Tax resistance in the “Peace Churches” →
Mennonites / Amish →
Charlie Hurst & Maria Smith
And here’s some late-breaking protest news from around the country:
Tax-Resisting Couple Draw Federal Wrath — War tax resisters Charlie Hurst and Maria Smith of Cleveland hold back 50% of their taxes and the IRS seize their money, their car and part of their paychecks.
Halliburton Event — Houston protesters in top hats surround a mock mailbox painted up with the Halliburton logo and thank taxpayers for their generous donations.
Resistance against War Taxes in Portsmouth NH — “[O]n the right side a member of the Libertarian party was protesting and on the left side a number of members of Seacoast Peace Response were organized.
But both had the same objective of raising the awareness of the public about federal income taxes and both agreed that we the people presently have taxation with illegal corporate representation.”
, when they married, they have resisted paying the United States what they and others call war taxes; Hurst has done so .
They accept the punishment the Internal Revenue Service deals out, including fines, interest and the garnishment of Smith’s wages as a lawyer (though not the pay of Hurst, a minister whom the IRS considers to be self-employed).
Following this is a remarkably superficial discussion of the academic ethics of war tax resistance which reaffirms my unhappy belief that people who call themselves “ethicists” rarely have anything useful to say.
Then, more about Hurst & Smith:
Smith, 46, is a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, which provides free legal help to low-income clients.
Hurst, 54, is the pastor of North Presbyterian Church in Cleveland and also counsels clients at 2100 Lakeside Emergency Shelter for Men, which serves as many as 550 homeless people a night.
Following a years-long struggle with the IRS and garnishment of Smith’s wages, the couple has had to pay more than $18,000 in back taxes, interest and fines.
They hold title to no real estate (which would be subject to government seizure), so Hurst, Smith and Alexander make their home in a modest apartment on the near West Side.
“When we file, we’ve always included a letter explaining that we don’t object to paying taxes,” Hurst says, “just the part that goes to the military.”
What they won’t pay the IRS they give to peace and human-welfare charities, among them the Mennonite Central Committee, Food First and the American Friends Service Committee.
was .
NWTRCC regulars were joined by curious locals like Tom Quinn of EcoWatch and Michael Patterson from Dennis Kucinich’s office (our meeting place is in Kucinich’s House district and he was curious enough to send an aide to take notes).
A few things jumped out at me during the opening introductory go-’round:
Jim Stockwell of North Carolina mentioned that after some initial mutual
suspicion there was surprising synergy between the traditional Tax Day
protest his war tax resistance group held
and the Tea Party protests going on
at .
Many of the local groups reported diminishing numbers and less-frequent
activity in the past months, mirroring a general doldrums in the peace
movement.
Bill Ramsey noted that it has become harder to set up alternative funds
in the post-9/11 financial paperwork era.
Ramsey also reported on an interesting and creative tax day protest in his
neck of the woods. A group grabbed hundreds of 1040 forms from public
places where such things are found (libraries, post offices, and the
like), then printed ghostly images of coffins and of children wounded in
war over the forms, and then replaced them where they had originally found
them.
Ginny Sсhnеider noted that in New Hampshire, the notoriety
of the Ed
and Elaine Brown tax protester stand-off fiasco has made it difficult
for her to do outreach in the progressive community. People hear “tax
resistance” and immediately their minds conjure up images of nuts holing
up with their arsenals and their conspiracy theories until the government
locks them up for life.
We watched a near-final cut of a film
NWTRCC is producing about war tax resistance and resisters:
Death and Taxes. It met with great acclaim (and
plenty of suggestions for last-minute edits). Last I heard, it’s due for
release .
Attendees watch a cut of Death and Taxes, an introductory war tax resistance film due to be released next month
Later, Phil Althouse, an election observer in El Salvador, updated us on conditions there, and Mike Ferner of Veterans for Peace talked about how to move from activism to organizing and build bonds between disparate parts of the broader anti-war coalition.
