Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
United States →
American revolution, 1765–81 →
boycott of British goods
More grab-bag material:
You can now visualize the U.S. war fatality statistics in Iraq in two new ways:
Obleek’s Flash animation moves forward in time at a pace of ten days per second , and peppers a map of Iraq with dots, where each one “indicates the geographic location that a coalition military fatality occurred.”
A Palm Beach Post map turns this around, and shows where in the United States each of the American fatalities from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan came from (at least those who hailed from the contiguous 48 states).
revival of the Twilight Zone series featured an episode entitled “Button, button”, based on a short story by Richard Matheson.
In the story, a gaunt, black-clad gentleman arrives uninvited at the cramped apartment of a financially destitute couple and presents them with a tempting though somewhat ominous offer.
He gives them a simple wooden box with a clear plastic lid overtop a large red button — the type of nondescript contraption teens might build in a high school Woodshop class — and explains their options:
1) Don’t push the button.
Nothing happens; the man will come back tomorrow to claim the box.
2) Push the button and get $200,000 — tax free — and someone will die.
“Who?” the wife asks.
“Someone you don’t know,” the man replies.
He then leaves them to think about it.
The husband decides it’s unconscionable, but the wife wants to go for it.
After all, what is the death of someone they don’t know?
People die all the time, don’t they?
Maybe a bad person will be the one to die.
“And maybe it’ll be someone’s newborn baby,” the husband counters.
In the end of the story, after much deliberation, the wife decides that they’re owed this and pushes the button.
Nothing happens immediately.
Then, later in the day, the gaunt, black-clad gentleman returns with a briefcase full of cash.
He gives the couple their money and takes his box back.
The wife asks what will happen now and the man replies:
“The button box will be reset and the same offer will be made to someone else…
someone who doesn’t know you.”
Those of you who have been intrigued by my mentions of freeganism and its potential for a lifestyle of radical frugality may be interested in the Dumpster World discussion board, where dumpster divers from all over the place share their wisdom.
It’s not all “do you think this meat is still good?” — there is a lot of discussion of restoring and repairing discarded furniture and appliances and other such topics as well.
How’s our great national flashback coming along?
Read the transcript of the President assuring the world “We will not be defeated.
We will not grow tired. We will not withdraw.”
David Morris at Alternet reviews some of the history behind (Economic) Independence Day.
Apparently Gandhi wasn’t the first one to try swadeshi in a campaign to break free from the British Empire:
Before we declared our political independence we declared our economic independence.
All things English were placed on the blacklist.
Frugality came into fashion.
Out of the First Continental Congress in New York came the embryonic nation’s first Chamber of Commerce.
Given the current policies of the Chamber, it might be useful this July 4th to recall its first campaign slogan, “Save your money and you can save your country.”
Bostonian Sam Adams, the fiery leader of the movement, knew that frugality was not enough.
To become truly independent, America had to produce at home what was previously imported from England.
Members of Boston’s Whig Party demonstrated their patriotism by nursing tea leaves and mulberry trees in their gardens.
New England farmers were exhorted to convert their oak plains into sheep pastures and produce enough wool to clothe every American.
Colonists were urged to abstain from eating lamb or mutton in order to encourage American woolen manufactures.
In less than a year the boycott had so disrupted Transatlantic trade that thousands of British workers lost their jobs.
And, going back a bit more into American history, Murray Rothbard makes a very interesting investigation of Pennsylvania’s Anarchist Experiment — when the Pennsylvania colony was “in a de facto condition of individual anarchism, and seemed none the worse for the experience.”
The American colonial rebels anticipated Gandhi’s homespun cloth campaign by over a century.
Here’s part of a poem — “American Daughters of Liberty” — written in by Milcah Martha Moore, a Quaker from Philadelphia who was advocating nonviolent resistance techniques against the British:
Let the Daughters of Liberty nobly arise; And though we’ve no voice but a negative here, The use of the taxables, let us forbear:— (Then merchants import till your stores are all full, May the buyers be few, and your traffic be dull!)
Stand firmly resolv’d, and bid Grenville to see, That rather than freedom we part with our tea, And well as we love the dear draught when a-dry, As American Patriots our taste we deny— Pennsylvania’s gay meadows can richly afford To pamper our fancy or furnish our board; And paper sufficient at home still we have, To assure the wiseacre, we will not sign slave; When this homespun shall fail, to remonstrate our grief, We can speak viva voce, or scratch on a leaf; Refuse all their colors, though richest of dye, When the juice of a berry our paint can supply, To humor our fancy — and as for our houses, They’ll do without painting as well as our spouses; While to keep out the cold of a keen winter morn, We can screen the north-west with a well polished horn; And trust me a woman, by honest invention, Might give this state-doctor a dose of prevention.
Join mutual in this — and but small as it seems, We may jostle a Grenville, and puzzle his schemes; But a motive more worthy our patriot pen, Thus acting — we point out their duty to men; And should the bound-pensioners tell us to hush, We can throw back the satire, by biding them blush.
After increasingly punitive restraints climaxed with the Stamp Act, women ardently supported the boycott of British goods by alleging that “naught but homespun” would cloak their bodies and that spinning wheels and knitting needles would doom “foreign manufactures.”
Formation of the Daughters of Liberty, the female “auxiliary” to the more radical Stamp Tax resisters, the Sons of Liberty, presaged an effective instrument for hardening resistance to British measures.…
New Englanders, eager to confirm their boldness in dressing only in domestic threads rather than anticipating arrival of modish bolts and bales from England, restructured the social form of the “spinning bee” into a public outcry against British goods.…
…at the first commencement exercises of Rhode Island College (later Brown University), the president proud-spiritedly wore wholly homespun clothing.
At Harvard, the faculty and students had all taken to homespun in support of their women spinners, of whom the Boston Chronicle had bragged “[T]hey exhibited a fine example of industry, by spinning from sunrise until dark, and displayed a spirit for saving their sinking country, rarely to be found among persons of more age and experience.”
Fierce competition between congregations, between married and unmarried women, between towns and cities and between old and young converted proceedings into such festive social occasions that hundreds of merry spectators milled around the grounds, augmented in the evening by men who joined the spinners and knitters for picnics and boisterous Sons of Liberty ballads.
The bees’ bountiful harvest of thread and yarn inspired others to imitate their fervor, and newspapers identified patriots by airing individual production records…
With the passage of England’s increasingly obstructive measures (such as the Coercive Acts in retaliation to the climactic Boston Tea Party), calls for boycotting tea and wearing homespun and handknit were even more strident.
Since women were the purchasers of what was served and worn in their homes, speakers, writers and preachers insisted that the “ultimate power” of saving the country reposed in their hands.
Even discounting the hyperbolic prose, women whose previous job descriptions had included little outside the family circle must have been astonished at the new perimeters of their responsibility.
Since noncompliance fell on their shoulders, their consequent focus on home production laid the groundwork for clothing their men when war actually came.
What would be a good equivalent of the patriotic knitting bee for today’s sons and daughters of liberty?
What commercial transactions does the government tax that it would have a harder time taxing if they were the fruits of household industry rather than the marketplace?
I’ve already discussed home-brewed beer as one good candidate.
Avoid the federal excise tax on alcoholic beverages, learn a craft, and drink good beer!
It’s a winning proposition any way you look at it.
I can easily imagine tax resister “brewing bees” or better yet “drinking bees” at which songs of liberty are sung with gusto.
But excise taxes are a minor portion of most people’s tax bill, and of the money the government takes in each year.
Most of the government’s revenue comes from taxing income and profit.
What are the homespun, untaxed equivalents of income and profit?
Enter Karl Hess, the Goldwaterite Republican Students-for-a-Democratic-Society anarchist libertarian, who published a provocative essay on barter .
Excerpts:
… constant harassment by the Internal Revenue Service caused me to snap my twig and just stop paying taxes altogether.… [M]y tax collector informed me that a lien would be placed against all my property — that they would take every cent, literally 100 percent, of every penny I might earn and that they could discern.
I asked, then, how they would handle it if I decided to just barter for a living.
They had a ready answer: “If you get some turnips for your work, we’ll take the turnips.”
Fortunately for me, either the IRS is surfeited with vegetables, or turnips are a good deal more difficult to track down than cold cash.
And so I survive.
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.
During the “Taxation Without Representation” years preceding the American Revolution, among the ways the king would try to tax his colonies was by attaching a tax to imports.
American patriots responded by pledging to avoid the use of imported products and to rely instead on goods manufactured in the colonies: a tactic Gandhi would later call swadeshi.
And as in the Indian independence movement over a century later, the wearing of homespun cloth became a symbol of allegiance to the cause of independence.
The Massachusetts Gazette reported:
Williamsburg, Va., .
On evening the honorable speaker and gentlemen of the House of Burgesses gave a ball at the capitol, for the entertainment of His Excellency, Lord Botetourt; and it is with the greatest pleasure we inform our readers that the same patriotic spirit which gave rise to the association of gentlemen on a late event was most agreeably manifested in the dress of the ladies on that occasion, who, to the number of near one hundred, appeared in homespun gowns; a lively and striking instance of their acquiescence and concurrence in whatever may be the true and essential interest of their country.
It were to be wished that all assemblies of American ladies would exhibit a like example of public virtue and private economy, so amiably united.
The production of homespun cloth and eschewing of British tea were ways of fighting for independence — and of organizing the resistance — years before the first shots were fired at Lexington & Concord and the war became a hot one. B.F. Morris writes, in Christian Life and Character of the Civic Institutions of the United States:
Three hundred heads of families in Boston, in a written covenant, resolved that they “would totally abstain from the use of tea till the revenue acts were repealed.”
The young ladies of Boston followed the example of their mothers, as the following pledge indicates:—
Boston, .
We, the daughters of those patriots who have and do now appear for the public interest, — and in that principally regard their posterity, — as such do with pleasure engage with them in denying ourselves the drinking of foreign tea, in hopes to frustrate a plan which tends to deprive a whole community of all that is valuable in life.
This pledge was signed by women throughout New England.
In an afternoon’s visit of ladies in Newport, Rhode Island, it was resolved that those who could spin should be employed in that way, and those who could not should sew.
When the time arrived for drinking tea, bohea and hyperion were provided; and every one of the ladies patriotically rejected the bohea, and unanimously, to their great honor, preferred the balsamic hyperion, — the dried leaves of raspberry-plants.
In Boston, some fifty young ladies, enrolled as “The Daughters of Liberty,” met at a minister’s house (Rev. Mr. Morehead) and in a single day spun “two hundred and thirty-two skeins of yarn.
Numerous spectators came to admire them, and the whole was concluded with many stirring tunes, anthems, and liberty songs, which were animated in their several parts by a number of the Sons of Liberty.”
One example of such patriotic verse was “To Our Ladies”—
Young ladies in town, and those that live round,
Let a friend at this season advise you;
Since money’s so scarce, and times growing worse,
Strange things may soon hap and surprise you.
First, then, throw aside your topknots of pride;
Wear none but your own country linen;
Of economy boast, let your pride be the most
To show clothes of your own make and spinning.
What if homespun they say is not quite so gay
As brocades, yet be not in a passion,
For when once it is known this is much worn in town,
One and all will cry out— ’Tis the fashion!
And, as one, all agree, that you’ll not married be
To such as will wear London factory,
But at first sight refuse, tell ’em such you will choose
As encourage our own manufactory.
No more ribbons wear, nor in rich silks appear;
Love your country much better than fine things;
Begin without passion, ’twill soon be the fashion
To grace your smooth locks with a twine string.
Throw aside your Bohea, and your Green Hyson tea,
And all things with a new-fashion duty;
Procure a good store of the choice Labrador,
For there’ll soon be enough here to suit you.
These do without fear, and to all you’ll appear,
Fair, charming, true, lovely and clever;
Though the times remain darkish, young men may be sparkish,
And love you much stronger than ever.
Then make yourselves easy, for no one will teaze ye,
Nor tax you, if chancing to sneer
At the sense-ridden tools, who think us all fools;
But they’ll find the reverse far and near.
In , Massachusetts patriots were circulating the following petition, which specified the imports to boycott and also pledged a social boycott of people who continued to buy and sell these imports:
Whereas the Hon. House of Representatives of this province, on , did declare, that the happiness and well-being of civil communities depend upon industry, economy, and good morals, and taking into serious consideration the great decay of trade, the scarcity of money, the heavy debt contracted in the late war, which still remains on the people, and the great difficulties to which they are by these means reduced, did resolve, to use their utmost endeavors, and enforce their endeavors by example, in suppressing extravagance, idleness, and vice, and promoting industry, economy, and good morals: and in order to prevent the unnecessary exportation of money, of which the province hath, of late, been drained, did further resolve, that they would, by all prudent means, endeavor to discountenance the use of foreign superfluities, and encourage the manufactures of this province; and whereas, the Parliament of Great Brittan has passed an act imposing duties on sundry articles for the purpose of raising a revenue on America, which is unconstitutional, and an infringement of our just rights and privileges; and the merchants of this province have generally come into an agreement not to import goods from Great Britain, a few articles excepted, till that act is repealed; which in our opinion is a lawful and prudent measure: therefore, we the subscribers, do solemnly promise and engage, each with the other, to to give all possible encouragement to our own manufactures: to avoid paying the tax imposed by said act, by not buying any European commodity but what is absolutely necessary; that we will not, at funerals, use any gloves except those made here, or purchase any article of mourning on such occasion, but what shall be absolutely necessary; and we consent to abandon the use, so far as may be, not only of all the articles mentioned in the Boston resolves, but of all foreign teas, which are clearly superfluous, our own fields abounding in herbs more healthful, and which we doubt not, may, by use, be found agreeable: 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 merchandize 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.
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:
Tax resister “insurance”
For instance, the Breton Association in
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
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.”
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.
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.”
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.”
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.
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.
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).
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.
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-gatherersand 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.
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.
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.
Maintain solidarity in the face of divide-and-conquer tactics
In
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.
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.
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 , 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.
Protests, rallies, pickets, and the like have been a part of many
large-scale tax resistance campaigns.
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.”
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.
Form groups for mutual support & coordinated decision-making
Here there are too many examples to list.
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.”
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.
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.”
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.”
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?
