to me.

There were fewer than 3,000 people living in Yellow Springs, Ohio at the time, and three of them were among the 43 public war tax resisters in the United States. I wonder what that was all about.

An Associated Press dispatch from this date in 1961, as headlined by The Kansas City Times:

Pacifist Fouls Up As a Tax Dodger

Washington, Aug. 30. — A 72-year-old pacifist sat down in a Treasury corridor today to begin a hunger strike which was quickly interrupted by [a] Secret Service agent.

Max Sandin of Cleveland, O., a sign painter, said he would stay in the hall until he starved to death.

Two agents took Sandin into custody and turned him over to a hospital for mental observation.

A conscientious objector in both wars, Sandin has refused to pay federal income taxes since 1943. The Internal Revenue service has attached his monthly social security check for $116 to meet back tax payments.

He was, according to a later article, “found sound of mind and discharged on his own responsibility.”

Monday the District of Columbia Commission on Mental Health dismissed a petition to commit Sandin to an insane institution. The commission said Tuesday the finding that Sandin was of sound mind came after examining Sandin and discussions with relatives, friends, and witnesses.

That was over a week and a half after the Secret Service grabbed him, though.

Another unsympathetic headline topped the United Press coverage in the Sandusky, Ohio Register a couple of days earlier:

Doesn’t Pay Taxes, But Asks Benefits

Cleveland (UPI) — Max Sandin, 72, was en route to Washington today to conduct a hunger strike at the U.S. Treasury Building until his social security payments are restored.

Sandin, a conscientious objector in two wars, has refused to pay federal income taxes since 1943 because most of the money goes to war purposes, he said.

He was notified Aug. 1 that his social security benefits for July 1961 had been surrendered to the Internal Revenue Service.

The government claims he owes several thousand dollars in income taxes.

“I am 72-years-old and unable to work,” Sandin said. “Without social security I will starve.”

He said he is going to starve in Washington and “the government can do as it pleases with me.”

He was in the news last September when he and three other pacifists protested against obstruction of Polaris-carrying submarines at New London, Conn.

He related that he had been sentenced to death as a conscientious objector in 1918 but this was later reduced by presidential action to a prison sentence and he served about five months.

“Now, years later, they take a second action which can kill me because I am a pacifist and have worked for a peaceful world without war,” Sandin said.

A Scripps dispatch added these details:

Max hitch-hiked from Cleveland to Washington. Yesterday he spent all day parading with fellow Peace Action colleagues before the White House, and arguing with Internal Revenue officials.

Late in the day, IRS spokesmen admitted there was a possible legal loophole through which Max might wriggle, should he choose to do so.

“The Social Security law says no one can attach the payments to individuals, but our law doesn’t except the beneficiaries,” explained Lawrence George, spokesman for the tax-collection service. “There’s a possible conflict in this case which could be taken to court.”

Max said he wouldn’t fight his battle in court.

“No lawyer in the world could defend me against not paying my income tax,” he said in broken English. “Besides, I have no money for that.”

The government had started seizing not only Sandin’s $116 monthly Social Security check, but also his $31 monthly Painters Union Pension, leaving him with essentially no income.

In 1918, Sandin was sentenced to death after being “found guilty of having refused to obey an order of his superior officer to clean up a pile of refuse in camp.” He was a conscientious objector, but because of the grounds on which he objected, he was found not qualify for that status officially, and so his refusal to serve was treated as simple insubordination. While at Camp Funston, Sandin and other objectors were subjected to brutal treatment, which became a minor scandal at the time. President Wilson commuted Sandin’s sentence to 15 years (though in fact he was released from the Fort Leavenworth disciplinary barracks on 24 June 1919).

The following comes from the 31 March 1949 Mansfield, Ohio News-Journal:

He Pays, But Indirectly

Fights Against Paying Taxes for War

Cleveland — (INS) – Max Sandin, 59, of Cleveland, refuses to pay federal income taxes because of his convictions against war.

Nevertheless, he pays them, if only indirectly.

Since 1943, long before a new cult of pacifists began refusing to pay taxes for “war preparations,” Sandin has not paid a single cent of income taxes of his own volition.

Every year, the pacifist sends the Bureau of Internal Revenue a tax form bearing his name and address and a note saying:

As a conscientious objector, I refuse to pay income taxes — not to help war directly.

Tax collectors continually send him notices, visit him at home and call him into the revenue office for conferences. Once they attached and took his pay for $145 on a painting job.

The collectors also filed a $2,800 tax lien against him, meaning that if he ever owns property, the government will collect its due. Meanwhile, interest and penalties add to the bill.

Tax officials in Cleveland, however, would not comment on Sandin’s case or that of any other Clevelander who may be one of about 150 persons throughout the nation belong[ing] to the “Peacemakers,” a pacifist organization.

During the First World War, Sandin was sentenced to be shot because he refused to bear arms. He said his objection was political, rather than religious. President Wilson, however, commuted the death sentence.

Here’s another piece on his tax resistance, from the Circleville, Ohio Herald, 11 April 1955:

Stubborn War Objector Still In Private War With Tax Collector

Cleveland (AP) — The little bald man said he wouldn’t pay his income tax this year, just as he has refused to pay it since 1943 when he decided Uncle Sam used tax money to pay for wars.

There was a fleck of white paint under Max Sandin’s ear as he sat in the newspaper office to make his annual declaration. It was literally an earmark of his trade, house-painting.

In his hand he carried a news release headed: “43 refuse to pay federal income tax,” and it was from the “Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers.”

Actually the number now is 42, because Mrs. Caroline F. Urie, a naval officer’s widow, died last week.

Sandin was a personal friend and neighbor in suburban Lyndhurst of Mrs. Urie, who made headlines by withholding 75 per cent of her income tax payment. She figured that percentage went for military expenditures, so she paid it to charities instead of to the government.

“I won’t pay even 25 per cent,” said Sandin, “because they would take 75 per cent of that and use it for war purposes.”

Sandin’s stand for peace has, of course, got him into his own small private war with the Internal Revenue collectors. Outnumbered, he has lost a few battles, but his foe is fighting on a long front and is unwilling to spend the time, patience, or money to achieve total victory that would net about $3,000 in tax money. Also, the opposing high command doesn’t want Sandin as a prisoner, and in the skirmishes the house-painter has certain tactical advantages.

When Sandin works steadily for the same contractor, the Internal Revenue officers latch onto his pay check before he gets it. When he gets his own painting jobs, the collectors have to wait outside his home, board the bus with him and give notice to the homeowner that Uncle Sam, not Sandin will collect for the paint job.

Peace from this private war with the tax collectors is just around the corner for Sandin, who is 65. He plans to retire next summer and write a book entitled “Political War Objector.”

In it he will tell how he has opposed war since World War Ⅰ, when he was sentenced to die for refusing to bear arms but was saved from a firing squad by President Woodrow Wilson’s last-minute reprieve. And he will tell how he was jailed in 1943 for refusal to register for the draft in World War Ⅱ.

“I oppose war politically, not religiously,” he explained. “Who am I to say that I’m the only person whose conscience objects to war?”

Sandin’s retirement income won’t be a matter of much concern to the Internal Revenue Department. It will come mostly from social security.

“I paid those taxes,” he said.

As I mentioned a while back, American communist newspapers could have a stand-offish, skeptical stance towards war tax resistance: politely applauding the spirit of dissent and rebellion, but doubting the wisdom of the tactic.

Here’s another example: In its 5 June 1950 issue, Labor Action reported on the war tax resisters who had begun to organize under the Peacemakers banner:

Statement on Tax Refusal, by Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers (Alternative, March 1950)

The pacifist monthly bulletin (formerly Pacific Views [sic]) carries the text of the declaration issued on March 15 by the above-named committee, accompanying the group’s announcement of refusal to pay income tax. It begins “War is to us abhorrent…” and presents fiscal conscientious objection as a means of direct action to stop war.

“Today is the deadline for payment of 1949 income taxes. Unitedly we affirm our determination to refuse to pay taxes which are levied for the purpose of carrying on war.…

“Some of us feel that because the major activity of the federal government is war, we must refuse the total amount of the income tax we owe. Others of us feel we must refuse to pay the proportion which corresponds to the percentage of the national budget now allocated to war preparation.…”

The problem quite unsolved by this type of action, however, still remains: Any worker employed in industry, especially heavy industry, is “contributing” as much to war preparation as a taxpayer. Do the pacifists recommend that they all quit their jobs? Or is the tactic merely a road to individual salvation of conscience, regardless of its possible efficacy?

This prompted a back-and-forth in the 24 July 1950 issue:

The Pacifist Tactic — an Exchange

From the Editors of Alternative

To the Editor:

We were glad to see in the June 5 issue of Labor Action a reprint of part of the statement of Tax Refusal from the March Alternative.

Following your quotations from the Refusal statement you say that this type of action leaves the problem quite unsolved. We would like to point out that we have a full program for social revolution. We never implied that refusal to pay taxes was by itself a solution to any of our social ills.

You ask if pacifists believe that persons working in heavy industry should quit their jobs. Most pacifists believe that no one should work in any plant that produces war materials. We believe that any worker finding himself engaged in work that is destructive should do all he can to change the type of work his company is engaged in. Failing this he should quit his job and try to obtain work of a constructive nature. It should be noted that the first plank in the Program of the Committee for Non-Violent Revolution, which publishes Alternative, calls for the workers taking over production from the capitalists.

Yours for socialism,
Robert Auerbach for the Editors

By The Editors

“The problem” which the pacifist Tax Refusal Statement left unsolved, according to LA’s comment, was not that of a “full program for social revolution,” but only the one which correspondent Auerbach’s letter takes up in his last paragraph. The LA comment had no intention of implying that Alternative considered tax refusal any basic solution to our social ills.

We think, however, that our correspondent’s letter reinforces our criticism of tax refusal as a futile tactic.

We raised a question suggested by the tax-refusal policy: Should, then, workers also refuse to work in plants which are vital to the carrying on of war? Our correspondent confirms that “most pacifists,” or at any rate the editors of Alternative, carry their tactic out to this point also. This in our opinion is consistent (which is a lot more than can be said for many people today) — but it is wrong.

In the first place, it should be understood, we think, that this proposed labor-refusal could not be applied only to plants directly manufacturing munitions, airplanes, etc. If the tactic is to remain consistent, it would be just as important, if not more important, to apply it also to plants producing the unfinished, semi-finished and raw materials which are just as important to the production of war goods as the labor in the last-step factories. One may have a greater personal distaste to machining a gun turret than producing the steel which goes into it — but surely this question is not a matter of personal taste.

However, whether the tactic applies only to direct war goods or also to the wider industrial field behind the production of war goods, the essential consideration is the same: the tactic would withdraw precisely the best elements from precisely the field in which they can do the most good — industry, in which they are in daily educational contact with other workers.

The Power of Example

A proposal for a general withdrawal of labor on a mass scale — in three words — a general strike — would, of course, be a horse of another color, with different considerations behind it. But we need not here go into the criticisms which Marxists have made of the general-strike slogan as a cure-all for war. The fact is that the pacifist tactic of labor-refusal today has to be considered, with regard to effectiveness, as the tactic of a very small group of workers who could be induced to favor it.

What should this small group of workers do? It is quite meaningless to propose that they should try to “change the type of work [the] company is engaged in.” They can’t. This idea might have meaning for the employee of a small shopkeeper, but war will not be prevented or stopped on these levels. A meaningful policy must at least concern itself with the basic industries of the country, run by giant corporations.

Should they then quit their jobs, and earn a living in some vocation totally unconnected with the war effort, if they can find one? (And of course they have to earn their living, even under capitalism…) But their aim presumably is, or ought to be, to convince other workers to agree with their anti-war views. The tactic advocated by our correspondent only divorces them from living contact with those workers, without stopping the drive toward war at all.

The thought behind the pacifist tactic is, we realize, quite at variance with this objective result. This thought is roughly: “If everybody acted as we do, war would be impossible. Let us, therefore, take the initiative in so acting, hoping that our example will be an inspiration and a model for all others.”

What is admirable in this reaction is an element which is rare enough nowadays, and for which certainly the pacifists have our ungrudging respect: acting on one’s conviction, lead where it may. It is the “convictions” — the pacifist tactic — with which we disagree.

We do not belittle the power of example per se — not to the slightest degree. But a would-be demonstration of an “example” from afar has never been and never will be effective — any more than was the example of the saintly hermits who withdrew from man’s sinful society in order to live in purity. This did not serve to reform Christian mores. In justice to the hermits, however, it should be added that reforming others was not their only, and perhaps not their main, aim in view: they had their own souls to save. Since many pacifists become irritated when it is suggested that this is also the only result of their own tactic, we mention it here only to point the difference between the goal of individual salvation and the goal of changing the world.

Mass movements are not created and organized and led by examples from afar which are divorced from participation in the life of the masses themselves. The meaning of the example has to be demonstrated to the people through the lessons of their day-to-day experience. The day-to-day experience and life of the working class is spent (most of it) in the factories, and the most important job of one who advocates social change is to be among them. If the pacifist tactic were successful in its own terms, it would empty the plants of workers with anti-war convictions. There could be few greater disservices to the cause of either labor or peace. Distributing leaflets at patriotic rallies — an activity which is certainly useful — is no substitute, though it may understandably give the distributor a feeling of taking “direct action.”