Mike Ferner and Phil Althouse address the gathering
While coalition building always sounds great in the abstract, when it comes
down to actually doing it, it runs into the practical difficulty of finding a
common ground and deciding where to compromise and where no compromise is
possible. Ferner thought that organizing around the larger vision of
real democracy was the way to go. Other folks were skeptical. It can
be difficult to find anything approaching an ideological common ground even in
a small group like
NWTRCC
with an inherently common, specialized and political interest.
In members of
NWTRCC
there’s often a tension between avowed nonviolent principles and promotion of
progressive projects (like universal health care and publicly-financed
elections for instance) that fundamentally rely on a coercive, violent state
to carry them out. The avowedly nonviolent progressives either don’t see the
violent ramifications inherent in such projects or I have failed to understand
the ingenious way they have squared this circle. I usually avoid the
temptation to press the point, but sometimes give in.
Anyway, after this we split up into two groups: a War Tax Resistance 101
discussion group that I moderated, and a larger group that discussed issues of
interest to more experienced resisters. There were other groups that met over
the course of the afternoon as well, but by then I found it hard to be in even
one place at once.
In the evening we heard more in-depth stories of the tax resistance from our hosts, Maria Smith and Charlie Hurst, and from Juanita Nelson and Erica Weiland.
Juanita Nelson told the story of her arrest-in-a-Sears-bathrobe that she also tells in A Matter of Freedom.
Erica described her transformation from a young Dean Democrat to a tax resisting anarchist (a salvation narrative in which, to my delight, The Picket Line plays a role).
Juanita Nelson tells her story
Another way people can assist and show solidarity with tax resisters is by coming to their assistance if their property is seized.
Here are some examples:
Practical support
The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund was established in .
It helps war tax resisters who have had penalties and interest added to their tax bills and seized by the IRS by reimbursing them for a large portion of these additional charges.
The more people we could recruit to shoulder the penalties and interest of resisters, the lighter the burden for everyone.
With the modest help we could provide, conscientious resisters were able to keep on keeping on.
The penalty fund had the added benefit of making us all tax resisters, not just those who withheld all or a portion of their income taxes.
The base list of supporters has been as high as 800 people sharing the weight.
In nearly every appeal, at least 200 people respond, usually more.
In all we’ve paid out about $250,000 to help resisters stay in the struggle.
The story of the seizure of the Kehler/Corner home was the subject of the documentary An Act of Conscience.
When the home of war tax resisters Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner was seized for back taxes, supporters came from near and far to maintain a 24-hour occupation of the home:
[David] Dellinger and others have come from as far away as California to the Colrain [Massachusetts] house…
Mr. Kehler and Ms. Corner continued to live in the house until they were arrested by Federal marshals last December.
Since then, friends and supporters of the couple have arrived to occupy the almost empty house in week-long shifts marked by the Thursday “changing of the guard” ceremony.
Because the house was sold in a Government auction in , all who go inside risk arrest for trespassing.…
For Bonney Simons of St. Johnsbury, Vt., sleeping on a bedroll in the house is her first official act of civil disobedience.
At 72 years of age, she said, it is time to “put your body where your mouth is.”
Suffragist tax resister Dora Montefiore barricaded her home and kept the tax collector from seizing her property for several weeks in , in what came to be known as the “Siege of Montefiore.”
She noted:
The tradespeople of the neighbourhood were absolutely loyal to us besieged women, delivering their milk and bread, etc., over the rather high garden wall which divided the small front gardens of Upper Mall from the terraced roadway fronting the river.
The weekly wash arrived in the same way and the postman day by day delivered very encouraging budgets of correspondence, so that practically we suffered very little inconvenience…
A woman sympathiser in the neighbourhood brought during the course of the [first] morning, a pot of home-made marmalade, as the story had got abroad that we had no provisions and had difficulty in obtaining food.