On a writer from Ipswich, Massachusetts reported for the Essex Gazette on the campaign of American patriots to switch from English cloth to homespun American cloth as part of the swadeshi campaign leading to American independence:
It gives us a noble Prospect to see what a spirit of Industry and Frugality prevails at this day in the American young Ladies, and Generosity toward their Gospel ministers.
very early the young Ladies in that Parish of this Town called Chebacco, to the number of 77, assembled at the house of the Rev. Mr. John Cleaveland with their spinning wheels; and though the Weather was extremely hot, and divers of the young Ladies were but about 13 years of Age, yet by they spun of Linen Yarn, 440 Knots, and carded and spun of Cotton, 730 Knots, and of Tow 600, in all 1770 Knots, which make 177 ten-knot-skeins, all good yarn, and generously gave their Work and some bro’t Cotton and Flax with them, more than they spun themselves, as a Present…
After the Music of the Wheels was over, Mr. Cleaveland entertained them with a Sermon on Prov. 14:1, “Every wise Woman buildeth her house but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands,” which he concluded by observing, How the Women might recover to this Country the full and free Enjoyment of all our Rights, Properties and Privileges (which is more than the Men have been able to do), and so have the Honour of building not only their own but the houses of many Thousands and perhaps prevent the Ruin of the whole British empire viz. by living upon as far as possible only the Produce of the Country, and to be sure to lay aside the use of all foreign Teas.
Also by wearing, as far as possible only Cloathing of this Country’s manufacture.
Their Behaviour was decent and they manifested nothing but Pleasure and Satisfaction in their Countenances at their retiring, as well as through the whole preceding Transactions of .
An earlier report in the same paper said that a family from Roxbury had carded, spun, and woven 645¾ yards of cloth over the previous calendar year, with 100 yards of yarn left over.
The following year, the paper reported from Middleton that (according to a summary in the book Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony) in the town of Middleton “there were between seventy and eighty looms in the ninety dwellings, and that , there were woven on these looms, 20,522 yards of cloth, more than 40 yards apiece for every man, woman and child.”
That book also reprints excerpts from a the report of the committee of an Ipswich town meeting held on :
Taking under consideration the Distrest State of Trade of this Government, (and the Whole Continent by Reason of a Late Act of Parliament Imposing Duties on Tea, Glass, etc.) … Voted, that we are Determined to Retrench all Extravagances and that we will to the utmost of our Power & Ability Encourage our own Manufactures and that we will not by ourselves or any for or under us Directly or Indirectly Purchase any Goods of the Persons who have Imported or Continue to Import or any Person or Trader who shall Purchase any Goods of said Importer Contrary to the agreement of the Merchants in Boston and the other Trading Towns in this Government & the neighboring Colonies Until they make a Publick Retraction or a Genl Importation Takes Place.
And Further taking under Consideration the Excessive Use of Tea, which has been such a bane to this Country.
Voted that we will abstain therefrom ourselves & Recommend the Disuse of it in our Familys Untill all the Revenue Acts are Repealed.
These excerpts come from an article by Richard Dillard in the Magazine of American History, with notes and queries, illustrated volume 28, number 2, :
Incident in North Carolina Connected with Taxation
It is the object of this paper to bring into the light an exceptionally interesting and patriotic incident in North Carolina, hitherto but casually noticed by one state historian.
A stranger coming to Edenton twenty-five years ago was shown an old-fashioned, long wooden house fronting directly on the beautiful court-house green; this historic house has since yielded to the ruthless hand of modern vandalism.
It was the residence of Mrs. Elizabeth King, and under its roof fifty-one patriotic ladies (and not fifty-four as stated erroneously by Wheeler) met , and passed resolutions commending the action of the provincial congress.
They also declared they would not conform “to that Pernicious Custom of Drinking Tea, or that the aforesaid Ladys would not promote ye wear of any manufacture from England” until the tax was repealed.
Wheeler, in alluding to this incident and to the stormy days closely preceding the Revolution, in his second volume says, “The patriotism of the men was even exceeded by that of the women.
By some strange freak of circumstance, many years ago, there was found at Gibraltar a beautiful picture done in skillful style, enameled on glass, of a ‘meeting of the ladies of Edenton destroying the tea’ (their favorite beverage) when it was taxed by the English parliament.
This picture was procured by some of the officers of our navy and was sent to Edenton, where I saw it in 1830.”
This is not only erroneous, but Mr. Wheeler has also misquoted the reference to the meeting in the American Archives, and there has been considerable other misinformation afloat regarding it, all of which I shall endeavor to set aright.
The following is the correct notice copied directly from the American Archives, and occupies but twelve lines: “Association Signed by Ladies of Edenton, North Carolina, .
‘As we cannot be indifferent on any occasion that appears to affect the peace and happiness of our country; and as it has been thought necessary for the publick good to enter into several particular resolves, by meeting of Members of Deputies from the whole province, it is a duty that we owe not only to our near and dear relations and connections, but to ourselves, who are essentially interested in their welfare, to do everything as far as lies in our power to testify our sincere adherence to the same, and we do therefore accordingly subscribe this paper, as a witness of our fixed intention and solemn determination to do so.’
Signed by fifty-one ladies.”
Women have always been important factors in all great moral and political reformations.
The draughting of such resolutions, so directly antagonistic to royal authority, required a calmer, far more enviable courage than that developed by the fanatic heroism of the crusades or the feverish bravery of martial music.
The tax upon tea was a direct insult to their household gods; it poisoned every cup of their tea, it affected every hearthstone in the province.
In looking back upon our past it should be a matter of pride to know that such women helped to form the preface of our history — characters which should be held up to our children as worthy of emulation.
“These are deeds which should not pass away, And names that must not wither, though the earth Forgets her empires with a just decay.”
The account of this tea-party found its way into the London papers of that day, and the effect it had there may be noted in the following old letter, strongly tinctured with sarcasm.
It was written by Arthur Iredell of London to his brother James Iredell, a distinguished patriot of this place, who married Miss Hannah Johnston, a sister of one of the signers of the noted document.
London, Queen Square, .
Dear Brother: I see by the newspapers the Edenton ladies have signalized themselves by their protest against tea drinking.
The name of Johnston I see among others; are any of my sister’s relations patriotic heroines?
Is there a female congress at Edenton too?
I hope not, for we Englishmen are afraid of the male congress, but if the ladies, who have ever since the Amazonian era been esteemed the most formidable enemies, if they, I say, should attack us, the most fatal consequence is to be dreaded.
So dexterous in the handling of a dart, each wound they give is mortal; whilst we, so unhappily formed by nature, the more we strive to conquer them, the more we are conquered.
The Edenton ladies, conscious, I suppose, of this superiority on their side, by a former experience, are willing, I imagine, to crush us into atoms by their omnipotency; the only security on our side, to prevent the impending ruin, that I can perceive, is the probability that there are but few places in America which possess so much female artillery as Edenton.
Pray let me know all the particulars when you favor me with a letter.…
Your most affectionate friend and brother,
Arthur Iredell.
The society of Edenton at this period was charming in its refinement and culture; it was at one time the colonial capital, and the social rival of Williamsburg, Virginia.
Its galaxy of distinguished patriots, both men and women, would shine resplendent in any country or in any age.
The tea-party then as now was one of the most fashionable modes of entertaining.
The English were essentially a tea-drinking nation, and consequently tea became the almost universal drink of the colonies.
Dr. Johnson declared that “with tea he amused the evening, with tea solaced the midnight, and with tea welcomed the morning.”
Coffee was not introduced in Europe until much later, the first cup having been drunk by Louis ⅩⅣ. of France at a cost of twenty-nine dollars per pound.
The principal variety of tea used by the colonies was the Bohea, or black tea, and came from India.
It was of the purest quality, the art of sophistication and adulteration being unknown at that day.
The feeling of ease and comfort inspired by an elegant cup of tea, as well as the exhilaration of the mental faculties which it produced, made it a necessary assistant to break the stiffness of those old-fashioned parties.
It contains an active principle, theine, which when taken in considerable quantity produces a species of intoxication.
Foreigners who visit China, where tea is served upon almost every occasion, become frequently tea-drunk.
The method of preparing tea by our ancestors was essentially that of the wealthy class in China.
The tea was brought upon the table in decorated china tea-caddies, some of which are still in existence, along with an urn of boiling water.
The tea-leaves were then placed in the cup of every guest, the cup filled with hot water, and the saucer inverted over it for a few minutes to retain the aroma.
The tea-pot was only used then by the rather bourgeoisie.
The incidents connected with this particular tea-party are especially interesting, as they come to us through the blue mist of a century.
We can easily imagine how they sat around in their low-necked, short-waisted gowns, and after they had gossiped sufficiently, “it was resolved that those who could spin ought to be employed in that way, and those who could not should reel.
When the time arrived for drinking tea, Bohea and Hyperion were provided, and every one of the ladies judiciously rejected the poisonous Bohea, and unanimously, to their very great honor, preferred the balsamic Hyperion,” which was nothing more than the dried leaves of the raspberry vine, a drink, in the writer’s opinion, more vile even than the much vaunted Yeopon.
None of the names of the fifty-one ladies present at this party have been preserved in history [I believe this fault has since been corrected], but I have succeeded in rescuing five of their names from the local traditions.
Mrs. Penelope Barker, whose picture appears here, was the president of this party.
She was no advocate of celibacy, having been married first to a Mr. Hodgson, then to a Mr. Craven, and lastly to Mr. Barker, whom she survived.
At a casual glance one might easily mistake her portrait for that of Lady Washington.
She was one of those lofty, intrepid, high-born women peculiarly fitted by nature to lead; fear formed no part of her composition.
Her face bears the expression of sternness without harshness, which a cheap novelist would describe as hauteur.
She was a brilliant conversationalist and a society leader of her day.
Mr. Thomas Barker, her husband, was a gifted Scotch lawyer, and had for his pupil at one time the distinguished governor, Samuel Johnston.
The attachment of Governor Johnston for Mr. Barker was so great that in after years he had him and his more illustrious wife interred in his private graveyard on his beautiful estate Hayes, where a mossy slab marks their last resting-place.
Mr. Barker was detained for some time in London during the Revolution, and while there his wife was called upon to show some of that pluck and courage she had evinced at the tea-party.
Being informed by a servant that some British soldiers were taking her carriage horses from her stables, she snatched her husband’s sword from the wall, went out, and with a single blow severed the reins in the officer’s hands, and drove her horses back into the stables.
The British officer declared that for such exhibition of bravery she should be allowed to keep her horses, and she was never afterward molested.
Mrs. Sarah Valentine was one of the signers, and her portrait is in the possession of her descendants, and her house is still standing on the lower end of Main street.
Mrs. Elizabeth King was another signer, and it was at her house, as before mentioned, that the party was held.
She was the wife of Thomas King, a prominent merchant of the town.
The Miss Johnston referred to in the Iredell letter was undoubtedly Miss Isabella, a sister of Governor Johnston.
She was engaged to Joseph Hewes, a signer of the Declaration of Independence from North Carolina, and died just before her marriage was consummated.
Hewes, who was a man of great wealth and refinement, soon followed her broken-hearted to the grave.
Mrs. Mary Hoskins, another signer, lived in the country near Edenton, and was the wife of Richard Hoskins, one of the signers of the St. Paul’s Declaration of Independence, antedating the national by two weeks, and of which we are justly proud.
From the Napoleonic standpoint she was the greatest of them all, having given eight sons and eight daughters to her country.
I extract the following from the first volume () of the Magazine of American History:
Revolutionary Caricature.
I send a description of a caricature that may interest collectors.
It is a mezzotint, fourteen by ten inches, entitled A Society of Patriotic Ladies, at Edenton, in North Carolina.
London.
Printed for R. Sayer & J. Bennett, No. 53 in Fleet Street, as the Act directs , Plate V. A group of fifteen figures are around or near a table in a room.
A female at the table with a gavel is evidently a man, probably meant for Lord North.
A lady, with pen in hand, is being kissed by a gentleman.
Another lady, standing, is writing on a large circular, which can be read, ‘We the Ladys of Edenton do hereby solemnly engage not to Conform to that Pernicious Custom of Drinking Tea, or that we the aforesaid Ladys will not promote ye wear of any manufacture from England, untill such time that all Acts which tend to enslave this our Native Country shall be repealed.’
The other figures are not close around the table, and are emptying tea-caddies or looking on.
A child and dog are under the table.…
Tax resistance campaigns can increase their visibility by adopting particular
uniforms, badges, ribbons, or other emblems to identify resisters and those
working in concert with the campaign. Today I will summarize some examples of
this.
Gandhi’s satyagraha in India
An important part of the Indian independence struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi
was the wearing of khādī (homespun cloth). This had three
purposes:
To encourage the development of Indian self-reliance and industry as the
economic foundation of Indian independence.
To hurt the British government by boycotting and thereby reducing the
profits from exports of British fabric to India.
To serve as an emblem to identify and express the commitment of Indian
patriots.
Gandhi wrote:
[T]he most effective and visible cooperation which all [Indian National]
Congressmen and the mute millions can show is by not interfering with the
course civil disobedience may take and by themselves spinning and using
khādī to the exclusion of all other cloth. If it is allowed
that there is a meaning in people wearing primroses on
Primrose Day, surely
there is much more in a people using a particular kind of cloth and giving a
particular type of labour to the cause they hold dear. From their compliance
with the khādī test I shall infer that they have shed
untouchability, and that they have nothing but brotherly feeling towards all
without distinction of race, colour, or creed. Those who will do this are as
much Satyagrahis as those who will be singled out for
civil disobedience.
Gandhi wearing a “Gandhi cap”
Gandhi himself put in many hours at the spinning wheel, and demanded this of
his followers as well.
“Gandhi caps” made from
khādī became almost a uniform of the resistance. One news
dispatch from around the time of the Dharasana salt raid noted:
The correspondent said the growth of the Gandhi movement was shown by the
increased number of persons wearing the Gandhi caps. In the cities, he said,
a majority of the people wear them; they also are beginning to be worn in
villages in Punjab while even in aristocratic Simla one person in six of the
population in the bazaars have donned caps, which is the symbol of the
nationalist campaign.
Homespun cloth in the American revolution
But Gandhi’s campaign wasn’t the first blow against the British Empire that
was struck in part by homespun cloth and conspicuous consumption of
locally-manufactured goods. This was also an important part of the American
Revolution.