Symmetrical Errors

On the other hand, we have no sympathy with the pseudo-radical who develops the convenient rationalization that the best way to have an effect upon the mass of workers is to take on the coloration of their political views, so that one is not accused of “sectarianism.” The pacifist tactic is the reverse of this, and just as wrong: for fear of being tainted by any connection with the war, they advocate divorcement from the mass workers’ movement (in effect). The hardest road is to fight in the mass workers’ movement without yielding to the prevailing backwardness and conservatism of its views, but rather educating for and teaching one’s own socialist view. This has always been the Marxist policy.

This policy of socialist education is also today being carried on by only a small group of workers. We are not criticizing the pacifist tactic because it would be followed only by a small number. We are criticizing the tactic because it means that this small number voluntarily deprives itself of the possibility of ever effectively influencing a larger number.

Finally, we wish to emphasize a point which has already been indicated in passing above and which today deserves to be emphasized.

We think the absolute pacifists are quite wrong, as we have explained, but we feel ourselves to have infinitely more in common with them and their ends than with the much larger number of self-styled “socialists,” “peace-lovers,” “radicals” (tired or still spry), “hard-headed liberals” and other, political specimens of our generation who give their “leftist” blessings in one form or another to the greatest crime of our age — the preparation of the third and atomic imperialist war against civilization. We would like to convince the pacifists to fight our way and with us — and vice versa, no doubt — but this is on quite a different plane from the case of those who refuse to fight at all or who fight for the ideas of our enemies.

While I wasn’t paying attention, someone scanned in many back issues of Friends Bulletin, the journal of the Pacific Yearly Meeting and Pacific Coast Association of Friends. This has allowed me another window onto the state of American war tax resistance, Quaker war tax resistance in particular, in the last half of the 20^th century.

Here, for example, from the April, 1951 issue, is an article on an early Peacemakers tax refusal pledge that includes a complete list of signatories, including several I hadn’t heard of before:

Tax Refusal

On March 15 there were among those who did not pay their Federal income taxes the following 59 persons who joined together to support a statement distributed by the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers, 2013 Fifth Ave., N.Y., N.Y. Reverend Ernest Bromley is chairman of this subcommittee of Peacemakers: A.J. Muste is secretary of Peacemakers. A part of their statement is: “Feeling that war must inevitably come unless something drastic is done by individuals to show their unwillingness to go along with war-making policies of their governments, we the undersigned state hereby that we are not going to pay our federal income taxes due March 15. For some of us this means that we will not pay that percentage which corresponds to the nation’s outlay for militarism; for others of us it means we will not pay even the first cent for the maintenance of a government whose main business is preparation for annihilation…”

The signers were: Ernest and Marion Bromley, Golay Rd., Gano, Sharonville, Ohio; Lindley and Emma Burton, Low Buildings, Bryn Mawr, Pa.; Horace and Ava Champney, 512 Phillips St., Yellow Springs, O.; Sara Chase, 1525 Sutter St., San Francisco, Calif.; Samuel and Clarissa Cooper, 214 Eastbourne Terr., Moorestown, N.J.; Dorothy DaPonte, Rte. 4, Box 374, Mobile, Ala.; Margaret E. Dungan, Wallingford, Penna.; Arthur Evans, Awbury, Penna.; Rebecca Winsor Evans, Radnor, Penna.; Fyke Farmer, Bellevue Dr., Nashville, Tenn.; Rev. Marion Frenyear, So. Hartford, N.Y.; Henry and Beatrice Dyer, Yellow Springs, O.; Walter Gormly, 412 N. 3^rd St., W., Mt. Vernon, Iowa; Konrad Halle, 76 Pinehurst Ave., New York 33, N.Y.

Gerald Haynes, R.R. No. 3, Freeport, Maine; Ammon Hennacy, Rte. 3, Box 227, Phoenix, Ariz.; Rev. George Houser, 21 Audubon Ave., New York 32, N.Y.; Woodbridge O. Johnson, Jr., 106 W. 3^rd St., Parkville, Mo.; Sandy Katz 232 W. 29^th St., New York 1, N.Y.; Ruth C. LaBarrer, 6 Nutt Ave., Uniontown, Pa.; Sarah B. Leeds, 28 E. Main St., Moorestown, N.J.; Walter and Emily Longstreth, 140 N. 15^th St., Philadelphia 2, Pa.; Mary Bacon Mason, 31 Pleasant St., Newton Center, Mass.; Rev. Maurice F. McCrackin, 1111 Dayton St., Cincinnati 14, O.; Mary S. McDowell, 555 Ocean Ave., Brooklyn 26, N.Y.; Rev. A.J. Muste, 21 Audubon Ave., New York 32, N.Y.; Ax Nelson, 501 Benvenue, Los Altos, Calif.; Wallace and Juanita Nelson, Golay Rd., in Gano, Sharonville, O.; Ray and Jean Olds, Yellow Springs, O.; Raymond F. Olds, Monterey, Mass.; Storrs F. Olds, Monterey Rd., Great Barrington, Mass.; Jim Otsuka, Rte. 1, Cloverdale, Mich.; Mrs. Gordon Parker, 1401 Wood Ave., Colorado Springs, Colo.; Mabel G. Parker, 1804 Wood Ave., Colorado Springs, Colo.;

James and Paula Peck, 552 Riverside Dr., New York, N.Y., Miriam Pennypacker, 6420 Drexel Rd., Philadelphia 31, Pa.; Grace Rhoads, Box 90, Moorestown, N.J.; Elizabeth and Edward C.M. Richards, Nur Mahal, R.D. 3, West Chester, Pa.; Francis and Valerie Riggs, 23 Coolidge Hill Rd., Cambridge 38, Mass.; Margaret Schauffler, 100 S. Cedar St., Oberlin, O.; Robert and Marjorie Swann, R. 1, Cloverdale, Mich.; Ralph and Lila Templin, Box 125, Yellow Springs, O.; Caroline F. Urie, 128 S. Walnut St., Yellow Springs, O.; Ellen Winsor, Radnor, Pa.; Abraham and Jean Zwickel, P.O. Box 232, Pismo Beach, Calif.

And here’s an early example of a plea for a “peace tax”-style accommodation for conscientious objectors to military taxation, from the January, 1951 issue:

Tax Petition

On Saturday, December 9, in Whittier, Calif., there was combined with the annual meeting of the southern California office of the Fellowship of Reconciliation a program sponsored by the Peace Board of California Yearly Meeting. One of the results of the day is the following petition:

To the Congress of the United States of America

We the undersigned citizens of the United States of America believe:

That present tensions between the free enterprise and communist group of nations are the result of reliance upon military force as an instrument of political determination;

That the threat or use of such force can never result in a just or mutually satisfactory resolution of these tensions;

That the labor and material expended in building up military might would have and still might lead to a peaceful and mutually satisfactory solution if used instead indiscriminately to rebuild the homes and industries destroyed in the last war.

We further believe:

That the military way violates the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” and the Golden Rule by which a Christian must live.

That to supply the means to induce of compel another to do that which we cannot do is equally a violation of those Commandments.

Therefore relying on our Constitutional Bill of Rights which our nation is this week honoring, and the Right of Petition thereby guaranteed, we humbly pray your august body that you pass legislation exempting all of like religious belief from income tax to be used in support of military establishment and substitute the use of that portion of our tax which is to our total tax as the amount used for military is to the national total, to that committee of the United Nations seeking a peaceful abatement of these tensions, thus giving the citizens of the United States the opportunity of paying taxes for the support of war or peace according to the dictates of their own conscience.

New Society Publishers began in 1988 to bring out a “Barbara Deming Memorial Series” of books meant to highlight women involved in nonviolent action. The first book in the series was You Can’t Kill the Spirit by Pam McAllister, which included a chapter on women tax resisters, and another separate section on the Igbo Women’s War, which was also a tax resistance campaign in part.

Here are some excerpts from this book:

Injustice, Death and Taxes: Women Say No!

The world just didn’t make sense to thirty-two-year-old Hubertine Auclert. On the one hand she was considered a French citizen expected to obey the laws of her country and to pay property taxes. On the other hand, she was denied the citizen’s right to vote simply because she was a woman. The male rulers couldn’t have it both ways, Auclert decided. She began plotting a way to unhinge the system.

On election day in February 1880, Auclert and several other tax-paying women of Paris initiated the first stage of the action. They stomped past a line of startled men and presented themselves for voter registration. They demanded that they be recognized as full citizens of France with rights as well as responsibilities. They demanded an end to the injustice of taxation without representation. The men were amazed: there was nothing wrong with the system’s inconsistencies as far as they were concerned! The women were turned away. It was time for stage two.

Taking advantage of the publicity the women had generated, Auclert called for a women’s “tax strike.” She reasoned that, since men alone had the privilege of governing the people and allotting national budgets, men alone should have the privilege of paying taxes.

“Since I have no right to control the use of my money,” she wrote, “I no longer wish to give it. I do not wish to be an accomplice, by my acquiescence, in the vast exploitation that the masculine autocracy believes is its right to exercise in regard to women. I have no rights, therefore I have no obligations. I do not vote, I do not pay.”

During the 1880 tax strike, Auclert was joined by twenty other women — eight widows and the rest, presumably, single women. When the authorities demanded payment, all but three of the women ended their participation in the strike. The remaining women continued to appeal the decision. But when law enforcement officers attempted to seize their furniture, Auclert and the others gave in. They decided they had done the best they could to call attention to the injustice.

Auclert was not the first woman to organize against the taxation of women without government representation. Mid-nineteenth-century United States saw a number of women’s rights tax resisters.

In 1858… Lucy Stone decided to publicize the injustice of government taxation of women who, because they were denied the vote, were without representation. Twelve years earlier, in 1846, Henry David Thoreau had spent a night in jail for his refusal to pay the Massachusetts poll tax, an action he had taken in opposition to the U.S. war with Mexico. Now Lucy Stone decided to use the same tactic to publicly draw attention to women’s oppression as voteless taxpayers. When she refused to pay her taxes, the government held a public auction and sold a number of her household goods.

Like Lucy Stone, [Lydia Sayer] Hasbrouck’s radicalism led her to become a tax resister, refusing to pay local taxes in protest against the denial of her right to vote. A tax collector, so the story goes, managed to steal one of Hasbrouck’s Bloomer outfits from her house and advertise it for sale, the proceeds to go toward the taxes she owed.

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Abby Kelly Foster had always been an active worker and speaker for women’s rights, but, in 1873, at the age of sixty-three, she was newly inspired. She had just heard about Julia and Abby Smith, two sisters in neighboring Connecticut, who were refusing to pay the taxes on their farm in order to protest the denial of suffrage to women. This was just the sort of nonviolent direct action that appealed to Abby. Her husband, Stephen, agreed. That year, they refused to pay their taxes on their beloved “Liberty Farm” in order to give voice to the urgency and justice of women’s suffrage.

When they refused again in 1874, the city of Worcester, Massachusetts took action. The farm was seized and put up for auction to the highest bidder.

Letters of support for the Fosters’ tax resistance poured in from the progressive leaders of the day. Boston abolitionist Wendell Phillips wrote, “Of course I need not tell either of you at this late day how much I appreciate this last chapter in the lives full of heroic self sacrifice to conviction.” Lucy Stone and Elizabeth Cady Stanton sent words of encouragement. William Lloyd Garrison, a pacifist abolitionist, wrote, “I hope there is not a man in your city or county or elsewhere who will meanly seek to make that property available to his own selfish ends. Let there be no buyer at any price.”

Unfortunately, Osgood Plummer, a politically conservative neighbor, bid $100 for the farm, but he retreated when Stephen Foster chided him. Later, Plummer wrote a letter to the local newspaper explaining that he had only wanted to teach the Fosters a lesson about obeying the law.

With no other bidders, the deed to Liberty Farm reverted to the city. For the next few years, Abby and Stephen lived with the fear and uncertainty of losing the farm, but they continued their tax resistance until Stephen’s ill health became an overriding concern. In 1880, the Fosters ended their protest and paid several thousand dollars to save the farm. The point had been made.

In 1911, the Women’s Tax Resistance League of London published a little pamphlet entitled Why We Resist Our Taxes… “The government of this country which professes to be a representative one and to rest on the consent of the governed, is Constitutional in its relation to men, Unconstitutional in its relation to women,” wrote Margaret Kineton Parkes, author of the pamphlet. Parkes did not mean all women, however. She hastened to reassure the reader that the tax resisters were not in the least radical but only fair-minded, concerned with votes only for women householders, certainly not for all women. The League, she claimed, was about passively resisting the unconstitutional government ruling England. Because they had been granted the municipal vote, women tax resisters were more than willing to pay local “rates,” and they promised they’d have equal willingness to pay “imperial taxes” as soon as they were granted the parliamentary vote.