This was never the case as I am a good housekeeper and have always kept a store cupboard, but we accepted with thanks the pot of marmalade because the intentions of the giver were so excellent.
Examples like this also proved to be vivid anecdotes that the press could use when describing the siege and the support from sympathizers.
When the U.S. government seized Amish tax resister Valentine Byler’s horses and their harnesses while he was in the field preparing for spring planting, sympathetic neighbors allowed him to borrow their horses so he could continue his work.
Other sympathizers throughout the country who heard about the case sent Byler money — more than enough to buy a new team.
An auctioneer who was dragooned into helping the government sell some of the livestock of a man who had been resisting taxes meant to pay for sectarian education in , donated the fee he had earned for conducting the auction to the resister.
During the water charge strike in Dublin, “local campaign groups successfully resisted attempts to disconnect water and in the couple of instances where water was cut off, campaigners re-connected it within hours.
The first round was won hands down by the campaign and it was back to the drawing board for the councils.”
Similar monkeywrenching is being practiced today in Greece, where activists promptly reconnect utilities of people who have been disconnected for failure to pay the increased taxes attached to their utility bills.
During the Annuity Tax resistance in Edinburgh, people sympathetic to the resisters would bid on and return furniture and other items that had been seized and sold by the tax collectors.
The Rebecca Rioters, on the other hand, were characteristically more direct in their resistance:
Warrants of distress were issued… and the constables proceeded to execute them…
The constables then went towards Talog; but when on their way there they heard the sound of a horn, and immediately between two and three hundred persons assembled together, with their faces blackened, some dressed in women’s caps, and others with their coats turned so as to be completely disguised — armed with scythes, crowbars and all manner of destructive weapons which they could lay their hands on.
After cheering the constables, they defied them to do their duty.
The latter had no alternative but to return to town without executing their warrants.
The women were seen running in all directions to alarm their neighbours; and some hundreds were concealed behind the hedges, intending to appear if their services were required.
The entire district seemed to be aroused, and awaiting the arrival of the constables, who were going to levy on the goods of John Harris of Talog Mill for the amount of the fine and costs imposed upon him by the magistrates.
There could not have been less than two hundred persons assembled to resist the execution of process, and vast numbers were flocking from all quarters, in response to the blowing of a horn, the signal of the Rebeccaites to repair thither.
Various mounted messengers were scouring the country and sounding the trumpet of alarm.…
At Maesgwenllian near Kidwelly, several bailiffs were put in possession for arrears of rent to the amount of £150, but about , Rebecca and a great number of her followers made their appearance on the premises, and after driving the bailiffs off, took away the whole of the goods distrained on.
As soon as daylight appeared, the bailiffs returned, but found no traces of Rebecca, nor of the goods which had been taken away.
A group in Olive Hill, Kentucky in followed the Rebecca model, to an extent, “in a raid… by a band of between 800 and 900 men, who forced Levi White, Collector of Taxes, to give up a stock of goods which had been seized.
The goods were then taken back to the store of Levi Oppenheimer, where the official had seized them.”
Last year in Oaxaca, the PRI said that the would “defend up to the point of injunctions those citizens who suffer from liens imposed as well as judgments in order to prevent the impounding of vehicles, considering it unconstitutional that the police will impound them to stop the driver and remove the unit if the striker does not pay the corresponding [vehicle] tax.”
The IRS auctioned off a portion of Ralph Shinaberry’s property in after he refused to pay a fine for growing more wheat on his farm than his government-assigned quota.
“I don’t believe the Government can tell me how much I can grow,” he said, explaining his resistance.
The winning bidder, Herbert Jessup, told a reporter:
“I have no intention of taking possession of the property.”
When war tax resister Cosmas Raimondi’s car was seized by the IRS in , a handful of families in his parish offered to permanently loan him their car so he could still get around, and many others loaned him their cars temporarily.
“I’ve not had to ask one person,” he said.