Here is an example reported in a
edition of the Massachusetts Gazette:
On Wednesday evening the honorable speaker and gentlemen of the House of
Burgesses gave a ball at the capitol… and it is with the greatest pleasure we
inform our readers… [of] the patriotic spirit… [that] was most agreeably
manifested in the dress of the ladies on that occasion, who, to the number of
near one hundred, appeared in homespun gowns; a lively and striking instance
of their acquiescence and concurrence in whatever may be the true and
essential interest of their country.
“Spinning bees” at which patriotic Americans worked together to card, spin,
weave, and sew, so as to avoid having to import clothing from England, were
ways that everybody could demonstrate their revolutionary spirit and
participate in the resistance. Resisters also made a point of eschewing
imported tea in favor of locally-produced substitutes (such as dried raspberry
leaves).
One patriotic poem of the time advised “young ladies”:
Wear none but your own country linen;
Of economy boast, let your pride be the most
To show clothes of your own make and spinning.
What if homespun they say is not quite so gay
As brocades, yet be not in a passion,
For when once it is known this is much worn in town,
One and all will cry out— ’Tis the fashion!
And, as one, all agree, that you’ll not married be
To such as will wear London factory,
But at first sight refuse, tell ’em such you will choose
As encourage our own manufactory.
No more ribbons wear, nor in rich silks appear;
Love your country much better than fine things;
Begin without passion, ’twill soon be the fashion
To grace your smooth locks with a twine string.
Massachusetts patriots vowed in :
…that we will not, at funerals, use any gloves except those made here, or
purchase any article of mourning on such occasion, but what shall be
absolutely necessary; and we consent to abandon the use, so far as may be,
not only of all the articles mentioned in the Boston resolves, but of all
foreign teas, which are clearly superfluous, our own fields abounding in
herbs more healthful, and which we doubt not, may, by use, be found agreeable…
Rebecca Riots
The Rebecca Riots in Wales in
were notorious for the distinctive garb donned by the
resistance groups who would gather to tear down tollgates.
The leader of the party was usually a man dressed up in women’s clothing and
a large bonnet, sometimes wearing a long horse-hair wig or carrying a parasol,
who was given the name “Rebecca.” Rebecca’s followers also were men wearing
women’s clothes, or at least white blouses over their clothes, and sometimes
bonnets or other high-crowned hats, occasionally with fern fronds, feathers,
or other decorations on them. They would paint their faces black or yellow,
and sometimes drape their horses in white sheets.
In this case, the reasoning behind the costuming was not so much to express
public pride than for other purposes. For instance:
To disguise the participants so that the government would be less able to
take reprisals against them.
To resonate with ancient folk forms of grassroots vigilantism and protest
that had a similar character (cross-dressing, face painting, a carnival
atmosphere).
To intimidate toll gate keepers with their strangeness and reputation.
To create a figurehead for the movement that could be adopted and then
set aside by multiple people, so as to make the movement’s leadership
harder to target for reprisals.
To make the resistance more festive and carnivalesque and thereby
encourage participation.
To make it easier to identify fellow-resisters in the confusion of
late-night raids on dark country roads.
Badges awarded by the Women’s Tax Resistance League
The badge representing Holloway Prison that was awarded to women’s suffrage
activists who had been imprisoned.
Women’s suffrage activists in the United Kingdom awarded badges to resisters
who had been imprisoned for their resistance. Here is a description of one
such badge given to Kate Harvey:
The badge is cast in the form of a shield on which is depicted the entrance
to Holloway Prison. On the reverse is a card inscribed in a faint hand:
“Given to Mrs K Harvey By Women’s Suffrage After She Had Been In Prison For
Tax Resistance.”
These badges were the equivalent of medals for meritorious service. An
American woman who visited her counterparts across the waters observed:
It was a queer sensation in those days to look upon sweet and ladylike young
women… and to know that they had actually been prisoners. It was not long
before they were looked upon as something sacred, as those who had made
special sacrifices for the cause, and they wore badges to show that they had
been prisoners and in every place were given the post of honor until their
numbers mounted up to the hundreds.
Relics of the Glastonbury cows
Abby & Julia Smith refused to pay taxes to a local government that denied
women the vote and that took advantage of this by excessively taxing women’s
property in order to ease the tax burden on male voters and to redistribute
the money to male patronage recipients. In response, the government
periodically seized and auctioned off the Smith sisters’ cows (“Votey” and
“Taxey”).
Emblems made from hairs of the cows’ tails, woven into the shape of flowers,
and tied with ribbons emblazoned with the slogan “Taxation Without
Representation,” became popular adornments for supporters of the Smiths’ tax
resistance.
“I refuse to fund this war” stickers
In , an American anti-war group held a
“Stop Funding the War in Iraq” rally near the offices of a Congressional
leader.
A war tax resistance group was there to hand out stickers for people to wear
that read “I refuse to fund this war!” I was there and noted:
I figured a few people would take them and wear them without thinking much
about it, a few people would refuse to take them without thinking much about
it, and the remainder would have to think about whether they should start
refusing if they hadn’t already.
As it turned out, just about everyone we offered the stickers to was eager to
wear one, though it’s hard to tell which of these will put their money where
their mouths are. Hopefully a few, anyway, had that light bulb go on, and
then looked around and wondered “have all these other people wearing these
stickers started resisting their taxes?”
French cockades and militia uniforms in the Fries Rebellion
The Fries Rebellion in the United States took place about a decade after the
enacting of the United States Constitution, and shortly after the successful
French Revolution.
The United States government was under the presidency of John Adams, who
represented the more authoritarian, aristocratic, pro-English faction; the
faction out of power was more populist, democratic, and pro-French.
Tax resisters who participated in the Fries Rebellion sometimes signaled
their loyalty (and frightened the Adams government) by wearing French
tricolor cockades in their hats to demonstrate their affinity with the
democratic revolutionaries across the pond, and/or by wearing their old
American revolutionary militia uniforms to show their belief that their
current rebellion was more in harmony with the spirit of the American
Revolution than were the policies of the federal government.
Masks at the Carnival of Viareggio
The Carnival of Viareggio is today a parade and bacchanal, but it began with
a tax protest in which “a number of local citizens, as a sign of protest…
decided to put on masks in order to show their refusal of high taxes they were
forced to pay.”
Australian miners wear a red ribbon
Australian miners, who in were resisting
a license tax, held a “monster meeting” at which they passed a number of
resolutions, including these:
[A]s it is necessary that the diggers should know their friends, every miner
agrees to wear as a pledge of good faith, and in support of the cause, a
piece of red ribbon on his hat, not to be removed until the license tax is
abolished.
That this meeting… desire to publicly express their esteem for the memory of
the brave men who have fallen in battle [during “the late out-break”], and
that to shew their respect every digger and their friends do wear tomorrow
(Sunday) a band of black crape on his hat…
Taking pride in resistance
Many of these are examples of resisters showing pride in their
resistance. This can be a way of short-circuiting a traditional government
gambit used against tax evaders: to publish their names as a way of calling
them out as bankrupts or deadbeats. If the government tries to shame tax
resisters as irresponsible tax evaders, but the resisters have already
willingly made their resistance public, this government tactic loses its
force.
When local council governments in the United Kingdom tried to use this tactic
against Poll Tax resisters in the Thatcher years, the newspapers who published
the lists of “shame” found themselves on the receiving end of letters to the
editor from resisters who were outraged that they had not made the
list — insisting that their names be included too!
Here are some similar examples of people taking pride in their resistance or
in things incident to resistance:
When the Women’s Freedom League (a British suffrage group which refused to
pay taxes on the salaries of its employees), was threatened with a legal
writ by the government, it decided to auction the writ as a
fundraiser.
Greek tax resisters in Penteli (near Athens), who have been refusing to
pay the new taxes attached to their utility bills during the recent “won’t
pay” movement, hung their urgent “past due” notices from a Christmas tree
in the town square as ornaments.
When somebody asked Quaker Nathaniel Morgan whether he and his father had
“got anything” in the course of their war tax resistance (by which he
meant, did his Quaker meeting reimburse them for their losses when their
goods were distrained and sold), Morgan replied: “Yes, peace of mind,
which was worth all.”
Often in tax resistance campaigns, not everybody is able to be a tax resister, for instance because not everybody is responsible for the tax being resisted, or because the point of the resistance is that some of the people being taxed ought not to be (and so only that class of people is resisting).
In such cases it can be useful to inspire those who cannot themselves resist the tax to show solidarity for the movement in other ways, and it can also help to provide or suggest roles that non-resisting sympathizers can play in the campaign.
Today I’ll mention some examples.
The Rebecca Rioters knew how to make their tollgate destruction popular among people who couldn’t (or even wouldn’t) participate directly.
For example:
One night, Rebeccaites destroyed the Rhos Gate, the Rhydyfuwch Gate, and the gate on the Llangoedmore road near Cardigan.
“ was market day in Cardigan, and every one who drove in was exempted from paying the usual toll, except those who came over the coach-road.
The people, looking at things from that point of view, were filled with Rebeccaite enthusiasm.
On that day nothing was heard at public-houses but proposals of good health and long life to Rebecca.”
On another occasion, they pointedly left intact the gates on “the Queen’s high road” but destroyed those on roads that the various parishes were required to maintain.
“This rendered Rebecca not unpopular amongst some farmers and others, many of whom paid the fine, rather than be sworn in as special constables.”
The Rebeccaites also sometimes resorted to threats to induce reluctant people to participate.
In one example:
All male inhabitants being householders of the hundred, were to meet , at the “Plough and Harrow,” Newchurch parish, to march in procession to Carmarthen — to defy the Mayor and magistrates, and to destroy the gate on their return.
Rich and poor were to be compelled to attend, and in case of illness a substitute must be found.
All owners of horses were to ride.
All persons absent without a sufficient excuse or substitute were to have their houses and barns destroyed by fire.
and in another:
[I]n order to ensure a full attendance of her followers, the church doors in the neighbourhood of Elvet were covered with notices in the dead of night, signed by “’Becca,” commanding all males above the age of sixteen and under seventy to appear at the “Plough and Harrow” on under pain of having their houses burnt and their lives sacrificed.
The time and place of meeting were also published by word of mouth at most of the Dissenting meeting-houses throughout the hundred, and wherever a disinclination was known to exist on the part of any person to join in the procession and to take part in the intended proceedings, he was privately admonished if he wished to protect his property from the firebrand of the midnight incendiary, and to excuse himself from personal injury, that he had better join the procession — “or else.”
This species of intimidation had the effect of drawing together immense numbers to the place of rendezvous.
despite the threats:
[Their cheers] were lustily responded to by groups of spectators who had by this time completely filled Guildhall Square, so that the Rebeccaites could hardly pass through.
At one point they explicitly threatened an attorney to make him join them on one of their destructive sprees, “so that if any proceedings were subsequently taken, he as local solicitor might be made a party to them.”
They sometimes also forced the toll house operators to take part in the destruction of their own toll houses.
When Palestinian Jews practiced tax resistance against the British occupation government in the at least one Jew back in London stopped paying his income tax as well.
In , in support of Palestinian doctors who were refusing to pay an Israeli income tax, shopkeepers in Gaza City launched multiple two-day strikes.
Some men who were sympathetic to the tax resistance of the Women’s Tax Resistance League found that they could participate in the campaign by exploiting a legal technicality that made them responsible for paying their wives’ income taxes.
If their wives refused to pay, and they were unable to pay and had no property to seize, they might be imprisoned for tax refusal — and some were.
American revolutionaries who were using boycotts and other means to try to cut off the support of taxed and British-monopoly products found allies back in the home country in the form of manufacturers and exporters who begged Parliament to rescind the taxes so as to bring the boycotts to an end.
War tax resister Vickie Aldrich recently got some pro bono legal assistance from law students in her battle with the IRS.
When residents of Beit Sahour launched a tax strike against the Israeli occupation, Israel put the town under seige.
Christian groups around the world attempted to bring humanitarian aid to the city, or even to visit (including the heads of the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox churches), but were turned away by the Israeli military.
The success of the anti-Poll Tax movement in Thatcher’s Britain relied on mass popular support.
The Anti-Poll Tax Unions “had to make people feel wanted and included and give everyone a sense that they had a role,” said movement chronicler Danny Burns.
“In order to sustain a long and protracted struggle, it was necessary for as many people as possible to feel responsible for some aspect of the movement, however small.
In the fight against the bailiffs and sheriff officers, the kids hanging around the streets passed on the word as soon as they saw a suspicious-looking character.
Parents and pensioners who were not out at work organised telephone trees and were ready to be at each others’ houses at short notice.”
As internet telephony started to become a real option several years ago, some American war tax resisters realized they could avoid the federal excise tax on telephone service by getting rid of their phone lines and switching over to such internet-based plans.
In , as the U.S. was launching its attack on Iraq, anti-war activists from other countries began to promote a boycott of the products of U.S. government contractors, and even of U.S. companies in general.
“The U.S. economy is strung out across the globe,” wrote Arundhati Roy.
“Its economic outposts are exposed and vulnerable.
Our strategy must be to isolate Empire’s working parts and disable them one by one.
No target is too small.
No victory too insignificant.”
When the Continental Congress imposed a tax on postage stamps to help pay for the revolutionary war effort, Quaker James Mott decided to stop using the mail.
He wrote to a friend:
Must our correspondence by mail be at end, in consequence of the extra postage?
or shall we pay it, and thereby contribute a mite to the support of measures calculated to destroy men’s lives and property?
Perhaps I may be alone in refusing to pay postage on letters.
Only a few cents — what can this do, it may be said, towards enabling government to prosecute the war?
Very little, I own: but the great sum required is made up of littles; and if all those littles are withheld, the effusion of human blood may be at an end. …
I cannot… believe it best for me to pay the present demand of additional postage, little as it is, and alone as I may stand.
Many years later, Congress issued revenue stamps that had to be purchased and applied to certain types of documents.
One Quaker wrote in :
I am one of those (I suppose there are others), who have felt an extreme unwillingness to help maintain our wars by the use of the revenue stamps, which were legalized expressly for war uses.
Our forefathers would have made an emphatic protest against it, if indeed they would not have refused entirely to use the stamps, and borne the consequences, whatever they might have been.
… at least we could restrict the use of checks (for example) wherever possible, and diminish in this way our contributions to the war fund.
Other Quakers began refusing to use or to deal in imported goods, so as to avoid paying import duties that were being directed to military expenses.