The London tax resisters devised a new way to reach beyond those already enlightened members of the public who attended suffrage meetings. They began making suffrage speeches at public auctions, a tactic that had unexpectedly good results. Many people were converted to the suffrage cause once they had the chance to hear the argument from the resisters themselves. The auctioneers not only permitted the women to make their speeches, but sometimes actively invited the speeches and even addressed the cause in their own words. One auctioneer who openly supported the tax-resisting suffragists ended his remarks by saying: “If I had to pay rates and taxes and had not a vote, I should consider it a great disgrace on the part of the Government, but I should consider it a far greater disgrace on my part if I did not protest against it.”

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Since the granting of suffrage, women’s tax resistance has most often been undertaken to protest a government’s military spending or its involvement in a specific war — such as the U.S. war in Vietnam. For part of her life, Barbara Deming was a war tax resister. In her essay “On Revolution and Equilibrium,” she explained the rationale for this form of nonviolent noncooperation.

Words are not enough here. Gandhi’s term for nonviolent action was “satyagraha” — which can be translated as “clinging to the truth…” And one has to cling with one’s entire weight… One doesn’t just say, “I don’t believe in this war,” but refuses to put on a uniform. One doesn’t just say “The use of napalm is atrocious,” but refuses to pay for it by refusing to pay one’s taxes.

At 6:30 one June morning in 1959, Juanita Nelson threw on the new white terry cloth bathrobe she’d recently ordered from the Sears-Roebuck catalog and answered her door. Two U.S. marshals informed her that they had an order for her arrest. What a way to start the day.

Juanita and her husband Wally, who was out of town that day, had not paid withholding taxes nor filed any forms for eleven years, so it was, in one sense, no big surprise that the government wanted to see her. “But even with the best intentions in the world of going to jail,” she later wrote, “I would have been startled to be awakened at 6:30 a.m. to be told that I was under arrest.”

She explained to the bright-eyed government men that she would be glad to tell the judge why she was resisting taxes if he’d care to come see her. Then she proceeded to explain why she would not willingly walk out of her door to appear in court.

I am not paying taxes because the overwhelming percentage of the budget goes for war purposes. I do not wish to participate in any phase of the collection of such taxes. I do not even want to act as if I think that anyone, including the government, has a right to punish me for an act which I consider honorable. I cannot come with you.

The government men were not moved. They called for back-up assistance while Juanita considered her situation. Should she get dressed? Would getting dressed be a way of cooperating? Quickly she called a friend on the phone to let others know what was happening to her, and just as quickly she was surrounded by seven annoyed law enforcement officers. There was a brief exchange about her still being in her bathrobe, and one uncomfortable officer asked her whether or not she believed in God. She answered in the negative. (“He did not go on to explain the connection he had evidently been going to establish between God and dressing for arrest,” Juanita later reported.) Suddenly, a gruff, no-nonsense officer said, “We’ll just take her the way she is, if that’s the way she wants it.” He slapped some handcuffs on her and lifted her off the floor. In maneuvering her into the government car, he apparently tried his best to expose the nakedness under her bathrobe while another officer tried to cover her.

As the car carried her into the heart of Philadelphia, she tried to think. “My thoughts were like buckshot,” she wrote of her experience, “so scattered they didn’t hit anything or, when they did, made little dent. The robe was a huge question mark placed starkly after some vexing problems. Why am I going to jail? Why am I going to jail in a bathrobe?” The only thing she was sure of at that moment was that, until her head cleared, she would refuse to cooperate with her jailers. When the car stopped, she was yanked from the back seat, carried into the federal court building, dragged up a flight of stairs, and thrown behind bars.

[S]everal friends stopped by to visit her. (Her phone call had been a good idea.) The first visitors were two men, tax-refusing pacifists like herself. They thought it best, for the sake of appearances, to go to court in the proper clothes. They offered to get some clothes for her, and she agreed — just in case she decided she’d feel more at ease in them.

After the men left, a woman friend stopped by. “You look like a female Gandhi in that robe!” she said. “You look, well, dignified.” Juanita grinned.

When they finally came for her, Juanita, still refusing to walk, was wheeled into the courtroom in her bathrobe. The clothes the men had brought were left behind in a brown paper bag. The judge gave her until Friday of that week to comply with the court order that she turn over her financial records or be subjected to a possible fine of $1000, a year in jail, or both. Juanita Nelson went home.

Friday came and went. Many Fridays came and went. The charges were dropped and she heard nothing more. Every now and then, the Internal Revenue Service sends her a bill or tries to confiscate a car, but so far the government has met a wall of nonviolent noncooperation. They should have known when they saw Juanita in her bathrobe: nothing will make her pay for war.

Most people who take any notice of my position are appalled by my lawbreaking and not at all about the reasons for my not paying taxes. Instead of trying to make me justify my civil disobedience, why do they not question themselves and the government about a course of action which makes billions available for weapons, but cannot provide decent housing and education for a large segment of the population?

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Like the ascetics of old, Eroseanna (Rose or Sis) Robinson was singularly unburdened by material possessions. She had no bank account, owned no real estate, and when the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tried to seize her personal property, they found that all she had was an ironing board, a clock, a quilt, and some clothes.

Robinson took seriously her membership in Peacemakers (an organization founded in 1948 to promote radical, nonviolent direct action). She had been a war tax resister since the early fifties, filing no statements of income and ignoring the various notices and certified letters sent by the IRS. In 1960, thirty-five years old, single and black, Robinson was a skilled artist and athlete; creative, too, in finding ways to live in the United States without paying for the U.S. military. She tried to keep her earnings below the taxable level and for a period managed to spend less than $3 per week for food. She also arranged to earn a withholding-free income from several different work situations. Even with the little money she made, Robinson regularly sent sums greater than the taxes she owed to groups that worked for peace and social justice.

On January 26, 1960, federal marshals descended on Robinson at a community center in Chicago and demanded she come with them. When she refused, they carried her bodily out of the center and to the district court where she was seated on a bench before a judge. She refused to accept the services of a lawyer and asked instead that they lay aside their roles as judge and defendant and speak to each other as two people with genuine concerns. When the judge agreed, Robinson talked. “I have not filed income taxes,” she said, “because I know that a large part of the tax will be used for militarization. Much of the money is spent for atom and hydrogen bombs. These bombs have a deadly fallout that causes human destruction, as it has been proved. If I pay income tax, I am participating in that course. We have a duty to contribute constructively to life, and not destructively.”

After making this statement, she was handcuffed, put in a wheelchair because she refused to walk, and taken to jail.

The next day she was wheeled into court again, where she encountered a different judge. This judge ridiculed her and her supporters who were standing in a vigil in front of the courthouse. He accused her of having an attitude of “contumacious criminal contempt.” He committed her to jail until she would agree to file a tax return and show records of her earnings.

Not only would she not agree to file a tax return, she also would not agree to cooperate in any way with the prison system. She would not walk. She would not eat. She did agree to see one visitor one time — her friend Ernest Bromley, a radical pacifist and member of Peacemakers, who had come to see her in Cook County Jail. He wrote while she dictated a message for all her supporters on the outside:

I see the military system and jail system as one thing. I don’t want to give up my own will. I will not compromise by accepting a lawyer or by recognizing the judge as judge. I would rather that no one try to make an arrangement with the judge on my behalf. I ask nothing from the court or the jail. I do not want to pay for war. That is my main concern. Love to everyone.

On February 18, Robinson was again wheeled into court. It was clear that she would not compromise her principles to spare her own discomfort. The judge sentenced her to jail for a year and added an extra day for “criminal contempt.”

On March 1, she was moved to the federal prison in Alderson, West Virginia. There she continued her fast, though prison officials began to force-feed her liquids through a tube inserted into her nose. She refused to cooperate in any way with her own imprisonment nor did she try to send letters through the system of prison censorship.

Ten members of Peacemakers, including long-time activist Marjorie Swann, set up their tents just beyond the gates at Alderson and issued a press release on May 14. They explained that they were there to show support for Robinson and that most of them intended to fast just as she was fasting. They invited anyone who wanted to talk to stop by the gate where they were camping. The pacifists propped up signs along the stretch of dusty road — “No Tax for War,” “Peace Is the Only Defense,” “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” and “Rose Won’t Pay Income Tax.”

After fasting for ninety-three days, Robinson was suddenly and unconditionally discharged from prison on May 20. The judge who ordered her release said Robinson had become a burden to the prison medical facilities, adding that he felt she had been punished sufficiently. He didn’t mention the picketers camped outside.

When Robinson was released from prison late that Friday afternoon, the first thing she saw was a huge banner held high by her friends — “Bravo Rose!”

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A number of women have become war tax resisters in reaction to a specific war. Mary Bacon Mason, a Massachusetts music teacher, became a war tax resister in 1946 after World War Ⅱ. She told the government she would be willing to pay double her tax if it could be used only for aid to suffering people anywhere, but would accept prison or worse rather than pay for war. The only possible defense, she said, is friendship and mutual help. Of World War Ⅱ she said:

I paid a share in that cost and I am guilty of burning people alive in Germany and Japan. I ask humanity’s forgiveness.

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In 1948, Caroline Urie of Yellow Springs, Ohio, bedridden and elderly, gained national attention and inspired many people to consider war tax resistance when she withheld 34.6 percent of her tax. She sent an equivalent amount as a donation to four peace organizations and wrote an open letter to President Truman and the IRS

Now that the atomic bomb has reduced to a final criminal absurdity the whole war system, leading quite possibly to the liquidation of human society, and has involved the United States in the shame and guilt of having been the first to exploit its criminal possibilities, I have come to the conclusion that — as a Christian, Quaker, religious and conscientious objector to the whole institution of organized war — I must henceforth refuse to contribute to it in any way I can avoid.

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Eighteen years later, and in response to a new war, another woman from Yellow Springs, Ohio, Doris E. Sargent, wrote to the Peacemakers newsletter with a new war tax resistance tactic. She noted that the government had reintroduced a federal tax attached to telephone bills. The money was earmarked specifically for U.S. military expenses. Sargent proposed a radical response — that all those who demanded an end to the fighting in Vietnam ask the phone company to remove their phones in protest. If everyone who opposed the war were willing to make such an extreme sacrifice, real pressure could be put on the government. Then Sargent suggested a less extreme idea — that people keep their phones and pay their bills but refuse to pay the federal tax. Phone tax resisters could send a note with their bills each month, stating that the protest was not directed at the phone company but at the government which was using the phone tax to support war. The idea caught hold, and phone tax resistance became a popular way to protest the war in Vietnam. It is still used today as a form of war tax resistance.

The war in Vietnam turned many people into war tax resisters. Pacifist folksinger Joan Baez set an example as a tax resister early in the war years by withholding 60 percent of her income tax. She was instrumental in persuading countless others to follow her example. In April 1965, she explained:

We talk about democracy and Christianity — and we try out a new fire-bomb. We talk about peace and we move thousands more men and weapons into Vietnam. 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.

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In 1972, life-long Quaker Meg Bowman wrote a letter to the IRS to explain why she had decided once again not to pay her federal income tax.

“Do you carefully maintain our testimony against all preparations for war and against participation in war as inconsistent with the teachings of Christ?” ― Query, Discipline of Pacific Yearly Meeting, Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).

The above quotation is from the book that is intended to give guidance to members for daily living. The book repeatedly stresses peace and individual responsibility.

It is clear to me that I am not only responsible for my voluntary actions, but also for that which is purchased with my income. If my income is spent for something immoral or if I allow others to buy guns with money I have earned, this is as wrong and offending to “that of God in every man” as if I had used that gun, or planned that bomb strike.

When I worked a five-day week it seemed to me that one-fifth of my income went to taxes. This would be equivalent to working one full day each week for the U.S. government. It seemed I worked as follows:

Monday for food.

I felt responsible to buy wholesome, nourishing items that would provide health and energy, but not too much meat or other luxuries, the world supply of which is limited.

Tuesday for shelter.

We maintain a comfortable, simply furnished home where we may live in dignity and share with others.

Wednesday for clothing,

health needs and other essentials and for recreation, all carefully chosen.

Thursday for support of causes.

I select with care those organizations which seem to be acting in such a way that responsibility to God and my brother is well served.

Friday for death,

bombs, napalm, for My Lai and overkill. I am asked to support a government whose main business is war.

Though the above is oversimplified, the point is clear. I cannot work four days a week for life and joy and sharing, and one day for death. I cannot pay federal taxes. I believe this decision is protected by law as a First Amendment right of freedom of religion. If I am wrong it is still better to have erred on the side of peace and humanity.

Sincerely,
Meg Bowman

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“The only thing of which I’m guilty is financially supporting the war in Southeast Asia against my better judgment until the year 1970,” said Martha Tranquilli when she was charged with the criminal offense of providing false information on her income tax forms.

At 7:30 a.m. on July 19, 1974, Tranquilli stood on the steps of the state capitol building in Sacramento, California and addressed the 100 supporters who had gathered. After a short Unitarian service held on her behalf, the aging white woman with a long gray braid told them in her calm, soft voice that she envisioned the day when scientists and workers would join in refusing to pay war taxes or do war work.