In Beit Sahour, when the Israeli occupation authorities seized furniture and appliances from resisters, relatives and others would loan them spares, or camping furniture to use as replacements.
“In Bedfordshire in community pressure persuaded a minister to return goods seized from a Quaker for non-payment of tithes.”
Moral support
When Dora Montefiore was first formulating her “siege” strategy with fellow-activists Theresa Billington and Annie Kenney, they agreed to organize daily demonstrations outside of her home while she was defending it.
Montefiore remembered:
The feeling in the neighbourhood towards my act of passive resistance was so excellent and the publicity being given by the Press in the evening papers was so valuable that we decided to make the Hammersmith “Fort” for the time being the centre of the W.S.P.U. activities, and daily demonstrations were arranged for and eventually carried out. …
The roadway was… ideal for the holding of a meeting, as no blocking of traffic could take place, and day in, day out the principles for which suffragists were standing we expounded to many who before had never even heard of the words Woman Suffrage.
At the evening demonstrations rows of lamps were hung along the top of the wall and against the house, the members of the W.S.P.U. speaking from the steps of the house, while I spoke from one of the upstairs windows.
…shoals of letters came to me, a few sadly vulgar and revolting, but the majority helpful and encouraging.
Some Lancashire lads who had heard me speaking in the Midlands wrote and said that if I wanted help they would come with their clogs but that was never the sort of support I needed, and though I thanked them, I declined the help as nicely as I could. …
The working women from the East End came, time and again, to demonstrate in front of my barricaded house…
When the IRS seized and auctioned off the home and farm of Art Harvey and Elizabeth Gravalos in , other war tax resisters and supporters were by their sides:
“I might have cried if I were alone,” Gravalos admitted.
But she was far from alone.
About 75 supporters gathered outside the building and spoke of their solidarity with Elizabeth and Arthur.
About 35 supporters turned up for the second auction, this time held at the IRS office in Lewiston, Maine.
Demonstrators read excerpts from letters to IRS officials and to President Clinton urging them to call off the auction.
In , the IRS levied 78-year-old war tax resister Ruth McKay’s social security checks to recoup the taxes she had been refusing to pay over the previous 20 years.
To show their support of her stand, 40 activists from New Hampshire Peace Action joined her for a vigil at the federal courthouse in Concord, New Hampshire.
When war tax resister Maria Smith’s wages were garnisheed by the IRS in , fifty supporters held a special church service in her honor.
“One of the Valod Vanias,” whose land was seized by the government during the Bardoli satyagraha, “who thus lost all his valuable property, celebrated the event by inviting friends and soldiers of Satyagraha to a party.”
On the other hand, some campaigns have taken the position that sacrifices for the cause are their own reward — that martyrdom is a blessing and that it would be foolish for such resisters to seek or accept recompense.
Nathaniel Morgan was speaking with someone curious about the Quaker stand on war and war taxes, and had this to say:
I told him then that I and my father had refused to pay the income tax on account of war, and had refused it on its first coming out, and withstood it 16 years, except when peace was declared, and that our goods were sold by auction to pay it.
This seemed to excite his curiosity, and made a stand to hear further, on the steps above the engine, going down to the river; asking me if we got anything by that, meaning, was anything refunded by the Society for such suffering.
I immediately replied: “Yes, peace of mind, which was worth all.”
This is the thirty-fifth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it was reported in back issues of The Mennonite.
Today we finish off the 1980s.
The issue announced that a new poster was available from the MCC:
Seattle Mennonite Church established a Northwest Peace Fund in to receive donations and recoverable deposits from people withholding a portion of their federal income taxes or phone taxes because of the large military buildup in the United States.
Anyone who wishes to may donate to the fund so that the resulting interest can be used for local peace activities.
Interest from the Northwest Peace Fund has been used to support peace-related projects in the Puget Sound area, such as the Emergency Feeding Program and the Victim Offender Reconciliation Program (VORP).