Joshua Evans wrote:
About , I understood a law was made for raising money to defray the expenses of war, by means of a duty laid on imported articles of almost every kind. …
I had felt myself restrained, for thirty or forty years, from paying such taxes; the proceeds whereof were applied, in great measure, to defray expenses relating to war: and, as herein before-mentioned, my refusal was from a tender conscientious care to keep clear in my testimony against all warlike proceedings.
Quaker shopkeeper Isaac Martin decided to stop dealing in imported goods rather than pay an import duty:
[A] weighty concern attended my mind on account of a tax on shop keepers, who dealt in foreign articles, to be appropriated towards carrying on the war against England.
I felt much scrupulous in my mind, respecting the consistency thereof with our peaceable principles. …
I believed my peace of mind would be affected, if I paid the said tax.
So I resigned myself to the Lord’s will, let the event be as it may.
But scarcely a day passed, that I had not to turn customers away, who applied for articles which I had on hand, but could not sell, on account of the heavy penalty.
Quaker meetings also had a policy of warning their members against “sharing or partaking in the spoils of war by purchasing or selling prize-goods” — that is, goods seized from the ships of enemy nations by government-sanctioned pirates.
Government bonds are an obvious boycott target for people trying to restrict the resources available to the government.
John Payne wrote a tract in entreating Quakers to divest from government bonds that went to pay for wars:
[T]he King [once] had the power of summoning the barons to the field, and the barons their retainers: by these means armies were raised, fields fought, and blood-stained laurels acquired.
But now immense sums are wanted; and without them War would be an impossibility.
The magnitude of the money necessary, infinitely exceeds any resource which the kingdom can immediately supply: therefore the ingenuity of ministers has recourse to the aid of Funding; that is, of establishing a fictitious capital, which shall bear a certain rate of interest; and any person, purchasing of Government a portion of this fictitious capital, is put into the receipt of interest according to the sum he purchases, and the country is burthened with taxes to support the payment of such interest.
No man hazards his veracity by saying that War cannot be now supported without the Funding System.
As no man then can deny this solemn truth, is it not astonishing to find Quakers holders of stock, not only in their individual, but in their collective capacity?
What then is the conclusion?
The Quakers, at the time they declare their fundamental principles prohibit War, are actively and voluntarily supplying the only prop by which the modern system of War is supported.
Payne himself went even further.
Eager to avoid as much as possible paying money to the British government that was fighting the American revolutionary war, he bricked up a third of the windows of his home to reduce his property tax (which was assessed based on the number of windows), he disabled his coach to avoid its license fee, and he rode miles out of his way to avoid road tolls.
Upset at the government siphoning off a portion of pew rents in establishment churches “to relieve the embarrassments in the city finances, occasioned by an extravagant self-elected magistracy,” some people in Edinburgh around the time of the Annuity Tax resistance there proposed also refusing to rent pews until government spending were to become more responsible.
The “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” movement aims to boycott businesses that profit from Israeli settlement expansion in occupied Palestine.
The “Potato Movement” in Greece is trying to circumvent the over-taxed middle-men of the above-ground commercial market by directly connecting producers and buyers in a way that is mutually-beneficial to them and less profitable to the state.
The British government’s enforced monopoly on tea imports into the American colonies was “equal to a tax” in the eyes of Samuel Adams and his fellow patriots.
Boycotts of monopoly tea were widespread, and were famously backed up by acts like the Boston Tea Party, in which monopoly tea was destroyed in bulk.
Other monopoly British imports that suffered from American boycott included house paint, cloth, glass, paper, and dye.
One patriotic song included the lyric:
The use of the taxables, let us forbear:—
(Then merchants import till your stores are all full,
May the buyers be few, and your traffic be dull!)
Boycotts of British-monopoly goods like salt were also, of course, big parts of the Indian independence campaign led by Gandhi.
During the tax resistance and protests that accompanied the campaign for the Reform Act of , “associations were proposed of persons who would undertake to use no excisable articles.”
In Russia around the time of the Vyborg Manifesto, a report noted that “the peasants are deciding to boycott all state-owned businesses.”
For example: “they have undertaken a concerted abstention from vodka, the manufacture and sale of which intoxicant was made a Government monopoly… [which] has since constituted one of the principal sources of the public revenue.”
Another report said that “[t]he leaders of the workingmen’s organization have taken the lead in placing fresh obstacles in the way of the government raising money at home by advising their followers to refuse to use spirits upon which the government collects an enormous tax.”
In the Vietnam era, “[o]ne pacifist, imprisoned for draft refusal and therefore lacking income to refuse taxes on, gave up smoking because the cigarette tax brings the [U.S.] government more revenue than any other single consumer-commodity tax.”
Another possibility is to obstruct the sale of such goods:
In Wales, truckers blockaded a Chevron refinery and called upon the tanker operators to join them in shutting it down, to protest the government’s tax on fuel.
Farmers in Argentina decided in to “halt sales of grains and livestock for a week, setting up roadblocks and hampering exports to press for lower taxes.”
In Greece, recently, resisters to taxes that were added to utility bills have barricaded the offices of utility companies.
A tax resistance campaign can increase participation by means of a social boycott practiced against non-resisting by-standers.
Here are some examples of social boycotts of this sort:
Vallabhbhai Patel, commander of the Bardoli tax strike
Social boycott was an important tool of the Bardoli tax refusal campaign during the independence struggle in India.
Mahadev Desai, in The Story of Bardoli, writes:
It is this weapon that exasperated the Government, but they were helpless because social boycott was no offence under the Penal Code.
And the Sardar [Vallabhbhai Patel, who commanded the campaign] poured ridicule on Government for grudging the people the use of this their only weapon.
“What do you do yourselves?
Yours is a close corporation maintained by force of arms and its motive is no nobler than keeping a nation in bondage.
We resort to this weapon simply for the sake of self-defence and self-preservation.”
But he never omitted to emphasize its limitations, the very first being that in no circumstances should a Satyagrahi refuse to minister to the physical needs of the party boycotted.
“Eschew by all means molestation or oppression.
We may not refuse anyone milk, water, foodstuffs, help in case of illness or worse.
We cannot afford to prosecute boycott at the expense of our humanity.”
Among the ways they could boycott landowners who capitulated to the government and paid their property taxes was to refuse to rent their fields or to work as agricultural laborers for them.
During the American revolution, boycotts of British imports were enforced by social boycott.
One resolution of boycotters read in part:
[W]e 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.
another said:
That whoever shall directly or indirectly countenance this attempt, or in any wise aid or abet in unloading receiving or vending the Tea sent or to be sent out by the East India Company while it remains subject to the payment of a duty here is an Enemy to America — … That a Committee be immediately chosen to wait on those Gentlemen, who it is reported are appointed by the East India Company to receive and sell said Tea, and to request them from a regard to their own characters and the peace and good order of this Town and Province immediately to resign their appointment.
An Ipswich town meeting resolved:
[W]e will not by ourselves or any for or under us directly or indirectly purchase any goods of the persons who have imported or continue to import, or any person or trader who shall purchase any goods of said importer contrary to the agreement of the merchants in Boston and the other trading towns in this government & the neighboring colonies until they make a public retraction or a general importation takes place.
Sicily’s branch of the “Confindustria” industrialists’ union unanimously voted in to expel any member who was caught paying protection money to the mafia, and a few dozen members in fact were expelled from the group under this policy.
Many Quaker “meetings” (congregations) had a policy of “disowning” members who failed to practice war tax resistance.
Sometimes, even failing to report that the government had subjected you to “sufferings” for your resistance could make you suspect, and Quakers would be appointed to visit you and ask how you had managed to avoid government reprisals while maintaining your refusal to pay.
Disowning was something akin to excommunication, and had the effect of removing the benefits of meeting membership from the disobedient Quakers until such time as they repented and made satisfactory amends — which might include reading an acknowledgment of the wrong of their behavior at a future meeting.
Occasionally, as during the American Revolution, disownings like this would lead to schisms and the emergence of rival meetings.
During the Tithe War in Ireland, it was reported that
Immense meetings are held, which form themselves into tribunals, before which persons accused of the crime of tithe-paying are summoned to appear, and give an account of their conduct; and defaulters undergo the punishment of being abandoned at once by every person in their employment.
Country gentlemen and farmers are left without a servant or labourer to perform the most necessary work.
The hay is left to rot on the ground, and the cattle to perish for want of the necessary food, drink, and care; and even on the roads it is common for the horses of the mails and stage-coaches to be changed by the coachmen and passengers, because the unhappy recusant innkeeper has been deserted by every one, even to his hostler.
Such is the terror of this new species of judicial authority, that numbers of highly respectable persons have found it necessary, in order to avert ruinous consequences, to appear before these self-constituted courts, acknowledge their jurisdiction, and promise to give obedience to their decrees!
Another report complained: “The man who in any way upholds the obnoxious system, whatever his previous character or services may have been, is branded as an object of universal execration.”
When resisters at the “New Rush” in South Africa in pledged to refuse to pay further taxes, they also pledged, “that I shall buy from, sell to, or deal with only such men as have also taken this pledge or obligation.”
Women in Pennsylvania who found themselves suddenly taxable in the wake of women’s suffrage were subject to strong social pressure to join in a largely unorganized but widespread tax boycott.
According to one report:
[A] woman, who is reported to have failed to pay her tax, asserted she was laughed at by her friends when she paid her tax in former years, and she would not be laughed at any longer.
Social boycott can also be a potent tactic to use against tax collectors or collaborators with the tax collection process.
Here are some examples:
Adolf Hausrath writes about how social boycott was used to discourage tax collectors in 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-gatherersand 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.
The current Greek “won’t pay” movement included a joint statement from several outraged groups that called for a social boycott of legislators who went along with the tax-and-austerity plans: “do not talk to them, do not listen, do not socialize, do not invite, do not serve them, do not put gasoline in their cars…”
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.
Sam Adams led those opposed to the tea tax to declare “That whoever shall directly or indirectly countenance this attempt [to send and collect duties on East India Company tea to America], or in any wise aid or abet in unloading, receiving, or vending the tea sent or to be sent out by the East India Company while it remains subject to the payment of a duty here is an enemy to America.” and to decide “that a committee be immediately chosen to wait on those gentlemen, who it is reported are appointed by the East India Company to receive and sell said tea, and to request them from a regard to their own characters and the peace and good order of this town and province immediately to resign their appointment.”
During the Whiskey Rebellion, the rebels passed a social boycott resolution that said 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.
Islanders living off the coast of Galway County in Ireland refused to appoint tax collectors from among their number, and “where collectors are available on the mainland owners of boats have refused to facilitate their passage to the islands,” according to a newspaper account.
“On a few occasions the Civic Guards have persuaded the owners to lend their service and their boats, or their boats alone, for the guards to cross.
In such cases the guards have met with anything but a cordial reception.”
During the Dublin water charge strike:
Through contacts in the trade union movement we were able to discover the names of all the water inspectors and imagine their surprise the night before disconnections were due to begin when each of them received a hand-delivered letter appealing to them as trade union members not to cut people’s water off.
They decided not to respond positively to our polite request so the next morning when they left home under the cover of darkness, they each discovered a car-load of activists sitting outside their homes ready to follow them wherever they might go to try to do their dirty work.
One of them didn’t like it so much that after driving around and being followed for an hour he went to the local copshop to complain about being intimidated.
During the Bardoli satyagraha, tax collectors and collaborators were vigorously shunned.
Here are some excerpts from Mahadev Desai’s The Story of Bardoli:
There were meetings in talukas contiguous to Bardoli… calling upon people in their respective parts not to cooperate with the authorities engaged in putting down the Satyagraha… by helping in the attachment of property by engaging as labourers or sending carts on hire…
…the police proceeded to hire a taxi.
The driver, whose car had been engaged by the Satyagrahis, refused to break his engagement and place his bus at the disposal of the Collector.
His licence was demanded, it was not with him, but he showed his brass badge, which he was asked to surrender.
Another taxidriver whose car had been engaged by [campaign commander] Sjt. Vallabhbhai was deprived of his licence too.
Kadod… was trying to go one better than other villages by resolving to cut off supplies of provision, etc. to the attachment officer posted in the village.
Sjt. Vallabhbhai in a long and moving speech expounded the principles of Satyagraha, and told them that their resolution was not in keeping with principles and must be canceled: “In a struggle based essentially on truth and nonviolence we must not do anything in resentment or anger.
It is a sign of weakness.
…do not refuse them the ordinary amenities of life.
They must get whatever they want at market rates.”
It would appear, that three carts were commandeered. for removing the kit and luggage belonging to the Deputy Collector from the Bardoli thana [district] to Valod.
The man to whom the carts belonged came to realise his mistake and went to the thana in company with Sjt. Ravishankar to call back his men.
One of the cartmen, as soon as he saw his master, said, they were not at all willing to go but they were helpless.
Sjt. Ravishankar pleaded with the Mamlatdar that if the men were not willing they should not be forced.
He was ordered to leave the thana which he did; and the cartman leaving the cart followed him.
The other cartmen also ultimately left leaving the carts in the thana compound.
Moderate reformist K.M. Munshi wrote to the government after visiting Bardoli:
Your japti officer has to travel miles before he can get a shave.
Your officer’s car which got stuck would have remained in the mud but for Mr. Vallabhbhai, officially styled “agitator living on Bardoli.”
Garda to whom lands worth thousands have been sold for a nominal amount does not get even a scavenger for his house.
The Collector gets no conveyance on the railway station unless one is given by Mr. Vallabhbhai’s sanction.
The threat of social boycott also played out at other points in the Indian independence struggle, with one account noting for instance that “the native police, fearing social boycott if they pressed their own kinsmen too hard, in some cases sat idly by and watched proceedings,” during the Dharasana salt raid.
When the salt march reached the sea near Danmi, where Gandhi planned to harvest sea salt in violation of the taxed monopoly:
The police and labourers [who had been hired by the government to try to destroy all the natural salt deposits in the area] are boycotted by the villagers in the neighbourhood and have to journey to a village ten miles away to procure food.
During the Edinburgh Annuity Tax resistance, social boycott was practiced against tax enforcers:
Of late months, no auctioneer would venture to the Cross to roup for stipend.
What human being has nerve enough to bear up against the scorn, hatred, and execration of his fellow-creatures, expressed in a cause he himself must feel just?
The cabman who brought the officers, seeing they were engaged in such a disagreeable duty, took his cab away, and they had some difficulty in procuring another…
During the government investigation of the Annuity Tax resistance campaign the following exchange took place:
Q: What was Mr. Whitten’s express reason for declining to act as auctioneer?