I was very much afraid of going to prison, but I think I have overcome that fear. I plan to read, write letters, and meditate as much as possible. I’m going to try my best to make an adventure out of this thing.

One after another, friends and strangers attending the rally came up to embrace Tranquilli and offer words of encouragement. After some spirited singing, they accompanied her to the federal building where she turned herself in to the federal marshals.

Hers was a media image made to order. “63-Year-Old Tax-Resisting Grandma Goes to Jail” shouted the headlines, and the war tax resistance movement didn’t mind the national publicity Martha Tranquilli generated.

Tranquilli was opposed to the Vietnam War and all the suffering the war was inflicting on the people of Vietnam, the people of the United States, and on the earth itself. She had therefore decided to withhold the 61 percent of her 1970 and 1971 income taxes (amounting to approximately $1,100) which she believed would go to pay for the war.

It was in Mound Bayou, Mississipi that Martha was tried and sentenced for tax fraud in May 1973. Like other war tax resisters, Tranquilli withheld her taxes by listing unusual dependents. Tranquilli listed seven peace organizations as dependents, including War Resisters League, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the American Friends Service Committee. (Another war tax resister in the 1970s claimed 3 billion dependents, explaining to the IRS that he felt the population of the earth depended on him and on others to refuse to pay war taxes. That case went to court and the tax resister was acquitted by a court of appeals of the charge of willfully filing a false and fraudulent W-4 form.)

Tranquilli was found guilty of tax fraud, but the judge was reluctant to send her to jail and indicated he’d give her a suspended sentence if she would only apologize and promise not to do it again. When Tranquilli refused this offer she was sentenced to nine months in prison and two years probation. The Mississippi Civil Liberties Union helped her appeal the case and, while the appeal was pending, she moved to California. Both the Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear her case.

On July 19, 1974, after making national headlines and being cheered on by supporters, Tranquilli began her stay at Terminal Island Prison in San Pedro, California. She quickly got involved in the life of the prison community…

After her release, Tranquilli wrote to a friend: “Be sure to say that I did not suffer in prison. It was a learning experience.” Tranquilli continued her tax resistance as well as her work for peace and justice until her death in 1981.

For Mason and Urie it was the Second World War. For Baez, Bowman, and Tranquilli it was the war in Vietnam. Today it is the U.S.-backed war against Nicaragua that motivates many new war tax resisters. In 1987 in Brooklyn, New York, tax resister Donna Mehle wrote an open letter to the IRS which was published in the local newspaper. She cited a religious basis for her tax resistance, protesting the war against Nicaragua.

The decision to come into conflict with the laws of my country is very difficult, but it is a decision rooted in my Christian faith. As a Christian, I am called to affirm life and reject violence… My commitment to tax resistance deepened in the past year when I travelled to Nicaragua. There I saw first hand the effect of my tax dollars ($100 million in Contra Aid 1986/87). I vowed to myself and to the Nicaraguan people I met that I would not be complicit in the U.S. backed Contra war, a war which targets innocent civilians and children.

Mehle informed the IRS that she intended to redirect the money she would have owed in taxes to an alternative fund “which supports life-affirming projects in New York City.”

In the 1980s, some women in the United States proposed a specifically feminist perspective on war tax resistance. In New York City, the Women’s Tax Resistance Assistance distributed a brochure which read in part:

We can’t keep working for disarmament, for women’s rights, including an end to lesbian oppression, and for racial equality while paying for a male-dominated government which impoverishes and exploits us now and threatens to eliminate the world’s future.

On tax day, April 15, 1985, this group performed street theater on the steps of Federal Hall. Some of the women dressed up as pieces of the federal budget “pie” while others, dressed as waitresses, explained the military menu to passersby and handed out leaflets.

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In Canada in 1982, sixty-eight-year-old Edith Adamson made headlines with her tax resistance. A lifelong pacifist and the coordinator of the Peace Tax Fund Committee of Canada, Adamson was one of approximately sixty Canadians who hoped to prevent the government from using their money to make war. Not that Adamson and the others wanted to keep the money for their own use: they wanted to redirect their dollars into a peace tax fund. With the adoption of the new Charter of Rights in the Canadian Constitution, there was a guarantee of freedom of conscience. “This means,” Adamson explained for news reporters, “that the government should provide a legal alternative to war taxes for those who object to killing on religious or ethical grounds.” Since the spring of 1982, Canadian war tax resisters — who call themselves “Peace Trusters” because they trust in peace, not war — have petitioned their government to develop a peace tax fund which would allow citizens the option of directing their money away from the military budget. They asked for a simple tax form which would allow taxpayers to check whether they want a portion of their taxes to go for warmaking or peacemaking.

In 1982, Edith Adamson explained her involvement:

In a nuclear war, you wouldn’t have a chance to be a conscientious objector. And, being an old lady, I wouldn’t be drafted, so it seemed the peace tax fund idea was a sound way to get at the root of the problem.

I not only want to exempt myself from the killing, but I want to try to influence the government to look at this problem — and other people as well to examine their consciences. A nuclear war would involve everybody and mean total destruction and I couldn’t just hide under my little exemption and stay alive.

This peace tax would be an extension of conscientious objector status for the military. It’s more appropriate today because war now depends more on money than on personnel; it only took twelve men to drop the bomb over Hiroshima, but it took millions, perhaps billions of taxpayers’ dollars in Canada, Britain, and the United States to develop that bomb.

By 1987 there were approximately 440 Peace Trusters in Canada who were withholding a portion of their taxes and putting that money into a peace tax fund. They had agreed to waive the interest on this money in order to pay the court fees involved in taking on a test case to establish the legality of the peace tax fund. The claimant Jerilynn Prior, a physician and Quaker originally from the United States where she was also a tax resister, now lives in British Columbia. In a January 1987 press release, Prior said that paying for war violates her freedom of conscience and religion.

This deep conviction rises from my commitment to work for peace. I try to live my life that way — as a mother, a physician, a teacher, a woman, a citizen of this world community. It would be hypocrisy to voluntarily allow my tax contribution to be used for war or the military or pamphlets about bomb shelters…

Each of us can work for peace in our own life, with our own resources, and in our own way. This tax appeal is the way I must work for peace.

Nigerian women used song in 1929 to ridicule, protest, and pressure a man and, by extension, the system he represented.

In November of that year, women streamed into Oloko, Nigeria from throughout Owerri Province. Word had been sent via the Ibo (Igbo) women’s network that it was time to “sit on” Okugo, the arrogant warrant chief of the Oloko Native Court. “Sitting on a man” was the figurative expression given a traditional process of punishment during which women gathered in front of a man’s home to sing songs which outlined the women’s grievances or insulted the offender. The women would dance and sing all day and all night, and sometimes, for the most serious and unrepentant offenders, give added impetus to their words by dismantling the roof of the hut until the man promised to cooperate.

On this November day, the women prepared as their mothers and grandmothers before them had prepared for the traditional settling of grievances: they bound their heads with ferns, smeared their faces with ashes, and put on the short loincloths tradition ordained. Each woman picked up a sacred stick wreathed with young palm fronds. These sacred sticks were necessary for invoking the spirit and power of their female ancestors. Thus attired, they massed on the district office to “sit on” Okugo until he got the message.

Just days before, the women had met in the market to discuss the new taxation rumors. They remembered that four years earlier, after promises to the contrary, the British had taken a census and begun collecting taxes from the men. The women were worried that taxes would soon be imposed upon them as well, especially since a district officer had ordered a new census in which they and their property would be counted. At the marketplace meeting the women had agreed to spread the alarm and act if any of them were approached for information.

And could anyone doubt their cause for alarm now? Just that morning Warrant Chief Okugo had approached Nwanyeruwa, a married woman. He had asked to count her goats and sheep. She had spat back an insult, “Was your mother counted?” In anger, Okugo had attacked Nwanyeruwa who had immediately set in motion the women’s network. Now the women were ready to act. Nwanyeruwa’s name became the watchword, Nwanyeruwa herself the catalyst.

Carrying their sacred sticks high, thousands of women marched on the district office. They danced. They sang songs of ridicule and protest, they chanted, and they demanded Okugo’s cap of office, taking from his head the symbol of his authority over them. A British officer who witnessed the event claimed that the cap, tossed into the crowd of women, “met the same fate as a fox’s carcass thrown to a pack of hounds.”

After several days of such protest, the women secured written assurances that they were not to be taxed. They also succeeded in having Okugo arrested, tried, and convicted of physical assault and of unnecessarily worrying the population.

When the news of this victory spread through the women’s networks, thousands of other women throughout the region organized to “sit on” their local warrant chiefs. The protest spread to Aba, a major trading center along the railway. The women in Aba, like those in Oloko, dressed in their traditional ferns, ashes, and loincloths and carrying the sacred sticks to invoke the mothers, gathered to dance, sing, and demand the cap of the warrant chief.

This is the seventh in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of Gospel Herald, journal of the (Old) Mennonite Church.

We are now up to the post-World War Ⅱ period and the Cold War is about to ramp up. Harold S. Bender gets us started with “Forward into the Postwar World with our Peace Testimony” (June 1946), which gives us some perspective on how wobbly the Mennonite nonresistance doctrine was even in regards to military service:

[O]f all the Mennoite men who were drafted, forty-one per cent entered the army and fifty-nine per cent stood by the faith of the New Testament and the Mennonite Church and went into C.P.S. To be exact, thirty per cent went straight into the army, ten into noncombatant service, and sixty per cent into C.P.S.

In October 1947, Ford Berg took a hard line on Romans 13 in “The Christian’s Obligation to the Government”, disputing in particular the idea that Paul’s advice to the Romans was given during a placid period of Nero’s reign and so shouldn’t be taken to apply to all governments at all times. (See yesterday’s Picket Line in which Edward Yoder tried to advance that gambit.)

Similarly, Lois Ann Weaver tried to quiet any Render-Unto-Caesar revisionists in the 10 May 1949 issue:

When Christ was questioned about the paying of tribute (taxes) He answered, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar’s, and unto God the things which be God’s” (Luke 20:25). We have no record of an unco-operative spirit or a voiced undertone of resentment on Christ’s part concerning the payment of taxes.

But what this tells me is that there were Mennonites out there who were chipping away at the Christians-Always-Pay-Their-Taxes edifice, enough so that the defenders of the orthodoxy felt it necessary to write such rebuttals.

There was a question of whether or not Mennonites should participate in blood drives run by the Red Cross, as the agency was apparently still doing this in a “race”-segregated way (e.g. only giving “white” plasma to “white” recipients) that was offensive to Mennonite teachings on common humanity. Ford Berg, in the 16 August 1949 issue, compared this to the relative lack of reluctance Mennonites had paying their taxes for war:

[I]f we are so touchy on this thing, perhaps we should recall that our tax money goes largely for war purposes, to which we carelessly respond that we are not responsible after we make our payments. Dare we apply this reasoning to the blood donations also? Both seem inconsistent, and yet…

Berg was also the first writer to introduce the Peacemakers to Gospel Herald readers. Recall that he was the one who took the hard Romans 13 line in 1947. Here, though, in the 23 May 1950 issue, he just lets the Peacemakers’ war tax resistance action speak for itself:

Forty-eight men and women, including eight Protestant clergymen, in various parts of the nation refused to file Federal income tax returns as a protest against “bomb building” and war, it was announced by the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers, a national pacifist group. “President Truman’s decision to begin the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb makes us even more determined than before to refuse to finance armaments. Building this newest and most terrible weapon is further indication of the extreme depth of moral degradation into which our nation has sunk.”

As with the coverage in The Mennonite around this time, the first mentions of war tax resisters are those from outside the Mennonite community. There is clearly some interest in this sort of witness or direct action, but it takes a while before Mennonites themselves put themselves forward. Here’s another example, from the 7 November 1950 issue:

Twenty-five Quaker residents of Fair Hope, Alabama, have decided to emigrate to Costa Rica so that they may be free from military demand and from paying “war taxes.” Said their spokesman, “Our economy has become so involved with military effort throughout the world, that a person can hardly make a living here without being a part of that system.” A spokesman for the American Friends Service Committee said this would be the first instance in American history that a group of Quakers had left the country because of their religious pacifist convictions.

On 23 August 1951 the Mennonite Church, in General Conference, adopted “A Declaration of Christian Faith and Commitment with respect to Peace, War, and Nonresistance.” These were the sections that dealt most directly with taxes:

[W]e cannot apply our labor, money, business, factories, nor resources in any form to war or military ends, either in war finance or war industry, even under compulsion.

[I]n wartime, as well as in peacetime, we shall endeavor to continue to live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty; avoid joining in the wartime hysteria of hatred, revenge, and retaliation; and manifest a meek and submissive spirit, being obedient to the laws and regulations of the government in all things, including the usual taxes, except when obedience would cause us to violate the teachings of the Scriptures and our conscience before God.

The 15 April 1952 issue included an article on “Nonresistance in Eighteenth Century Pennsylvania” by M. Alice Weber that related the story of the war-tax-related Funkite schism in the early American Mennonite community, and also mentioned Quaker refusal to pay war taxes.