While the Seattle Mennonite Church’s Northwest Peace Fund will accept deposits and contributions from outside the Northwest, we strongly encourage each Mennonite congregation to establish its own peace fund.
We approved these seven operating guidelines:
This fund will be called the Northwest Peace Fund.
It will be a non-profit investment fund that will generate income.
This income will be distributed for peace and social concerns projects in the Pacific Northwest.
The peace fund will be administered by three peace fund representatives selected by the peace and social concerns committee of the Seattle Mennonite Church initially for one-, two-, and three-year terms, and for two- year terms thereafter.
Current peace fund representatives are Charles Lord, Bob Hamilton and David Ortman.
Money may be deposited into the fund through a peace fund representative either on a donation or recoverable-deposit basis:
(a) Donations will be retained to generate income for the fund,
(b) Recoverable deposits may be placed in the peace fund for a period of up to five years.
During this time period such funds may be returned to the depositor within 30 days upon written request of the fund’s address, given below.
Recoverable deposits will be used to generate income during the time these funds remain available.
After a period of five years, if not reclaimed, such deposits will revert to the status of donations.
The fund will operate on a fiscal year ending on May 31.
One meeting of the peace fund representatives will be held each April to prepare an annual report, copies of which will be available upon request.
At this meeting the peace fund representatives are also authorized to distribute up to all income generated from the fund to peace and social concern projects in the Pacific Northwest.
Any disbursement must have prior approval of the Seattle Mennonite Church advisory council.
The peace fund is authorized to budget up to 10 percent of any income generated by the fund to cover costs of advertising the fund to attract additional deposits and to provide copies of the annual report.
Any peace fund representative is authorized to withdraw within 30 days any recoverable deposit to a depositor upon a written request by the depositor.
In the event of the dissolution of the peace fund, all funds will be transferred to another peace fund escrow account and the depositors notified.
The mailing address of the fund will be…
Peace Tax Fund campaign director Marian Franz also wrote in with a brief note in which she suggested war tax resisters prompt their Congressional representatives to become Peace Tax Fund law supporters:
Sometimes the sequence goes like this (and I wish it would more often):
Carl Lundberg, a United Methodist pastor from New Haven, Conn., refuses to pay the military portion of his taxes.
The Internal Revenue Service comes to garnishee the wages.
The congregation has a meeting.
The vote is unanimous.
The answer is, No, they will not cooperate with the IRS because they will not be tax collectors, because they will not violate the pastor’s right to his own views of conscience and living by those, etc.
Then in the same year the U.S. Senator from Connecticut, Lowell Weicker, becomes a co-sponsor of the Peace Tax Fund Bill.
Is there a connection?
I think there is and that more will be coming.
That is because I am a person of hope.
Another invitation for war tax resisters to redirect their taxes through the MCC U.S. Peace Section’s “Taxes for Peace” fund appeared in the edition.
This time the funds were to be disbursed to both the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund and to the Christian Peacemaker Teams program.
The note said about $4,000 had been donated to the fund .
The Commission on Home Ministries is interested in hearing from Mennonites who have placed some of their resisted military taxes into alternative peace funds.
Information on recent judicial decisions affecting such peace funds is available from the General Conference Peace and Justice office…
Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner’s Colrain, Mass., home is scheduled to go on the auction block any day.
The Internal Revenue Service seized their house for non-payment of $20,000 in taxes and $6,000 in fines and fees.
The couple has been withholding their federal taxes for 12 years, donating the money to a shelter for homeless women and children, a veteran’s outreach center, and a local peace group.
Kehler says they are willing to risk the consequences “because we can’t not do it.”
While the IRS is looking for a buyer, many local realtors will not touch the sale of the house because of strong community sentiment in favor of the couple’s decision.
After 7½ years of litigation, 27 hearings, and with a case file that grew two inches thick, the Tokyo District Court has ruled against a taxpayers’ organization that sought to end the Japanese government’s collection of income taxes for military purposes.