A: He was very much inconvenienced on that occasion, and he believed that his general business connection would suffer by undertaking these sales, and that he would lose the support of any customer who was of that party.
During the Fries Rebellion, social pressure made it difficult for the government to recruit collaborators:
[I]n every tavern [Jacob Eyerley] stopped at, the law was the subject of general conversation and denunciation, and great pains were taken to find the friends of government, in order to persuade them not to accept the office of assessor.
In consequence of this feeling there was great difficulty in finding suitable persons for these appointments.
When Thatcher’s poll tax was being introduced, the government tried to recruit convenience stores and newsstands to be tax collection points.
When the resistance got wind of this, they contacted the stores, letting them know they would be boycotted if they allowed themselves to be used in this way.
Several then refused to participate.
A threat of social boycott was used to deter potential buyers of property seized from Steuben County resisters of taxes meant to pay back purchasers of crooked railroad bonds:
The scene was upon the farm of William Atkins, where 200 of the solid yeomanry of the town had assembled to resist the sale… A Mr. Updyke, with broader hint, made these remarks: “I want to tell you folks that Mr. Atkins has paid all of his tax except this railroad tax; and we consider any man who will buy our property to help John Davis and Sam Alley as contemptible sharks.
We shall remember him for years, and will know where he lives.”
The tax collector finally rose and remarked that in view of the situation he would not attempt to proceed with the sale.
During a tax resistance campaign in the German countryside between the world wars:
The carters refused, even with police protection, to carry off the distrained cattle, for they knew that if they did they would never again be able to do business with the peasants.
One day three peasants even appeared in the slaughter yards at Hamburg and announced that unless the distrained cattle disappeared at once from the yard’s stalls the gentlemen in charge of the slaughterhouse could find somewhere else to buy their beasts in the future — they wouldn’t be getting any more from Schleswig-Holstein.
I mentioned boycotts of government-produced or -taxed goods and services as a variety of tax resistance or a tactic that has accompanied tax resistance campaigns.
Today I’m going to cover a related tactic: the manufacture and sale of untaxed alternatives to taxed goods.
This tactic was put to good use in the American Revolution.
Boycotts of British products like tea, paint, cloth, were supplemented by expansion of local industry to make alternative products:
Members of Boston’s Whig Party demonstrated their patriotism by nursing tea leaves and mulberry trees in their gardens.
New England farmers were exhorted to convert their oak plains into sheep pastures and produce enough wool to clothe every American.
Colonists were urged to abstain from eating lamb or mutton in order to encourage American woolen manufactures.
In less than a year the boycott had so disrupted Transatlantic trade that thousands of British workers lost their jobs.
Gatherings at which dozens of people would card and spin yarn, weave fabric, or sew clothing, were simultaneously acts of resistance and patriotic rallies.
Towns competed with each other over how many yards of cloth they could produce, with results breathlessly reported in the newspapers.
At society balls, a woman who turned up in anything but a homespun cloth dress would be shunned.
…at the first commencement exercises of Rhode Island College (later Brown University), the president proud-spiritedly wore wholly homespun clothing.
At Harvard, the faculty and students had all taken to homespun in support of their women spinners, of whom the Boston Chronicle had bragged “[T]hey exhibited a fine example of industry, by spinning from sunrise until dark, and displayed a spirit for saving their sinking country, rarely to be found among persons of more age and experience.”
American tea drinkers switched to “balsamic hyperion” — dried raspberry leaves — which could be produced domestically.
Homespun cloth, or khādī, was a signature part of the Indian independence movement (which also, famously, promoted the domestic production of salt to break Britain’s taxed monopoly).
Gandhi insisted that everyone in the resistance movement should participate in producing, and of course should exclusively wear, domestic cloth.
I’ve tried to promote home-brewing beer and cider as a way of avoiding the federal excise tax on those products.
Home distilling is another option, though it’s not legal in the United States.
When Britain increased the excise tax on distilled spirits in Ireland in , “the only effect was to increase illicit distillation.
The decrease in the duty was £7,361 4s. The number of persons in confinement for breach of the revenue laws had increased from 84 to 368.” A few people have started growing their own tobacco as a way of combating the increasingly prohibitive tobacco excise taxes.
Audrey Silk grew and cured enough tobacco at her Brooklyn home in to roll nine cartons worth of cigarettes, which would have cost more than $1,000 at taxed rates at the time.
The “Addiopizzo” movement in Italy founded a supermarket, the shelves of which were stocked exclusively with goods from producers who had vowed not to pay any more protection money to the mafia.
They also maintain a buycott list of such companies to help consumers make pizzo-free shopping choices.
When Greece tacked new taxes onto electric bills as a way of combating tax evasion, the sales of gas-powered electric generators shot up.
As early attempts to get methodical about nonviolent resistance theory and practice, these are interesting works.
I’ll note some of what he had to say about tax resistance as a nonviolent resistance tactic here today:
Tax resistance against the Education Act of
This was the organized opposition to the English Education Act of , which extended the private school system of the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches at the expense of the general taxpayer.
The interest of the matter for the purposes of the present discussion lies in the fact that it was explicitly an example of passive resistance, inasmuch as the agitators called themselves “passive resisters” and published, for a decade or more, a periodical called “Passive Resistance,” from whose pages this account is drawn.
Their method was to refuse to pay the school tax, which they held to be grossly unjust to dissenters, but to submit obediently to the penalty prescribed by the law for delinquency.
This punishment came with great regularity in the form of fines, which the passive resisters steadfastly and consistently refused to pay; whereupon their goods were distrained, or, in default of goods, the recalcitrant was cast into prison.
The magnitude of the movement is shown by the fact that within two and one half years of its inauguration the league had on file reports of seventy thousand summonses and 254 commitments to prison.
The character and social standing of the members of the movement are facts of significant interest.
According to the secretary of the organization,1 “The men and women whose goods have been sold belong to all classes and ranks.
They are clergymen and ministers, journalists and teachers, manufacturers and magistrates, members of Parliament and candidates for Parliament, farmers and gardeners, aged women and young men.”2
The movement was losing momentum in , in response, as was supposed, to a feeling on the part of some that the Liberal victory of , for which the Passive Resisters seem to have been more or less responsible, insured the repeal of the obnoxious law.
But the decline was doubtless due also to the proverbially early exhaustion which overtakes all sudden expressions of popular indignation.
The secretary admitted in that the Passive Resisters were “fewer in number compared with the hosts which at first resisted the fraudulent legislation of .”3
“Passive Resistance,” ; p. 7.
Ibid.
Ibid.; p. 4.
Tax resistance in the American Revolution
The merchants, true to the intuition of their class, were by no means revolutionary or even reckless as regards the foundations of law and order, although in this case they permitted their zeal for prosperity to encourage social forces which, in turn, eventually raised a tempest that they could not quell.
Their intention, both real and apparent, was the organization of a boycott against British trade, particularly in commodities subjected to taxation or other restrictions under the recently enacted revenue laws.
This boycott was planned with clear comprehension of the interplay of interests that obtains in human affairs, and particularly the dependence of political policies upon personal and business influences.
Consequently the colonial merchants did not aim a general broadside at the whole British Empire, but planned to reach particular interests with a well-directed blow.
More specifically, they hoped, by means of their boycott measures, to give the British mercantile and manufacturing people a motive, in the person of their own imperiled interests, for seeking the ear of Parliament with a demand for the repeal of the objectionable legislation.
The straight, or primary, boycott was the method used to impress the minds of the British trading class, which was, of course, the British government for practical purposes.
The secondary boycott, as now known, was in turn brought to bear upon Americans who failed to observe the original agreement and resorted to dealing within the limits prescribed, either as to persons or goods.
For instance, in the earlier struggle, waged against the stamp tax, communities that paid the same were made to feel the disapproval of their neighbors, as in Charleston, South Carolina, where a radical fire company agreed that ”no provision should be shipped “to that infamous Colony Georgia in particular nor any other that make use of Stamp Paper.’ ”1
During the later boycott, directed against the Townshend taxes, Rhode Island yielded to that temptation which constitutes the greatest peril for any concerted movement of this kind, namely the impulse to reap a rich harvest by seizing the opportunities deliberately left to go begging through the self-denial of one’s competitors.
This incident also discloses another weakness inherent in such organized “voluntary” efforts, which is that they are really seldom, if ever, completely voluntary.
Enthusiasts for every cause, however worthy, almost invariably make use of coercion by means of the hundred and one devices known to social pressure, and thereby incorporate the seeds of their own disintegration.
Thus a contemporary Rhode Islander wrote that they “were dragged in the first place like an ox to the slaughter, into the non-importation agreement,” and that adherence to the same “would have been acting out of character and in contradiction to the opinion of the country.”2
The resistance of the colonists was destined, however, to run the entire gamut of forms known to social opposition and constraint.
Evasion of law had long been an established business in the form of smuggling; the peaceable boycott, both primary and secondary, was now well under way; but political action, litigation, social ostracism, mob violence, and armed revolution were either already coming into play or waiting to enter the stage as the historic drama proceeded.
And this list makes no mention of those subtle methods of persuasion and “influence” which operate between friends and relatives, business and scientific associates, boon companions, and numberless other channels of daily intercourse, not to mention the more overt persuasion of pulpit, press, and platform.
And one of the most significant aspects of it all is the tendency of any one of these situations to transform itself into one or more of the other members of the series, so that one method can hardly be used without sooner or later invoking the others.
This truth is clearly exemplified in the events now before us.
For example, in the secondary boycott directed by Charleston against Georgia, as quoted above, the resolution threatened death for future offenders, with destruction of their vessels.
In Boston, especially during the earlier contest over the Stamp Tax, the disturbances were most serious.
The rioters were led by one Mackintosh, a shoemaker, endowed by nature for “government by tumult.”
Under his leadership, the mob, which was currently reported to include “fifty gentlemen actors” partly disguised in workman’s attire, not only razed the stamp office but also attacked the house of the registrar of the admiralty, and even the residence of Governor Hutchinson himself.
In all these scenes the Sons of Liberty, composed largely of workingmen, did the strong-arm work.
Meanwhile the merchants, ostensibly committed exclusively to the boycott and orderly methods, lent in private an anxious but effective moral support.
One of them testifies in a private letter of the time that they were endeavoring “to keep up the Spirit” of resistance but were “not a little pleas’d to hear that McIntosh has the Credit of the Whole Affair.”3…
“The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution, ,” by Arthur Meier Schlesinger; Vol. ⅬⅩⅩⅧ, Whole Number 182, of “Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law,” edited by the faculty of political science of Columbia University.
New York, ; p. 82.
Ibid.; p. 215.
Ibid.; p. 72.
Economic pressure through the boycott and physical force in the form of violence were constantly supported by the more subtle forms of social coercion.
Thus the Boston agreement of was to be enforced by a discountenancing “in the most effectual but decent and lawful manner” of all who should fail to aid the movement.
At Philadelphia, any person failing to support the boycott was to be branded “An Enemy of the Liberties of America,” and it was the plan to publish such names in the newspapers.
The commercial resisters of Savannah likewise agreed that “every violator should be deemed ‘no Friend to his Country’ ”; while in South Carolina non-supporters were “to be treated with the utmost contempt.”
In the Boston boycotters circulated thousands of handbills throughout their own and neighboring provinces calling on the inhabitants to have no trade relations with persons whom they named as lacking in regard for the public good.
While this is apparently merely a case of the secondary boycott already described, the publicity methods connected with it are of interest just here.
Public disapproval, aside from withdrawal of patronage, was a factor held in view.
It was an effort to revive the ancient pillory upon its mental though not its physical side that prompted some of these acts — perhaps that of the Harvard College seniors who resolved never again to deal with Editor John Mein, who championed the non-boycotters.1 The town meeting went a step further, and ordered the names of seven persistent offenders inscribed on the town records in order “that posterity may know who those persons were that preferred their little private advantages to the common interest of all the colonies.”2
Boston, the scene of so many stirring activities, staged a prototype of our present-day “peaceful picketing” on a mass scale, when, during the struggle to prevent disintegration of the boycott forces, in , a procession of more than a thousand persons proceeded, in what Professor Schlesinger describes as “impressive and orderly array,” to the homes and shops of the recalcitrant merchants, among them two sons of the governor, whom they sought under the roof of the executive mansion itself.
Having made their demonstration and protest, in every place the multitude quietly dispersed.3
Ibid.; pp. 112, 130, 148, 149, 158, 172.
Ibid.; p. 173.
Ibid.; p. 176.
Francis Deak’s campaign against Austrian domination in Hungary
Deak proceeded to organize a scheme for national education and industry, and a boycott against Austrian goods was set in motion.
As relations between the two governments became more tense, “Deak admonished the people not to be betrayed into acts of violence, nor to abandon the ground of legality.
‘This is the safe ground,’ he said, ‘on which, unarmed ourselves, we can hold our own against armed force.
If suffering be necessary, suffer with dignity.’
He had given the order to the country — Passive Resistance”; “and the order was obeyed.
When the Austrian Tax Collector came to gather the taxes the people did not beat him nor even hoot him — they just declined to pay.
The Tax Collector thereupon called in the Austrian police, and the police seized the man’s goods.
Then the Hungarian auctioneer declined to auction them, and an Austrian auctioneer had to be introduced.
When he arrived he discovered that he would have to bring bidders from Austria also if the goods were to be sold.
The government found before long that it was costing more to distrain the goods than the tax itself was worth.”
Gandhi’s campaigns against anti-Indian measures in South Africa
The long struggle, which the London “Times” declared, according to Mr. Polak’s report, “must live in memory as one of the most remarkable manifestations in history of the spirit of Passive Resistance,” was drawing to its close in .
Mr. Gandhi, in connection with the discussion in Parliament and elsewhere in England, just prior to the great “March” of , above described, had accepted full responsibility for his advising the Indian community to resist the law.
His plan, which he held to be “of educational value, and, in the end to be valuable both to the Indian community and the State,” consisted, as he worded it himself, in “actively, persistently, and continuously asking those who are liable to pay the £3 tax to decline to do so and to suffer the penalties for non-payment, and what is more important, in asking those who are now serving indenture and who will, therefore, be liable to pay the £3 tax upon the completion of their indenture, to strike work until the tax is withdrawn.”1
This, as has been shown, was his plan of procedure at , when he proposed the strike of protest for .