The first instance I saw of a Mennonite suggesting that Mennonites should take action to address the problem of their taxes going to the military was in the article “Give Caesar — Give God” by Christian L. Graber in the 16 December 1952 issue. Excerpt:

A large part of the Federal Taxes are used to support the military budget. If we do not deduct all that the government allows us to deduct, but rather pay a higher tax than we would need to pay, we are to the extent of such overpayment lending our voluntary support to the military program. Good stewardship forces us to face this issue.

But this idea was taken as a reductio ad absurdum by Barney Ovensen, who was defending nonresistance against another Christian who was arguing that Christians should not be pacifistic (“Why It Is Not Right for a Christian to Fight”, 17 June 1952). Excerpt:

McQuilkin says the man who pays taxes is just as guilty of killing as the man who actually joins the army and kills. If this is true, every Christian is guilty — for we all are told to pay taxes to “Caesar.” But where did McQuilkin learn this doctrine? From Christ? Of course not. From the apostles? No. It is an awful thing to use the wisdom of this world in order to make void the “foolishness” of God.

The 5 May 1953 issue brought news of another example of war tax resistance from outside of the Mennonite community:

For the third year in succession a woman pastor at Great Barrington, Massachusetts, has paid only 25 per cent of her federal income tax, because she is opposed to the large percentage of the national income used for war. In a letter accompanying her tax return this lady says, “I cannot conscientiously pay more of my tax because at least that proportion of our national income is now used for war. I believe it is wrong to kill human beings. I believe that today war only increases the evils we are fighting and it will, if we persist in it, degrade us, destroy our liberties and our spiritual values, and eventually destroy us and our civilization.” In the past two years a lien was placed against this pastor’s salary to collect the unpaid tax. Probably the same method will be used again this year.

The 13 April 1954 issue briefly quoted A.J. Muste on why he refused to file a tax return, but made no comment.

A series of notices in 1954, 1956, 1957, and 1960 noted with alarm what a high percentage “of the taxpayer’s dollar” in the U.S. was devoted to military spending.

The annual sessions of the Virginia Conference, held 28–30 July 1954, passed a resolution that indicates the attitude of unconcern was still dominant:

Resolved, That we gratefully acknowledge the sincere efforts of our government to provide for the welfare of its citizens; that we counsel our people to pay their taxes cheerfully…

An editorial by Paul Erb in the 24 August 1954 issue, “On Paying Taxes,” seemed to acknowledge that war tax resistance was in the air — not approving of it, but indicating that in any case there was a right and wrong way to go about it.

In our obedience to law, we reserve the right to obey God rather than man, if we are asked to do something contrary to our consciences. But we do not think it is wrong to pay lawfully imposed taxes and customs, even tough some of the money maybe used for purposes which we cannot approve, like military preparations and war.

If anyone has conscientious scruples about paying taxes, he should be honest and aboveboard about it. Certainly a Christian could never justify dishonest tax or import reports. Yet a brother who is in business writes us of his certain knowledge that some Mennonites falsify their reports, and cheat the government out of some thousands of dollars.

“The Christian and the State” by Wilbur J. Miller, found in the 4 February 1958 issue, reiterated the traditional hard line on Romans 13.

“Mennonites and Bomb Tests” by Ronald & Elaine Rich (11 March 1958) matter-of-factly presented war tax resistance as a possible Christian option:

Christians have responded to the challenge of this issue in various ways. A few have refused to pay the proportion of their tax that is used for military purposes. Some have voluntarily limited their income to the low level that is tax exempt.

I assume the following note, found in the 3 June 1958 issue, again refers to A.J. Muste:

A Presbyterian clergyman in New York has refused for the fourth consecutive year to pay the major part of his income taxes which he says are earmarked for military expenditures. He pays only 20 per cent of his taxes and gives the rest to charities. “The time has come,” he says, “when responsible clergymen must join in a common protest against the government’s present suicidal policy of reliance on military might.”

Ditto with this one, from the 10 February 1959 issue:

A Presbyterian pacifist minister who refused to pay the part of his federal income tax which he felt would be used for war purposes is now serving a six-month term at Federal Prison camp at Allenburg, Pa.

I’m not sure what if anything was behind the reluctance to mention his name.

A “Sunday School Lesson” (Alta Mae Erb again) in the 20 January 1959 issue asserted that when Jesus asked his interrogators to show him a coin, and then gave his Render Unto Caesar answer, what he meant by all that was: “With these coins they paid their poll tax. Jesus meant that this tax was among the things of Caesar.”

On 3 March 1959, Melvin Gingerich testified before a Senate committee on a military conscription bill. His testimony included the following phrase: “We who have uneasy consciences because of the disproportionate share of our tax money which is going into military expenditures in contrast to that which is going into nonmilitary foreign aid…” This, I thought, was a long way from Romans 13 and its insistence that Christians pay their taxes not grudgingly but “for conscience’ sake,” and shows how that norm was shifting.

Amish Farmers and the Social Security Tax

While this was going on, there was another tax resistance fight in the greater Anabaptist community. The Amish, who placed a high value on mutual aid and on reliance on God and who therefore did not purchase insurance, were resistant to being roped in to the federal government’s Social Security system. Many refused to apply for benefits. Some refused to pay withholding taxes.

The first mention of this I noticed was this, from the 2 December 1958 issue:

The Federal International Revenue Service [sic] has ordered the seizure of livestock of Amish farmers in certain Ohio counties. These farmers have refused to pay taxes which go for social security, which the Amish are opposed to.

Other mentions of this conflict included:

• 13 January 1959 — the Amish farmers bought their horses back from middlemen who had bought them at a tax auction
• 24 March 1959 — a bill was introduced that would exempt Amish from Social Security
• 19 May 1959 — Amish refuse refund of overplus from auctions of their goods
• 20 October 1959 — Amish petition government for an exemption from the Social Security law
• 28 March 1961 — the Amish reportedly win such an exemption (but this turns out to be exaggerated)
• 20 June 1961 — three work horses are seized from an Amish farmer for back taxes
• 20 June 1961 — letters of protest hit the local papers after an Amish farmer’s horses are seized for taxes
• 1 August 1961 — the IRS announces a crackdown on Amish social security tax resisters
• 19 December 1961 — the IRS announces a moratorium on seizures from Amish Social Security resisters, and a Senator goes on record siding with the Amish on this
• 9 January 1962 — debate on a possible exemption continues in Congress
• 5 June 1962 — a Gospel Herald editorial sympathizes with with Amish resisters
• 15 September 1964 and 20 October 1964 — more exemption legislation is proposed
• 6 April 1976 — apparently they’re still debating whether or how much to exempt the Amish from Social Security in Congress

Today I’ll share what I found in the archives of American Brethren periodicals from the early 1950s concerning war taxes and war bond purchases.

I found most of the items of interest in the Gospel Messenger again, and for the first time these included specified war tax resisters from within the Church of the Brethren. The 25 March 1950 edition gave readers this short notice:

Floyd M. Irvin of Eustis, Fla., sent in only that part of his income tax which would not be used by the Federal government for war purposes. The rest of it, he informed them, he was turning over to a useful church program. He believes that if many more people would do this it would have a telling effect upon military expenditures.

This was the first I’d heard of Irvin. There was a follow-up about his resistance in the 2 September issue (source):

A series of articles in a Lake County, Fla., local paper call attention to the activities of Floyd M. Irvin of Eustis, Fla., on behalf of world peace. While the articles tell a few facts concerning Bro. Irvin’s life, they give special attention to his advocating nonviolent techniques in place of war, and especially to his refusal to pay the share of income taxes which goes toward supporting the military program. Through Bro. Irvin’s efforts a recent article in the Gospel Messenger was used as the basis for a feature in his local paper.

They don’t come right out and claim Irvin as a member of the Brethren here, but they do call him “Bro.” and make the Gospel Messenger connection. I think this is the first explicitly war tax resisting member of a Brethren church named in a Brethren periodical from the modern war tax resistance era.

Another small note was found in the 1 July 1950 issue (source):

Again this year various people, who have conscientious feelings against the tremendous amount of our budget which is being spent for war, are withholding from their income tax the percentages which are used definitely for war purposes. The rest of it they are paying.

I assume this refers to the Peacemakers, who were putting out press releases about organized war tax resistance around this time.

The 28 October 1950 issue included a note about the Monteverde Quaker emigrants (source):

Quaker Group to Leave United States

Twenty-five Quaker residents of Fairhope, Ala., have decided to emigrate to Costa Rica so that they may be free from military demands and from paying “war taxes.” This announcement came from Hubert Mendenhall, the spokesman for the group who range in age from twenty to eighty years. Most of them are farmers.

“Our economy has become so involved with military effort throughout the world,” Mr. Mendenhall said, “that a person can hardly make a living here without being a part of that system.”

A spokesman for the American Friends Service Committee said that this would be the first instance in American history that a group of Quakers had left the country because of their religious pacifist convictions.

A letter to the editor from Mart Sheaffer, in the 18 November 1950 edition suggested that tax resistance was more Christian than the alternative (source):

Tax Refusal

Why do Christians continue to pay the government that portion of tax which is used to support war, since war is contrary to the teachings of the New Testament?

It seems that it would be more Christlike to refuse to pay that portion of tax and to give the same amount — or more — to some worthy Christian cause such as the program of the Brethren Service Commission or some other Christian denomination’s project.

We could then take a receipt for the amount given and turn the receipt over to the government. If it is permissible to teach the gospel, it also should be permissible to live it and practice it.

Nearly a year later the magazine printed a letter in response, disagreeing by giving the old taxes-are-debts argument, and recommending instead prayer rather than civil disobedience (source). Floyd M. Irvin responded in the 20 October 1951 issue (source):

Taxes and Our Responsibility

I would like to express my disagreement with the brother from Grantsville, Md., who states that “taxes are a debt… when we pay this debt our responsibility ends.”

I would say rather that, as a citizen, I am a partner with other citizens both in managing and in financing the affairs of our government. A citizen of a democracy has a definite responsibility in determining the purpose for which his tax money is used. The denial of this privilege by the English government was one of the chief reasons for the revolt of the American colonists and for the birth of our republic. Now that we have this privilege, it becomes a responsibility.

If the fathers of the American Revolution in their day felt an inner compulsion to refuse to pay taxes for the use of which they had no directing voice, ought not followers of the Prince of Peace in our day feel an urge to refuse to pay taxes which are used to finance the killing of our fellow Christians?

This is a question which needs careful consideration. The following questions may stimulate our thoughts on the matter.

Do we as citizens have a responsibility in regard to the use of our tax money which should direct our actions beyond our choice of representatives? In other words, after we have voted to the best of our ability, are we guiltless if our taxes are used to kill our fellow men?

Does the Scriptural injunction to pay taxes apply without exception, or is the payment of taxes to finance a war that destroys God’s children an exception when we should obey God rather than men?

How can we order our lives and finances so that if we refuse to pay taxes the government will not take more than we withhold? Is it time for Christians to organize a non-violent resistance movement against war?

The 21 April 1951 edition again covered the Peacemakers (source):

Group Refuses to Pay “War” Taxes

Fifty-nine men and women, including four Protestant clergymen, in various parts of the country have refused to file federal income tax returns because they find it impossible to support the Korean or any other war. This announcement was made by the tax refusal committee of Peacemakers, a national pacifist group, which released a statement by the fifty-nine saying:

“We are particularly concerned at this time about the situation in Korea, where a civil struggle has been provoked and aggravated by two power states to the point where it is already a major war — one which may be the spark that will set the world afire.

“We find it impossible to support policies and activities of this kind with our allegiance or with our money. We must, therefore, refuse to give money for such purposes of conquest and massacre, and must give it instead to causes which build understanding and world community.”

A.J. Muste of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, sent a separate letter to the collector of internal revenue in his district, declaring that this is the third successive year in which he has refused to file a return or pay taxes. He contended that “anyone who contributes to arming the United States today also contributes to arming Russia — which is the last thing I want to do — in the same way that Russians contribute to American armament, for each government mechanically matches the military preparations of the other.”

The 27 October 1951 issue brought this news (source):

At the auction sale of her husband’s car, Mrs. Arthur H. Emery, Jr., begged those attending the sale not to bid. She said she feared the proceeds might be used for war. The U.S. bureau of internal revenue, which had seized the car, will apply the $145 on the income tax owed by Mr. and Mrs. Emery. They had refused to pay it because they thought it might be used for military purposes.

This letter from Ernest Bromley comes from the 1 December 1951 issue (source):

Tax Refusal

Many people who have been deeply concerned over the large and growing percentage of federal taxes going to war purposes have been prevented from taking any definite action because all funds paid to the federal government go into a common treasury, whether this money is for war purposes or for constructive purposes to which citizens willingly contribute.

The Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers calls attention to the fact that if the increased military appropriations now being voted by Congress under various heads are added together, this will mean a total of around seventy billion dollars for war purposes out of a budget of around ninety billion. The increased appropriations will reflect themselves in a percentage increase in taxes, and this increase will be for purely military purposes and nothing else. We would welcome correspondence from persons who feel a concern over this matter, which should be addressed to Rev. Ernest Bromley, Golay Road in Gano, Sharonville, Ohio.