The case had its origin after the bank accounts of Akiteru Nakagawa and Mennonite minister Michio Ohno were attached by the government and the telephone of Yoshinori Tan was seized, in each instance due to their non-payment of taxes.
The Mennonite Church and the General Conference Mennonite Church voted to combine into a single organization at their joint conference in .
This, I hope, will simplify things for me at least, as it’s been difficult to keep track of the subtle differences in names between the two organizations and their subcommittees.
Also at that conference:
The Mennonite Church narrowly (59 percent) approved a resolution calling for its General Board to take four steps on military tax-withholding.
It will establish a policy of not withholding (U.S.) federal income taxes from wages of any of its employees who make this request because of conscientious objection to war.
The resolution supports “other church boards and agencies that may adopt similar policies,” giving direction, not a mandate.
The General Conference took a similar action in in Bethlehem, Pa., but with a stronger vote, 71 percent.
The edition included an editorial by Muriel T. Stackely that brought readers up to speed on the history of the withholding debate.
Excerpt:
Our conference [the General Conference Mennonite Church] now does not withhold federal tax from those employees requesting this.
“We immediately notified the Internal Revenue Service,” says conference treasurer Ted Stuckey, “explaining our actions, being open, concealing nothing.
That was .
We still have not heard any more from the IRS — after getting its initial response, which told us that this was illegal.
We answered that we knew it was illegal but that it was in response to the action taken by the delegate body.”
Currently three employees of our conference offices in Newton, Kan., are requesting that tax not be withheld.
They are treated as self-employed people.
They say, observes Ted, that they have appreciated the opportunity to witness in this way.
The amounts not paid to IRS have been symbolic rather than comprehensive.
One expression of our commitment to non-violence has been war tax resistance.
Thus we and our friends found that our commitment to practice war tax resistance encouraged our commitment to a simple lifestyle.
We have defined war tax resistance as filing our taxes, but refusing to pay 50 percent of what is owed because that is the portion of U.S. income tax that goes toward military spending.
Fifty percent is a conservative estimate because parts of the U.S. military budget are hidden or secret.
We have learned that if we own a car, even one that is six years old, the IRS will sell it at a public auction to collect back taxes.
It became obvious that consumerism and war tax resistance are incompatible.
As a result several of our friends have made a conscious decision to do job-sharing or half-time employment.
It has worked out that between couples both parents can act equally as care-takers for the children while also having employment, which is psychologically rewarding and complementary to their vision of participating in God’s reign on earth.
Our choice of war tax resistance as a way of reducing our participation in the U.S. war machine has made a simple lifestyle almost mandatory because it has led us to lower our tax liability and lower our material consumption.
Another editorial by Muriel T. Stackely, this one in the edition, complained that “the 7,000 brochures about the Peace Tax Fund distributed at our triennial session in Normal, Ill., among 8,000 Mennonites netted one, one new membership for this campaign that says to the U.S. government, I want my tax dollars to be used to promote life, not death; peace, not war.”
War Resisters League is initiating organizing for major Tax Day demonstrations in Washington and San Francisco on .
Based on the theme “Alternative Revenue Service,” the actions will emphasize the U.S. government’s militaristic spending priorities and will feature a 1040 EZ Peace tax form and the distribution of redirected tax dollars to peace and social justice programs.
WRL is inviting other tax resistance and peace groups to join in planning the actions.
For more information contact Ruth Benn, War Resisters League…
This is the fortieth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it
was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today
we finish off the mid-1990s.
He established the Michael and Margarethe Sattler Foundation to distribute his
royalties from Mathematica to people in need. He thus kept his income below
the taxable level in order not to contribute tax money to the military.