But the new year opened with a series of conferences with the authorities, a truce was declared, and the principal points in the long dispute were finally settled by the Indian Relief Act, passed in …
“Speeches and Writings,” p.
ⅩⅬⅦ.
Gandhi’s independence campaign in India
At the close of his year of silence we find Gandhi organizing the ryots of the Kaira district in his own province in a passive resistance movement, i.e., Satyagraha, against the payment of taxes which they asserted should have been suspended because of a partial failure of their crops.
The struggle continued to , when the passive resisters were released from jail and their contention accepted.
Meanwhile the non-coöperation movement, the strangest revolution in human history, had been launched at a special session of the Indian National Congress, which met in Calcutta in .
the program was amended and strengthened in what are known as the Regular Congress Resolution, or the Nagpur Resolutions, of .
The resolution is based upon the two fundamental propositions, (1) that the British Government in India had forfeited the confidence of the country, and (2) that it should be brought to an end by the non-violent method of simply refusing to cooperate with it longer.
The program of non-cooperation was planned to culminate in “civil disobedience,” specifically in refusal to pay taxes for governmental support.
It was realized, however, that this drastic measure would subject the social order to a terrific and perilous strain.
Therefore a more or less extended period of discipline was seen to be necessary by way of preparation for the final stroke.
It will be recalled that the Non-cooperation Resolutions promised Swaraj within one year.
But as the tumult tended to increase with the passing months of , it became necessary, time and again, to postpone the most drastic measure, namely civil disobedience or refusal to pay taxes or remain in the government service, in which it was planned to culminate.
In , the All-India Congress met at Delhi, where Gandhi, according to the despatches to London of , declared it necessary to accelerate the movement by using all the measures in the non-cooperation arsenal.
“This,” he declared, “embraces the policy of civil disobedience, which means civil revolution.
Whenever it is practised it will end Government authority.
It means open defiance of the Government and its laws.
I will launch this campaign in my own district, in Gujarat, within the next fortnight.
The nation must await the result of this example, which should open the eyes of the whole world.”
The congress committee pointed out in a resolution that only a little more than a month then remained of the year within which Swaraj had been promised.
In view of this and the “exemplary self-restraint” observed by the nation in its adherence to non-violence, the committee then authorized “every province on its own responsibility to undertake civil disobedience, including non-payment of taxes,” provided they would observe Hindu-Moslem unity and all the other features of the non-cooperation program.
So much for the individual provinces, but, as for the nation as a whole, the decision was that it must await Gandhi’s signal.
And so it came about that at a meeting of the working committee of the All-India Congress on , with Gandhi presiding, a resolution was adopted postponing civil disobedience until , or pending the final result of the negotiations at the round-table conference then in progress between leaders of all parties…
During an interview with an American correspondent, in ,1 Mr Gandhi admitted that mass civil disobedience had been abandoned on the very eve of its promised inauguration, because “the country was not ready.”
“The principles of non-violence,” he explained, “had not yet made themselves felt.”
But he declared it merely a postponement, adding, “We will continue individual disobedience and boycott.”
Mr. John Clayton, in the Chicago Tribune, .
Shortly thereafter, Gandhi was jailed, and he was still in jail when Case was writing his book.
Some tax resistance campaigns have had their own anthems or fight songs.
Mahadev Desai, in The Story of Bardoli, mentions such songs on a few occasions:
I paid a visit along with Sjt. Vallabhbhai to one of these [Raniparaj] villages.
… The young women, who had taken the Khadi pledge three years ago in the presence of Gandhiji and shed their trinkets and heavy brass ornaments, were all there in spotlessly white Khadi, brimming over with joy and lustily singing Satyagraha songs.
The mention of the Satyagraha songs reminds me of one or two things that happened during the month.
… Phulchandbhai had already some songs ready, and the atmosphere in the taluka gave him the inspiration for many more.
These friends were posted at Valod, and thanks to their bhajans they were in great demand everywhere.
The plain and homely songs spread the message of Satyagraha in a most effective manner, and men, women, and children had them on their lips.
One cannot speak too highly of the part played in the movement by Phulchandbhai and his songs.
I shall describe one of the scenes.
We visited Nani Phalod, a small village, at about 9 p.m. There was a huge procession of men and women, the former singing Satyagraha songs, and the latter singing a song from an old saint of which the refrain was: “All our sorrows have ended, now that the Master has come.”
There were huge meetings everywhere, attended by hundreds of women, laying heaps of [homespun] yarn before Sjt. Vallabhbhai, as in , and lustily singing bhajans.
The invincible spirit of the people evidenced everywhere was bound to exasperate the officials even more.
The women of Varad… had their own songs, some of them being old songs of the saints and some composed by themselves to suit the fight in which they were engaged, and tacked on to the originals.
One of these songs sung soulfully by them ran:
With full knowledge take up your arms even like a Gnani (seer).
Let Purity and Contentment be your armour and Courage your shield.
The valiant shall rush to the forefront, the laggards will be beaten and will take to their heels.
With full knowledge, therefore, take up the fight like the Gnani.
The path of fight is not strewn with roses.
It is sharp as the edge of the sword, for it is the fight for Truth.
Let us therefore be wide awake like the Gnani.
With full knowledge etc.
The tyrant has run amok and crushed the ryot under his heels.
We slumbered so long, we have now found our Guru and are blessed with knowledge.
With full knowledge etc.
He has taught us to pit righteousness and truth against oppression and injustice.
God is sure to run to the rescue of right and vanquish the wrong.
With full knowledge etc.
Vallabhbhai our leader assures us that ultimately victory is ours.
Let us therefore keep our pledge.
With full knowledge etc.
The boycotts and tax strikes of the American Revolution also had their songs.
When patriots gathered to spin home-spun yarn, the work would be accompanied by “many stirring tunes, anthems, and liberty songs,” such as the following:
Young ladies in town, and those that live round, Let a friend at this season advise you; Since money’s so scarce, and times growing worse, Strange things may soon hap and surprise you.
First, then, throw aside your topknots of pride; Wear none but your own country linen; Of economy boast, let your pride be the most To show clothes of your own make and spinning.
What if homespun they say is not quite so gay As brocades, yet be not in a passion, For when once it is known this is much worn in town, One and all will cry out— ’Tis the fashion!
And, as one, all agree, that you’ll not married be To such as will wear London factory, But at first sight refuse, tell ’em such you will choose As encourage our own manufactory.
No more ribbons wear, nor in rich silks appear; Love your country much better than fine things; Begin without passion, ’twill soon be the fashion To grace your smooth locks with a twine string.
Throw aside your Bohea, and your Green Hyson tea, And all things with a new-fashion duty; Procure a good store of the choice Labrador, For there’ll soon be enough here to suit you.
These do without fear, and to all you’ll appear, Fair, charming, true, lovely and clever; Though the times remain darkish, young men may be sparkish, And love you much stronger than ever.
Then make yourselves easy, for no one will teaze ye, Nor tax you, if chancing to sneer At the sense-ridden tools, who think us all fools; But they’ll find the reverse far and near.
The modern American war tax resistance movement has in recent years managed to collect its own funk anthem (“What If We All Stopped Paying Taxes?” by Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings):
I was talking to a friend of mine Said he don’t want no wars no more They’re building bombs while our schools are falling Tell me what in the hell we’re paying taxes for
What if we all stopped paying taxes? Now, what if we all stopped paying taxes? Stop paying taxes y’all
Now tell me who’s gonna buy their bombs Their tanks, their planes and all their guns Well, tell me who’s gonna pay for their wars If we all get together and cut their funds
Hey, listen people, listen to what I’ve got to say What if we all stopped paying taxes?
folk song (“Don’t Be Afraid of the Neo-Cons” by Norman Blake):
Don’t send your money to Washington To fight a war that’s never done Don’t play their games don’t be their pawns And don’t be afraid of the neo-cons
and rap (“Uncle Sam Goddamn” by Brother Ali):
You don’t give money to the bums On the corner with a sign, bleeding from their gums. Talking about you don’t support a crackhead — What you think happens to the money from yo taxes?
Shit, the government’s an addict With a billion dollar a week kill-brown-people habit And even if you ain’t on the front line When the master yell crunch time you right back at it
You ain’t look at how you hustling backwards And the end of the year add up what they subtracted: 3 outta twelve months your salary Paid for that madness… man that’s sadness
War tax resister Joan Baez was fond of including the Whiskey Rebellion celebration tune “Copper Kettle” in her concerts.
Get you a copper kettle Get you a copper coil Cover with new made corn mash And never more you’ll toil
You just lay there by the juniper While the moon is bright Watch them jugs a-fillin’ In the pale moonlight
Build your fires of hickory Hickory or ash or oak Don’t use no green or rotten wood They’ll catch you by the smoke
My daddy he made whiskey My granddaddy did to We ain’t paid no whiskey tax Since !
When a youth activist group joined war tax resisters at a recent Tax Day demonstration at the Oakland federal building, they brought their lyrical skills along:
People, People, People, can’t you see? They kill around the world with tax money. Stealing from workers how there money’s made, I guess that’s why we’re broke and they’re so paid!
People, People, People, can’t you see? They tax the poor more, the rich stay greedy. No money for health or to educate, I guess that’s why we’re broke and they’re so paid!
On-line, you can see some of the rehearsal video showing how they combined the lyrics with pantomime to drive the point home.
At another American “Tax Day” protest, this one in St. Louis in , war tax resisters at the federal building sang a protest song with lyrics like these:
For the cost of cluster bombs that maim and leave to bleed our kids could have more teachers helping them to read
Tax resisters against the British colonial government in Ghana had a fight song for the occasion:
Cannon they have loaded, but couldn’t fire, Cannon they have loaded, but couldn’t fire. Whitemen dishonestly imposed poll-tax on the blacks. The poll-tax we will never pay, the grandees never deliver up, Go tell the white man to come out!
Luzerne County, Pennsylvania is home to an unusually corrupt government culture (or maybe it’s just that they got caught).
Federal authorities charged 23 county residents with various corruption charges, including three judges and a county commissioner.
But then the county government decided to hike taxes by 10%.
Fred Heller said no.
Why fund a nest of crooks?
He recorded a protest song titled “Take This Tax and Shove It” and started a campaign to get county residents to refuse to pay their taxes, at least until the government stables have had all their manure shoveled out.
Excerpts:
Take this tax and shove it We ain’t paying you crooks no more The good ol’ boys stole all our cash And ran out the courthouse door
Residents in Castine, Maine, upset at their local taxes being siphoned off by state politicians, started a tax resistance campaign and accompanied it by protest songs:
Write me a song of the Revolution, ’cause that’s what it’s gonna be. Write me a song of the Revolution, ’cause that’s what’s in store for me! I can’t sit by and watch this country go right down the drain. I gotta stand firm on the Constitution and stay aboard the freedom train.
When Meo farmers killed a tax collector during a tax strike aimed at the British-backed Maharaja in , they commemorated the occasion with a song:
Rebels in the open the Meos did then rejoice They conferred among themselves and spoke in a single voice Your názim’s dead and ever since we aren’t ruled by any prince To London by now you should’ve fled, and do take along your dead.
the American Revolution was portrayed as the culmination of a tax revolt in this educational cartoon short that aired frequently between Saturday morning cartoons in the United States in
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
your humble editor and his little brother in
I was a little too young to be much of an observer of the political scene, but I remember as being something of an orgy of innocent patriotism.
America was sick of being cynical and wanted to go back to being stupid — besides, the Vietnam War was mostly over, at least for most Americans, and we’d given Nixon the heave-ho — and so there were plenty of red-white-and-blue commemorations of the bicentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The Friends Journal wasn’t quite so willing to get with the star-spangled program.
In particular, it intensified its coverage of war tax resistance during the bicentennial year.
The issue was the Friends Journal’s first special issue devoted to war tax resistance.
It starts off with a couple of inspiring quotes on the subject from A.J. Muste and David Dellinger, then opens with a piece by Jennifer S. Tiffany on how she met the challenge of deciding whether to pay or to resist.
Excerpts:
This fall was a time when I was grappling a great deal with the question of war tax resistance.
To start with, I knew and had known for a long time that I could not be clear in paying taxes to any state which would use them to pay for war-making.
Particularly, I could not contribute to the nuclear death race between this nation and the Soviet Union.
Perhaps it goes back to the civil defense tests and simulated nuclear air-raids which had terrified and confused me when I was a child.
Anyway, the imperative, the need to keep clear of war (to use Bruce Baechler’s words), had always been strong.
I had been acting on it, in small ways, for a long while-avoiding earnings beyond the taxable minimum, for example, and claiming six “peace dependents” on my W-4 form when my income did exceed this minimum.
I also corresponded with the IRS concerning my views and actions.
However, a disclarity still existed regarding full resistance, with all the possible ramifications on my life and lifestyle.
The question was, to me, was I strong enough and centered enough to maintain a taxable income level, restructure my life in such a way as to prevent eventual government levies, and go on with my resistance?
Could I face creatively the possibility of putting a good deal of energy into court cases with the eventuality of prison?
I came into meeting for worship one morning at the height of these grapplings.
As I settled in, I was astounded.
Somehow the fears and conflicting leadings within me changed.
They did not fade or diminish, but grew into context.
The spirit of the meeting, the presence of loving Friends, who loved whether or not they agreed with one another’s approach, literally overwhelmed me.
The presence of God wholly covered the gathering, and finally clearness came.
Our God, the Presence in our worship and acts of witness, is a gentle, healing, loving, empowering God, one who speaks strongly and softly from within us.
At the same moment as making demands on our lives, this Presence says, “You need not fear; if you act on this I will sustain and strengthen you throughout the whole process.
I am…” This was a moment of resolution for me.
I was no longer entangled in a negative refusal to pay taxes, but was healed and sustained and led to a positive witness.
I could go on.
It is in this context that tax resistance has its roots and life.
War tax resistance, any resistance to war and to those authorities which bring about war, is not a negative presence: every no implies a yes, and this no to killing and death can be a yes to healing and life.
Within tax resistance dwell seeds which can help a whole new order to grow — seeds which deny fear and powerlessness in the face of death; seeds which lead us to the creation of healing alternatives to structures which sustain death.
As John Woolman puts it, “to turn all we possess into the channel of universal love becomes the whole business of our lives.”
I can speak only of my moment of resolution, the clearness and joy which is liberated in my life through a tax witness.