Another war tax resister from outside of Brethren circles was featured briefly in the 7 June 1952 issue (source):

Woman Pastor Refuses to Pay “War Taxes”

A woman pastor in South Hartford, N.Y., paid only twenty-five per cent of her 1951 federal income tax because she is opposed to the government’s “warlike ventures.” The Rev. Marion C. Frenyear, pastor of the South Hartford Congregational church, said she is a Christian pacifist and “cannot support war in any way,” that in her belief war is against religious principles and taxes should be used to bring peace and disarmament to the world.

For the same reason last year Miss Frenyear paid only twenty-five per cent of her federal tax bill. Walter R. Sturr, collector of internal revenue at Albany, placed a lien against her salary and indicated the same method would be used this year to collect the unpaid taxes.

The delinquent taxes last year were paid by the treasury of the church and the amount was deducted from the pastor’s salary.

The Brethren Missionary Herald seemed to trend conservative. It complained about high government spending and taxes (and saw creeping socialism at every turn), and didn’t hesitate to put the blame for this on the military budget, but this was about as far as it was prepared to go in protest:

The child of God will… pay his taxes…. It is our judgment that the general tenor of the teaching of the Bible allows for protest and even revolt against unjust and exorbitant taxation. Beyond these considerations, however, the Lord’s servant will not try to evade the payment of tribute. [23 February 1952]

The Brethren Evangelist was also largely sticking to its guns and not entertaining any newfangled tax resistance ideas. But the magazine’s intolerance for legalized alcoholic beverages was intense enough that, in the midst of what was otherwise a standard render-unto-Cæsar article, they let this slip in the 4 August 1951 issue (source):

“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” What things does Caesar have a right to claim? Taxes? Yes, we should expect to pay taxes for the privilege of living in such a land as ours. We expect protection of life and property; good sanitary living conditions, and the like — and these cost money. But there is, of course, a limit to which the Christian should be forced to go. For instance, to be forced to pay taxes for the upkeep of hospitals for the criminally insane and penitentiaries where are housed the results of crimes brought about by a government-supported liquor program, is going beyond what any government has a moral (even if it has a legal) right to demand. We could go on at great length with many other examples, but space forbids. You think about them.

I found this in an old copy of Freedom which billed itself as an “Anarchist Fortnightly” (from the U.K. I think). It is the first example I have seen that quotes the complete Peacemakers tax refusal statement in 1950:

H-Bomb Makes Them More Determined

Say U.S. Tax Resisters

Saying that President Truman’s decision to go ahead with the production of the hydrogen bomb makes them even more determined than before to refuse to finance war preparation, 27 men and 19 women in scattered parts of the United States announced on March 15^th, their refusal to pay income taxes. They released the following statement through the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers, a national pacifist movement with headquarters in New York City:

War is to us abhorrent. The wholesale and systematic burning or blasting to bits of men, women, and children is the most hideous barbarism committed by men since the world began. No declaration of war or other government pressures can shake our determination to have no part in such unspeakable atrocities.

Preparing for such atrocities is equally abhorrent. Those who help build atomic bombs, germ sprays, or biological weapons share the same responsibility as those who drop the bombs or cast the deadly sprays. Hence, we are determined as far as possible to stop our part of bomb building and other armament construction.

Today is the deadline for payment of 1949 income taxes. Unitedly we affirm our determination to refuse to pay taxes which are levied for the purpose of carrying on war. President Truman’s decision to begin the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb makes us even more determined than before to refuse to finance armaments. Building this newest and most terrible weapon is further indication of the extreme depths of moral degradation into which our nation has sunk.

Some of use feel that because the major activity of the federal government is war, we must refuse the total amount of the income taxes we owe. Others of us feel we must refuse to pay the proportion which corresponds to the percentage of the national budget now allocated to war preparation.

We can do little to obstruct the manufacture of war weapons in other countries, but we feel morally compelled to resist such manufacture here in every way we can. We call on all people, both in the United States and other lands, to consider this course of action and join us.

Here are some more bits I found in back issues of the British anarchist weekly Freedom.

From the 2 April 1949 issue:

41 Refuse to Pay Income Tax

25 men and 16 women, in scattered parts of the United States, announced recently that they would refuse to comply with the federal income tax laws. They released the following statement to the press through a Tax Refusal Committee of “Peacemakers,” national pacifist group with headquarters in New York City:

Believing that men are accountable for their actions, and that laws requiring immoral acts should not be obeyed, we have after serious consideration determined upon a course of civil disobedience with relation to the income tax laws of the United States.

We are united in affirming the brotherhood of all men, and we are therefore unwilling to contribute to preparations for war. We renounce the ways of war and violence, and call upon our fellow men in all countries to lay down their arms, to renounce forever dependence upon violence and murder to protect their property, their lives, and their ideals. We testify the methods of violence have failed utterly, and that they have failed because they are morally wrong. We plead with our fellow citizens of the United States to join us in acting for peace by refusing to manufacture weapons of war, refusing to serve in the armed forces, and refusing to finance war preparations. We urge them to join us in working together in love and non-violence for a world in which peace replaces conflict, abundance replaces want, and freedom and equality replace tyranny and injustice.

The Committee stated that some of those refusing would pay no portion of their tax, since they maintain that the major activity of the federal government at this time is war. They point out that 80 per cent. of the national budget is devoted to “past, present, and future wars.” Others will refuse to pay that percentage of their tax which corresponds with the percentage which the government spends for military preparations.

“Peacemakers” has been prominent in the news recently for advocating that young men of draft age refuse to register for Selective Service. Several of their number have been sentenced to prison terms, while others are now awaiting trial.

From the 30 April 1960 issue:

Tax Refusal

What is the next move after Aldermaston? It would be tragic if the Campaign were now to stand still and take no positive action for months.

A rally 100,000 strong against the bomb is a major success. What a victory it would be if those 100,000 followed their action through to its logical conclusion.

If we are prepared to march against the H-bomb how can we go on helping to pay for its manufacture and for the farce of civil defence? Tax refusals have a long and honourable history dating from the 17^th century when John Hampden refused to pay “Ship money” to the despotic Stuart monarchy. “No taxation without representation” was the slogan of the American colonists and of the people in the women’s franchise movement. It might equally well be ours in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament today.

There will be a meeting to plan a campaign of revenue refusals on Saturday, May 7, at the Student Movement House, Gower Street, London, W.C.1 In the morning rates refusals and suing borough councils will be discussed; in the afternoon, income tax refusals.

Pamela Frankau and Doris Lessing as well as a number of other well-known people have promised to come to the afternoon meeting. We hope that all those interested in taking action along these lines will attend the meeting — including those on PAYE for whom certain lines of action may be possible.

April Carter, Secretary.
Pat Arrowsmith, Field Secretary.
(Direct Action Committee).

Today, some excerpts from The Catholic News Archive concerning tax resistance in 1973. First, from the January 1973 Catholic Worker:

“Peacemaker” Refuses Taxes

By Ernest Bromley et al.

The federal government’s Internal Revenue Service on December 6 began proceedings against Gano Peacemakers, Inc. and against Ernest and Marion Bromley for taxes and penalties amounting to over $30,000, for the years of 1966 through 1971. The address for both is 10206 Sylvan Ave., Cincinnati, Ohio. The locality is on the map as Gano.

As many people are aware, Gano Peacemakers, Inc. is a nonprofit corporation established by the Bromleys and others soon after they went to Gano as a community in 1956. It has held property, but has never operated a program, had any income from work or contributions, or had a treasury. In 1958, the mailing address of the Movement of Peacemakers, together with its organ, The Peacemaker, was brought to Gano, as Ernest Bromley had accepted responsibility for circulation and editing. The Peacemaker files were brought from Yellow Springs, the financial records were brought from the former business address in Cleveland, and the sharing fund from Oberlin. As is well known by all volunteers who have kept the records and everyone close to the Peacemaker Movement, The Peacemaker finances have continued entirely apart from the finances of the people at the house in Gano.

False Information

IRS arrived at this figure through the assertion that the Peacemaker Movement and its organ, The Peacemaker, housed at that address, are synonymous with Gano Peacemakers, Inc., which holds title to the house where the Bromleys live. The erroneous claim, expressed in notations and figures on numerous IRS forms, is that the finances of the Peacemaker Movement are one and the same as the corporation holding title to the property. Figures on these forms claim that all subscriptions to The Peacemaker and contributions to the Movement are income to Gano Peacemakers, Inc. These IRS tables and figures, received at the house in Gano, go so far as to assert that all recipients of checks from The Peacemaker bank account are employees of Gano Peacemakers, Inc., and assessments are listed for FUTA, FICA and payroll income tax which they claim Peacemakers should have withheld from all those receiving checks. People said to be employees are named in the documents; most are the families of imprisoned war objectors who received monthly checks for their period of need. Apparently, IRS took these from copies of canceled checks kept by the Farmers and Citizens Bank, Trotwood, Ohio.

Whether IRS has made this move with the calculated intention of disrupting and diminishing the Peacemaker Movement and The Peacemaker is, of course, not known. It should be stated that the Bromleys and others who refuse taxes for war have consistently refused to give IRS any information—partly because they wanted to make collection as difficult as possible, even though the amount might be very small—and partly because they wanted to offer total noncooperation with the machinery of a racist and murdering government apparatus. Having gathered information which is totally-false as the basis for a claim, IRS should not be permitted to proceed in ignorance of the total misrepresentation they have made with regard to activities at Gano.

If IRS does proceed on the basis it has claimed, no assets called Peacemaker will be immune to its seizure at any time, be it a checking account where subscriptions are deposited or funds contributed for aid to imprisoned war objectors’ families. Anything considered to be the Movement’s can be grabbed. If that should happen, Peacemaker would find other ways to continue to communicate with each other and meet their obligations to families of imprisoned war objectors.

Claim Against the Bromleys

Ernest and Marion Bromley’s nonpayment of taxes for war antedates the founding of Peacemakers. They have for many years made public their stand against paying taxes for war, and have refused to give IRS any information. It is rather ironic that after making the house at Gano available without charge for The Peacemaker editing and circulation work, they are now being accused of receiving income from the operation of the Peacemaker Movement.

What Response to Make?

It is not likely that either individual refusers or any persons acting for Peacemakers will begin to fill out tax forms, open its mailing lists to IRS, show names of contributors and do any of the things people do who are merely looking for a better deal from IRS. Even if such cooperation were acceptable to Peacemakers, it is no guarantee that IRS would accept the explanations. And one thing quite repugnant to Peacemakers is the thought of applying to IRS for a right to continue.

There is the possibility that IRS is proceeding without knowledge of how far-fetched their claims are. Those who know the principles on which Peacemaker finances are handled may wish to write to the IRS accountant who signed the papers. He is Samuel T. Lay, IRS, P.O. Box 476, Cincinnati, OH, 45201.

Such a communication would be for the purpose of informing the IRS that their claims against the Peacemaker Movement are erroneous. It would be particularly helpful if those knowing how the sharing fund operates would inform the IRS that those receiving checks are not employees either of Peacemakers or Gano Peacemakers, Inc.; that they have not performed any services for Peacemakers; and that they may have never had any other connection with Peacemakers than receiving financial aid during a resister’s prison sentence.

There is no true basis for a collection in the material IRS has assembled. It may be that they will acknowledge this fact if they receive information from those who know how incorrect their assumptions are. If letters go to IRS, it would be helpful if copies are sent to The Peacemaker.

Chuck Matthei reports that the Peacemakers’ winter continuation meeting in Indianapolis discussed mounting an educational campaign about tax refusal in the Cincinnati area. They also foresee a non-violent, direct action response to the war-tax machine if an eviction or auction takes place. Chuck stressed that the action would involve a no bail/no fine commitment from participants.

Although the Peacemakers wish to make refusal to support war, not concern to protect property, the issue in their tax case, they are collecting pledges of assistance for the Bromleys, should the need arise.

For more information, or to participate, contact:

The Peacemaker
10208 Sylvan Av.
Cincinnati, Ohio 45241

The National Catholic Reporter reported in its 5 January 1973 issue:

American Telephone and Telegraph reports that 22,000 people refused to pay the telephone excise tax in protest against the Vietnam war in 1972, up from 17,000 last year and 12,000 in 1970. The Internal Revenue Service wants AT&T to disconnect all those phones, but AT&T says tax problems are IRS’ business. Apparently, IRS wants as little to do with 22,000 prosecutions as AT&T wants to do with the $200,000 a month It would cost to disconnect protesters’ phones.

The 2 February issue of that paper, toward the end of a larger article about peace movement retooling toward the tail end of the Vietnam War, noted:

Bob Calvert of War Tax Resistance said his organization will continue to urge tax resistance in protest against the large amount of the federal budget — more than half — which goes into the military.

He said local tax resistance centers are preparing reports describing the amount of federal taxes taken out of each state, the amount returned through revenue sharing, the real needs of the state and the amount of money from the state which goes into the military.