Following his deeply-held personal and religious beliefs, Keiper lived in a
very simple manner. He wore simple clothes, ate simple food, and used a
bicycle as his primary means of transportation. He also felt that to be
consistent in not supporting the military, he should avoid paying taxes to the
government. For a while, this meant that he would accept almost no salary. But
in the end he worked out a scheme for donating all but a small percentage of
his salary to charity. In addition, Keiper set up a foundation, which he named
the Michael and Margarethe Sattler Foundation, after two early Mennonite
martyrs. As part of Keiper’s compensation, Wolfram Research then made
donations to this foundation. The foundation solicited proposals, and in turn
supported various colleges, giving them both funds and copies of Mathematica.
Charles Hurst’s and Maria Smith’s letter to the IRS
was reprinted in one issue. The letter announced that they were redirecting
about 40% of their taxes “to groups or projects that bring healing for our
world.”
A supplement designed for the triennial conference noted
that through the Commission on Home Ministries, “[p]eace and justice resources
have been sent to individuals and congregations on such subjects as military
draft registration, alternatives to paying war taxes in the United States and
Canada, and New Call to Peacemaking peace education resources.”
A
profile of attorney Sharon Heath in the edition briefly mentioned that shortly after joining a Mennonite
church “she decided to become a war tax resister by living below the taxable
income level.”
An
editorial by Gordon Houser in the edition urged that “In our daily affairs we must learn to stand
against the idol called Bomb” and then, somewhat vaguely, said “We will want to
ask ourselves how our tax dollars are being spent and how we should respond to
that.”
An
article by John K. Stoner in the same issue echoed this: “What does it mean
for our souls that we have become willing to call down fire from heaven and
have made the capacity to call down fire from heaven the centerpiece of our
national security doctrine? What does this do to every person who consents to
it, pays their taxes for it, and remains silent as generation after generation
of nuclear missiles and weapons are developed?”
These sort of sidewise-glances at war taxes seemed to be becoming common.
A
report on the triennial conference, for example, noted in passing:
“Meanwhile, violence occurs in our homes; people of color experience a
qualified acceptance in our churches; our tax dollars continue to support the
building of nuclear weapons.”
The triennial sessions also seemed to sidestep any official recognition of war
tax resistance, replacing this with support for a Peace Tax Fund law:
GC delegates
also passed a resolution calling one another to support the
(U.S.) Peace Tax
and the (Canadian) Peace Trust campaigns, which work to provide legal
alternatives to paying war taxes. This was the third consecutive
GC triennial
session to affirm a peace-tax resolution.
A
letter from Don Schrader appeared in the issue, in which he expanded on the theme of the hypocrisy
of praying for peace while paying for war, noted his own choice of a life of
voluntary simplicity, and concluded: “For 16 years I have paid no federal
income tax, and I am not silent. I say, Not with my money, not with my silence,
not in my name.”
The Council of Commissions met in . According to
a
report, the Commission on Home Ministries in its meeting “agreed that the
Student Aid Fund for Non-Registrants should also apply to students who cannot
get loans because they are war-tax resisters.”
In
a
editorial about baptism,
Gordon Houser made a point of casting the original theological debate about
infant baptism as in part a tax resistance issue:
Those early believers were called Anabaptists out of derision. At that time
the state church in Europe baptized infants, which not only placed them on
the church’s membership list but on the state’s tax rolls as well.
Refusing to baptize infants and baptizing adults was a political act at that
time, one that threatened the sovereignty of the state government. It served
as a form of tax refusal, since taxpayer lists came from church membership
rolls. It also served as a protest against the state’s authority to conscript
people to fight the Turks.
A
letter to the editor from David E. Ortman, printed in the
issue, explained how the
resistance landscape had changed for telephone tax resisters in the aftermath
of the breakup of the telephone service provider monopoly. It mentioned two
phone companies that had created official ways for resisters to have the
federal excise tax removed from their phone bills. The letter ended: “Now, if
church organizations only had as much courage or political muscle as phone
companies to avoid being tax collectors.”
In the edition,
Titus Peachey reported
on “[a]n informal survey of 17 Mennonite and Brethren in Christ institutions in
North America [that] has found that few have written policies related to war
taxes.”