As I see it, this issue of Friends Journal is not a coercive tool, saying “you must for these reasons refuse to pay your taxes or I will no longer judge you to be a good Friend.”
The point of this issue is not to define terms for judgment, to draw lines of inclusion and exclusion.
Our faith is an experiential one, and your experience of real clarity is as right and valid for you as mine is for me.
The point is to lay ourselves open to what speaks truthfully in us, to really open ourselves to the spirit which utterly denies war, to really grapple with the questions this raises and the demands it makes on our lives.
One of those questions has to do with tax resistance.
This is an invitation to grapple with it, and a reaching out which says there is a great company of people, past and present, who have done so.
There is a process of empowerment, growth and the birth of community among people which can take root through tax resistance.
First comes the knowledge that the authorities of death are not all-powerful, that the laws and structures which sustain any war machine are in fact quite weak.
As Marion Bromley says in her article, “What can they take away that is of real value?”
Second dawns the realization that alternatives are possible: through the flaws in the death order, we glimpse the order of life.
And, although such consequences as possible imprisonment or loss of property, and the inward struggle with fear, are largely borne alone, the vision is shared by a growing company of sisters and brothers.
Isolation is hard to feel when so many glimpse the possibility of a new order — an order beyond war.
Finally and especially, tax resistance often grows as an act of ministry, an act of obedience to the loving and healing spirit.
War tax resistance is one aspect of a community set on fire with the presence of a gentle, empowering God.
Bruce Baechler thought the question of whether Quakers should resist war taxes was a no-brainer.
He wrote in from prison (where he was doing time for draft resistance) with this defense of war tax resistance.
Excerpts:
Do Friends support war?
At one time this could be answered with a “not at all.”
These days, though, it seems to depend on how one defines support.
Friends, generally, denounce war in the strongest terms. Indeed that’s all many people know about us.
But for the most part Friends can no longer claim to renounce, or “utterly deny” war.
Friends today are not compelled to bear arms… instead of fighting with outward weapons ourselves, we are merely asked to buy the weapons through taxation, and leave the dirty work to others.
And most of us do.
Yet we cling to our traditional peace testimony, often expressed as early Friends did in the Declaration of :
We utterly deny all outward wars and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretense whatsoever; this is our testimony to the whole world.
This is strong language.
One cannot, without being hypocritical, utterly deny something and still give it material support.
But most Friends do.
There are many reasons given for paying taxes.
Most of these are quite valid, if one thinks of tax resistance as a protest.
But I see a difference between various types of protests, such as vigils and letters to Congress, and nonsupport, or remaining clear of war, as by tax resistance.
In protesting, one makes her/his views known, but leaves it up to someone else (the government) to make the decision.
Governments are not noted for their receptivity to the pacifist message, and it is unlikely they will be in the near future.
I am not deriding protest — much has been accomplished through it.
I am just saying that it is not enough.
Nonsupport, on the other hand, emphasizes individual responsibility.
To refuse to pay one’s taxes is to accept responsibility for the way they would be spent, and to refuse to allow them to be spent for immoral purposes.
Tax resistance should not mean just withholding taxes from the government.
An integral part of tax resistance is to redirect the money normally spent for taxes into life supporting channels.
In many places this is done through Alternative Funds, where the resisters in a community band together to make most effective use of the money.
Thus not only is money diverted from warmaking, but at the same time it is made available as a resource for peaceful activities.
Perhaps the biggest problem most Friends have with not paying for war is that it is illegal.
One faces the prospect of prison for it, and this alone is enough to make most people give it only superficial consideration.
Hopefully the World Peace Tax Fund, if established by Congress, will alleviate some of this problem in much the same way that the Conscientious Objector provisions in the draft laws gave a legal alternative to the army.
But in the meantime the problem remains.
Friends have often suffered for their beliefs.
Throughout our history large numbers of Friends have been imprisoned, tortured, and killed for preaching and practicing the message of the Inward Light.
Would you stay away from a Meeting for Worship if to go meant certain arrest?
Would you attend but not speak when moved, if that would be dangerous (a situation facing Korean Friends today)?
Would you join the army to avoid prison?
Kill to avoid being killed?
The question is where to draw the line.
When, to you, does the personal suffering involved in a course of action outweigh the reasons for taking that course?
Each person must decide for her/himself.
Another response to the problem of imprisonment is that if any substantial number of Friends did engage in tax resistance, the likelihood of their being imprisoned would be small, and some provision in the law would probably be made for them, thus eliminating the problem and encouraging more people to resist.
Jack Cady shared his long, meandering letter to the Director of the IRS.
Excerpts:
[O]ur first confrontation… will be the examination of my tax return.
I expect the examination is prompted by my refusal last year to pay half of my income tax.
I will refuse. to pay half of the tax again this year, although because of withholding, your agency already has most of the money.
I refuse to pay half of the tax on various grounds, some of which are moral, some of which are legal.
The refusal is prompted by the expenditure by our government of over fifty percent of tax monies on the maintenance and purchase and use of armies and weapons.
Through its agency, Internal Revenue Service, the United States Government seeks my complicity in the violation of twenty centuries of moral teaching.
The government is in further violation of the Constitution of the United States.
It is also in violation of various international treaties and agreements, and is, in fact, engaged in crimes against peace and crimes against humanity.
In requiring that I pay taxes for the support of war, planning for war, offensive weapons and the maintenance of a standing armed force sufficient to engage combat on a worldwide scale, the U.S. Government through its agent IRS is in violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees my religious freedom.
I am a member of the Port Townsend meeting for worship of the Society of Friends (Quaker).
The Quaker belief and effective detachment from war dates from the beginnings of the Society in .
The precedent of refusal to pay war taxes in America dates from when John Woolman, John Churchman, and Anthony Benezet refused to pay for the French and Indian wars.
Nonviolence and refusal to pay or endorse either side in a combat dates in U.S. history from the revolution when Quakers who refused to kill were stoned or beaten under the brand of Tory.
I claim my devout belief in God and the injunction that we may not kill as sufficient reason to refuse this tax.
I would expect that opposition to this view would also have to overcome three hundred years of Quaker nonviolence and two hundred years of U.S. acceptance of Quaker attitudes that insist on nonviolence.
[I]n asking taxes, the U.S.A. through its agent IRS seeks my complicity in crimes against peace and crimes against humanity as defined by the Nuremberg Principles.
These principles hold that citizens of a nation are guilty of crimes committed by that nation if they acquiesce to those crimes when, in fact. a moral choice is open to them.
In requiring that I pay taxes to support a war industry and armed forces capable of contending on a worldwide scale, the U.S. Government is threatening both my moral and my physical existence.
I am not being protected, because the U.S. builds atomic weapons, B-1 bombers, atomic submarines, poison gas, lasers, rocketry, napalm and all of the other expensive paraphernalia of war.
These do not protect me.
They invoke the suspicion and fear of other nations, and they provoke among other nations the building and stockpiling of similar weapons.
[T]he U.S. now gives every indication that it is, in fact, not a nation of laws but a nation of men and corporations.
This, despite the resignation from office of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew.
I charge that the freedom of the citizen is largely illusory, and that the payment of taxes, the keeping of tax records, the invasion of privacy by IRS and other agencies of government, the making of rules by agencies (rules that have the force and effect of law but which are not to be challenged in courts), the maintenance of records or files on the political, religious, economic and moral statements and actions of the individual, the power to levy fines and licenses by agency rule, and the presumption by government that citizens are guilty of any agency charge and must therefore bear the burden of proof of their innocence; all of these show the citizens of the U.S. are no longer free.
I have two main intentions in this tax refusal.
The first is quite clear.
I do not intend to pay for the destruction of other human beings, nor endorse by word or deed the crimes of the United States.
The second intent is a little more nebulous but it is just as strong.
It is strong because I love my country.
In this refusal I intend that the United States will display by its action whether or not a citizen, raised to believe in U.S. principles of freedom, equality, protection under the laws; raised, in fact, under statements like, “With a proper regard for the opinions of mankind,” can indeed trust and believe in the way he has been raised.
Either the Constitution is sound or it is not.
The U.S. will either honor its national and international commitments or it will not.
The courts will either face issues or the courts will duck them.
…If the rules of IRS are bigger than the Constitution, the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Principles and the Christian teaching of two thousand years, then I believe it is time that the U.S. acknowledge this…
The next article came from Marion Bromley.
Excerpts:
Ernest and I began a tax refusers’ newsletter soon after our marriage in .
In all the time since, only a tiny proportion of Friends and other pacifists have become tax refusers, and we sometimes try to understand why.
It has been, for us, more a personal imperative than a carefully reasoned political position, though we have done what we could to expound on all aspects of refusing to allow one’s labor to be taxed for war and weaponry.
Most people, whether they are pacifists or not, seem to respect our “right” to refuse taxes when we have a chance to explain how we feel about it.
In turn we have to accept the “right” of others to continue to pay large sums in taxes, even though the U.S. budget continues to be overwhelmingly devoted to war and the war system.
Before 1800 taxes were levied largely for specific things such as bridges, schools, highways.
A levy for war was as separate as the others.
Quakers, Mennonites and a few others who had strong scruples against paying for the militia or for gunpowder refused to pay and sometimes suffered distraint of goods or imprisonment for their stand.
When all these items began to be lumped together into one, general tax, it was no longer so simple an issue.
Some, with a considerable feeling of relief, began to pay; others paid more out of frustration.
And one of the most potent testimonies against war during became lost.
Now, in , probably no reasonable person believes that the billions to be spent for weapons research, deployment of armies and nuclear weapons, nuclear submarines prowling the ocean floor, planes carrying nuclear bombs, and intercontinental ballistic missiles will be in any sense a “defense” for anyone.
Since such policies and practices will probably lead to a nuclear holocaust at some future time, maybe distant, maybe near, paying for these weapons comes close to being an evil act.
It may be that the reason most Friends do not see it in that light is that they are conscientiously committed to liberalism — to the direction the federal government began in and from which there is now no retreat.
The federal government, in order to ease suffering and to maintain control over its own populace, began to assume some social responsibility.
Possibly most Friends are in the same position as those who began paying the “mixed” taxes in .
But in the whole world has witnessed the kind of horror that a powerful military state can unleash even without resort to the ultimate weapon.
…In an individual such behavior would be deemed madness.
Would a mad individual be permitted to continue such activities because that individual was also performing some useful services?
Another aspect of liberalism that has probably influenced Friends greatly in the past fifty years is the commitment to law.
I cannot explain why most Friends think it is almost a religious principle to honor the law and the courts, while I feel it is very low on my list of loyalties.
My religious instincts are insulted when I observe a judge in the robes of a priest, high above others in the courtroom, the witnesses and observers in pews and the bailiff enforcing a hushed silence.
My view is that this holy-appearing scene is for the purpose of defending the property and the power of the people who have those commodities.
It is the same in a socialist or a capitalist state.
It is certainly an acceptable arrangement for people to agree on certain codes or laws, agreements about property.
I would not disobey laws for frivolous reasons.
But I have no qualms about disobeying laws which would force me to pay for murder and other crimes related to the war system.
Civil disobedience which requires long-term adherence, such as arranging to make one’s living without the withholding system, perhaps is considered impossibly difficult by many conscientious people.
For many Friends, commitment to a service type vocation seems to require “fitting in” with a professional life style.
The scale has not been invented which could balance service that is beneficial to others with the negative effects of supporting warmaking and possibly silencing one’s conscientious stirrings.
The only contribution I can make to such considerations is my testimony that refusing to pay income taxes has proved to be a blessing in many ways.
For one thing, it resulted in our “backing into” a simple life style, consuming less than we otherwise would.
Friends who have valued simplicity know of its blessings — the simple life is more healthful, more joyful, more blessed in every way.
A new friend we met following seizure of Gano Peacemakers’ property, our home for 25 years, wrote us after moving from Cincinnati that he supposed we were having a very sad summer at Gano this year, knowing that we would be evicted in the fall.
This notion was quite contrary to the way we felt.
We were enjoying the time here more than ever before.
The growing season seemed more productive than ever, and the surroundings more beautiful.
We were working very hard, preparing leaflets, signs and press releases, corresponding, thinking of new ways to tell everyone who would listen that the IRS claims were fraudulent and politically motivated.
We expected to be evicted but never had the feeling that we would “lose” in the struggle.
(The following paragraph, concerning the eventual IRS surrender in the Gano Peacemakers case, is largely obscured in the PDF.)
One of the pleasant feelings we have about the reversal of the sale (besides knowing that we can continue to live on these two acres) is that many people have told us they got a real lift when they heard that some “little people” had prevailed in the struggle with the IRS.
We had the feeling that our daily leafleting and constant public statements during the seven months’ campaign had, at the least, the effect of showing that people need not fear this government agency.
People do fear the IRS and that is an unworthy attitude.
What can they take away that is of real value?
Jack Powelson struck a dissenting note, listing war tax resistance among a number of popular Quaker positions that he felt to be sentimentally motivated and economically naive.
Excerpt:
Friends are concerned about paying taxes to a government that allocates a high proportion of its budget to the military.
But we also know that if enough Friends refused to pay taxes so that the government was seriously impeded in its operations, the first items to be cut would be welfare and education, and the poor would suffer.
The Journal then quoted John A. Reiber on his vision for “a cultural revolution with political implications, not a political revolution with cultural implications.”
Excerpt:
The most effective social changes are not going to come from within the system, but without it.
We must realize that the vast, impersonal and powerful institutions are not intrinsic to our survival and well-being, but, in fact, extrinsic and harmful.
What we must do to achieve a cultural (r)evolution is to, first of all, withdraw our support of our unendurable, tyrannical and inefficient institution of the government.
One way of doing this is through tax resistance.
But tax resistance, by itself, is only a part of the solution.
Money, time and energy should be channelled into alternatives to our technological mass consumption/ mass waste society, our irrelevant and oppressive educational institutions and our mass media which don’t meet our informational needs.
Craig Simpson next gave a report on war tax resistance as it was practiced internationally.
Excerpts:
During the Peace Research and Peace Activists Conference in Holland in , I met Susumu Ishitani, a member of the Japanese Conscientious Objectors to War Taxes Movement (COMIT).
The group is the first of its kind in Japanese history and was started in .
It is made up of Christian pacifists — Mennonites, FOR members and Quakers — as well as non-church pacifists.
The group apparently has been growing rather quickly.
They have meetings all over Japan, print articles in newspapers, and hold press conferences.