Mike DeGregory penned an argument for war tax resistance for the March 1973 issue of Catholic Worker:

Render to God: The Imperative to Resist

By Mike DeGregory

“There are two things I’ve got to do in this world — die and pay taxes.” This sentiment presents a serious theological problem for the modern world: equating the demands of the nation state with those of God. Given the violence and militarism of our times, the problem becomes a question of idolatry. As such, the payment of taxes must be examined with all its implications.

God and State

Since biblical times there has existed a tension between allegiance to God and allegiance to the state. Periodically, acts of resistance were made as a witness affirming God as the source of life in opposition to the state. Recently this tension has been manifested in this country when hundreds of thousands of Americans, motivated by belief in a higher authority, refused allegiance to the state. Draft resistance to the Vietnam war was widespread, and the war tax resistance movement reached a high point.

Now, however, that the ceasefire accords have been signed and American troops will be withdrawn from Vietnam, many consider war tax refusal an inappropriate anachronism. Such a view is a misunderstanding of the nature of war and tax resistance. Mr. Nixon has repeatedly said, “Peace, peace with honor,” but there is no peace.

The Vietnam war continues with intense fighting. It is the Vietnamese people who suffer. Over 200,000 refugees have been created since the ceasefire began, while American planes daily bomb Cambodia, and frequently bomb Laos.

Outside Indochina, a similar “peace” prevails. America continues to arm other smaller nations for fratricidal wars, most recently in a $2 billion agreement with Iran. And America’s nuclear overkill continues to increase, as does the military budget. This is peace only in an Orwellian sense.

William James has described the true nature of this “peace” in his The Moral Equivalent of War:

“Peace” in military mouths is a synonym for “war expected”… Every up-to-date dictionary should say that “peace” and “war” mean the same thing, now in posse, now in actu. It may even be reasonably said that the intensely sharp competitive preparation for war by the nations is the real war, permanent, unceasing; and that the battles are only a sort of public verification of the mastery gained during the “peace” interval.

No Mere Protest

The existence of perpetual war makes war tax resistance relevant and necessary. Tax resistance is not just another form of protest. It is a refusal to participate in something, namely war. It involves a change of worldviews, a conversion. It demands a commitment to a new way of living. It can be a truly religious response, stemming from moral obligation rather than expediency. In this moral sense, it is for everyone, not just the courageous few. For in modern society, how we use our money and how we relate to money determines what kind of lives we lead and the kind of persons we are.

For many Christians, this decision of how to relate to the issue of taxes is easily answered: pay them, for Christ said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

The spirit of the Gospel is peace and nonviolence. A biblical response to the “Render to Caesar” passage does not mean blind obedience to the state. Rather, it suggests the responsibility to judge the “things” of Caesar in light of the “things” of God. The essential part of the passage is the latter clause: “Render to God the things that are God’s.” Jesus intended no equality between God and Caesar. Therefore, before rendering to Caesar one must judge if the things of Caesar are compatible with the things of God. More specifically, today we must ask: is the payment of an income tax of which more than 50% finances the works of war, compatible with the things of God who desires from us the works of mercy? We are faced with the moral imperative of examining war and our role in it as taxpayers. In conscience we must decide whether to pay or not.

The New C.O.

In the modern process of violence, our technological society increasingly replaces men with machines. The “big business” of modem war relies more and more on citizens’ money than on their bodies. In light of this, it becomes essential that tax resisters be seen as the new conscientious objectors to war, withholding their financial as well as their bodily resources.

In the past, draft resistance has been seen as the refusal to place the pinch of incense on the altar of a false god. Tax resistance deals more fundamentally with this same idolatry. For tax money is the very gold of which the false idols of war are made. War tax resistance is an alternative to this idolatry.

Some will object that war tax resistance, even with its corresponding alternate life funds, is ineffective. This is perhaps correct, but as I see it, irrelevant. Too often actions are undertaken simply for effect. The words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer sum up the effectiveness of war tax resistance: “One asks, what is to come? Another, what is right? And that is the difference between the slave and the free man.”

“When it becomes the ‘sacred duty’ of a man to commit sin, one no longer knows how he should live,” said Reinhold Schneider. “There remains nothing else for him to do but bear individual witness alone. And where such witness is, there is the Kingdom of God.” In this is the effectiveness of war tax resistance.

One of the best (and shortest) rationales for war tax resistance is Peter Maurin’s statement, “The future will be different if we make the present different.” If we continue to pay for war and the instruments of war, will we ever have peace?

---

(Ed. Note: For more information about tax resistance, write War Tax Resistance, 912 E. 31^st St., Kansas City, Mo. 64109.)

The National Catholic News Service included this among its dispatches on 18 April 1973:

Five Anti-War Priests Refuse to Pay Part of Income Tax

Pittsburgh (NC)— Five priests of the Pittsburgh diocese have filed income tax returns but deducted 20 percent from their taxes which they contend would go to support a “totally immoral war” in Southeast Asia.

“The bombing in Cambodia going on right now is without any foundation in law — let alone morality,” said Father Jack O’Malley, spokesman for the group.

“The Thieu government in South Vietnam holds five of our brother priests as political prisoners because they have dared to speak out against the immoral actions of their government. It is our taxes which is keeping Thieu in power,” Father O’Malley said.

The five priests waited until the deadline day of April 15 to file their tax returns at the Internal Revenue Service office here at noon.

Father O’Malley said the priests recognize that wrong is also being done by the North Vietnamese government. “But that country is not our ally,” he said.

“It is a privilege and duty to pay taxes,” the priest said. “It is likewise a duty to resist evil in conscience. When that evil is done by one’s own government, the duty is no less.”

During Holy Week the five priests prayed for an end to the bombing in Cambodia and an end to fighting and violence by all parties in Southeast Asia.

The other priests taking part in the tax resistance were: Fathers Mark Glasgow, Patrick Fenton, Warren Metzler and Donald McIlvane.

A letter-to-the-editor in the May 1973 Catholic Worker, signed by “Ammon Hennacy House” (Grand Rapids, Michigan), included this paragraph:

At this writing we have just ended a week-end tax resistance conference with about twenty-five people from around the state. We have been promoting tax and draft resistance as part of our nonviolence workshop group Life Force. With the beginnings of a tax resisters’ fund we are seeking an alternative to the violence and exploitation of banking. Also, we are exploring possibilities of an insurance fund. With four active children, we feel the need to be providing them with assurance of medical care in emergencies.

The National Catholic News Service included this among its dispatches on 23 July 1973:

War Resister Gets Tax Refund

Altamont, N.Y. (NC)— Mark Brockley of St. Lucy’s Parish here received a refund check from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for $250.50 for 1972, which was the total amount IRS had withheld from Mark’s wages for the year.

The unusual aspect of Brockley’s case is that he received the refund after claiming his infant niece as a dependent on his 1040 form, knowing that she would not qualify as his dependent under the IRS definition.

Brockley explained in a letter to IRS officials that his niece, who was born the day of the Vietnam cease-fire, “represents all children, whether they be Mexican-American babies born in a migrant farm worker’s tent or Cambodian youths huddled in a village under American attack, who depend on each of us to create a livable world for them to grow up in and inherit.”

An IRS official said that if an audit showed that Brockley had claimed a dependent to which he was not entitled, any tax owed would be subject to normal IRS collection procedures.

Brockley is among a small but growing number of people who resist payment of federal taxes because of conscientious objection to government policies, especially to the large portion of the budget which supports the military.

He is 22 and single and describes himself as having been “gung ho for the war” (in Indo-China) until about his junior year in high school when his feelings began to change. His feelings continued to grow until he was arrested in 1972 for protesting the mining of North Vietnamese harbors.

After a demonstration in support for the Berrigans during their trial for conspiracy, Brockley learned about the war tax resistance. He then took steps to prevent the withholding of taxes from his wages, which is illegal.

“But since the government already had taken over $200 of my money for the year,” he said, “I thought in conscience I should get it back.”

To emphasize that his action was not meant to evade or defraud IRS, Brockley sent the letter explaining his irregular 1040 form. He stated in part, “I intend that the government you represent shall not receive one penny more of my tax money while it continues policies to which I cannot in conscience lend my support.”

Brockley reconciled his duties as a citizen and his tax actions by noting that “people forget that Jesus did not simply answer, yes, when they asked him if you should pay Caesar’s tax. It is well established that when you see a clash between Caesar’s law and the Gospel, the Christian’s allegiance is owed to the Gospel.”

The refunded money, Brockley said, is being donated to the Life Giving Fund. This fund is used to support “groups we consider alternatives to the government’s priorities,” he added. “None of us is interested in tax evasion for personal gain. We’ve given out over $1000 so far.

“Someday maybe I could get some land and be as self-sufficient as possible — so I could keep my income below the taxable level,” he said. “That way I could follow my conscience without having to break the law.”

Mike Cullen, who had come to the United States from Ireland twelve years before, and had founded the Casa Maria Catholic Worker hospitality house in Milwaukee, was deported in September 1973. Press reports (e.g. National Catholic Reporter, 14 September 1973) noted that the judge in the deportation case had “listed the cause of deportation as burning of draft files, interfering with administration of the selective service law, counseling others on conscientious objection, tax resistance, and burning his own draft card.”

Today, some excerpts from The Catholic News Archive concerning tax resistance in 1975

The March 1975 Catholic Worker gave an update on the case the IRS was pursuing against Gano Peacemakers, The Peacemaker magazine, the Peacemakers organization, and Ernest and Marion Bromley:

Bromleys Resist IRS

By Peggy Scherer

On January 31, 1975, two agents of the Internal Revenue Service posted a notice of seizure on the house occupied by Marion and Ernest Bromley, two long time pacifists and advocates of refusal to pay war taxes. The house, located near Cincinnati, Ohio, was seized to pay $24,671.31 the IRS claims is owed them. This claim is a false one, however, even by IRS rules.

The claim is based on banking records of The Peacemaker, the newsletter of the nationwide Peacemaker movement. Records seized were for the period between 1966 and 1971. All money sent to The Peacemaker was spent on printing and mailing out the paper, financing of a few projects, and for the Peacemaker Sharing Fund. The Sharing Fund is used to support families of imprisoned war resisters. Part of the assessment is based on Ernest Bromley’s being an employee, and therefore owing income tax. Checks were made out to Ernest to obtain cash for postage, but he never received payment for work he did. All work on The Peacemaker was and is done without compensation.

The first notices, which began coming in late 1972, claimed that the families who had received money from the Sharing Fund were also employees. This claim was dropped after the IRS received letters from those families denying this charge. Numerous letters were also sent disclaiming that The Peacemaker owed money for income tax and social security for any employees. In spite of this, the IRS has not dropped the largest part of its claim. To compound the injustice, they are making their collection by taking property which does not belong to The Peacemaker, which has no holdings, and no longer has a bank account.

The property being seized is owned by Gano Peacemakers, Inc., a small nonprofit corporation formed in 1952, when Marion and Ernest moved to the community of Gano. There, they and a few others formed a small pacifist community. In 1958, when Ernest became the editor of The Peacemaker, the paper was given office space in the house, and it stayed there until 1973. All finances of the two groups were separate.

Internal Revenue Service made its audit of The Peacemaker records during the period when the IRS’ “Special Services Staff” (SSS) investigated some 3000 groups and 8000 individuals who were antiwar activists. These investigations were kept secret until mid-1973, but recently it has been discovered how a coordinated, government-wide effort was undertaken against antiwar activists and protest groups. The SSS collected information from the Justice Department, the FBI, Army and Air Force Intelligence units, and the Secret Service. Since it is doubtful that an audit of The Peacemaker banking records could legitimately be made for tax gathering purposes, it appears the search was for political motives.

The Bromleys follow the policy of noncooperation with the efforts of government agencies to gather information. They are pacifists, and deplore the huge amounts of money spent on war and preparation for war. They will not contest the case in court, but rely on personal witness and informing people of the facts. Efforts are being made by them and many others to publicize the seizure. Leaflets are being handed out each day at the IRS office in Cincinnati to inform potential buyers of the fraudulence of the seizure. Anyone interested in demanding this injustice be stopped should write or telegraph the District Director, IRS, Federal Office Building, Cincinnati, Ohio. Inform local IRS offices and the media, as well as other individuals.

This seizure is only part of the larger injustice which IRS finances. At present, as for the past number of years, the major percentage of the U.S. budget is spent for “defense” purposes. This country still provides the main support for the oppressive governments in South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. We supply war materials to countries around the world. The products of our labor should be directed for the good of all into positive, life-building works, not in support of war and preparation for war. Often the argument is raised, “Render unto Caesar…” Yet to contribute willingly to the death and oppression of our fellow humans is not to follow the teachings of Christ. When a government misuses power, then we must withdraw our support in every possible way, building with our own lives a just and equitable society. In our world of many people and limited resources, our energy is needed to concentrate on providing food, shelter, clothing and a caring atmosphere for our fellow creatures.