But some do honor requests from employees not to withhold all of their federal
income taxes or the portion which would otherwise go for military-related
expenditures. Others have policies opposing Internal Revenue Service levies of
accounts of war tax resisters.
Most institutions surveyed had not fielded such requests within
.
The General Conference Mennonite Church has had a tax-withholding policy in
place and has implemented it
several times. The Mennonite Church General Board agreed in
to “honor the request of an employee who for
conscience’ sake requests that the military portion of his or her federal
income tax not be withheld.”
Mennonite Mutual Aid approved a
policy asking the Internal Revenue Service to lift levies related to war
taxes. “To the extent legally possible,
MMA supports
its members who are protesting the payment of war taxes by initially
requesting that
IRS
collection attempts or levies on MMA-controlled
assets be lifted,” the policy states.
Pennsylvania Mennonite Federal Credit Union in
adopted a similar position.
In a letter responding to an
IRS levy
on an employee’s wages, Mennonite Central Committee wrote: “We do not want to
do anything as an organization that would be an offense to the conscience and
beliefs of such individuals or that would suggest support for the world’s arms
race… We would therefore respectfully request that the levy… be withdrawn.”
Attention war tax resisters: Now you can avoid war taxes without
IRS
harassment. For free information, send SASE to:
Yoder’s Tax Information, 10630 Hiser’s Lane, Broadway,
VA 22815.
Given the Internal Revenue Service’s sullied reputation, this shouldn’t
surprise us, although it probably should offend us: After years of trying to
resolve the issue, Grace Montgomery, a Quaker war-tax resister from Stamford,
Conn., is calling for an
investigation after the
IRS
illegally cashed a photocopy of a check not even made out to the
IRS.
According to the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund newsletter, Montgomery
each year places the military portion of her federal income tax in a Quaker
escrow account. The
IRS then
usually levies her bank account for the amount owed. But in
, the
IRS
cashed a photocopy of Montgomery’s check to the escrow account. Her bank
accepted it even though it was not genuine and was made out to “The Religious
Society of Friends.”
Some recent links of note:
NWTRCC kicked off this year’s federal tax filing season with a panel consisting of the experienced war tax resisters Kathy Kelly, Sam Yerger, Erica Leigh, Charlie Hurst, and Maria Smith, who explained their approaches to resistance and took questions from a live audience.
You can view a video of the panel and the Q&A here.
[S]uppose… that the governor of a state like Texas or Florida were to say: Citizens of this state should not pay federal taxes this year, and our state will indemnify its citizens against federal prosecution. In other words, the state would assume the federal tax bill for its own citizens, and declare it null and void.
Meanwhile, one of the more unhinged Trumperists decided it would be a good idea to publicly tweet an increasingly violent series of fantasies including threatening the life of a traffic cop, killing Nancy Pelosi, running over “a million people” in a speeding car, and… bombing the IRS headquarters.
That last bit got him indicted on federal charges.
TIGTA has released another report on the federal government’s use of private debt collection companies to pursue unpaid taxes.
The report says that the companies recovered a mere 1.79% of the unpaid taxes they were assigned, and that more than a third of the money collected went to cover costs and profit for the private companies, with the remainder going to the Treasury.
The National Taxpayer Advocate also released its report recently.
It highlights some of the many problems the IRS had to cope with and/or exacerbate during the year of pandemic shutdowns and greater-than-usual government dysfunction.
For example:
Taxpayers got misleading tax notices that included deadlines to respond that had already passed by the time the notice was sent.
People who tried to call the IRS were able to get through to an agency employee less than 25% of the time.
Taxpayer records are processed on “the oldest major IT systems in the federal government,” but Congress has appropriated only about 8¼% of the estimated cost of updating them.
Hey, what do you know?
Another tax strike is brewing in South Kivu.
This strike, which is scheduled to start in , is meant to pressure the government to repair roads and bridges in the region.