Their emphasis is on the refusal of the 6.5% of their taxes which goes for the so-called “Self-Defense Forces.”
They have even written a “Song of 6.5% or 6.5% for a Peaceful World” protesting war taxes and expressing the need for money to stop death and the pollution of our environment.
Susumu is a wonderful and gentle member of the group.
Outside of his job as a university professor he is active as a member of the local Friends Meeting in Minato-ku (Tokyo).
He also trains students in nonviolence and works to raise consciousness about the Japanese government’s involvement with the repressive South Korean government.
He clearly sees the importance of not sending his money to the government for destructive purposes.
COMIT was still in operation at least as late as , but I haven’t been able to find much about them on-line.
France… has a long tradition of resistance to war and the military.
The tax refusal movement began in its present state in during the first French atomic tests in the South Pacific when a number of people decided to refuse the 20% of their taxes which would go to the war department.
This money was redistributed to organizations working for peace and developing social alternatives.
Groups soon were organizing in Orleans, Paris, Mulhouse, Lyon, and Tours and by were working in cooperation with one another.
They then made a decision to broaden the movement by asking people to refuse only 3% of their income tax.
They felt this way they would be able to attract more people because of the minimum of risk.
Many of these people decided to redistribute their money to the peasant-worker struggle in Larzac.
Larzac is a plain in Southern France where a group of peasants, farmers and shepherds have been resisting the expansion of an army training base onto land where they have lived and worked for centuries.
The Larzac struggle has become extremely important in France.
It receives broad support from leftists, environmentalists, workers and antimilitarists.
The peasants, who have come to believe strongly in nonviolent struggle, have used some very creative tactics to draw attention to their plight.
For example, they drove their tractors from Southern France onto the streets of Paris.
On the way, they were met in Orleans by 113 tax refusers who gave their tax money to the peasant struggle instead of to the military.
This link between the peasant struggle against the military and the people who refused taxes solidified the movement and both benefited.…
By , 400 French people had become tax refusers and at latest count as many as 4,000 are giving their money to Larzac instead of the government.
Many farmers, workers and pacifists are involved now in the refusal of taxes to support the Larzac struggle.
Most recently in France, pacifists are discussing and organizing for 100% refusal of their taxes as their non-cooperation with the military becomes more consistent with their lifestyles.
the issue also had a list of resources interested Quakers could use to find out more about war tax resistance
There were also several letters to the editor on the subject:
Mary Bye wrote in to explain the rationale behind her tax resistance.
“I believe that my tax dollars go to support a system which perpetuates misery and suffering in large parts of the world.
Here at home we have set up a monstrous military budget while the programs for the poor, the minorities, the disadvantaged and the defenseless are being cut.
I believe that the first step to moral health is to realize the callous role of oppressor we, as a nation, play abroad and at home.
The second step is to act.”
She said tax resistance works for her because “I know of no other way to introduce this concern into the courts, and… I want to commit my money to help meet human needs neglected by the government.
I give voluntarily an amount equal to that computed by IRS regulations to help build a community of caring.”
Ross Roby wrote in to promote the World Peace Tax Fund Act.
“Essentially, this bill would provide conscientious objectors to war (male and female, young and old) an alternative to having their Federal tax payments used to finance government agencies that wage war and those that contribute to the waging of war by our government and by other governments of this world.”
He complained that the proposal hadn’t gotten much Quaker support: “Are we unable to recognize a friendly hand when it does not come in Quaker garb?
Or, has vocal pacifism fallen so irrevocably into the hands of radical resistants that a congressional bill which proposes accommodating conscientious objection to the realities of the Internal Revenue Service (and vice versa) is automatically dismissed?”
He described the mechanism of the Act this way: “It sets up a Fund for Peace to which we, conscientious objectors to war, would automatically contribute as we paid our usual federal income tax.
If the federal budget were determined, by an impartial authority, to contain sixty per cent for military purposes, then sixty cents of each dollar we pay would enhance the treasury of a fund that builds peace…”
Jim Forest wrote about his decision to stop tax withholding from his paycheck by filing a new W-4 form.
“We will be using these moneys for human needs that aren’t being adequately met in the present world: hunger, housing, resistance to militarism, various efforts for impoverished people, etc. We receive fund appeals each day which, had we the means, we would respond to, or respond to more generously.
Now we will.”
Donald Hultgren gave a report of Robin Harper’s talk about war tax resistance and charitable redirection at the Quaker Meeting in Cornwall, New York.
Harold R. Regier, the Peace and Social Concerns secretary of the General Conference Mennonite church, wrote to thank the Journal for its “encouragement in our efforts to work at war tax payment/resistance issues.”
Harold R. Regier, the last letter writer I mentioned, said that: “One of our efforts along this line was to convene a war tax conference to look particularly at the theological and heritage bases for war tax resistance.”
The Journal article that followed concerned this conference.
A note at the top of that article said that “[o]ne hundred twenty persons registered” for a Mennonite/Brethren in Christ sponsored conference to seek theological and practical discernment on war tax issues.”
That conference issued a summary statement, which the Journal reprinted.
Excerpts:
After considering the New Testament texts which speak about the Christian’s payment of taxes, most of us are agreed that we do not have a clear word on the subject of paying taxes used for war.
The New Testament statements on paying taxes (Mark 12:17, Romans 13:6–7) contain either ambiguity in meaning or qualifications on the texts that call the discerning community to decide in light of the life and teachings of Jesus.
Although those in the Anabaptist tradition were generally consistent in their historical stand against individual participation in war, they were not of one mind regarding the payment of taxes for war.
Evidence suggests that most Anabaptists did pay all of their taxes willingly; however, there is the early case of the Hutterite Anabaptists, a sizable minority in the Anabaptist movement, who refused to pay war taxes.
In the later stages of Anabaptist history there is no clear-cut precedent on the question of war taxes.
During the American Revolution most Mennonites did object to paying war taxes, yet in a joint statement with the Brethren they agreed to pay taxes in general to the colonial powers “that we may not offend them.”
The record continued to be mixed until the present day.
Only a small minority chose to demonstrate their allegiance to Christ through a tax witness.
So far most discernment on the war tax issue has been done on an individual level as opposed to a church or congregational level.
Although individuals struggling with the issue have been supported by similarly concerned brothers and sisters, wider church support has been lacking.
While recognizing the need for a growing consensus in these matters, we know that not all in the Mennonite/Brethren in Christ fellowship are agreed on an understanding of scriptural teaching and a faithful response regarding war taxes.
We are ready to acknowledge this disagreement and seek to continue discerning God’s will in this.
But as a church community, we feel we should be conscious of the convictions and struggles of our sisters and brothers and supportive of the steps they have taken and are considering.
And all that’s just from one issue!
The issue included an article by Robin Harper about the Brandywine Alternative Fund, one of “a series of experiments [that] go by various names: fund for humanity, people’s life fund, life priorities fund, war tax resistance alternative fund.”
Excerpts:
As many as forty sprang into existence in as the country’s agony over Vietnam reached a crescendo.
Though each is organized and operated a bit differently, the basic concept is to pool federal war taxes (both telephone and income) conscientiously withheld from the IRS and redistribute them, by loans or grants, to community groups working for peace, social justice, and other areas of social change.
…the Brandywine Alternative Fund serves Delaware and Chester Counties just west of Philadelphia.
Although the greater part of the Brandywine fund comes from “reallocated” federal taxes, we also encourage deposits of personal savings.
This policy has not only enlarged the fund but has also broadened participation to include persons eager to help “reorder our nation’s priorities away from the military” who don’t choose to use the particular method of principled tax resistance.
In addition, seven monthly meetings, churches and civic groups have made deposits or contributions to the alternative fund, following the precedent of London Grove Friends Meeting.
This development of religious and other community groups investing in Brandywine is, I believe, a rather new departure for the alternative fund movement and offers an opportunity for sensitizing even larger numbers of people to issues of war preparations, civilian priorities and tax accountability.
Through the growth of our alternative fund, we have begun to take our central concern to the people of the communities in which we live; we are seeking creative ways to support financially some of those groups which are addressing a range of social and economic problems largely neglected by government; and we have undertaken the task of stripping the mask off one of our most powerful institutions — the IRS — as we portray its grim role in the betrayal of our society’s and world’s ultimate security.
World Peace Tax Fund promoters tried to jump on the bicentennial bandwagon with a bizarre logo they promoted in the issue
The issue had some Revolutionary War-era history lessons.
Nonviolence theorist Gene Sharp wrote an article on “The Power of Nonviolent Action” in which he pointed out (among other things) the usefulness of tax resistance in the struggle for American independence:
During the Townshend resistance, in … for example, a London newspaper reported that because of the refusal of taxes and the refusal to import British goods, only 3,500 pounds sterling of revenue had been produced in the colonies.
The American non-importation and non-consumption campaign was estimated by the same newspaper at that point to have cost British business not a mere 3,500 pounds but 7,250,000 pounds in lost income.
Those figures may not have been accurate, but they are significant of the perceptions of the time.
The attempt to collect the tax against that kind of opposition was not worth the effort, and the futility of trying eventually became apparent.
Finally, Lyle Tatum examined the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s activity around .
Excerpts:
Although the Yearly Meeting was clear that members should not participate in military activities or pay direct war taxes, some areas were more difficult to decide.
Bills of credit, a form of negotiable instrument sanctioned by the colonies, were controversial.
The use of them stood in a similar position to the payment of taxes today.
To those Friends who were trying to get other Friends to stop using bills of credit, the Yearly Meeting minuted a bit of advice:
…we affectionately exhort those who have this religious Scruple, that they do not admit, nor indulge and Censure in their Minds against their Brethren who have not the same, carefully manifesting by the whole tenor of their Conduct, that nothing is done through Strife, or Contention, but by their Meekness, Humility and patient Suffering, that they are the Followers of the Prince of Peace.
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of met in , just a little more than two months after .
As we have seen, pressure on the peaceable testimony had been growing over the previous few years.
In the face of this, the Yearly Meeting minuted:
…we cannot consistent with our Christian peaceable Testimony… be concerned in the promoting of War or Warlike Measures of any kind, we are united in Judgment that such who make religious Profession with us, & do either openly, or by Connivance, pay any Fine, Penalty, or Tax, in lieu of their personal Services for carrying on the War under the prevailing Commotions, or do consent to, and allow their Children, Apprentices, or Servants to act therein do thereby violate our Christian Testimony, and by so doing manifest that they are not in Religious Fellowship with us…
In spite of their many hardships, Friends were holding firm.
Loyalty oaths were going strong in .
It was minuted:
…in some places Fines or Taxes are and have been imposed on those who from Conscientious Scruples, refuse or decline making such declaration of Allegiance and Abjuration, it is the united Sense and Judgment of this Meeting, that no Friend should pay any such Fine or Tax…
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
A fellow named Kenneth O’Keefe has been making waves for his nicely seditious activities for some time now.
In a recent interview he also made a case for tax resistance:
When you look at citizenship, you have to understand that citizenship is a social contract between the state and the citizen.
Under that contract you have, supposedly, rights and you also have obligations.
Now, I look at the obligations of being a U.S. citizen and I realized I cannot pay into a tax system which is basically paying up debt to the bankers, but nonetheless, we pay into a tax system which is used to produce military capability that is also ultimately used in other parts of the world, which is ultimately killing my brothers and sisters in other parts of the world.
I do not agree to contribute to a tax system that is being used to commit mass murder against people I consider to be my brothers and sisters halfway around the world.
It’s violation of my ethics as a man, of someone who believes in justice for everyone and wants a better world for everyone.
I cannot pay for the murder of my brothers and sisters — and that’s part of the contract of citizenship.
So I said, which was to me a sensible thing and a moral thing to do, “Take my name off of that contract, because I do not agree to it and ultimately I will walk away.”
I left a paradise life in Hawaii, had my own business, I was making money, lived on the beach, and did something I loved.
I had a beautiful, beautiful life and I walked from that, because I absolutely, 100 percent disagree with the actions of my birth nation and I find them so criminal that I need my name taken off that list.
I will enter into a contract again with the U.S. if indeed it carries itself with honor and will respect the US Constitution; if the U.S. Constitution is indeed made the supreme law of the United States, then I will happily come back to my nation and adhere to the contract.
It’s a difficult process.
It’s costly, you have to leave the country, you have to swear under oath, you have to hand over your passport, you have to fill up the forms — I’ve done all that.
I would argue that probably the reason why they have not honored my right of self-determination, a human right of self-determination, is because it could have set the precedent, which could spark an imaginative idea that people can look out around the world and say, “You know what?
I don’t actually agree with this contract with my nation any longer, I want to enter into a new contract.”
This is why I refer to myself as a world citizen, we’re all world citizens.
My human family is where my allegiance goes; I don’t give my allegiance to one unit, one group, one nation, one religion.
My whole human family is my brothers and sisters and ultimately I give my allegiance to them.
That’s the contract I will honor and if any other contract, inferior to that one, will try to compel me to pay for the murder of my brothers and sisters — I will not partake in that contract.
I’m living here in the U.K. and haven’t made enough money to even be taxable for the last 12 years, but I might make enough money this year to actually be taxable, and I’ll tell you what: I will not pay into the U.K. tax system and fund the murder of my brothers and sisters halfway around the world.
I simply refuse to do it, and I would argue that other people should look at the contract like that and, maybe, if we all decide to enter into a new contract like that we can end war for good.
I’ve seen a couple of summaries of tax resistance in the American colonies pass through my feed reader in recent days:
“Taxes, trade, and resistance” is part of an educational project meant to explain revolutionary-era North Carolina and is based on official government history (literally: it’s based on a report from the U.S. State Department’s “Office of the Historian”).
“American Resistance to British Taxes ” by Sanderson Beck sketches out a chronological view on the various taxes imposed on the colonies and the resistance that followed.
Resistance tactics described include:
intimidation of tax enforcement collaborators
attacks on customs-enforcing ships
attacks on tax offices
petitions and legal challenges
boycotts of British manufactures
smuggling
bribes of tax officials
attacks on tax enforcers
attacks on the homes of tax enforcers
attacks on the homes of tax collaborators
encouraging tax officials and enforcers to resign or desert
humiliation attacks on tax officers (such as hanging in effigy, mock trials)
The Capital Gazette reports on the anniversary of the burning of the Peggy Stewart — a reprisal by American revolutionaries against a ship owner who tried to break the boycott against taxed British tea.