This is the time of year when IRS concentrates on collecting monies used mainly for destruction. To retain control of our own lives, to curtail the massive war-oriented economies of the United States and other nations, we must make personal witness and say no to paying war taxes. Without financial support, the government could not carry on as it is. Such refusal can lead to prison and harassment by the government. Yet if many of us would refuse, and even fill the prisons, there would be no money to support their work. Though it may be difficult, the reward of acting conscientiously, of asserting our freedom to support only what is right, is great.

For information about others who have refused to pay taxes for war, contact The Peacemaker, 1255 Paddock Hills Ave., Cincinnati, Ohio 45229, or War Tax Resistance or War Resisters League, both at 339 Lafayette St., N.Y., N.Y. 10012.

By Marion Bromley

In discussing the IRS seizure of the property here in Gano, a young office worker commented to others, “I don’t see why they are just bringing this up now. If they had gone to the IRS right in the beginning, they would have straightened it out.”

The more we become involved in analyzing the way IRS proceeded against Peacemakers, the more we want to strip the IRS of this phony facade of beneficent rectitude.

Many people have advised us to fight it in the courts, and that seems to indicate a confidence in the legal system which we do not share. That system provides protection for the state and protects the property of those who can wield power in that arena. We have no interest in asking one branch of the powerful warmaking state to protect us against the improper activities of another branch.

If IRS is not obliged by public clamor to remove the lien against the property, they will sell it and collect $25,000 (which is not taxes “owed” by anyone) — and that would be a defeat of sorts. But if that happens, after we have done everything we can to prevent it, we hope we can go away from here as whole people and continue our adventures elsewhere. We would be truly defeated if any friends attempted to pay the IRS anything to regain title to the property.

We have had the support of a small but active local group. A vigil has continued daily at the federal building in Cincinnati. We know people responded to the Peacemaker mailing suggesting letters to IRS officials, and there have been small support vigils in other places. We do not want to exaggerate the nature of the IRS attack on Peacemakers and on us as tax refusers. The bulletins of Amnesty International detail every month the horrible oppression of dissenters in many places. Many of these cruel regimes are maintained in power by U.S. money and open or covert military, police and financial assistance.

Our energies now are directed to exposing the arrogant power methods the IRS revealed in dealing with Peacemakers, and in urging the people who learn of this to take some responsibility for their own support of the government which seems to be permanently locking the people into a war system.

Just in the matter of the continuing war in Southeast Asia, we learned through a UPI story, published in Cincinnati on Feb. 13, of Bird and Sons Cos. of Oakland, Cal., which is getting five more C130 planes from the Pentagon to increase the supply flights from Thailand to Cambodia. Owner William Bind told a newsman that the Air Force is using Bird Air “to get around the congressional ban on U.S. military involvement.”

The U.S. budget for the coming fiscal year, presented by Gerald Ford on Feb. 4, provides for an increase in military spending; and the planners announce that they expect to increase federal spending for the military on a rising level for the next five years.

The U.S. seems to be operating a "Permanent War Economy,” to use the title of Seymour Melman’s new book.

We think if enough public clamor is raised about the wholly fraudulent actions of IRS in the matter of seizure of the property of Gano Peacemakers, it might cause IRS to remove the lien — and more important, it would serve the larger purpose of educating the public about the methods of the warfare state.

Ernest Bromley Released

Charges have been dropped against Ernest Bromley, arrested on March 5^th, while leafleting at the IRS Center in Cincinnati. He fasted from food and water, and refused to co-operate with the court proceedings, even refusing legal assistance. Despite weakness from the fast, and injuries incurred during his arrest and incarceration, Ernest Bromley will continue to resist the IRS action.

Eds. note.

The National Catholic News Service put this out over the wires on 24 April 1975:

Priest Says He Not Filing Income Tax Return as Protest

Jersey City, N.J. (NC)— In a letter to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) a pacifist priest with a long record of involvement in social causes has stated his intention not to file an income tax return.

Father John P. Egan of St. Boniface’s Church here informed the IRS that he would not file the required tax form as a protest over what he called the “war-making” policies of the U.S. government.

Father Egan admits the protest is symbolic because he is not subject to a tax liability and has not been required to pay a tax for the past five years, because of deductions and donations to charitable causes.

But he said that he feels it is important to subject himself to the penalties imposed for not complying with the tax law in the matter of filing a return because at the time he had torn up his draft card in a previous protest he was exempt from the draft. The maximum penalty for failing to file an income tax form is one year in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Even as he was taking this action Father Egan learned that his conviction on a trespassing charge stemming from a Demonstration on behalf of the United Farm Workers of America (UFWA) was being reversed.

Father Egan and 15 other UFWA supporters were arrested in South Orange, N.J., the past October for a demonstration at a supermarket there. A municipal court verdict was upset as a result of an appeal to Essex County Superior Court.

On April 25 a hearing was to be held in Washington, D.C. in a case stemming from his arrest earlier this year during a protest inside the White House as part of an anti-war demonstration.

Father Egan’s letter to the IRS was reprinted in the July 1975 Catholic Worker:

St. Boniface Church
254 First St.,
Jersey City, N.J. 07302

Sirs:

As April 16, 1975, the last day for filing income tax returns, approaches, let me serve notice on the government that I do not wish to serve its disregard for humans. For the same reason as I ripped up my draft card and registration some time ago, I now refuse to fill out any income tax form.

I choose not to give money to kill. For years, any extra money that could have gone to this government for the purposes of war, I gave to many different humanizing efforts. This way, I made sure there were no taxable monies available from me.

I want to say no strongly to an administration which would spend nine billion dollars more for war-making and would cut out an already allotted 2.6 billion for things ranging from cancer research to schools and hospitals.

I want to say no strongly to a government which makes the poor and the old grovel for enough bread to survive while it struggles to give oil depletion allowances to those who have robbed the earth of natural resources meant for all, not for a favored few. Imagine wanting to give taxpayers’ money to those who have made 130 percent profit off a probably contrived energy crisis which caused suffering to millions! Of course, the poor always have an energy crisis. They live in fear of having heat, gas, electricity shut off because there is not the money to pay the exorbitant bills. But it is not just that taxpayers’ dollars are used for war and for oil depletion allowances. That would be enough for tax resistance.

I want to say no strongly, by not filling out an income tax form, because money from the people of this country is used to train police in other countries how to torture, how to repress demands for justice. Money from this country was used to overthrow a legitimate government in Chile, with the subsequent murder of countless Chilean citizens. Money from this country is used to support and maintain dictatorships in South Korea, in the Phillipines, in Brazil and in the Dominican Republic, and in other Latin American countries where big business gains enormous profit off the cheap labor, off the enslaved backs of millions of our brother and sister humans who live in neighboring lands.

Money from this country, from the people of this country is used to keep people who yearn for freedom in inhuman prisons. And there is no asylum here for the economically or politically oppressed, as the dollars are spent to weed out illegal aliens in hunts that put to shame and mock the words on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free.”

To the laws that de-humanize, and that are anti-human, anti-life, I say no not just with a clear conscience but as a way of clearing conscience. The law of love the only one we must keep, is violated blatantly.

Jesus says we must love our neighbor. My neighbors in Jersey City are poor, old, Puerto Rican, black, illegal, and the way taxes are spent violates their humanity! I say no to such violation of the people here in Downtown Jersey City and to all my neighbors with whom I share life on this planet.

Peace,
Rev. John P. Egan

That issue also had updates on the Bromley/Peacemakers conflict with the IRS:

Bromleys Face Eviction for Tax Resistance

By Peggy Scherer

It was in 1972 that the Internal Revenue Service first sent notices to The Peacemaker and to Ernest and Marion Bromley, claiming approximately $25,000 in unpaid taxes. The assessment, based on banking records of The Peacemaker, claimed that Ernest had been a paid employee. This claim is false: Ernest never received payment for years of work on The Peacemaker. IRS also claimed that recipients of money from The Peacemaker Sharing Fund, which supports families of imprisoned war resisters, were employees and taxes were owed on their “salaries.” This last claim was later dropped. The first claim has been carried through, with a second injustice. The assessment is based on financial records of The Peacemaker; but the property that has been taken to pay the unjust assessment, a house located near Cincinnati, Ohio, belongs to Gano Peacemakers, Inc., which is a separate financial entity. Though the house belonging to Gano Peacemakers Inc. is also the home of Ernest and Marion Bromley, and was the mailing address of The Peacemaker until recently, no money was ever exchanged between the two groups. But the house was seized by the IRS on Jan. 31, 1975, and sold at auction on May 28, 1975.

SSS Secret Flies

This case has serious implications for the Peacemaker Movement as a whole. If IRS succeeds in this action, it can proceed to make it impossible for The Peacemaker to continue. There are political implications for thousands of other peace groups and individuals as well. The auditing of The Peacemaker funds in 1972 came soon after the Special Services Staff (SSS) drew up a file on The Peacemaker and Ernest Bromley, then acting editor of the paper. A memo on this file, dated Dec. 8, 1971, singled out The Peacemaker and Ernest Bromley for tax refusal and encouraging others to refuse to pay war taxes. The SSS was set up by IRS, at the request of Richard Nixon. Its purpose was to study groups and individuals who protested against the US government, especially those who protested US involvement in Vietnam. The SSS investigated and drew up files on 2873 organizations and 8585 individuals who were considered extremists and dissidents. Only 99 of these files have ever been made public. The existence of the memo on The Peacemaker was discovered by accident. And though the SSS was supposedly disbanded on Aug. 9, 1973, the continued harassment of the Peacemaker movement, and the fact that the files have not been destroyed or made public, even to the people studied in the files, indicates otherwise. The man in charge of setting up the SSS was Leon Green, then deputy assistant commissioner of IRS — and now regional commissioner of the IRS, headquartered in Cincinnati.

The continued and secret existence of these files is dangerous. In connection with the Bromley case, a reporter and a group of Quakers requested to see all files pertaining to the case. Although all the proper request forms were filed through official channels, this group was continuously denied access to the files. Another reporter who wrote a newspaper article sympathetic to the Bromleys had his own accounts audited by the IRS soon after his article appeared.

Peacemaker Response

The IRS has been informed of the true facts of this case, but has continued almost without hesitation. Since the first notice sent the Bromleys in 1972, hundreds of letters of protest sent to IRS have resulted in one change. IRS claims that recipients of Sharing Fund monies were employees have been dropped. But the assessment was readjusted and fines were added to keep the amount they claimed was due them at about $25,000. The Bromleys, because of personal beliefs that to appeal through IRS appeals courts would be to recognize an unjust system, will not work through the courts. They believe, rather, in personal witness and public disclosure of the abuse of power. In accordance with this belief, the Bromleys and many others have written letters, leafletted the IRS building in Cincinnati daily for the last five months, and gotten newspaper articles written. Personal conversations between individual Peacemakers and IRS officials leave no doubt that IRS has all the facts but is acting anyway. Education of the public in the facts of this case, and the credibility that this is in fact an act of political harassment, was attested to when, on June 18, 1975, Cincinnati’s city council voted 8 to 1 to ask two Congressional committees to probe this affair.

There is still time to respond to this case, on the part of individuals and groups. Write to demand the reversal of the sale of the house (a step which IRS can still take until the official closing of the sale and eviction, which will take place on, or around, Sept. 26). Request that all the SSS files be destroyed, and that the IRS not be allowed to harass any other groups or individuals who disagree with the government. Letters should be sent to:

Regional Commissioner Leon Green
District Director Dwight James
Federal Office Building
Cincinnati, Ohio 45202

Donald Alexander, Commissioner, IRS
12^th & Constitution, NW
Washington, DC 20224

The Congressional Committees investigating the case are the US Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, 102 B Russell, Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510, and the Oversight Committee of the House Ways and Means Committee, 2371 Rayburn Building, Washington, DC 20515.

Those who have faith in government processes might write these committees.

The most important witness will be on Wednesday, Sept. 3^rd, at the National Headquarters of IRS in Washington. We are asking as many people as possible to join us then, for a general demonstration and acts of civil disobedience, in protest of IRS harassment of the Bromleys and all political dissenters. For exact times, gathering points, and information on housing, etc., contact Kathi Milanowski, c/o Community of Creative Nonviolence, 1345 Euclid St. NW, Washington, DC 20009 (202) 667‒6407. There will be an action the same day in Cincinnati — contact John Leininger, The Peacemaker, 1255 Paddock Hills Ave., Cincinnati, Ohio 45229 about this action and for more information on the case.

Demonstration at IRS September 3, 1975

A general demonstration, protesting IRS harassment of the Bromleys and all political dissenters, will be held at the National Headquarters of IRS, in Washington, D.C. For exact times, gathering points, and information on housing, contact Kathi Milanowski, c/o CCNV, 1345 Euclid St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009, (202) 667‒6407.

The September 1975 issue of The Catholic Worker gave an update on the national War Tax Resistance organization, which I think was nearly finished by this point:

War Tax Resistance

The War Tax Resistance national office has moved to 629 South Hill St., Los Angeles, Ca. 90014. Mandy Carter, a member of the War Resisters League, is the new coordinator of WTR. The office provides literature on war tax resistance, and publishes the bi-monthly Tax Talk.